SKU: HL.4007972

Stories, sagas and legends--who among us doesn't know them? Always delivered with a tinge of brutality, these cautionary tales are a legacy of moral education from times past: inquisitive children alone in the forest are generally eaten by a witch; the Soup-Kasper of Hoffmann's Struwwelpeter dies from starvation rather than eating his soup; anyone letting in strangers usually gets devoured; anyone who plays with matches gets burned; and thumb-suckers get their thumbs cut off. The list of unfortunate demises is almost endless.In the tale of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, parents lose their children through greed, ridicule, scorn and a failure to appreciate art. There is still a street in the town of Hamelin in which neither drumming nor playing has not been allowed since 130 children disappeared into a mountain, never to be seen again. This composition by Otto M. Schwarz opens with exactly this scene, taking us back to the year 1284. As in many towns at the time, Hamelin in Germany suffered with hygiene problems--rats and mice began to multiply rapidly, and the town was overrun with the plague. There appeared a man dressed in colorful clothes who promised the locals to free them from this burden. They agreed and settled on a fee. Then the man pulled out a pipe and began to play. When the rats and mice heard this, they followed him. He led the animals into the Weser River, where they all drowned. Back in town, the people refused to pay him. They didn't recognize this man's skills and knowledge and were only prepared to pay for simple labour. A pact with the devil was made, which led to the Pied Piper leaving the town in a furious rage. One Sunday, when many people were at church, he returned, took out his flute and began to play. The town's children were so enchanted by his playing that they followed him. He led them out of the town and disappeared with them forever into a mountain. Of all the children, only two survived--however one was mute, and one was blind. In the street from which the children left Hamelin, music may no longer be played in memory of this event.

SKU: BR.OB-3210-15

ISBN 9790004300695. 10 x 12.5 inches.

Johannes Brahms' first Piano Concerto was the fruit of a complex, protracted, and extremely trying creative process. Its origin goes back to a sonata in D minor for two pianos conceived in spring 1854. The impulse for the creation of the main subject was however a shocking event: According to Joseqph Joachim, the theme originated after hearing about Schumanns suicide attempt. A few months earlier, Schumann had revealed Brahms to the musical world in his essay New Paths. In this article, Brahms is extolled as the musician who is called to give expression to the feeling of his times in an ideal fashion. The unusually rapid genesis of the D-minor sonata and its prevailingly dark, monumental mood can be interpreted as an impassioned compositional response to Schumann's suicide attempt. However, the year-long struggle to arrive at the final form of the work should perhaps also be seen in the context of the resounding praise of Schumann's prophetic article. Brahms undoubtly felt a growing inner pressure to live up to the expectations aroused therein.Together with Clara Schumann, Brahms played the three so far existing movements of the sonata, but he was very self-critical. He felt that he had not been able to realize the monumentality he had envisioned, and which Clara Schumann felt, by merely doubling the piano sound. He soon decided to transform the sonata into a symphony (his first orchestral project). However, this idea did not seem to fit his vision either. Only in spring 1855 did he strike upon the definitive solution: a piano concerto. With Brahms as soloist, this concerto premiered in 1859, though he initially had little success. He wrote to Joachim about one of the first performances that the concerto was a brilliant and unmistakable - failure. This hardly surprised Brahms, for he was undoubtedly aware of the newness of the work, which surpassed the expectations of the audience. The work's complex structure and symphonic dimensions, the solo part's rejection of showy, elegant brilliance, and the uniquely Brahmsian orchestral density it maintains throughout; all of these qualities inevitably exasperated audiences at first - until they raised this work to the ranks of the most celebrated concertos of all time.

SKU: PR.510076960

1. Choral: An improbably superimposing of Beethoven and Brahms. At the end of the first performance of the latter's 1st Symphony, someone asked the composer: Don't you find that your main theme remin ds one of the Ode to Joy? To which he retorted: Even an idiot would have noticed it! 2. Fugue: in the last exposition, the subject of Fugue I from volume 1 of Bach's Well-Tempered Keyboard is super imposed on the theme from Mozart's so-called easy sonata. 3. Passion: In his Violin Concerto, Mendelssohn, to whom we owe the rediscovery of Bach's Passions, seems to have borrowed a theme from a lost Passion. 4. Recitativo: Tribute to Franck's tribute to Bach in his Sonata for violin and piano. 5. Invention: A private revenge, after a bitter failure. Debussy's Toccata was on the compulsory list for the Conservatory piano class entrance exam. 6. Arpeggione: In which the listener realizes the similarity in the introduction to Schubert's Unfinished Symphony and Arpeggione Sonata. 7. Sarabande: The most iconoclastic, for Bach's 5th Cello Suite is already suffused with harmony. There might be an evocatioin of a Brahms-like overarching structure, though... 8. Variation: The slowest variation ever written on Paganini's 24th Caprice. 9. Scene: Schumann's Reverie as a Prelude. 10. Finale: In order to capture the elusive harmony of the Finale of Chopin's Sonate Funebre. 11. Fugue on Au clair de la lune: Our greatest nursery rhymes, fugue fitted and choralized. 12. Fugue de Noel (Christmas fugue): Quite appropriate. 13. Fugue on J'ai du bon tabac: Prohibited counterpoint. 14. Fugue on La Marseillaise: Franco-German reconciliation. 15. Pedal - Exercitium: Realization and conclusion of Bach's organ pedal exercies.

SKU: BR.EOS-20828-16

The world premiere of the play L'Arlesienne with the incidental music by Georges Bizet was a notable failure not only for the playwright Alphonse Daudet, but also for the composer.

ISBN 9790004785454. 10 x 12.5 inches.

The two four-movement orchestral suites, in turn, are still thrilling concert-goers all over the world, ever since their first performances in 1872 and 1880 respectively. In 1998 and 2001, Lesley A. Wright presented the score and orchestral parts of the two repertoire pieces in an Urtext edition prepared for the first time on the basis of all relevant sources. Thus not only will the yellow Urtext angel be gracing the conducting score and orchestral parts, but, next to the standardized large format and new layout of the parts, there are other user-friendly improvements, such as practical page-turns, page-turn aids and intelligent cue notes.

SKU: GI.G-10494

ISBN 9781574635195.

This book contains collective insights from some of the most inspirational high school orchestra directors in the United States. They reveal their ideas on rehearsal philosophy, rehearsal preparation, warm-up strategies, favorite repertoire, tone/bow control, intonation, articulation, expression, online instruction, recruiting and building community. Each of their stories is as unique as the individual strategies and approaches they share. You will surely be inspired by their ideas, approaches, and strategies presented in Rehearsing the High School Orchestra. I know the most joy in my life has come from my violin. (Albert Einstein) —Gail Barnes, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts. (Winston Churchill) —David Eccles, The Lovett School, Atlanta, Georgia I want every student who comes through my door to enjoy and see the value of music. —Creston Herron, Klein High School, Klein, Texas Without music, life would be a mistake. (Friedrich Nietzsche) —Cathie Hudnall, Norcross High School, Norcross, Georgia To make a resolution and act accordingly is to live with hope. There may be difficulties and hardships, but not disappointment or despair if you follow the path steadily. Do not rest in your efforts, without stopping, without haste, carefully taking a step at a time forward will surely get you there. (Shinichi Suzuki) —Scott Laird, North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, Durham, North Carolina Orchestra class teaches so much more than how to play a stringed instrument. We learn valuable life skills in ‘O.R.C.H.E.S.T.R.A’—Opportunity, Responsibility, Concentration, Honesty, Effort, Self-Discipline, Trust, Respect, and Attitude. —Charles Laux, Alpharetta High School, Alpharetta, Georgia I teach excellence and the commitment it takes to be excellent. Music is the discipline that I use to teach this. While music is a beautiful artform, the subject matter is never more important than the subject itself. —Kirt Mosier, Youth Symphony of Kansas City, Kansas City, Missouri You are the music while the music lasts. (T. S. Eliot) —Kirk Moss, University of Northwestern—St. Paul, Roseville, Minnesota The job of teaching is less about feeding information to students, and more about making them hungry. —Christopher Selby, School of the Arts, Charleston, South Carolina High achievement always takes place within the framework of high expectations. (Charles Kettering) —Laura Mulligan Thomas, Charlottesville High School, Charlottesville, Virginia.

SKU: UT.NAP-11R

ISBN 9790215324459. 9 x 12 inches.

Performance Material on Hire

[Solo: SSATTB - Choir: SATB - 2.2.2.2 - 4.2.3.0 - Tp - Hp - Str]

Francesca da Rimini is a drama for music in two acts by Saverio Mercadante, libretto by Felice Romani; the text is freely inspired by the unfortunate events of the two lovers, Francesca and Paolo, of which Dante's Comedy (canto V) also narrates.
According to some scholars, the first performance of Francesca da Rimini took place in Madrid in January 1828; however, this date is not reflected in the Diario de Avisos de Madrid, a publication that daily reserved a conspicuous space for news on the shows staged in the Spanish city: the years between 1828 and 1831 in fact do not mention the work. Furthermore, no printed libretto of Mercadante's Francesca da Rimini is preserved today – an inexplicable fact, if one admits that the performance took place. The text of the opera can be largely traced back to the one prepared by Romani for the homonymous work by Antonio Carlini (Naples 1825), which Mercadante was able to know before his stay in Spain.
Following the missed Spanish premiere, the opera should then have been represented at La Scala Theater in a subsequent season, with reliability the imminent one of the 1831/32 carnival; but shortly thereafter the impresario died: thus the contractual obligations involving him were no longer fulfilled, and, for a second time, Mercadante was then forced to shelve the plans about Francesca da Rimini, put aside now for several months.
In fact, the scoring – very similar to that of the operas planned at La Scala in the same Carnival period – assumes that Francesca da Rimini was destined for a theatre of great means, like few others in Italy besides La Scala. But the failure of the opera may also have been due to the presence of the part of an amoroso en travesti, Paolo, to whom Mercadante assigns a prominent role also in terms of music: in 1831 and in Italy such a solution was no longer so frequent as a few years before or in provincial theatres, and so this condition may possibly have affected the fate of the negotiations in Milan, and may explain how the composer was then unable to have the score performed elsewhere.
This critical edition is based on manuscript copies conserved in the Museo internazionale e Biblioteca della Musica di Bologna (autograph score) and in the Biblioteca Histórica Municipal in Madrid (score and separate parts).