If Ye Love Me by John Tavener was commissioned by Manchester International Festival (MIF Creative) with thanks to the support of the MIF Commissioning Circle. In If Ye LoveMe there are subtle echo-effects between three String Quartets which are complimented by an upper Voice choir.

Arranged for Soprano voice Violin and Piano.Violin part available separately: CH75240-01.Note from the composer:In the spring of 1996 my great friend and brilliant violinistFriedemann Eichhorn invited me and my girlfriend-at-the-time Hila Plitmann (a soprano) to give a concert with him in his home city of Speyer Germany. We had all met that year as students at the Juilliard School and wereinseparable. Because we were appearing as a band of travelling musicians 'Friedy' asked me to write a set of troubadour songs for Piano Violin and Soprano. I asked Hila (who was born and raised in Jerusalem) to write me a few'postcards' in her native tongue and a few days later she presented me with these exquisite and delicate Hebrew poems. I set them while we vacationed in a small skiing village in the Swiss Alps and we performed them for thefirst time a week later in Speyer.In 2001 the University of Miami commissioned me to adapt the songs for SATB chorus and string quartet and the Efroni Choir in Israel commissioned me to adapt them for SA Violin andPiano leaving me now with five(!) different versions of the same work: SATB and String Quartet; SATB Violin and Piano; SA and String Quartet; SA Violin and Piano; and the original Soprano Violin and Piano.Eachof the songs captures a moment that Hila and I shared together. 'Kalá kallá' (which means 'light bride') was a pun I came up with while she was first teaching me Hebrew. The bells at the beginning of 'Éyzeshélleg' are the exact pitches that awakened us each morning in Germany as they rang from a nearby cathedral.These songs are profoundly personal for me born entirely out of my new love for this soprano poetand now my beautiful wife Hila Plitmann.Eric Whitacre

A selection of folk ballads from England Ireland Scotland and Wales.A ballad is the blending of words the beauty of melody tone rhythm and expression. They reflect the history of a people their legends religion love and work. British ballads are renouned for their verse melodic construction and for the enormous range of expression.1 The Lass of Richmond Hill is a poem by Leonard McNally a barrister about a lass who became his wife in 1787. The music is by James Hook (1746 1827).2 Sally in our Alley. The words are by Henry Carey who also wrote the original music but this was replaced by the tune we now know an English traditionalmelody in 1790.3 Caller Herrin'. The poem is by Lady Nairne (1766 1845). Nathaniel Gow the famous Scottish violinist wrote the music in 1798 as a harpsichord piece combining the traditional Edinburgh fish wives cry Caller Herrin' with the bells of St Andrew's Church Edinburgh.4 Men of Harlech. The music is traditionally Welsh and the ballad probably originated from North Wales where the native princes had ruled the longest.5 David of the White Rock (Dafydd y Garres Wen). Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) wrote the words to this ballad The Dying Bard. David Owen the Welsh bard of the ballad composed the tune on his death-bed on awakening from a trance in which be believed himself to have heard the tune in heaven.6 Oft in the Stilly Night. The words describe an old man's memories of the smiles the tears of boyhood years. The eyes that shone now dimmed and gone and how oft in the stilly night he remembers other days. The ballad is by the Irish poet Thomas Moore (1779 1852) who set the words to a traditional air.7- The Meeting of the Waters. Written by Thomas Moore music Irish traditional.The Meeting of the Waters is the confluence of the rivers Avonmore and Avonberg in a beautiful valley near Avoca County Wicklow.8 Oh! Charlie is my Darlin'. The

Born in South Africa, but now an Irish citizen, Kevin Volans' musical idiom has been shaped by an unusually diverse range of experiences, including studies with Stockhausen in Cologne, field trips to South Africa to study traditional music, his own involvement with the New Simplicity movement, his collection of contemporary art and African textiles, friendships with composers like Morton Feldman and Gerald Barry, as well as a love of virtuoso piano music which he performs, broadcasts and records. While having an easily recognised, unique voice, Volans' music resists compartmentalisation. He is as comfortable working in conventional genres as embarking on innovative collaborations with artists of other disciplines.String Quartet #1 (White Man Sleeps) was written for the Kronos Quartet and was first performed by them in July 1986, London.The title 'White Man Sleeps' comes from a moment in nyanga Panpipe music where the performers leave off playing their loud pipes for a few cycles and dance only to the sound of their ankle rattles, to let the white landowner sleep - for a minute or two.'In composing this piece I drew from the following sources: the first movement owes something to the style of Basotho concertina music - the second and fourth movements are drawn from traditional Nyungwe music played by Makina Chirenje and his Nyanga panpipe group at Nsava, Tete, Mozambique, recorded and transcribed by Andrew Tracey (to be found in an article entitled 'The nyanga Panpipe dance' in African Music, Vol.5, #1 (1971) - the third movement derives from the San bow music (recorded by Tony Traill of the University of Witwatersrand) and from Basotho lesiba music, transcribed by myself - in the fifth movement I added my own invented folklore. My approach to the original music was anything but purist - it is played in Western tuning, filtered, slowed down by a few 'time-octaves?, cast into non-African metres (like the 13-beat pattern of the first dance) and redistributed between the players in several ways. I also used interlocking techniques where they were absent in the original models and vice versa' - Kevin VolansDuration 24 minutes. Parts available: CH61205. / Quatuor A Cordes (Conducteur)

Solo for Oboe or Violin. Par BACRI NICOLAS. The title only appears frivolous to those who have lived little. With the passage of time, the seasons that pass, the differences in quantity and quality of light, of temperature and weather, become of ever greater importance in the meaning of our individual existence. This transformation follows the path of our lives and often mimes in front of our very own eyes, incredulous and wondrous, events that we can only experience once in a lifetime: our birth, our blossoming, our aging and our death. Such a subject could well take up ten years of my life. This was the case. Nevertheless, everything started very innocently with a proposition from my friend François Leleux to write him a double concerto that he could play with Natalia Gutman, initially named ‘Musica Concertante’. It was with this second proposition from François for another double concerto, this time with Lisa Batiashvili, that the idea came to me for a cycle of four concertos with, each time, a different instrument from the string quartet to join the oboe. The automnal colours of the cello are a perfect match for the retrospective nature of the first completed concerto in the cycle. ‘concerto nostalgico, l’automne’, whilst the love and the first child of the Leleux-Batiashvili couple could only bring Spring to mind, hence the ‘Concerto amoroso, le printemps’, was born. When Jean-Marc Bador asked me to be an associate of the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris for two years, it was quite naturally that I thought of completing this cycle for François Leleux, with winter ‘Concerto tenebroso’, created in January 2010 with Lise berthaud playing the viola. All that remained was for me to conclude, with a work that reunited all four protagonsits. It was summer, the ‘Concerto luminoso’, which took on this role’./ Répertoire / Orchestre

Par BARTOK BELA. Béla Bartók?s six string quartets, composed between 1908 and 1940, are 20th-century milestones of the genre. His First String Quartet is closely linked to his unhappy love for the violinist Stefi Geyer, to whom he sent the initial measures of its first movement in early 1908 with the remark: ?My song of death?. When he completed all three movements of the work a year later, he had, according to his friend and colleague Zoltán Kodály, written himself ?back into life?. In this First Quartet, Bartók combines late-Romantic sounds with elements of the folk music that had since 1905 been a source of increasing interest to him. This definitive edition, supervised by Bartók scholar László Somfai, is the first-ever Urtext edition of this work. It takes into account both manuscript and printed sources, as well as letters and notes by the composer in which he recorded matters such as modifications to tempo markings. The Henle edition thus offers a musical text edited to the highest scholarly standards, with fascinating information on the work?s compositional history and performance practice. Sensible page turns and cue notes help to make this edition a real ?must have?. / Date parution : 2023-05-06/ Répertoire / Quatuor à Cordes

Henry Mancini's most recognized theme is a jazz classic that string players will love with this new arrangement from Robert Longfield. Great riffs cool harmonies and a spot for a jazz violin solo (written version included) make it a super chart for string quartet.