SKU: BT.EMBZ12001

Vocalise, for soprano (or tenor) voice with piano accompaniment, came into being in 1910 as the final piece in Rachmaninov's Op. 34 song series. Most of the songs were tailored to suit the personalities of various outstanding Russian singers (including Chaliapin), and dedicated to them. An interesting feature of Vocalise, which was written for the soprano Antonina Nezhdanova, is that, as its title indicates, the vocal solo has no text: the performer can sing it through on any one vowel of her choice. This song became one of the composer's most popular pieces, and countless arrangements have been made of it (for orchestra, for various chamber ensembles, for violin, for cello,for almost every kind of brass instrument, for clarinet, for guitar, for harmonica, even for cello orchestra!). One of the most successful transcriptions for solo piano, first published in 1981, is the work of the world-famous Hungarian concert pianist, conductor and composer, Zoltán Kocsis.

SKU: HL.49030396

ISBN 9790220122743. 9.0x12.0x0.067 inches. Vocalise.

No traditional tunes of any kind are made use of in this piece, in which I have wished to express my personal feelings about my own country (Australia) and people, and also to voice a certain kind of emotion that seems to me not untypical of native-born Colonials in general.Perhaps it is not unnatural that people living more or less lonelily in vast virgin countries and struggling against natural and climatic hardships (rather than against the more actively and dramaticly exciting counter wills of their fellow men, as in more thickly populated lands) should run largely to that patiently yearning, inactive sentimental wistfulness that we find so touchingly expressed in much American art; for instance in Mark Twains Huckleberry Finn, and Stephen C. Foster's adorable songs, My Old Kentucky Home, Old Folks at Home, etc. I have also noticed curious, almost Italian-like, musical tendencies in brass band performances and ways of singing in Australia (such as a preference for richness and intensity of tone and soulful breadth of phrasing over more subtly and sensitively varied delicacies of expression) which are also reflected here.Percy Aldridge Grainger.

SKU: OU.9780193864924

ISBN 9780193864924. 12 x 8 inches.

For soprano and pipa (or marimba) A beautiful vocalise originally intended with pipa accompaniment (a four-string Chinese instrument with similarities to the lute). The vocalist sings only vowels throughout conveying a sense of timelessness and meditation.