SKU: CY.CC3170
ISBN 9790530111406. 8.5 x 11 in inches.
The set of 24 Preludes for Piano, Op. 34 was composed in the winter of 1932-33. They represent all of the major and minor keys, inviting comparisons with similar collections by Bach and Chopin. Each movement has its own individual mood and there are sharp contrasts within each movement and between movements in style, rhythm and harmony. James Markey has brilliantly arranged eleven of these movements for Tenor Trombone and Piano for virtuoso level performers. The entire work is about 17 minutes in length. We are grateful to the Shostakovich estate and G. Schirmer for authorizing Mr. Markey's arrangement. Mr. Markey and pianist Virginia Perry can be heard performing this arrangement of the Preludes on his CD entitled Offroad released in 2003, which happens to be sold by Cherry Classics Music on this site and also available on iTunes and other music retailers.
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.
