SKU: PR.14440516S
UPC: 680160667864. 9 x 12 inches.
In 1979, Martin produced a set of three quintets, in consideration of Gorky's piece Nighttime Enigma Nostalgia. Each is scored for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano. As the title suggests, the music is in a state of perpetual questioning using a variety of approaches. For example, Enigma opens using ostinati (plural of ostinato) that do not match in length, like a staircase with each step a different height. Additionally, the music has sudden starts and stops, again unexplained. There are dramatic and powerful explosive passages that are interrupted. The technique, used to create this feeling of a perplexed music world where things seem often not to make sense and to be left unresolved, is called in poetry and literature, anticlimax. In Enigma, the music suggests one direction; then refuses to continue, striking out in another direction. Artists use approaches such as this to force themselves into creative circumstances that they otherwise might not have discovered. (From the performance notes.).
SKU: CF.MXE71
ISBN 9781491144749. UPC: 680160902248. 9 x 12 inches.
The day that Australian and New Zealand forces joined the Allies for an invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula of Turkey in World War I, with disastrous consequences, is celebrated in Australia as Anzac Day (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps). To honor this special day, Bresnick takes inspiration from two selected poems by Bertolt Brecht (And I Always Thought and Legend of the Unknown Soldier Beneath the Triumphal Arch). Commissioned to commemorate Australia’s Anzac Day, similar to Memorial Day, and inspired by two Brecht poems…The somber opening violin and clarinet lines unfolded to haunting effect before eventually reaching a fervent climax. --Vivien Schweitzer, The New York Times.