SKU: HL.49004036

ISBN 9790001040785. 8.25x11.75x0.262 inches.

Inhaltliche Tiefe, uberschaumende Lebendigkeit und Raffinesse der Kompositionstechnik' - lobt Samuel Rhodes, der Bratschist des renommierten Juilliard String Quartet, Paul Hindemiths Streichquartette. Der Komponist entwarf das Quartett op. 10 1918 an der Front im Elsass, und doch zeigt es nicht den kleinsten Einfluss der schrecklichen Kriegsereignisse. Das dreisatzige Werk ist voll jugendlichen Uberschwangs und spiegelt Hindemiths neue Kompositionstechniken wider. Seine Meisterschaft und Fantasie im Gebrauch der Instrumente beweisen, dass er mit der Gattung Streichquartett schon vollig vertraut war.

SKU: ST.Y296

ISBN 9790220223525.

Nature and landscape have been the dominant themes of much of Rhian Samuel's vocal music of the last ten years, projected chiefly through the poetry of Anne Stevenson, and in her most recent song-settings, the writings of the Pakistan-born Texas-based poet Zulfikar Ghose. His poem 'Conspiracy of the Clouds' describes how, the clouds having chosen to become invisible, 'Even the astronauts on the space shuttle / looked down on a cloudless America' as hurricanes ravage Louisiana and storms engulf Nebraska. An intriguing conceit in the tradition of magic realism, the text is presented as a scena lasting around 16 minutes, with interpolations from 'Haze' by the nineteenth-century New England transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau. Thus modern fable and romantic nature-description are juxtaposed, and their interaction becomes the source of musical contrasts too. Thoreau's words are assigned predominantly to the vocalist's highest register, those of Ghose to her lower tessitura; and the suggestive and dramatic accompaniment builds tension steadily to the final ironic response of an incredulous American public: not one of awe and wonder, but the question 'Why weren't we told about it?