Set of parts for Piano Quartet by Poul Ruders (2015-16). Commissioned by the Bravo! Vail Music Festival Vail Colorado (2016) and Patricia Isenberg the Ocean Reef Chamber Music Festival Key Largo Florida (2017). Score available: WH32840
SKU: HL.14027994
ISBN 9788759864593.
New York is the city which fascinates and inspires Ruders. Time and again he goes back there to work. 'Manhattan Abstraction' (1982) subtitles - a symphonic skyline for large orchestra - was conceived there. Ruders' Brittish colleague Oliver Knussen defines the piece as: - a performance of an extraordinary Morden-Times-like construction. It is a sort of symphonic sculpture, which in the composer's own words words propels forth from one particular inspiration: the New York profile, as seen from Liberty Island, one icy cold January day with it's open, clear sky and dazzling sun light. 'Manhatten Abstraction' appears as an amalgam of some of the compositorical habits found in present pieces. For instance, are present here compositorical ideas and melodic loans from 'Capriccio Pian'e Forte', 2nd String Quartet(1979), 'Four Compositions' (1980), and 2nd Piano Sonata(1982). The question at hand is mainly concerned with the enhanced elaboration of Ruders' use of the classic English change-ringing system: a permuting method pre-determining the order of tone-appearances and /or tone groups; a serial technique in other words. In spite of the rigidly fixed material, Ruders somehow manages to chisel out a personal expression by way of emphasising contrasting elements already existing within the material itself. The spiky, repetitive sections form a counterpart to a more human violin-solo. This dialectical tension is - as hinted by the title - a symphonic abstraction of a fascinating metropolis; the most beautiful and the ugliest. The subtitle: a symphonic skyline reflects the musical erection of the Manhattan profile, which under the clear sky, materializes into the most powerful and compelling man-made sculpture on earth. Thus 'Manhattan Abstraction' is a homage to, as well as a vision of, this giant contraption of concrete, glass, and chrome.
SKU: HL.14031314
ISBN 9788759886342. Danish.
Poul Ruders ' two Piano pieces Star Prelude And Love Fugue from 1990, expertly arranged for Saxophone Quartet by Jesper Nordin. Programme note Star Prelude and Love Fugue is the fruit of “a wonderful stay in Tokyo in March 1988” (the composer's words). The two pieces were composed in February 1990, and they are dedicated to Japanese pianist Aki Takahashi, who gave the premiere performance at the Lerchenborg Musikdage on 3 August 1990. The prelude is a fantasia on the prelude of Act Two of Poul Ruders' opera Tycho (1986), about Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (which should explain the title). The theme of the Love Fugueis taken from the opening bars of anotherearlier Ruders' work, namely the a cappella motet Charitas Nunquam Excidit (which is Latin for “love never ceases”). The following fugue is purged of the genre's traditional gravitas, as is already signalled by the expression mark 'Swinging'. Its initial eleven bars quote the motet, but there after everything is newly composed. Per Erland Rasmussen, 2001.
