SKU: PR.11440561S

UPC: 680160009039.

The three movements examine the same materials from different points of view; in the first, the ideas are chronologically separated, but they alternate and develop through the instruments in an intensifying way that generates a rather imposing and grandiose rhetoric. The second, with its hypnoti, incessant reiterations at maximum volume of a simultaneous combination of motives of different l lengths and shapes, ends just short of becoming unbearable... In the last movement the flute, clarinet and violin slowly unfold a continuous texture that combines several of the earlier elements, while the piano softly interjects the echo of its first movement triplets.

SKU: HL.14041762

9.0x12.0x0.071 inches.

'Romance for violin and piano is a short, reflective piece that exploits the lyrical qualities inherent in the combination. Originally written for a very young but talented violinist, Romance travels through numerous moods andcolours within a continuous musical development of the opening material. At first gentle and reflective with increasing dramatic outbursts outlined by the violin sforzandi and parallel sixths in the piano writing, numerous shortsolo passages in both instruments culminate in a fiery climax. Quickly subsiding into the calmer yet now more melancholy strains of the earlier stages of the piece, the ending is somewhat incomplete. This seems to suggest acontinuous turn of events alluded to in the music.'
             - Helen Grime



Born in 1981, Helen studied oboe with JohnAnderson and composition with Julian Anderson and Edwin Roxburgh at the Royal College of Music. She graduated from the BMus course with First Class Honours and completed her Masters with Distinction in 2004. From 2005-07, Helenwas a Legal & General Junior Fellow at the Royal College of Music. In 2003 she won a British Composer Award for her Oboe Concerto, and was awarded the intercollegiate Theodore Holland Composition Prize in 2003 as well as allthe major composition prizes in the RCM. In 2008 she was awarded a Leonard Bernstein Fellowship to study at the Tanglewood Music Center where she studied with John Harbison, Michael Gandolfi, Shulamit Ran and Augusta Read Thomas.Helen has had works commissioned by some of the most established performers and organisations including ENO, London Symphony Orchestra, BCMG, Britten Sinfonia, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the Tanglewood Music Center.Conductors who have performed her work include Daniel Harding, Oliver Knussen, Pierre Boulez and Yan Pascal Tortelier. Helen is the 2010 recipient of the Lili Boulanger Memorial Fund and Associate Composer of The Halle from the.

SKU: PR.164002390

UPC: 680160038091.

I became interested in the work of Plato through my friend and collaborator, the writer and philosopher Paul Woodruff. Paul's new translation, with Alexander Nehamas, of the Symposium gave me insights into ancient Greek ways of thinking about Love, Beauty, and Wisdom -- and managed to keep the earthy, and often bawdy side of it all in full view. But their new translation of Plato's later dialogue Phaedrus went even further: the beauty of the speeches is breathtaking, and the discourse itself is enough to keep one awake at night. Basically the Great Speech of Socrates in the Phaedrus dialogue has to do with the place of Eros in the world, and with the conflict in the soul between fleshly pleasure and philosophic discovery. I will not attempt to encapsulate this brilliant discourse in a program note: suffice it to say that reading it gave rise to my two-sided work for clarinet, violin, and piano, Phaedrus. The first movement represents the Philosophic life, and is thus subtitled Apollo's Lyre (Invocation and Hymn). It begins with an unaccompanied melody for the clarinet, which (after a pair of harp-like flourishes for the piano, expands into an accompanied canon. The voices in the dialogue (clarinet and violin) follow each other by a prescribed number of beats, but the music is totally devoid of any meter at all. The piano, representing the lyre, accompanies this lyric love-feast with repeated strummed chords. The canon has three large sections, and ends with violin echoing the unaccompanied clarinet invocation as the sound of the lyre fades. The second movement, called Dionysus' Dream-Orgy (Ritual Dance) presents, after a brief introduction, another kind of unmetered music. Rather than long lyric flights of philosophic song, however, this time we hear a unison dance of unbridled energy and sensual transport. The piece soon forms itself into a loose arch form, with contrasting metered dance sections divided by the unison unmetered orgy tune. Midway through the movement, Apollo's melody returns from the first movement, but it is a temporary reminiscence. The orgiastic dance returns, reaches a climax, and ends with a stomping of feet. While Plato asserts that a proper balance between lust and reason is necessary in all men, he (naturally) gives the nod to Philosophy as the better choice in which to live. Not so in my music: the two sides are meant to coexist and to complement each other. No sides are taken. Phaedrus was commissioned of the Verdehr Trio by Michigan State University. It is dedicated to the Vedehr Trio with great affection and admiration.

SKU: HL.49019514

ISBN 9790220132575. 9.0x12.0x0.111 inches.

“All Stars Aligned was originally to be a set of variations on a theme that is almost hidden in the opening bars. However, the piece took on much more of a fantasia feel and shape as I wrote it and it could be argued that a second theme first heard in the violin of the ground (derived from material in bar 5) becomes more dominant than the first as the piece progresses. The piece is in one continuous movement but is in three distinct sections and tempi: medium, slow and fast. The material shares some similarities with my piano trio, Nightswimming, and in some ways can be seen as a companion piece (minus the cello of course). The title comes from a track on an album by the artist St. Vincent called Marry Me which I hope is appropriate for a piece commissioned to celebrate a wedding anniversary.” Joe Duddell 2010.