SKU: HL.14023668
ISBN 9780711932975. 9.0x12.0x0.095 inches.
String Quartet No.3 was written for, and first performed by the Balanescu Quartet, February 1990 at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London. Duration 16 minutes. Instrumental parts are available on sale. Quoting composer: In the summer of 1989 I composed a choral work, Out of the Ruins, for Agnieszka Piotrowska's BBC2 documentary which dealt with the physical and emotional responses of some inhabitants of Leninakhan to the earthquake which devastated Armenia the previous December. When he heard the recording of the work that I made with the Holy Echmiadzin Chorus under the fervent conducting of Khoren Meykhanejian, Alex Balanescu suggested turning Out of the Ruins into a string quartet. There seemed no reason or opportunity to do this until I felt the need to add to the intensity of my experiences in Armenia the no less profound experience of witnessing the images of the Romanian revolution on television during the later part of December 1989. The compositional procedure was as follows: to take Out of the Ruins as a template on which the Romanian vocal or instrumental music would be superimposed, quite often stretched into new intervallic shapes though the demands of the completely performed harmonic structure.
SKU: HL.49045305
ISBN 9781495082405. UPC: 888680656539. 9.0x12.0x0.256 inches.
Following the premiere of my opera An American Tragedy at the Metropolitan Opera, the President of the Manhattan School of Music, Robert Sirota, called me and told me that the American String Quartet had asked him to commission me as part of the school's 90th anniversary celebration. I was very excited because this meant that the first new music I would compose after my largest piece ever would be a string quartet for my alma mater. I embraced the chance to return to chamber music with gusto because I saw this not only as an opportunity to incorporate everything I'd learned writing four grand operas into an intimate yet profound genre but also as the starting point of a new direction in my compositional thinking. 20 years separate my first and second quartet and it is not difficult to hear the evolution between the two. Tobias Picker.
SKU: FG.042-08543-1
ISBN 979-0-042-08543-1.
This song cycle is a setting of poems by Solveig von Schoultz. They describe some of the most profound human emotions: life and death, love and human relations. The music reflecs the message of the words contraststing quiet meditation and impassioned outbursts, closely interweaving the human voice and the string quartet.
SKU: FG.042-08542-4
ISBN 979-0-042-08542-4.
