PARTITIONS GRATUITES : VIOLON
- From the Inside Out - Oboe

SKU: PR.114406980

UPC: 680160010806.

Shula mit Ran’s second string quartet, subtitled “Vistas,” occupies a large canvas that is cast in a traditional fourmovement mold, where the outer movements present, explore, and later return to the work’s principal musical materials, surrounding a slow movement and scherzo-type third movement with a trio. In addition to tempo-based titles, the individual movements have subtitles that are evocative of each movement’s character, as follows: I. Concentric: from the inside out II. Stasis III. Flashes IV. Vistas.
My second string quartet, “Vistas”, is a work cast in a traditional four-movement formal mold, with the outer movements, presenting and later returning to the work’s principal musical materials, surrounding a slow movement and a scherzo-type third movement.While the four movements’ “proper” names -- Maestoso con forza, Lento, Scherzo impetuoso, and Introduzione; Maestoso e grande – give some indication of the general character of the individual movements, I have also subtitled, less formally, each movement as follows:  1) Concentric:  from the inside out  2)  Stasis  3) Flashes  4) Vista.  The images evoked by these titles tell one, I think, a bit more about the inner workings of the quartet.In the first movement, a prominently presented opening pitch (E) reveals itself, as the movement unfolds, to be a center of gravity from which ever-growing cycles of activity gradually evolve.  While various important themes come into being as the movement progresses, their impact on the listener has, I believe, a great deal to do with their juxtaposition and relationship to the initial central point of gravity.Stasis is, as the name implies, a movement where activity seems, at times, almost suspended.  Being also, as Webster’s Dictionary reminds us, “a state of static balance and equilibrium among opposing tendencies or forces,” it develops various materials, including ones from the first movement, without bringing them to points of resolution.Flashes is short and very fast, evoking in my mind the quick shimmer of fireflies, a “sudden burst of light”, but also a “brief time”.  Perhaps, even, a “smile”?Final ly, the last movement, Vista, is not only “a view or outlook”, but also “a comprehensive mental view of a series of remembered or anticipated events.”  After a brief recall of the opening of the second movement, this movement brings back all the important themes of the first movement in their original order.  But just as going back can never really mean going back in time, the movement is much more than recapitulatory.  By cutting through previously transitory passages and presenting the main ideas in a fashion more direct yet more evolved, it also sheds new light on earlier events, offering a retrospective, synoptic view of the first movement as it brings to culmination the work as a whole. “Vistasâ € was commissioned by C. Geraldine Freund for the Taneyev String Quartet of what was then Leningrad.  It was the first commission given in this country to a Soviet chamber ensemble since the 1985 cultural exchange accord between the Soviet Union and the United States.

SKU: HL.49046391

ISBN 9781540086549. UPC: 842819108696.

The general inspiration for the music was an idea of Durham, garnered from two or three short visits and a reading of a short history - so a sort of Durham of the mind, a stylized Durham; 'my' Durham, if you will, imagined into music. However, the defininginspiration for the piece was the Cathedral. My first visit to Durham in 2001 saw me standing open-mouthed on Palace Green, and then in silent awe as I walked into that formidable magnificence inside. Most of the themes came from the days immediately following my first experience of this extraordinary, inspiring building. The feeling that the very stones and pillars themselves are imbued with centuries of prayer, withpeople's joy, grief, despair, even anger; gratitude and hope. As the tunes and chords and sounds started to organize themselves in my mind and onto manuscript paper, I realized that I was writing a sort of day in the life of Durham, and that the Cathedral wouldbe its beginning, would be in its middle, and would be at its ending. The piece consists of six 'pictures' arranged into three parts - the morning, afternoon and evening of this imaginary Durham city. Jon Lord, 2017.