Peter Maxwell Davies: Quintet For Trumpet And String Quartet: Chamber Ensemble:

Brass Quintet Parts for 'Four voluntaries' by Thomas Tallis arranged for brass quintet by Peter Maxwell Davies.

Peter Maxwell Davies. Cinderella is a light-hearted pantomime opera based on the traditional story with a few new twists by the composer. The first performances of ‘Cinderella’ were given by children in Kirkwall in the OrkneyIslands who were non-specialist and had shown no unusual interest in or aptitude for music. All vocal parts are written within the range of children’s normal unbroken voices although the three Ugly Sisters can be played by olderboys singing an octave lower than written. Eleven solo parts plus chorus and parts for descant treble and tenor recorders trumpet percussion piano and string quintet with optional viola. 60 mins.

Une carte d'anniversaire du Prince Charles ' a été écrit pour le Club Fiddle Sanday, à l'occasion du soixantième anniversaire de son Altesse royale le Prince de Galles. Sanday est une des îles Orcades, l'archipel que, depuis 1970, Maxwell Davies a fait sa maison. Le Club de violon de Sanday est un groupe de niveau mixte pour la communauté. Ce travail est donc destiné à être apprécié par tous les acteurs de la chaîne ! Maxwell Davies a toujours construit et entretenu des liens étroits avec la communauté et le Festival annuel de Magnus St, qu'il a fondé en 1977. / Ensemble A Cordes (Quintette A Cordes)

Brass quintets are exuberant almost by definition and Davies's certainly does not disappoint. It has though the rarer quality of being a consistent gripping and fully developed work: a piece as substantial as one might expect a string quartet to be. There are three movements of which the first is a romping Allegro with a slow introduction. Then comes a slow movement with vividly alive duetting from the trumpets and the finale is again fast except for a passage of questioning before the end.Set of parts.This is a special item which is made to order. Please e-mail our Mail Order Department for further information.

Like many of Davies’s smaller works this is in a relatively lucid modal style midway between the clarity of his carols and the complications of his symphonies: the opening is in a kind of B flat minor and the close is triumphantly in G flat major. What happens in between -- always in 4/4 march time but usually with exuberant syncopations and cross-rhythms - is a sequence of transformations of the theme heard first from the second trumpet on the top line at the start; it will be heard again from the horn and from the first trumpet in upward-moving inversion with brilliant climaxes to punctuate. An ebullient piece in a simplified yet still very distinctive harmonic andrhythmic style and surely destined to make a rousing encore item. Arranged for brass quintet.