String Quartet

SKU: HL.14008374

Composed by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. Music Sales America. Classical. Score. Composed 2006. 24 pages. Chester Music #CH68629. Published by Chester Music (HL.14008374).

ISBN 9781846096150. UPC: 884088435202. 8.25x11.75x0.105 inches.

The Full Score for Peter Maxwell Davies' fourth in a series of ten string quartets commissioned by the Naxos Recording company, first performed by the Maggini Quartet on 20th August 2004 at the Chapel of the Royal Palace, Oslo, Norway, as part of the Olso Chamber Music Festival. Composer Note: The fourth Naxos quartet was written in January and February of 2004, with the intention of producing something lighter and much less fierce than its predecessor, an unpremeditated and spontaneous reaction to the illegal invasion of Iraq. I returned to the well-known Brueghel picture of children's games (1560, now in Vienna), which had been the inspiration for my sixth Strathclyde Concerto, for flute and orchestra. These illustrations liberated my musical imagination, but I feel it would limit the listener's perception to be too specific about which game relates to exactly which section of the work. Suffice it to say that there is vigorous play - leap-frog, bind the devil with a cord, truss, wrestling - alongside quieter pastimes - masks, guess whom I shall choose, courting, odds and evens. The single movement juxtaposes these activities as abruptly and intimately as they occur in Brueghel. Rather as the eye is taken into different perspectives and proportions of scale within the picture, taking liberties which would never be present in, for instance, Brunelleschi architectural drawings, so here, with a constant sequence of transformation processes, I have distorted the neat, precise implications of modal progression, expressed in the unison opening phrase (from F to B through A sharp/B flat), so that the ear is led, en route, into the sound equivalents of strange passageways and closed rooms: sicut exposition ludus. As work on the quartet progressed I became aware that I was reading into, and behind the games, adult motives and implications, concerning aggression and war, with their consequences. It was impossible to escape into innocent childhood fantasy. The nature of the F to B progression underlying the whole construction derives from a passage in the development of the first movement of Mahler's Third Symphony, and the opening of Schoenberg's Second String Quartet. However, unlike in these models, here a real - if temporary - sense of resolution occurs at the close of the quartet: as when the curtain falls on the reconciled Count and Countess in 'Figaro' one wonders how long the F/B truce will hold, and games break out again. The quartet is dedicated to Giuseppe Rebecchini, Roman architect, and friend since the nineteen-fifties.

String quartet

SKU: FG.55011-639-9

Composed by Einojuhani Rautavaara. Score + parts. Fennica Gehrman #55011-639-9. Published by Fennica Gehrman (FG.55011-639-9).

ISBN 9790550116399.

New Urtext edition (2020) of Einojuhani Rautavaara's String Quartet No. 1 is based on the composer's manuscript, incorporating corrections and comments by composer's hand in various sources. Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928-2016) was one of Finland's internationally most successful composers. He made his major breakthrough with the Seventh Symphony, Angel of Light, in the 1990s, but his output includes numerous classic operas, concertos, chamber music works and choral works. Over his extensive career, he progressed from Neo-Classicism to strict dodecaphony to free-tonal Neo-Romanticism. His catalogue of influences over the decades includes Orthodox liturgical music and Finnish fiddlers. Rautavaara's first string quartet (1953) is from his Neo-Classical early period when he composed only little chamber music. Stravinsky and the Finnish folk music are present in the rhythmical first movement; later enters a characteristic scale alternating half and whole steps. After the Slavic romanticism of the slow movement Andante the fiddler is back in the cheerful Gigue.

By Asia Rodstein, for violin solo with playback. This ingenious album by Asia Rodstein provides beginners with the opportunity to play in an ensemble and to develop an ear for playing together. For each song, there is a preparatory exercise, and a first violin part. Book/CD. Grade 1

Score and Parts. Composed by Franz Schubert (1797-1828). Edited by Egon Voss. Henle Music Folios. Classical. Softcover. G. Henle #HN1317. Published by G. Henle