Hammerklavier. Par BEETHOVEN LUDWIG VAN. “Here’s a sonata that will challenge pianists and that one will be able to play in 50 years”: thus Beethoven is said to have written to his publisher Artaria regarding his mighty “Hammerklavier” Sonata Op. 106. Given its monumental scale and extreme musical and pianistic demands, the term “Grande Sonate” seems almost an understatement. Dedicated to Archduke…

Par ESPLO HAAKON. Nice Day for a Stroll depicts just this, a leisurely stroll around the park. Make sure the piece is not played too fast. With its light jazz touch, the rhythm and the triplets should rather be a bit behind to get the right style. All instruments have small solo parts and melodies that change. The piece is easy to listen to for the audience and will fit well for almost any concert…

Par HAENDEL GEORG FRIEDRICH. When the librettist Paolo Rolli and George Frideric Handel composed an Italian opera about Scipio's conquest of the Iberian port city of Carthago Nova in 1726, these events from 209 BC were already almost two thousand years in the past. Research on the critical edition of the opera “Scipione” in the Halle Handel Edition suggests that the librettist and composer had so…

Par KNUSSEN OLIVER. Paul Griffiths says 'The piece is full of clever and beautiful things - the early scenes proceed almost in convulsions of orchestral brilliance within a marvellously clear and animated world whose chief references, sometimes explicit, are to Ravel and Stravinsky. The scene with the pig is deliciously rich in bass gruntings - that with the milkman cat mixes Marx brohters dialogu…

Flute Music from the Mannheim School Heft 5. Par RICHTER FRANZ XAVER. F. X. Richter, one of the foremost exponents of the Mannheimer School, was a prodigious and versatile composer whose instrumental output comprises about 70 symphonies, six harpsichord concertos, flute concertos, several string quartets, as well as trios, duets and solo pieces. His vocal compositions (almost exclusively sacred wo…

Cesar Franck's Sonata for Piano and Violin is one of the most treasured works in the violin repertoire, a masterpiece of cyclic form with a gracefulness and expressive force almost paradigmatic for the age of musical Romanticism. This work was composed in 1886 and was dedicated to the Belgian violinist and composer Eugène Ysaÿe.After Franck's death in 1890 the original publisher of the Sonata, the…

Par KAPUSTIN NIKOLAI. This short duet by contemporary Russian composer Nikolai Kapustin has a driving syncopated rhythm and edgy harmonic palette. Kapustin makes good use of both the cello?s rich sonority and its more hard-edged character to underpin the flute?s almost incessant virtuosic outpourings. There is tense rhythmic interplay between the instruments, making it a hugely enjoyable piece for…

Par MOZART WOLFGANG AMADEUS. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's horn concertos: the Mozart expert Henrik Wiese edits the central work genre of Viennese classicism according to the current status of international Mozart research. Mozart wrote the Horn Concerto K. 417 - like the other works of this genre as well - for his horn-playing friend Joseph Leutgeb. The jokes which the composer made at Leutgeb's expe…

The Jazz Piano Chord Book, with over 1,700 jazz Piano chord voicings contained within, is an essential resource for jazz Pianists, whether they're newcomers to the style or established players who want to improve upon existing skills. The handy and compact layout of this convenient Chord Book allows you to quickly and easily find the chord you are looking for. Its layout of the almost innumerable…

SAM-Klang. Par SCHUMANN ROBERT. The name SAM-Klang takes the three voice parts from the arrangements Soprano, Alto and Men and combines it with the Scandinavian and German words for ‘sound’ to create the portmanteau word ‘sound together’ or ‘harmony’. The SAM-Klang series offers basic and advanced choral repertoire arranged for soprano, alto and one male voice- part. In addition to new repertoire …

When Taylor Swift's first official 'pop? album, 1989 was released in October 2014, it quickly achieved record-breaking sales. According to Billboard®, it sold almost 1.3 million copies in its debut week, the largest sales week for an album since 2002 and made Taylor the first artist ever to have three albums top $1 million in sales in a week. Our songbook features all 13 songs from the album trans…

(Farewell to Philosophy). Par BRYARS GAVIN. As I have written a number of works for solo instrument or voice with orchestra I welcomed the opportunity to write a concerto for cello and orchestra and especially one which focuses particularly on the instrument’s lyrical qualities. Although the piece is in one continuous movement, and the soloist is playing almost without a break, it nevertheless fal…

Par HAYDN JOSEPH. Haydn probably composed his Symphony no. 88 in G major in 1787, just one year after the six so-called Paris symphonies. It was written, together with its sister work, the F-major Symphony no. 89, for the violinist Johann Tost, who sold it to the Parisian publisher Sieber. In both works, Haydn continues the compositional achievements of the Paris symphonies: mastery of orchestrati…

The great talent of Cécile Chaminade (1857-1944) showed very early: At the age of 12, she published her first composition. Georges Bizet, a friend of the family, predicted her great future. After her successful debut as a pianist in Paris in 1877, she began busy concert activities as a solo pianist, chamber musician and conductor in many European countries as well as in the USA and Canada.Although…