Meditation & Toccata

SKU: ET.PNO81

ISBN 9790207003256.

L’enfance en éclats 2001 [Childhood Shattered]
As its title suggests, Childhood Shattered is program music. A simple and graceful tune, symbolizing childhood, is abruptly interrupted by a horrific, dissonant chord. The tune returns ; but the echo of the chord, still lingering in the background, tells us that the memory of the traumatic event persists. Life has darkened. Nothing is as it was before. The initial melody wanders into keys ever stranger and more distant, ultimately arriving at a new theme, obsessive, with grating seconds and thrusting accents. This shattered childhood and its episodes of aimlessness, will it give birth to new certainties?
The piece is an exercise in contrasting detached notes with tied notes.
Commissioned by the Association Jeune musique. Required work at the International Piano Competition Freiburg - Jeune Musique, 2002.

Toccata (2004)
This piece by Caroline Charrière issues from the historical lineage of the toccata, traditionally an exercise of dexterity characterized by repeated musical motifs.
The introduction is constructed of subtly displaced upper-register chords in the right hand that alternate with two lower notes in the left hand, creating an almost meditative preamble. In the rapid section of the piece, the performer playfully exploits the keyboard's full breadth in the course of spirited dialogues between notes high and low.
Commissioned by the Association Jeune Musique. Required work in Category IV at the International Piano Competition Freiburg - Jeune musique, 2004.
Irène Minder-Jeanneret.

SKU: M7.DOHR-20142

ISBN 9790202041420.

Im Sommer 2019 bat mich Christoph Dohr um ein Concertino für eine von ihm selbst konzipierte Truhenorgel (E.D. 20141). Die vorliegende Fassung ist eine Umarbeitung für den Vortrag auf einer zweimanualigen Orgel mit Pedal. Das viersätzige Werk, dem die Melodie des Chorals Nun danket alle Gott zugrunde liegt, lebt vor allem von einer quasi improvisatorischen Interpretation. Eine flexible agogische Gestaltung gereicht dem Concertino an vielen Stellen zum Vorteil. (Jürgen Borstelmann).

SKU: HL.49005319

ISBN 9790001057295. UPC: 073999804775. 9.0x12.0x0.105 inches.

Hermann Schroeder (1904-1984) ranks among the major German organ composers of the 20th century, being an excellent organist himself. Many of his more than 100 organ works deal with themes of the Gregorian chorale. The chorale's modal diatonicism which is freer and different than the later major-minor tonality establishes a perfect symbiosis with the free tonality of the contemporary composer. In the five-movement chorale partita, the more than 1,000 years old Mixolydian Whitsun Sequence of Hrabanus Maurus (9th century) is used in an imaginative and formally varied way: as a virtuoso toccata, in the second movement 'ostinato' as a strict trio setting over a seven-bar ostinato in the pedal, as a capriciously playful 'bicinium', and as a meditative, harmonically appealing 'arioso'. The fifth movement (fantasia ricercare) displays brilliant full-handed chords and virtuoso passages as well as a fugato in the middle section. A rewarding concert piece for Whitsun, with an excellent possibility of virtuoso interpretation and colourful registration.