Witold Lutoslawski

Dance Preludes for Clarinet and Piano is an impressive chamber work by Witold Lutoslawski. The five movements which form this work are based on folk songs from North Poland providing a variety of contrasts.This is the original version of the work composed in 1954 for Clarinet and Piano. This piece was later revised for chamber ensemble and again for orchestra.The solo clarinet part is also included on a separateinsert.

Score. The title of the work relates to its form which consists of two structurally independent strands. Sections within each strand begin and end at different times. Chain 2 is in 4 movements: AD LIBITUM; A BATTUTA; ADLIBITUM; A BATTUTA - AD LIBITUM - A BATTUTAIn the AD LIBITUM movements the element of chance plays a part within fixed parameters.

Commissioned by the Salzburg Festival. First performance given by the Austrian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer with Krystian Zimerman on piano.

Song cycle for Soprano and Piano (reduction from orchestral score) with poems by Robert Desnos. First performed at the BBC Proms in August 1991 by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer with Solveig Kringleborn.Duration c.16 mins.

Commissioned by Paul Sacher who conducted the first performance in Lucerne 1980. The parts are also available here are the item codes. CH55410-01(harp)  CH55410-02 (oboe)

Trois poèmes d'Henri Michaux was written for the Zagreb Biennale and first performed there by the orchestra and choir of Radio Zagreb, conducted by the composer and Slavko Zlatic on 9 May 1963. It is composed for 20-part choir and an orchestra similar to that of the Symphony of Psalms, though without the lower strings of the latter.Lutoslaswski has said that the general outline of the work came to him first, and only then did he choose the three poems. These reflect his Francophile taste: Henri Michaux was born in Belgium in 1899 and later became a painter: the trenchant Le Grand Combat, with its onomatopoeic invented words, dates form the 1920s- the other two texts, which are more philosophic than pictorial, form the 1930s. Choir and orchestra need separate conductors even though throughout they alternate more often than they combine.A description of the course of the music itself will be more useful than any discussion of its technical processes or of its notation. A quiet section of orchestral polyphony, which brass sforzandi punctuate with increasing frequency, frames the beginning and end of Pensées. After the choir's first unaccompanied passage, the woodwind have a staccato section over which the female voices, singing downward glissandi, are superimposed ('Ombre de mondes infimes?'). Then the woodwind and both pianos join in a lapping ostinato which illustrates the text of the next forte choir entry 'Pensées à la nage merveilleuse?' The climax of the movement comes as these characteristic woodwind figures alternate with the tintinnabulation of a gamelan-like ensemble of vibraphone, céleste, harp and pianos. / Orchestre

This is the Oboe Part for Witold Lutoslawski's Double Concerto arranged for Oboe Harp and Chamber Orchestra. Originally commissioned by Paul Sacher the work wasfinished in 1980.

A folk song based on Polish words by Julian Tuwim for SSA and piano. Handy as a short item to include in a Junior/Middle school concert.

The Composer Portraits series offers unique and original monographs on individual composers. Text and music introductions written by experts are combined with carefully chosen selections of newly-engraved music to give aconcise but informed overview of the life and work of each composer.The Composer Portraits series offers unique and original monographs on individual composers. This edition focuses on the life and works of the Polishcomposer Witold Lutoslawski.With notes by Nicholas Reyland.Writing in the European Piano Teachers Association Journal Angela Fogg calls Composer Portraits 'a well thought-out and wellpresented series of books offering fantastic repertoire for students in the later grades. I cannot recommend them enough!'

Setting of a poem by Hilaire Belloc. Written at the request of CRUSAID and first performed in London in May 1990 by David Wilson-Johnson and David Owen Norris.

First performed in November 1954 by the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Witold Rowicki. Duration c.29mins. Orchestral material available for hire from Chester Music.