SKU: FG.55011-912-3

ISBN 9790550119123.

Luonnonjumala (God of Nature) is Tauno Marttinen’s adaption for harp of his piano suite Taara op. 34. The manuscript for harp was found in January 2024 by Rauno Marttinen, composer’s son.

Duration: c. 15’
Movements:
1. Virran ääniä | The Voices of the Stream
2. Luonnonjumalan lähde | The Spring of God of Nature
3. Metsässä tuulee |The Wind Blows through the Forest

Tauno Marttinen (1912–2008) studied in Viipuri and later in Helsinki at the Helsinki Conservatoire. His piano teachers were Ilmari Hannikainen and Selim Palmgren, but he soon became increasingly interested in composing. Marttinen was also the conductor of the Hämeenlinna City Orchestra in 1949−1958 and the founder and principal of the Hämeenlinna Music Institute.

Marttinen started his composing career in late Romantic vein. However, his first concerts in the 1940s met with criticism since the winds of Modernism had already landed in Finland. He then became interested in Dodecaphony and studied under Vladimir Vogel in Ascona but later abandoned strict dodecaphony and found his own, personal style incorporating elements from Neo-classicism and free-tonality with a hint of mysticism – he was called the Shaman of Hämeenlinna (his hometown).

Tauno Marttinen was an incredibly productive composer; he wrote around four hundred works with opus numbers as well as a wealth of other pieces. His oeuvre includes 10 symphonies, concertos for various solo instruments, operas as well as vocal, chamber and instrumental works. Many of Marttinen’s pieces have become popular standard repertoire, such as the piano piece Kimalluksia (Gleams).

SKU: PR.110406720

UPC: 680160001316.

I have always been fond of writing works for specific people or organizations. It has been my good fortune during most of my creative career to be asked to compose for many extraordinary performers. The Sonata for Harpsichord Solo is such a case in point: it was written in 1982 for Barbara Harbach, a superb performer, close friend, and collaborator on many musical projects. The Sonata was premiered on March 2, 1984, in a recital given by Dr. Harbach at Nazareth College in Rochester, New York. During my formative years as a composer, one seldom heard of the harpsichord as a modern instrument, though while I attended undergraduate school at Boston University, some of us banded together to construct a small harpsichord from one of the first do-it-yourself kits which began to appear in the late '40s. It was also during this time that I heard the Sonatina for Violin and Harpsichord by my teacher Walter Piston and consequently specified that the accompanying instrument for my second violin sonata could either be a piano or a harpsichord. It was not until recently, however, that my interest in the harpsichord as a solo instrument for new music was aroused. This was because of the emergence of so many young virtuosi, such as Barbara Harbach, who are interested in the performance of new music besides the great harpsichord music of the Classical, Baroque, and pre-Baroque eras. The keyboard music of Domenico Scarlatti has always intrigued and fascinated me. The brevity, excitement, and clarity of this sparkling music is charming as well as exhilarating. It is this type of Baroque sonata that inspired the conception and form of my harpsichord sonata. The entire work is loosely based on the musical translation of Barabara Harbach's name, especially the conflict of the B (B-flat) and H (B-natural in German notation). This secondo rub or dissonance especially pervades the first movement, which is in a modified sonata form, pitting jagged and tense melodic elements against most lyrical and smooth lines. This second movement is a song-like melody accompanied by rolled chords which may be played on the lute stop of the instrument if this sonata is performed on a two-manual harpsichord. The final movement is an ever-driving joyous toccata which brings the work to an exciting close with a coda made up of accelerating repeated chords. --Samuel Adler.

SKU: CA.1630200

ISBN 9790007099695. Language: all languages.

The viola solo courbe 2 is based on an excerpt from the viola part in the Trio for flute, viola and harp << courbes >> - sequences. In the densest time curve of this piece the viola plays the leading role for a span of almost three minutes. This material is taken from the Trio, presented and divided into separate parts. courbe 2 is three times longer in duration than the Trio excerpt from which it is derived. The musical text of the individual fragments remains as it is in the original, but, pulsating, demarcated in seconds. Fissures emerge between the fragments, windows open: - to harmonic fields, central sounds, taken over from the reverberations, from which new tone material is derived; the fields in turn are distorted and spacialised by the electronics - to metrical structures and pulses freed from the individual motives of the original musical text, which forms new variants in interaction with these fields. Thus in courbe 2 which, as already indicated, is three times longer in duration than the original, three musical levels are interpenetrated, whereby all three are derived from one tone, which plays an absolutely central role in most of my works. It is a reference to the French writer Anne-Marie Albiach (and to her great text << H II >> lineaires), and it remains as the only tone at the end of the piece, definitively, determining everything, b = 247 Hertz. Walter Feldmann.