SKU: HL.14028050
ISBN 9788759858387. UPC: 888680630478. 16.5x11.75 inches. International (more than one language).
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 is being 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.
SKU: HL.14027994
ISBN 9788759864593.
New York is the city which fascinates and inspires Ruders. Time and again he goes back there to work. 'Manhattan Abstraction' (1982) subtitles - a symphonic skyline for large orchestra - was conceived there. Ruders' Brittish colleague Oliver Knussen defines the piece as: - a performance of an extraordinary Morden-Times-like construction. It is a sort of symphonic sculpture, which in the composer's own words words propels forth from one particular inspiration: the New York profile, as seen from Liberty Island, one icy cold January day with it's open, clear sky and dazzling sun light. 'Manhatten Abstraction' appears as an amalgam of some of the compositorical habits found in present pieces. For instance, are present here compositorical ideas and melodic loans from 'Capriccio Pian'e Forte', 2nd String Quartet(1979), 'Four Compositions' (1980), and 2nd Piano Sonata(1982). The question at hand is mainly concerned with the enhanced elaboration of Ruders' use of the classic English change-ringing system: a permuting method pre-determining the order of tone-appearances and /or tone groups; a serial technique in other words. In spite of the rigidly fixed material, Ruders somehow manages to chisel out a personal expression by way of emphasising contrasting elements already existing within the material itself. The spiky, repetitive sections form a counterpart to a more human violin-solo. This dialectical tension is - as hinted by the title - a symphonic abstraction of a fascinating metropolis; the most beautiful and the ugliest. The subtitle: a symphonic skyline reflects the musical erection of the Manhattan profile, which under the clear sky, materializes into the most powerful and compelling man-made sculpture on earth. Thus 'Manhattan Abstraction' is a homage to, as well as a vision of, this giant contraption of concrete, glass, and chrome.
SKU: HL.14028012
ISBN 9788759811870. 8.25x11.75x0.097 inches. English.
Poul Ruders's Star Prelude And Love Fugue is a work for Piano dating from 1990.
SKU: HL.14028003
ISBN 9788759862896.
Poul Ruders Polydrama (Manyfold Event) for cello and orchestra, is the last part of a drama trilogy otherwise consisting of Dramaphonia for piano and 11 instruments and Monodrama for percussion and 32 instruments. In this abstract drama, the individual listener is left entirely to his own associations. The composer has compared polydrama with the gradual defoliation of a big tree: the vigorously growing organism is attacked by a swarm of locusts until, finally, nothing remains but bare branches in a landscape of long shadows; a solitary, singing bird remains, however, like a streak of hope in an increasingly dark and pessimistic universe.
SKU: HL.14027974
English.
The B flat Solo Clarinet Part for Danish composer, Poul Ruders' fabulous concerto. Written between 1984 and 1985, this mysterious, majestic and expressive work for Clarinet and Twin Orchestra is quite a challenge but certainly an impressive and rewarding one! The full score is also available(KP00077).
SKU: HL.14028025
ISBN 9788759815076. 8.0x11.5x0.123 inches. English.
Poul Ruders ' collection of short solo pieces entitled 13 Postludes For Piano was written in 1989 for the Danish pianist Amalie Malling, right on the heels of the composer's first symphony 'Himmelhoch jauchzend - zum Tode betrubt', which was premiered in London during the 1990 Prom-season.
SKU: HL.14028022
ISBN 9788759861615. 12.0x16.5x0.52 inches.
Ruders writes: My second concerto for violin and orchestra is a 'reverse' cousin of Polydrama the cello concerto. The former starts out extremely slow and speeds up gradually and the latter progresses in exactly the opposite way, but whereas the cello concerto is composed as one, uninterrupted stretch, the violin concerto is formally completely different: there are 4 movements, each of them combined via a 'ritornello', a solo-cadenza which appears 4 times (the works conclude with a solo) in almost the shape, i.e. the length varies from time to time.
SKU: HL.14028042
ISBN 9788759810668.
Ruders writes: There's a solid tradition in the history of Western music of turning the theme of Nicolo Paganini's 24th Caprice for soloviolin into a set of variations endemic to the time and style of each individual composer; Liszt, Brahms, Rachmaninov and Lutoslawsky being the most prominent names. When asked by David Starobin to write a concerto for him, I though well, why not have a go at it? - bearing in mind, that not only is Paganini the most celebrated violin-wizard of all times, but he was also a more than accomplished guitarist. There are 22 variations in all, numbers 1 to 16 all adhering strictly to the 16-bar pattern, laid down by Paganini himself. From variation 17 though, the writing becomes more symphonic and the rigid 16-bar regime is being lossendes up a bit. However, the last variation 'Finale Prestisimo' is a 6 x 16 bars white-knuckle ride, in which the hitherto soloistic role of the guitar gives way to that of 'primus interpares', i.e. 'first among equals'. As with another set of variations of mine 'Concerto on Pieces' (based on a tune by Purcell), the nature and shape of the 'Pagannini-Variations' may be compared to a stroll through a hall of mirrors: the portrait - the theme is gradually being distorted out of all recognition - but it's still the same original walking by.
SKU: HL.14028021
Ruders writes: This short piece 'Variations' for violin solo is composed of 57 bars, which you could call the theme. Each of the bars or musical units are then repeated, but in a reshuffled order, so to speak, and each of the original bars appears, not only in a different context, but in a slightly altered rhythmic guise.
SKU: HL.14028044
ISBN 9788759850640. 12.0x16.5x0.605 inches. Danish.
The full score of Ruders' Solar Triology for large orchestra.
SKU: HL.14028045
ISBN 9788759872574. UPC: 884088434403. 11.75x16.5x0.475 inches.
A second Symphony by Ruders, commissioned by the Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress for the New York City based chamber orchestra, Riverside Symphony. The piece is subtitled Symphony And Transformation to express the formal symphonic nature of a piece that is otherwise in a state of constant musical and textural transformation.
SKU: HL.14027981
ISBN 9788759808368. English.
'Dramaphonia' for piano solo and 11 instruments forms the first part of a trilogy of solo-concertos, the remaining two being one for percussion and smaller symphony orchestra ('Monodrama') and the last ('Polydrama') for violoncello and full orchestra. All three pieces are in one movement each and may be performed together, thus presenting a vast concerto grosso of the duration of one hour and a half. Each concerto, however, stands by itself, offering its own story: having employed the word drama in all three pieces, I naturally want to imply that something is going on, a series of hidden events created by each listener's own inner theatre which enables him to stage his own, personal associations, and in the case of 'Dramaphonia', the compositorical tension alters between action and frozen panoramas. In the percussion concerto, the rhythmical progression is being constantly intensified, whereas the metric proportions of Dramaphonia tighten and loosen, like a magnifying glass being wielded in and out of focus. 'Dramaphonia' is commissioned and dedicated to LONTANO and Poul Rosenbaum.
SKU: HL.14027967
ISBN 9788759811856.
Work for Ensemble dating from 2000.
SKU: HL.14027983
ISBN 9788759860991. 8.25x12.0x0.087 inches. English.
Two Pieces for Solo Guitar.
SKU: HL.14028007
ISBN 9788759853023. 8.0x11.75x0.195 inches. English.
Work dating from 1982.
SKU: HL.14027984
ISBN 9788759854044. 12.25x16.5x1.33 inches. English-Danish.
Opera based on the novel by Margaret Atwood.
SKU: HL.14028036
ISBN 9788759810248. 12.0x16.5x0.537 inches.
This short orchestral piece is a tone poem based on a passage from one of Hans Christian Andersen's lesser known fairytales, THE WIND TELLS ABOUT WALDEMAR DAAE AND HIS DAUGHTERS, a mighty allegory about the transitoriness of Life, about Vanity and Pride and the inevitable victory of Death (alias the wind), whose scything ravaging is sublimely depicted by Andersen in these few, truly breathtaking lines: And Winter rushed, Winter and Summer they rushed, and they rush, like I rush, like the howling snow, the flurrying apple blossom, the scurrying foliage; rush! rush! The people too!.
SKU: HL.14028038
ISBN 9788759854730. 12.0x16.5x0.3 inches. English.
The word GONG is saturated with associations: the splendour of the Orient, mysticism, drama, loud metallic clangour, violent impact, etc. The present piece draws upon all those connotations, but it is primarily a symphonic drama about the life and behaviour of the sun, our closest star and prime source of life on Earth. Describing the sun in music is not a new idea, of course; during a visit to Greece, Carl Nielsen was inspired by the orbit of the sun and its very un-Danish ferocity and thus wrote the Helios Overture. GONG is a Helios Overture too, of sorts, albeit more abstract. Recent astronomical research shows, that the surface of the sun reverberates like a gong, in four different, simultaneous tempi (not directly depicted in the score, though); the sun looks like a GONG, - the O in the written work looks like the sun; there is even a solar research group called GONG (Global Oscillation Network Group). Formally the composition follows the life and fate of the sun, from the initial explotional birth through the hyper-activity as energy source as we know it today to the final, predicted flaring up and collapse into a so-called white dwarf. But - being a musical composition, not an astrophysical thesis - GONG is brought to its compositional conclusion by a real concert-ending, a chord taken from the middle of the piece and sustained over several bars, from virtual nothingness to full force.
SKU: HL.14027978
ISBN 9788759807590. UPC: 884088433512. 11.75x16.5x0.205 inches. English.
Concerto In Pieces was commissioned by the BBC as a celebration of two major events in British history of music: the 1995 tercentenary of the death of Henry Purcell and the 50th anniversary of Benjamin Britten's Young Persons' Guide to the Orchestra in 1996. Concerto in Pieces may be performed without the commentaries, as an uninterrupted set of variations. Work for Orchestra dating from 1994.
