SKU: XC.LS1810

UPC: 812598030150. 12 x 9 inches.

The Legacy Solo Series contains masterworks meticulously edited and set beautifully by one of the most popular composers of music for students today, Larry Clark. These solos are routinely found on many state festival lists throughout the United States and are perfect for use at an adjudicated solo festival or recital. Commonly featured on college audition lists, these works are a cornerstone of the solo repertoire. Piano players will enjoy piano reductions that are clean and feature the solo line in concert pitch for easy rehearsal. Each Legacy Solo, compatible with Smartmusic, comes with beautifully set parts and piano accompaniment. Piano recordings for rehearsal or performance of each piece are available for download from the Excelcia Music Publishing website.

SKU: AP.36-60710008

ISBN 9798888522028. UPC: 676737624248. English.

Ralph Vaughan Williams, ever fond of poetry, found creative impetus for his beautiful romance The Lark Ascending, IRV 39, in an 1881 poem by George Meredith. Marie Pauline Hall, to whom the work was dedicated, gave the first performance of the original violin and piano version, here presented in a Masters reprint edition, at Shirehampton Public Hall on December 15, 1920, beside pianist Geoffrey Mendham. After World War I, the composer expanded the work for soloist and full orchestra. This has become the version most familiar to listeners. The violin, lifting its silvery tones above the stage, captures the soaring nature of Meredith's couplet: Till lost on his aerial rings/In light, and then the fancy sings. Reprint edition.

These products are currently being prepared by a new publisher. While many items are ready and will ship on time, some others may see delays of several months.

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.49047147

UPC: 196288134060.

The “Easy Concert Pieces” series for Violin and Piano is intended for tuition purposes and are particularly suitable for performanceat auditions and school concerts, for competitions, examinations - and for music making at home too, of course. Recordings and backing tracks for all the pieces are included on the accompanying Audio-Download. Volume 3 (intermediate) requires familiarity withthe first four positions. Besides well-known works such as the famous Air by Bach, the Largo from Handel's opera “Xerxes” and a movement from Vivaldi's Four Seasons, there are rewarding concerto and sonata movements by Küchler and Fiocco, as well as less familiar Romantic compositions by Rieding and Trowell. Modern music is represented in two lovely pieces by Hermann Schroeder, also inspired by the theme of the seasons. Young violinists will enjoy the four pop pieces that round off the selection.