Par CURNOW JAMES. Throughout The New Covenant the composer seeks to portray through programmatic music the sensitivity, love and understanding of a compassionate Christ and the strength and wisdom of the Son of God who gave Himself to become the new covenant between God and man. This descriptive work creates a word painting by use of fragments from John Newton's beautiful hymn 'How Sweet The Name …

Score Parties. Par BEETHOVEN LUDWIG VAN. When Beethoven wrote these three quartets he was 15 years old and a composition student of Christian Gottlob Neefe in Bonn. They reveal a strong Mozartian influence while the brilliant piano writing already gives a sense of the mature Beethoven. He may conceivably have written the works for the wealthy Mastiaux family in Bonn, as he gave piano lessons to …

Fassung Iv. Par BACH JOHANN SEBASTIAN. with the unfinished revision [1739] an an appendix. The St. John Passion ranks among the great vocal works from Bach’s Leipzig years. In contrast to his other large-scale choral works, however, Bach never gave this work a definitive final form. Rather, for every performance he made numerous changes. All previous editions of the St. John Passion have combined …

Fassung Ii. Par BACH JOHANN SEBASTIAN. The St. John Passion ranks alongside the St. Matthew Passion, the Christmas Oratorio, the Magnificat and the B minor Mass as one of the great vocal works from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Leipzig years. In contrast to his other large-scale choral works, however, Bach never gave this work a definitive final form. Rather, for every performance he substantially revis…

This brand new edition presents Béla Bartók's Mikrokosmos, a progressive cycle of 153 studies for Piano, in a single volume for the first time. Designed to illustrate the musical and technical progressions suitable for beginner to advanced players, this complete collection is invaluable for every pianist. All six volumes of Mikrokosmos are presented here, exactly as the composer intended them. Fea…

Par LEWIS GEORGE. Although his Signifying Riffs (1998) for percussion and strings is halfway there, String Quartet 1.5: Experiments in Living (2016) is the first proper string quartet by composer George Lewis. Borrowing its title from the writings of John Stuart Mill, Experiments in Living leads the performers through a series of idiosyncratic episodes featuring extremes of gesture and extended te…

Par AL PETTEWAY. Master guitarist Al Petteway ventures into new territory with 15 Celtic-inspired, traditional, and New Age fingerstyle compositions in standard and alternate tunings. Derived from Al's award-winning solo recording of the same title, each piece bears the inimitable Petteway signature of profoundly graceful, inspired innovation. Written in standard notation and tab with several piec…

Par CORP RONALD. Both as composer and conductor, Ronald Corp is steeped in the English choral tradition, and in A Spotless Rose he has traversed by his own path the hallowed ground of words immortalised by Herbert Howells. Corp’s own music, chordal yet contrapuntal, and likewise redolent in its modality of a distant past ‘of ancient seers’ foreshowing’, flows smoothly in flexible rhythm, each voic…

Fassung Iv. Par BACH JOHANN SEBASTIAN. with the unfinished revision [1739] an an appendix. The St. John Passion ranks among the great vocal works from Bach’s Leipzig years. In contrast to his other large-scale choral works, however, Bach never gave this work a definitive final form. Rather, for every performance he made numerous changes. All previous editions of the St. John Passion have combined …

Par DE HAAN JACOB. Jacob de Haan was commissioned to write Choral Music a concert band from Dinxperlo (Netherlands). This band gave the work its premiere in 1997 during the World Music Contest in Kerkrade. Choral Music is based on the chorale Sollt ich meinem Gott nicht singen by the seventeenth century German composer Johann Schop. Contrary to the title, Choral Music has nothing in common with a …

Par LIANG LEI. Having been interested in Mahayana Buddhism for a number of years, I went to a Buddhist monastery in upstate New York to study meditation in 1999. One evening, while walking alone by the side of the lake, I caught the sight of a “V” shape floating and extending on the surface of the water. It was a beaver taking a swim under the moon. This image gave me insight into my relationship …

Erinnerungen, Briefe und Kompositionen zum 80 geburtstag. Clytus Gottwald's importance for contemporary choral music can be measured by his outstanding achievements, including his founding of the Schola Cantorum Stuttgart, which he conducted for its entire existence of 30 years and with whom he gave numerous first performances of contemporary music. Contemporaries and musical companions relate sto…

Bohuslav Martinu wrote his First Violin Concerto in Paris in 1932-33, this work having been commissioned by the violin virtuoso Samuel Dushkin. However, it was never performed during the composer's lifetime and was even considered lost after his death. It was not until 1961 that musicologist and collector Hans Moldenhauer bought it from Boaz Piller, contrabassoonist of the Boston Symphony Orchestr…

Par HOWARD EMILY. Dualities by Emily Howard is a contemporary work for an Ensemble of 14 players. The work is an expression of the fascination with the juxtaposition of extremes and explores relationships between emotion and reason, constructivism and spontaneity, complexity and simplicity. The resultant musical structure is an accumulation of transitions between contrasting soundworlds. Dualities…

Arr. Otto M. Schwarz. Par PRAETORIUS MICHAEL. The many sided and productive Michael Praetorius (1571-1621) is knwon as a composer of dance music, sacred music and music for the advent and Christmas time. He worked as Kapelmeister to the court at Wolffenbuttel, but he was also asked to serve in other places, includin Dresden. Praetorius was valued for the new impulses he gave to music by means of h…