SKU: HL.49046240

ISBN 9783795714536. UPC: 888680964696. 6.0x9.0x0.237 inches.

The violin concerto from 1935 is probably the best-known and most frequently performed instrumental work by Alban Berg. Written on behalf of the violinist Louis Krasner, it is his last completed composition. Krasner played the solo part at the world premiere at the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona on 19 April 1936 after Berg's death. The concert is dedicated to “The Memory of an Angel.” Berg processed the death of 18-year-old Manon Gropius, who had contracted polio, and his daughter Alma Mahler-Werfel's marriage to architect Walter Gropius. His intention was “to translate the traits of the young girl into musical characters”. With more than 1,200 titles from orchestral and choral literature, chamber music and music theater, Edition Eulenburg is the largest score series in the world. It covers a large part of music history from the baroque to classical modernism and looks back on a long tradition.

SKU: BT.EMBZ20017A

English-German-Hungari an.

In 1845 Franz Liszt embarked on a project to compose an Italian opera based on Lord Byron’s tragedy, Sardanapalus (1821). It was central to his ambition to attain status as a major European composer, with premieres variously planned for Milan, Vienna, Paris and London. But he abandoned it half way through, and the music he completed has lain silently for 170 years.
Liszt’s difficulty in obtaining a libretto meant that composition only began in April 1850. He completed virtually all the music for Act 1 in an annotated piano-vocal score of 111 pages, contained within his N4 music ‘sketch book’. The unnamed librettist was an Italian poet and political prisoner, seemingly living under house arrest, and a close acquaintance of Cristina Belgiojoso. His libretto survives as underlay in the N4 sketchbook and has been critically reconstructed and translated.
Sardanapalo is Liszt’s only mature opera. While he consistently referred to it in French, as Sardanapale, the published title of the Italian opera would almost certainly have used the Italian name, hence this forms the title of the first edition. There are three solo roles and a chorus of concubines. The manuscript was previously thought to be fragmentary and partially illegible, but it was finally deciphered to international acclaim in March 2017. Liszt’s score offers a richly melodic style, with elements from Bellini and Verdi alongside glimmers of Wagner and the symphonic poems ahead: a unique mixture of Italianate pastiche and mid-century harmonic innovation. It remains quintessentially Lisztian. The opera sets Byron’s tragedy about war and peace in ancient Assyria: the last King, effeminate in his tastes, is drawn to wine, concubines and feasts more than politics and war: his subjects find him dishonourable (a ‘man queen’) and military rebels seek to overthrow him, but are pardoned, for the King rejects the ‘deceit of glory’ built on others’ suffering: this leads only to a larger uprising, the Euphrates floods its banks, destroying the castle’s main defensive wall, and defeat is inevitable: the King sends his family away and orders that he be burned alive with his lover, amid scents and spices in a grand inferno. As Byron put it: ‘not a mere pillar formed of cloud and flame, but a light to lessen ages.’ For his part, Liszt told a friend that his finale ‘will even aim to set fire to the entire audience!’
This critical edition includes a detailed study on the genesis of Liszt’s Sardanapalo in English, German, and Hungarian, the libretto in the original Italian as well as in English, German, and Hungarian translation, several facsimile pages of Liszt’s manuscript, and a detailed Critical Report.

SKU: PR.114407260

UPC: 680160011209.

Ports of Call, a suite of five movements for two violins and guitar was written for the Trio Triento for their New York debut. Composed in the Summer of 1992, it was premiered in April 1993. 1992 was the 500th anniversary of the 1492 expulsion of the Jews from Spain and, of course, Columbus' trip to America. To commemorate these important events, I was commissioned by organizations in 20 major cities to write an oratorio. The result was Ever Since Babylon. The musical material was greatly influenced by tunes from around the Mediterranean region. These Sephardic melodies took on treat meaning for me, and I took five of them and expanded them into these five pieces which are actually dances. I felt that the combination of two violins and guitar lent itself well as a vehicle for this music. The names of the cities are used because the tunes originated in these particular locations. Marseille, a typical provencale dance with naturally changing meters and a light, airy, touch. Alexandria, much more mysterious and languid, reflecting the heat and inertia of that glorious city in slow though sometimes steady movement. Salonika, a wild dance in typical Greek fashion celebrating a holiday with abandon. The whirling movement goes relentlessly from beginning to end. Haifa is represented by two beautiful chant-like pastoral tunes which introduce the beauty and luminous quality of this, one of the most beautiful parts in the Eastern Mediterranean. Valencia, the last, a tribute to medieval Spain. The music is a culmination of the influences of the three great cultures, Moslem, Christian, and Jewish, which flourished there for hundreds of years. It is an uplifting dance with just a tinge of sadness in the center, since the Golden Age of which the tune was a part, had come to a tragic end in 1492. --Samuel Adler.

SKU: BR.PB-5651

ISBN 9790004215487. 10.5 x 14 inches.

The ballet, a masterpiece of Impressionist orchestration, is now followed by new Urtext editions of the well-known Daphnis Suites, both edited by Ravel expert Jean-Francois Monnard. Ravel extracted two suites, two Fragements Symphoniques: the work now known as the First Suite was published before the first performance of the ballet. It served as a test for the composer, who wanted to present the just orchestrated pages in concert. Suite No. 1 was premiered in April 1911, but its reception was disastrous. It was not until three years later that Suite No. 2 was performed. It takes up the third and last part of the ballet unchanged. It is largely thanks to this suite, with its richness of color in the famous Lever du jour, that the work is known.The large format of the conducting score as well as the orchestral parts allow good readability and support the clarity and transparency of the modern notation. The already published piano reduction EB 9422 can also be used for the suites due to the double bar count and information about the layout of the suites.