Koncertouverture-Musernes Dans paa Helikon (Koncertouverture) . Instrumentation: 3.2.2.2/4.3.3.1/timp/perc/arpa/archi. BVN185

Score-This work is perhaps best described by the composer Tan Dun: 'About five years ago I went to an exhibition on the works of painter Paul Klee at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. I was extremely moved and wanted to write asymphony. This became a discussion a diologue between myself and Klee's painting but not in any sense a musical description of any particular paintings. Although constructed of many small sections my symphony is imagined as acomplete continuous work.'

Four Pieces For Orchestra was composed by Hans Abrahamsen in 2000-2003. Programme note: In 1983 Hans Abrahamsen wrote the first seven of his Ten Studies for Piano. In the early eighties most composers who wrote for the piano were still making strenuous efforts to distance themselves from the instrument?s romantic past for example treating it as a percussion instrument rather than exploiting its expressive ?singing? potential. The piano?s modern identity as a mechanical rational emotionally cool instrument is reflected in Abrahamsen?s studies 5 7; but in the first four studies Abrahamsen allows the piano to?recollect? its past: especially what the composer calls ?the golden German romantic time full of expression night timelessness dream and the irrational?. Accordingly these first four studies were given German one might specifically say Schumanesque - titles: Traumlied (?Dreamsong?) Sturm (?Storm?) Arabeske (?Arabesque?) and Ende (?End?). While Abrahamsen was in no way dissatisfied with the first four Studies as piano music he soon felt the urge to expand them in both time and space. In their new identity as Four Pieces for Orchestra created between 2000-2003 the original studies nearly doubled in length while the forces required expanded from one soloist to an orchestra of Mahlerian/Straussian dimensions including instruments beloved by the late-romantics: Wagner tubas bass trumpet guitar mandolin and the hammer used so memorably in Mahler?s Sixth Symphony and Alban Berg?s Three Pieces for Orchestra. The results are not so much ?arrangements? of the four piano studies more recompositions. A helpful comparison might be made with certain painters: Cézanne portraying the same mountain from different angles; or Monet obsessively returning to Rouen Cathedral in different lights and weather conditions. Abrahamsen himself remembers an important visit to the Munch Museum in Oslo where he saw how Munch painted the same subject

The genre 'pastorale héroïque? is a legacy of the grand siècle of Louis XIV and in the 18th century it only rarely reached the stage. But in the second period of his career it became Rameau's preferred genre: the more unconventional world of shepherds and nymphs gave him greater freedom in terms of dramatic action, stage décor and musical virtuosity compared to the tragédie lyrique. This is demonstrated to masterly effect in 'Acanthe et Céphise? (1751), where even the ballets are fully integrated into the plot.This edition contains all the instrumental numbers from this popular pastorale in a new critical edition by Nathalie Berthon-Blivet. / Conducteur

Score-For string orchestra (3-1st Violin 3-2nd Violin 2-3rd Violin 1-1st Viola 2-2nd Viola 4-Cello/Bass).