Poul Ruders

POD-Set of parts for Clarinet Quintet by Poul Ruders (2014). Written for Harry Cameron-Penny and The Benyounes Quartet.

Cembal d'Amore - First Book - a suite for Piano and Harpsichord by Poul Ruders (1985-86)Dedicated to Amalie Malling and Lars Ulrik Mortensen.Prgramme Note:Cembal d'Amore is a five-movement suite for harpsichord and piano which works with the timbres of two very different-sounding instruments. The composer says that he ‘hears early music through the tears of centuries’. This moving formulation comes to expression in the work in the sense that the early music glitters so to speak as a poetically imaginative undertone through the highly contemporary structure. At one point the old music emerges so strongly in the sound-picture that it becomes quite tangible: a sarabande by Händel. Just as the external appearance of the instruments embodies the opposition between ancient and modern the work itself profiles a meticulously calculated tension between archaizing expression and contemporary construction

Five Paraphrases on the opera Kafka's Trial.For Large Ensemble:1 Flute dbl Alto Flute in G and Piccolo1 Oboe dbl English Horn in F1 Clarinet in Bb dbl Bass Clarinet in Bb1 Bassoon1 Horn in F1 Trumpet in Bb1 Trombone1 Percussion (one player)Tambourine Police Whistle Bass Drum Castanets Tubular Bells Tamtam Glockenspiel Triangle Guiro Mark Tree Xylophone Spoons Crotales Snare Drum Hi-hat Kick Drum Siren (hand-cranked) Ratchet Lion's Roar.1 Piano1 Violin 11 Violin 21 Viola1 Cello1 Double Bass (with extension)

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). Parts available WH32840A

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

Poul Roduers’ work for Solo Percussion dating from 1988. With Latin and World drums included in the instrumentation this is a precise and detailed yet expansive piece.

String Quartet No.4 by Poul Ruders dating from 2012. Programme Note: It might be of interest for some to note that a gap of only six months separates the writing of my second and third quartets (1979) but a 33 year interval stands between the third and the present piece String Quartet No. 4.Which is in five movements and is about nothing but itself. The first movement 'Adagio - Presto alla breve - Adagio' is an overture of sorts lifting the lid as it were on the odd bit of what happens later on in the other movements.A portal into: The second movement 'Vivo scherzando' which is justthat: a short (2 minutes only) fast and jocular piece leading up to the next movement: 'Adagio sognante' a slow and hushed dream-world paving the way for the pièce de resistance of the entire quartet: 'Presto alla breve' a ferociously fast tour de force for the four players who with that one under their belts can lean back a little (but only a little) and put the whole thing gently to bed in the fifth and final movement: a simple 'Adagio'. Off the record: my first string quartet (1972) has been withdrawn and is no more a fact that renders the numbering of the subsequent quartets a matter of personal conviction. Poul Ruders November 2012

Work for Solo Percussion dating from 1983. Ruders writes: The extraordinary title is a typical example of Poul Ruder’s (b. 1949) peculiar and bizarre sense of humour - Ruders together with Hans Abrahamsen and Bo Holten being one of the most important names within new Danish music after the Nørgård-Holmgreen-Nørholm generation. Although Ruders is influenced by Holmgreen’s absurd simplicity he takes up an original place in new Danish music to which he has conveyed humour and liveliness as well as theatre and virtuosity. Quotations ‘found objects’ play an important part in Ruders’ music for instance in his chamber work MEDIEVAL VARIATIONS (1974) but the old material isbeing varied with adequate audacity and liveliness so as to yield new qualities not unlike Peter Maxwell Davies’ ’music on music’. ALARM is ‘a short shocker a kind of film soundtrack without the pictures’ based on the horror in victor Hugo’s THE BELL RINGER OF NOTRE DAME. To produce the right atmosphere of uneasiness and nervousness Ruders uses among other things the Balinese cymbal-machine ‘ching-ching’ and the snore of the ‘didjeridoo’ from Australia.

Premiered at the festival 'Magma Berlin 2002' by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by David Robertson 29th November 2002.3 Flutes 1st and 2nd also Alto Flutes in G 3rd also Piccolo3 Oboes 3rd also Cor Anglais in F3 Clarinets in Bb 3rd also Bass Clarinet in Bb3 Bassoons 3rd also Contra Bassoon4 Horn in F3 Trumpets in Bb3 Trombones1 TubaTimpani4 Percussion four playersPlayer 1 - Vibraphone Glockenspiel Water Chime Bell Tree Japanese Wood Blocks Cymbal (Suspended) TamTam (Medium)Player 2 - Triangle Tubular Bells Crotales Marimba Chinese CymbalPlayer 3 - TamTam (Large) Java Gong(Large very low) Bell Lyra (Handheld) Sizzle CymbalPlayer 4 - Bass Drum Glockenspiel Xylophone1 Harp1 Piano also CelestaStrings - 16/14/12/10/8All transposing instruments are notated in their relevant transpositions.Any accidental apply only to the note that it immediately precedes except tied notes.Naturals appear occasionally 'for safety'.'LISTENING EARTH' is a symphonic drama a one- movement composition in four parts based on the work by two writers Joseph Addison (1672-1719) and W.H.Auden (1907-1973). Joseph Addison is not particularly well known; he was English a classical scholar essayist poet and politician but one of his hymns was used by Benjamin Britten. in his setting of a Thomas Tallis canon.The hymn is singularly beautiful and being a composer always inspired by extramusical stimuli such as poems nature paintings I was immediately convinced when I carne across the Addison hymn that here was exactly what I wanted to use as my major source of inspiration for this piece commissioned by and written for The Berlin Philharmonic. I don't refer to the hymn in its entirety but have chosen the following 3 excerpts all acting as mottos for the first three sections of the piece thus turning the piece into a straightforward tonepoem in the classical

The organ part and reduced score Symphony No. 4 - An Organ Symphony (2008) by Poul Ruders. Full score: WH31186 Orch. parts are available on hire: hire@ewh.dk Preface / Programme Note When introducing a large-scale symphonic work not only as a symphony but as an organ symphony it would be impossible not to think of and perhaps compare it with Camille Saint-Saëns’s famous SYMPHONY NO. 3 popularly known as the Organ Symphony. Well that is a risk I am prepared to take – and live with the consequences.Saint-Saëns however listed his work as a symphony avec/withorgan. The organ only appears in two out of the four sections of thepiece. In my symphony the instrument plays a far more significant part and is featured in all four movements. But it is not a concerto for organ and orchestra rather a symphony with organo obligato - a symphony with an organ part of a soloistic nature. So an Organ Symphony it is. The first movement PRELUDE is exactly that: a foreplay to what is in store for the rest of the symphony. It is slow (very slow!) and predominantly hushed: the organ and the orchestra wake up side-by-side getting to know one another.The second movement CORTÈGE is a slowly moving processional and it evokes extreme solemnity and austerity. Later on the music takes flight and the atmosphere lightens considerably a far more playful music emerging.This leads to the third movement ETUDE an exercise in instrumental virtuosity and technical challenge.The fourth and last movement is called CHACONNE but I could just as well have named it passacaglia (the definition of those two terms seems to blur even among the learned). Bearing in mind the last movement of Johannes Brahms´s SYMPHONY NO.4 which is universally agreed on as being a passacaglia I chose to avoid the Wrath of the Gods and opted for

This piece has a broad moderately paced first movement which leads to a sparkling scherzo which in turn gives way to an extremely sparsely textured movement that features the horn and its less frequently used techniques. The whole piece turns on this movement then a couple of crisp arpeggios act as a premature cinematic transition into the big finale the longest and the technically most demanding movement of the piece.