SKU: CY.CC2144

The Skye Boat Song, among the most popular of all Scottish folk tunes, deals with the flight of Bonnie Prince Charlie (Charles Edward Stewart) from Scotland to the Isle of Skye in 1746, after having been defeated on Culloden Moor by the English Army of King George II. The present setting, for either Tenor or Bass Trombone and Piano, is mostly lyrical and passes through a series of episodes that evoke watery images in various ways. A stormy episode which superimposes a more martial tune (relying heavily on the familiar scotch snappy rhythm) against a variation of the original folk tune leads to brief quotations from Mendelssohn's Hebrides overture (the Isle of Skye is part of the group of islands known as the Hebrides) before a short recapitulation of the theme.

SKU: FL.FX071512

A rhythmic composition in which the cells quaver / two semiquaver and two semiquaver / quaver are like a leitmotiv until the end of the Piece. The numerous triplets are a wink of Rhapsody in Blues from George Gershwin. My goal was to facilitate the listening, the exchange and the mimicry between the two associated players: no tandem (Temps d'M) without that!

SKU: CY.CC2718

The Chants du Rhin (Songs of the Rhine), a cycle of six pieces, based on poems by Joseph Mery, were written in 1865, and Bizet performed two of them on 16 April 1866 at a soiree of the Beaujolais Philharmonic Society. The songs are grouped symmetrically around La bohemienne as the central piece, framed by two meditatively yearning pieces (in E and D flat major) and two vividly exuberant ones (similarly in E and D flat major), with L'aurore serving as an introduction.

In this cycle Bizet takes up the theme of the gypsy girl which had already entered European music in the operas The Bohemian Girl by the Irish composer Michael William Balfe and Verdi's Il trovatore, as well as in Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies for piano. Bizet will return to it one year later in La jolie fille de Perth and ten years later in Carmen. The fourth piece Les confidences shows similarities in tonality, structure and motifs to the middle part of the third movement of Chopin's Sonata in B minor.

SKU: CY.CC2853

The Intermezzo & Farandole are both from the 2nd L'Arlesienne Suite arranged by Guiraud in 1879, four years after Bizet's untimely death.
The Intermezzo is slow and powerful, whereas the Farandole, which incorporates the theme from the March of the Kings is fast and bouncy.
Mr. Sauer's arrangement is a joy to perform. The 6-minute suite of two movements is appropriate for moderately advanced performers.