SKU: BR.EB-9413

ISBN 9790004188873. 9 x 12 inches.

For a long time after Romanticism had come to the fore, it was generally agreed that Brahms somehow did not get it: History and Progress - it was thought - were proceeding along one clear path and Brahms - who was composing sonatas and symphonies instead of nocturnes and symphonic poems - had taken the wrong way. Almost one century later, Schonberg wrote an essay, Brahms, der Fortschrittliche (Brahms, the progressive), in which he explained that it wasn't like that at all.Fully assuming the risk to appear somehow irreverent, I have to confess: Over the years, I came to the conclusion that the present - and the future - can be created only by loving the past. As Brahms had shown us, it is only by accepting the challenge of taking our heritage into our own hands, that we can create something new. We cannot avoid engaging with the past. Therefore, starting with my Sinfonia n. 1, I began to flirt with such a strong and effective musical structure like the sonata form. I re-read and freely transformed it, because it is a sturdy and resilient structure, but also a theatrical and colorful one. For me, it is a happy structure. And I think that today more than ever we need something like this: We need to find places - even imaginary ones - where we can give happiness a form of its own.Nicola Campogrande, December 2020

World premiere: Bologna/Italy, Streaming, April 11, 2021Commissioned by the Fondazione Musica Insieme.

SKU: PR.414411630

ISBN 9781491114551. UPC: 680160089956. 9.5 x 13 inches.

EXCURSIONS is a one-movement work exploring two “characters.” A rhapsodic, descending passage is introduced by the cello, followed by a  static, chorale-like phrase for the violin and cello. Their individual developments are separated by a slow, contrasting middle section. The composer has written: “This is analogous to situations in life: we stand by a crossroad, choosing one option and forfeiting the other. But in art, the realm of the imagination, we can perhaps afford to pursue more than one route to its ultimate destination… or can we? It is symbolic that in this work both roads eventually lead to the same place.”.
Excursions for violin, cello and piano, is a one-movement work of tripartite structure in which materials explored in the first of three large sections are brought back in the last section.  The traditional statement-contrast-restatement form, which is readily suggested by such a description, is, however, not at all in the mold in which the work is cast.  Rather, my aim was to subject the essential materials of the piece (two “characters” –the rhapsodic, descending passage played by the cello in the very opening and, later, a static, slow moving, chorale-like phrase for the violin and cello) to two entirely different developments separated by a slow, contrasting middle section.  This is analogous to an exploration of the ramifications that two divergent choices made by the same person might lead to.  In life, as we stand by a crossroad, choosing one option usually means having to forfeit the other.  But in art, the realm of the imagination, we can perhaps afford to pursue more than one route to its ultimate destination…or can we?  It is, I believe, symbolic that in this work both roads eventually lead to the same place: in composing Excursions, it seemed absolutely inescapable that at the end the slow, contrasting middle sections – both more resigned and peaceful than the battling spirits of the outer parts – should return briefly to end the work. The piano trio combination (once highly favored, but to this composer still as challenging today) is approached here as a collaborative effort of three equal soloists – partners.  Of the available pairings, the two strings find themselves occasionally approached as a team pitted against the piano.  The cello-piano combination is also not uncommon here, and there is an extended violin cadenza toward the end of the piece.  The writing for the three instruments is closely and at times interlinked, but the players are all instructed to play from scores. Excursions was first performed at Brandeis University in 1982.

SKU: BA.BA11086

ISBN 9790006564446. 32.5 x 25.5 cm inches.

A suite whose movements always deliver something other than what they seem to promise. But throughout, the two instruments and respectively their players act like two people in very specific situations:

I.: The opening movement is reserved for the piano; the initially earnest, solitary cantilena intensifies creating expectation. Suddenly
II.: the violin sounds. Its moving figures replace the now silent piano, also soloistically.
III. „Passacaglia“: The title is taken literally – the two instruments/persons encounter each other in the street. Two musical characters who meet at a specific point, recognize each other, but move on again, each one by itself.
IV. „Rondo“: The two of them dance together. Before me, I saw people dancing the Sardana – a round dance – in front of the cathedral of Barcelona. Four themes in different time signatures circle ceaselessly between the two instruments.
V. „Fuga“: At last, regardless, panic flight – again the title is taken literally ... Human, only too human …

SKU: BR.EB-9250

World premiere: Toronto, November 17, 2016Written for the Duo Wapiti (Genevieve Liboiron, Daniel Anez)

ISBN 9790004185506. 10 x 12.5 inches.

Whereas Nono considered the world to be only fragmentarily analyzable, so-called consumer capitalism increasingly intrudes upon ego structures, by fragmenting them to the point of: assumed insufficiency, i.e., was consumption a form of infiltration?, or: in television you can see models licking face cream because it's so rich etc. (retranslated), as Meredith Haaf cited in her book review (SZ / 23.05.2016 Alexandra Kleeman: You Too Can Have A Body Like Mine) , and to the point of similar perfection-senselessness. Music doesn't do things by halves. Even when events or notes are puffed up, they can retain elegance and significance. Other ego amplitudes are of violinistic nature or are favourite memories - Paganini's Capricci, Stockhausen's Studie I, Steve Reich, the tone C and similar things. The craziest egos are quantums, because at no time are they identical with themselves. They can entangle and superpose, are nonlocal, etc. Although the sound character in this Duo is fairly open, I believe I succeeded in making probability waves of harmonic stopovers perceptible. This means hearing without analyzing and without constantly measuring. Nonlocality - without messenger particles - means no harmonic steps, but with the capacity to interact. (Nicolaus A. Huber, May 2016)

World premiere: Toronto, November 17, 2016 Written for the Duo Wapiti (Genevieve Liboiron, Daniel Anez).

SKU: HL.132577

UPC: 884088974114.

SKU: BT.PWM4788030

English.