Gaelic Melodies Music Pictures - Group VI this work is for Piano Solo and was composed in 1924 by John Herbert Foulds.

Barbara Arens writes... A fact: I love Scotland. Every time I come home after travelling in Scotland I feel myself bursting with ideas inspired by all I've seen and experienced there. The heather-covered hills and the dusky forests the wind the amazingly pure air the mysterious ruins - and especially the water - be it a dark brown burn a roaring waterfall heavy clouds a gentle mist or the waves of the North Sea or a loch just begging to be explored - and the people I meet and their lovely almost always comprehensible speech...What a source of inspiration! And then there's the music - nothing is more thrilling than hearing massed bands of pipes and drums aswell as the rich tradition of folk music. So I come home and sit down at the piano and try to put these impressions into music trying always to keep the pieces as easily playable as possible - I want my piano students to enjoy them and express themselves through them without struggling with technical difficulties.So some of these pieces reflect my impression of a landscape standing stones a sunset over a loch; but some of the pieces are based on actual traditional gaelic songs and tunes. A wonderful discovery was finding the Scots Musical Museum the collection of traditional songs assembled and revised to a great extent by Robert Burns which appeared in Edinburgh 1769 1803 - a fantastic resource.I'm hoping you'll enjoy playing this collection of Scottish Piano pieces.

Variation on a theme by Rameau. Par CASKEN JOHN. This short solo piano piece is a variation on a theme by Rameau. Casken has created in this work a broad Gaelic sound world along with sultry Debussian colours. The piece was written for the British pianist Stephen Gutman for his Rameau Project in 1999. / Date parution : 2003-11-20/ Recueil / Piano

Score and Parts.Commissioned by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Centre. First performance 19 May 1998 Merkin Concert Hall New York City.Quoting Weir: 'In my previous work I have often enjoyed inventing titles whichattempt to encapsulate the particular world of each composition but this fifteen minutes piece for violin cello and piano is simply entitled Piano Trio . What is the reason for this unusually abstract description? I thinkperhaps that in this piece the many external impressions which habitually make up my musical world have become too numerous and too personal to be pinned down in the space of few words that a composition title allows.The firstmovement began in my mind with impressions of Venice as relayed in Schubert's song Gondelfahrer; the crisp midnight air the dark choppy water the bells tolling the gondolier alone in emotional turmoil. Schubert's world is aplace where I can find constant inspiration and strength.The second movement recalls a time when I was called from a phone box in Africa. At one moment I was alone in my room the next (or so it seemed in my imagination)surrounded by light heat and sudden energy and activity. The movement is not however an evocation of African music; it takes the form of a scherzo and trio which collide with each other at the movement's conclusion.Thethird movement formed in my mind whilst I was reading some Gaelic poetry from the Hebridean island of Lewis on Scotland 's far flung Atlantic fringe. I was thinking of the bleached white beaches in that part of the world whereevery object lying on the sand - a washed-up bottle or a bird's skeleton - is a major event in a deserted landscape. The same might be said of this short set of musical variations where melodic fragments are laid out with plentyof space around them clear and plain for everyone to hear.