20 Easy to Intermediate Pieces from four Centuries. Par NEUMANN EVA-MARIA (Arr.). Making music in a quartet uniquely nurtures young string players’ musical development, ensemble playing, listening to each other, and intonation. So, what could be more obvious than introducing the scoring of this genre, often referred to as chamber music’s supreme discipline, as early as possible. Indeed, composers have all along advised the classical string quartet’s outstanding compositions, but they are hardly easy to play for beginners. Here, with the present collection, is where Eva-Maria Neumann comes in. The two volumes include A total of 20 easy to intermediate arrangements of pieces from Bach to Bartók, together with specifically composed ones in string-quartet friendly keys - Reading scores and individual parts - additionally, individual part for violin III instead of viola - Tips on warming up, intonation, bowing, fingering, tempos, dynamics, and playing musically - Specific instructions for the individual pieces - Lists of supplementary original literature The pieces are also effective as scored for chorus./ Recueil / Quatuor à Cordes

Par FREEMAN ALEX. Alex Freeman found initial inspiration for his string quartet (2015) in a series of photographs a geologist friend showed him of en échelon veins in rock formations. The open strings punctuated with pizzicato unisons that begin the single-movement work call to mind something crystalline and shimmering, which is immediately infused with tumbling lyrical lines in something of a rapid caccia technique throughout. The middle of the work becomes more suspended in slower material loosely based on a technique of prolation canon, comprises layers of free, expressive, lyrical, and even elegiac music moving at different speeds. As the work concludes, the materials converge in a rhythmically pulsating stasis and an almost chorale-like statement. Duration: c. 13' This product includes the score and the parts (A4 sized). American-Finnish composer Alex Freeman (b.1972) has established himself among the foremost composers of choral music in Finland. A dedicated citizen of his musical community, a teacher, and a choral singer himself, he composes music that reflects an appreciation for a wide range of aesthetics and a passion for communicating with listeners and performers. In his choral works, in particular, we find music that aims to be sonorous, melodic, and resonant, but is always crafted to carefully avoid the cliches that can burden conventional tonality. His instrumental works run the gamut: a cantata with orchestra based on poetry of Whitman; a significant body of solo piano works that reveal deep roots in everything from austere absolute music to soaring elegaic rhetoric (see Albany Records, Inner Voice); his chamber work Blueshift (Navona Records), which is a kind of paean to Reich and Adams in miniature; open-ended modular works, like various iterations of his Slow All Clocks for electronic media, solo clarinet, and mixed choirs of kanteles; and, recently, some new directions in microtonal music. / Date parution : 2022-05-31/ Répertoire / Quatuor à Cordes

John Luther Adams' Everything That Rises for String Quartet. Composers note: I never imagined I would write a string quartet. Then I heard the JACK Quartet and I understood how Imight be able to make the medium my own. The result was The Wind in High Places - a twenty-minute work composed entirely on natural harmonics and open strings. Over the next few years twomore quartets followed. The second quartet  untouched  is a further exploration of the aeolian sound world of the first. Then in Canticles of the Sky the musicians finally touch the fingerboards of theirinstruments. And now comes Everything That Rises. This fourth quartet is more expansive both in time and in space. It grows out of Sila: The Breath of the World - aperformance-length choral/orchestral work composed on a rising series of sixteen harmonic clouds. Everything That Rises traverses this same territory but in a much more melodic way. Each musician isa soloist playing throughout. They surround the audience. Time floats. Over the course of an hour the lines spin out - always rising - in acoustically perfect intervals that grow progressively smaller as they spiralupward... until the music dissolves into the soft noise of the bows sighing. Duration: 60 minutes

Par HYNNINEN MAIJA. Maija Hynninen's piano quintet Nine-channeled Pearl flows effortlessly. Beginning with rhythmical gamelan-inspired movement it continues through twirling scales that lead to the heart of the piece – a sonorous bell-like harmonic on the piano. From this calm center the music continues floating in a dream-like world ending with a chorale played by the strings. Duration: 10' This product includes the score (=piano part) and the string parts. Composer Maija Hynninen (b. 1977) is working in the areas of concert music, electronic instrument design and multidisciplinary performances. The essence of her music builds on the unique moments where the parameters of this world are slightly altered to allow a glimpse of another reality to be present. It can be a moment where the timbre of purely acoustical writing gives surprising results or when electronics project sounds into another domain, another space and reality. / Date parution : 2023-06-01/ Répertoire / Quintette avec Piano