SKU: CU.EC6039

SKU: CU.EC4988

ISBN 9790215901964.

SKU: CU.EC4990

ISBN 9790215907515.

SKU: CU.EC5449

SKU: PE.EP3900

ISBN 9790014019365. UPC: 9790014019365. English.

Edited by Carl Flesch and Artur Schnabel

SKU: KU.GM-1911

ISBN 9790206202384. 9 x 12 inches.

Monumentum, Music for String Sextet, was written in 2014 to a commission from the Moritzburg Festival, The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center New York and the Kathe Kollwitz House in Moritzburg. It is dedicated to the cellist Jan Vogler. The world premiere took place on 19 August 2014 at the Moritzburg Festival, performed by Timothy Chooi & Mira Wang (violins), Roberto Diaz & Hartmut Rohde (violas), Jan Vogler & Harriet Krijgh (cellos). The American premiere took place on 7 May 2015 in the Lincoln Center with the Amphion String Quartet, the violist Yura Lee and the cellist Jan Vogler.

The String Sextet Momentum commemorates the outbreak of the First World War, the death of Peter Kollwitz – who died as a volunteer, aged just 18, in the early weeks of the war – and the manner in which his mother, the artist Kathe Kollwitz, mourned the loss of her son. The artist worked through her pain by creating her most famous sculpture, The Mourning Parents. It stands today at the German soldiers’ cemetery at Vladslo in western Flanders, where her son Peter also lies buried. During the 18 years that she worked on the Parents, Kathe Kollwitz attended several concerts at the Volksbuhne in Berlin, where from January to February 1927 she heard Arthur Schnabel’s cycle of all the Beethoven piano sonatas. Schnabel performed the Sonata op. 111 in c minor on 26 February 1927, and this work touched her in particular, as we can read in her diary: “The strange flickering notes turned into flames – a moment of rapture, taking one into a different sphere, and the heavens opened almost as in the Ninth (Symphony). Then one found one’s way back – but it was a return after having been assured that there is a heaven. These notes are serene – confident – and good. Thank you, Schnabel!” This encounter with Beethoven’s last sonata inspired the artist to take up work again on her sculpture after a long interruption and to consider different possibilities for arranging the two figures. For this reason, the first minutes ofMomentum are derived from this sonata by Beethoven – though without it being quoted in an audible manner – and they leave their mark on the form of the Sextet. The number 18 and the date of Peter Kollwitz’s death (23 October 1914) also have a direct impact on the work’s dramaturgy. This music is mostly calm in nature, but is time and again interrupted unexpectedly, being disturbed by unruly sounds and vehement eruptions until time itself seems to dissolve in an aleatoric passage. The work ends with an extended lament on “seed corn should not be ground”, a line from Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years. Kathe Kollwitz often quoted this phrase to argue for peace, and also took it as the title for a lithograph that she made in 1942. - David Philip Hefti

SKU: HL.49045822

ISBN 9781540024749. UPC: 888680737764. 9.25x12.0x0.29 inches.

The Kreutzer Sonata was originally dedicated not to Rudolphe Kreutzer (who never performed it) but to George Bridgetower, a famed 18th-century Afro-European concert violinist. In an early draft, Beethoven jokingly labeled the piece in starkly racialized terms: Sonata Mulattica composed for the mulatto Brischdauer, big wild mulatto composer.Beethoven and Bridgetower performed the premiere, which was by all accounts a success, and even featuring some improvised embellishment by the violinist. While celebrating afterwards, the two quarreled about what Beethoven construed as Bridgetower's insult of a female acquaintance; the composer then revoked the original dedication, adding Kreutzer's name instead. The work gained acclaim, while Bridgetower's career languished; he eventually died in poverty.Bridgetower has been the subject of considerable research and speculation, most notably in poet Rita Dove's book, Sonata Mulattica. From our 21st-century vantage, considering Bridgetower's unique circumstance, we can only see him as an ambiguous figure who, in embodying difference, provoked inspiration, fantasy, desire, anger and, finally, erasure.My piece is a collection of imaginings about George Bridgetower. It is not programmatic, but it takes on an episodic character, assembled from contrasting fragments. The dance rhythms, recurring figures and gestural contours are intended to feature the embodied expertise and expressivity of the performers, who at times must access liminal sounds and execute complex synchronies. I am grateful to Jenny Koh and Shai Wosner for involving me in their beautiful, virtuosic music-making.

SKU: UT.CH-385

ISBN 9790215328174. 9 x 12 inches.

The Sonatina del Sur (Sonatina of the South) was commissioned by Isabel Siewersâ?? mother as a 34th birthday present for her daughter. Its music pays token, rather than imitative, homage to South American music. Thus the sonata form first movement, whose brief development section accounts for the workâ??s â??diminutiveâ?? title, merely hints at syncopations that are as common in South America as they are in Europe. The Canción de cuna (Cradle Song) is unusual in the fact that it is played entirely in natural harmonics â?? no string touches a fret from start to finish, a compositional challenge I had long planned to face. The third movement was originally titled Milonga, but when the dedicatee said that, although it has a South American air over it, and the rhythm is right, it was not really like a milonga, it was renamed! Perhaps, though, it captures a little of the happy and lightness-of-touch character of its eponym. The Danza negra, another common South American genre, is energetic, with a variety of percussive gestures that demand extreme agility on the part of the performer.