SKU: HL.14030676

ISBN 9788759863879. Danish.

The 'Ten short piano pieces' with the title Sommerferie i Blekinge (Summer Holiday in Blekinge) (1916) have not been preserved in their complete form. The only existing source is a manuscript in Rued Langgaard's hand that lacks the first and last pages with sections of the music. This means that the entire first piano piece with the title Paa rejse (Travelling) is missing as well as most of Piece II, Mode (Meeting) (only the conclusion of this piece has been preserved). A large fragment exists of Piece X, Aften med Dans (Evening with Dancing), but the conclusion is missing. The manuscript is to be found at the Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen (RLS 83,2). On the first page,Langgaard has merely written 'Piano Pieces 1916': the real title and titles of the movements in the first two pieces derives from other sources. In 2008, the Rued Langgaard Society asked the Danish composer Niels Marthinsen (b. 1963) to add to the work, the aim being to create a 'performance version'. Marthinsen composed a complete new first piece - Paa rejse (Travelling) - and allowed it to merge with the preserved concluding fragment of Langgaard's second piece, Mode (Meeting). Niels Marthinsen further composed a conclusion to the incomplete Piece X, Aften med Dans (Evening with Dancing), and in it incorporated a reference to the first piece, so that his additions came to form a frame round what hasbeen preserved of Langgaard's work. This supplemented version was given its first performance by Berit Johansen Tange in 2008. The overall title and titles of the individual pieces refer to a summer stay in 1913, i.e. three years before the work was composed, when the then 20-year-old composed was on holiday in Kyrkhult in Blekinge (Sweden).

SKU: PR.114423770

UPC: 680160688579.

When RoseWind Duo’s Clifford Leaman and Scott Herring commissioned me for Silver Linings, we could not have anticipated that we would be in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic when I composed the piece. In the early summer of 2020, when the three of us met virtually to discuss possible topics, we had all been in lockdown for several months; the causes and effects of the lockdown were at the forefront of our discussion. In themidst of daily tragedies, I had been seeing news stories using the words “silver lining” to describe unexpectedly positive situations arising from our global situation, ranging from small effects (i.e. people having time to work on projects they never could get around to doing) to global ramifications (resurging animal populations in areas where they’re no longer challenged for space with humanity).Silver Linings consists of two movements. Groundhog Day, the first movement, is slow and brooding. It embodies the strong feeling of déjà vu that so many of us experienced early on into lockdown, as we seemed to live the same day repeatedly with minor variances to our schedules. There are two main musical gestures: the first opens the piece as a slow, ascending minor chord which is a representation of uncertainty, and the secondis a falling minor scale. These gestures depict how our lives were reduced to the basic building blocks of life – wake up, eat, work, eat, sleep – as our daily activities and livelihoods were suddenly knocked down. These same two gestures are utilized in the energetic second movement, Making Lemonade, except that they are spun around to reveal their silver linings: the minor chord falls to sound centered and decisive, and the minor scale rises as it bubbles with activity. Among the seeds of despair are also foundseeds of hope, and the saxophone and marimba explore this hopefulness with great vigor and excitement.

SKU: HL.49045014

ISBN 9790001202114. 9.0x12.0 inches.

The Belgian composer Nicholas Lens presents extremely varied etudes, exercises and simple phrases with wonderfully telling titles from poetry and everyday world for children and adults. For the most part the studies are tonal and simple and have no constructed line. They are not based on any educational concept but leave the musical dramatization to the pupils and teachers: 'Notes and rhythms are just notes and rhythms, they do not have that many rules, they do not have any pretension, they are just tools for you to use to express what you want to share'.