Wings That Work

SKU: GI.G-1095

The Universe works in strange ways. Recorded almost three years ago, none of us could have known that when this recording was released the world would have lived through a life-altering pandemic or a tumultuous upheaval in the cultural awareness that now surrounds us. The work that opens this recording—with the words of Quaker George Fox that end with, “So be faithful, and live in that which doth not think the time long”—provides a haunting premonition regarding the time in which we live, Quaker George Fox is strangely prophetic about these days and perhaps provides a future caution for us all. The music chosen for this recording is strangely and poignantly relevant, I believe, for each of us. “The Fruit of Silence” by Pēteris Vasks reminds us to visit those beliefs that are most sacred in the work by Cortlandt Matthews. A deeply personal Requiem by Peter Relph, in reflection, remembers the hundreds of thousands of lives lost in the pandemic. And then there is Thomas LaVoy’s “O Great Beyond.” All great texts are timeless and speak to the universality of the human condition. Particularly, the George Fox text set by Jackson Hill and the Tagore text set by LaVoy give us messages to reinforce the humanness of each of us for hope. Two other works on this recording poignantly remind us of the passing of life, with the Relph Requiem and especially the final movement of “O Great Beyond.” May these words give comfort to all those who endured the deepest of Life’s losses during our shared pandemic journey. For so many loved ones, goodbyes were said in silence, and alone. It is our hope that all the music on this CD will show us a way for living as we move forward and also give loving comfort to those who have lost loved ones. Peace, my heart, let the time for the parting be sweet. Let it not be a death but completeness. Let love melt into memory and pain into songs. Let the flight through the sky end in the folding of the wings over the nest. Let the last touch of your hands be gentle like the flower of the night. Stand still, O Beautiful End, for a moment, and say your last words in silence. I bow to you and hold up my lamp to light you on your way. —Rabindranath Tagore in The Gardener (1913).

SKU: XC.RCB1913

UPC: 812598032215. 9 x 12 inches.

Full of lush harmonies and beautiful melodic lines, On the Wings of Angels, composed by acclaimed composer Carl Strommen, will both excite and challenge players. Written for the annual WorldStrides Onstage event, On the Wings of Angels has all of the flowing lines that we have come to expect with Carl’s symphonic works. Whether for a special occasion or a selection on a concert program, musicians and audiences alike will enjoy On the Wings of Angels.

SKU: FP.FSS13

ISBN 979-0-57050-289-9.

The albums in Forsyth's Silhouette Series are widely acknowledged to provide as some of the finest piano arrangements of the works of the great composers available to the player of intermediate ability. These albums provide excellent teaching material, as well as superb recreational pieces for the adult player.

SKU: CA.5070800

ISBN 9790007245689.

Johann Adolf Hasse, Kapellmeister at the Saxon-Polish court in Dresden, composed the Requiem in C major for the ceremonial exequies of the deceased Elector Friedrich August II in November 1763 in the Catholic Hofkirche in Dresden. With this work he composed a monument in music to his long-standing, generous employer, who was also King of Poland under the name August III: passionate choral movements, echoes of historic compositional styles, expressive vocal solos and arias which undeniably reveal Hasse the opera composer, and trumpets and timpani in the orchestra - all these are the ingredients of a royal Requiem Mass in the style of a Missa solemnis.Hasse's much smaller-scale Requiem in B flat, which we are now publishing for the first time, was presumably composed as early as the second half of the 1750s. Nothing is known about the occasion for which this beautiful work was composed, or even whether it was performed during the composer's lifetime. Perhaps the Seven Years War, in which the electorate of Saxony was involved, prevented any performance. Several borrowings from it in his Requiem in C and in the later Requiem in E flat show that Hasse held the work in high regard.The Hasse Works Edition (HWA) is published in collaboration with the Hasse-Gesellschaft Bergedorf e. V. and is intended to serve both scholarship and the needs of performing musicians with scholarly-critical editions of Hasse's music.

SKU: FD.FD0321

ISBN 9790560243214.

Work for solo piano. My snapshots are scribblings in pencil or ink, with a little color, and that's all -Kees van Dongen. This collection of short pieces is neither akin to sketches nor to studies, nor to preludes, nor to variations in the classical meaning of the word. They are like the rough drawings that make up a kind of travel notebook, and as such they demand a piano writing that involves widely varied musical gestures. This multiplicity of very different motifs crates sudden ruptures in the sonic atmosphere. This writing doesn't develop but rather hints at things in order to reach equilibrium between light and deep. A play on variants of the core motifs runs right through across the work. Each piece centers on a motif or a group of motifs in particular that builds the shape of a palindrome.