PARTITIONS GRATUITES : ALTO
- Op

SKU: HL.48024644

ISBN 9781784544010. UPC: 888680949082. 9.0x12.0x0.273 inches.

In 1989 when Louis Andriessen was teaching at the State University of New York at Buffalo, Miles Davis Autobiography was published.While reading it, he suddenly knew what the subject of his piece for the Kronos Quartet should be - early be-bop licks and especially the work of Charlie Parker. He wanted to do the impossible - be-bop is not at all idiomatic for string instruments. But be-bop had been an important influence on his musical development when he was young, and he decided to do something with this music from his youth. Basically the essence of Charlie Parker's playing is the extremely fast tempo. This fast tempo is really fast, because the playing is based upon the chord structure of existing melodies which are sometimes played two or three times as fast as normal. Parker needed speed to express what he musically felt: little time was left for him. This is the main explanation of the title of the work.In the beginning of Facing Death, Andriessen literally quotes fragments of Charlie Parker improvisations. He also quotes one original melody: Ornithology (which is based on How High the Moon). The 7th and 8th bars of Ornithology become an important motif inthe piece. The whole composition is one long development in Parker's fast tempo. This work was composed in 1990 for string quartet and later arranged for saxophone quartet.

SKU: BR.EOS-1900-19

ISBN 9790004789391. 9 x 12 inches.

The triumphal concert hall success of Tchaikovsky's most popular and musically most valuable concert pieces for solo instrument and orchestra was preceded by severe teething troubles. His Piano Concerto No. 1 Op. 23 of 1874/75 was slated by Tchaikovsky's mentor and potential performer at the premiere, the pianist, conductor and director of the Moscow Conservatory, Nikolai Rubinstein. So Hans von Bulow premiered it gratefully and enthusiastically (in Boston, USA, on 25 October 1875). Leopold Auer, violin virtuoso and professor at the Petersburg Conservatory, to whom Tchaikovsky wanted to dedicate his Violin Concerto Op. 35 of 1878, refused to premiere it - he regarded the solo part as unrewarding and unplayable. On 4 December 1881, Adolf Brodsky premiered the Violin Concerto in Vienna, with Hans Richter conducting, but Eduard Hanslick wrote a crushing and unpleasant review. The Variations on a Rococo Theme for Cello and Orchestra Op. 33 were finally published by their dedicatee, the German cellist and professor at the Moscow Conservatory, Wilhelm Fitzenhagen, after he had almost completely rewritten and then premiered it on 18 December 1877 in Moscow, while Tchaikovsky, who had asked him to publish the work, was abroad. The original version, which can be found in this edition, was not published until the 1950s.