Adagio, 2Nd Movement From Chamber Concerto

SKU: BR.DV-8109

ISBN 9790200482898. 10 x 13 inches.

Johann Matthias Sperger, no doubt the leading double bass player of his time, was born on 23 March 1750 in the Lower Austrian town of Feldsberg (today Valtice, Czech Republic). After studying in Vienna and occupying various posts in Pressburg and Eberau, he was hired by Grand Duke Friedrich Franz I of Mecklenburg-Schwerin for the Duke's court ensemble in Ludwigslust. There Sperger died on 13 May 1812, a highly esteemed man. His extensive compositional oeuvre (which includes 45 symphonies, chamher works, church music and concertos) found its climax in his works for double bass solo. His 18 concertos, sonatas and chamber works for various instrumental comhinations off er the soloist gratifying musical tasks both from a musical as well as a technical point of view. The Adagio for Double Bass and String Quartet was composed around 1796/97, no doubt for the composer's own use. The autograph belongs to the Landesbibliothek Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (class. no. Mus. 5179). The work is based on thematic material from the second movement of Anton Franz Hoffmeister's Double Bass Concerto No. 3. The relationship between the two works and the mutual influence of both composers is plainly visible.In order to allow a performance of this charming little work without a string quartet, we are also offering a version with piano accompaniment (DVfM 8109) as well. Since the original solo part was written for a double bass tuned in thirds and a fourth (Viennese tuning: A-D-F sharp-A), it was necessary to arrange the enclosed for the solo tuning customary today: F sharp-B-E-A. The editor and publisher wish to thank the Landesbibliothek Mecklenburg-Vorpommern for its permission to print this first edition. Klaus Trumpf, Munich, Spring 1997 Klaus Trumpf

Sperger, musician at the Mecklenburg court in Ludwigslust, achieved fame above all with his works for double bass. Thematically, the A major Adagio closely recalls Anton Franz Hoffmeister's Double Bass Concerto No. 3.

SKU: HL.14015171

ISBN 9788759878224. Danish.

Quartetto Sereno - String Quartet No.21 Op.197 (op. posth.) by Vagn Holmboe.

Holmboe's last quartet work, which is unoffi­cially also String Quartet No. 21, was the last work he ever composed, and was unfinished on his death in 1996. His pupil Per Nørgård has finished the quartet, and himself characterizes his contribution by saying that the score existed “in an only partly completed form, which could however be written out with only a few cases of doubt”. With only two movements and a play­ing time of about nine minutes it is at its exist­ing length the shortest of Holmboe's stringquar­tets. The first movement takes the form of one long arch in a rocking triple time which constantly shifts among different tempo and pulse sensations. At the same time the rhythmic en­ergy increases until the movement, in a faster Con moto tempo accelerates to a more flowing 12/8 time, coloured both rhythmically by cross-­rhythms in duple time and timbrally by harmon­ics in the viola. In its middle section, Con fuoco, the movement culminates in both tempo and expression until it falls calm in brief recapitula­tions in reverse order of the first two sections. The rocking feeling continues in the second movement, but now at a more extroverted level from the outset, Allegro and pizzicato. The en­ergy builds up further as the mood intensifies to Con fuoco, while all instruments go over to bowed playing, but like the first movement, this movement ends Adagio here however not as a gradual attenuation but through a sudden shift in tempo to a calm, imitative passage before the movement slowly thins out to the almost inaudible through a last, dense, open sounding chord with a brief violin solo above it.

The quartet is dedicated to Holmboe's wife MeLa May Holmboe, and was given its first performance by the Kontra Quartet on 22nd March 1997 at the Carl Nielsen Academy of.

SKU: HL.48024561

ISBN 9781784543518. 0.078 inches.

This Sonata for Viola (unaccompanied) was written in 1999. The soloists C-string is tuned down a semitone for the entire piece, giving a duskier quality to the tone-colour, and setting up in the very first bar the characteristic melodic/harmonic shape that infiltrates all four movements. I - slowish and thoughtful - gradually expands this opening idea into cantilena and pattern, as prelude to II - Vivacissimo - played muted throughout, a tremolando tarantella, with contrasting section, chunky double-stops, alternating withsomething of a gigue. III - adagio - rhapsodic and quasi-improvisando, enclosing a simple self-contained melody, and linking into IV, where the gigue-like material from the scherzo provides the principal substance, expanding into an ardent cantabile, and calminginto the Coda not just the finale but, in its reminiscences of I, to the sonata as a whole.