Arr. Douglas Court. Par MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY FELIX. Mendelssohn for band! Mendelssohn is known for the beauty of his melodic themes, and this one from the 'Italian' Symphony certainly fits that category. THEME from SYMPHONY #4 gives impressions of the people and landscapes of this beautiful country. A bucolic sense pervades the score and translates into a restful and uplifting musical experience. Douglas Court has done a marvelous job in bringing the orchestral textures to the young band stage. His considerable experience with directing young bands and his many fine compositions expressly for musicians at this level give him the ability to make the music as playable as it is authentic. Don’t miss it! / Niveau : 2 / Répertoire / Concert Band

Par PART ARVO. Chad Smith, Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, has long nurtured the desire to commission a new work by Arvo Pärt. When the Los Angeles Philharmonic submitted this idea to Arvo Pärt in February 2007, the suggestion came at precisely the right moment. Pärt was working at that time with an ancient canon in Church Slavonic containing a prayer to a guardian angel - the connection to 'Los Angeles' was irresistible. Pärt was further inspired to take the commission by the idea of seeing this work performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, one of the best orchestras in the world, under its music director Esa-Pekka Salonen, and in the Walt Disney Concert Hall, one of the most exciting concert buildings of our time. The Canberra International Music Festival / Ars Musica Australis and the Sydney Conservatorium of Music joined the project as co-commissioners, thanks to the committed work of director Chris Latham. It may come as a surprise that it has taken so long (37 years) for Pärt to produce his fourth symphony. Symphony No. 3 emerged in 1971, in a time of transition before Pärt had fully developed the 'Tintinnabuli style' which he still employs today. Since developing this style, Pärt has not written any orchestral works which could be called 'symphonic' in scope or structure. With Symphony No. 4, which he calls 'Los Angeles', he creates a reference to this essential phase in his compositional life. Symphony No. 4 incorporates Pärt's 'These Words…' for string orchestra, which was premiered in May 2008 in Copenhagen. As was previously seen in some of Pärt's early instrumental works, all parameters of the text (number of syllables, inflection, punctuation etc) play a decisive role in the structure of the composition. Arvo Pärt has dedicated Symphony No. 4 'Los Angeles' to Mikhail Khodorkovsky./ Répertoire / Orchestre à Cordes, Harpe, Timbales et Percussion

Aulis Sallinen’s Symphony No.7 is related to J.R.R. Tolkien’s great novel 'The Lord of the Rings.' The symphony does not actually depict the events in the novel; rather it is a musical expression of the literary atmosphere and poetry. The symphony was commissioned by the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and composed in 1995-6. Orchestration: 3 Flutes 3 Oboes 3 Clarinets in B flat 3 Bassoons 4 Horns in F 4 Trumpets in B flat 3 Trombones Tuba Timpani Percussion Celesta Harp Strings. The duration of the work is 25 minutes full score and orchestral material is available for hire.

Par MARTINU BOHUSLAV. Unusual instrumentations were by no means the exception in the chamber music works of Bohuslav Martinu, most notably the works he wrote in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s being characterised by his experimentation with sound and form. It is from this period that four short serenades also originate (1932), each with a different instrumentation. The serenades were issued by the Prague publishing house Melantrich in 1949. Their premiere took place two years previously on 16 October 1947 and was performed by members of the Prague Symphony Orchestra (FOK). Although the study score of the Serenades Nos. 1 and 3 was published while the composer was still alive, he was in fact not involved in preparing this edition: indeed, the performance material also appeared in print without his participation in 1954. It was therefore decided to use the autograph score as the principal source for this edition./ Répertoire / Hautbois, Clarinette, 4 Violons et Violoncelle

This is the full score for Carl Nielsen's Symphony No. 4 The Inextinguishable the composer's most popular and most frequently recorded and performed work. Although Carl Nielsen's Symphony No. 4 was completed in 1916 and although it prominently features a thundering duel between timpani the composer did not write this work in response to World War I. Instead it is a noisy energetic thrusting paean to the inextinguishability of life itself. And as music like life in this instance is inextinguishable the four intricately interlinked movements are played without a break. In this work can be heardthe influences of Brahms Dvorak Sibelius and others all transformed by Nielsen's creative spirit. The symphony ends in grand Romantic style with a triumphant finale wherein the jagged two-note and three-note themes of the beginning are conquered by the songlike theme of the third movement. CN00013A is the parts to accompany this full score.

After the 1841 premiere which was anything but promising Schumann did not deal with his Fourth Symphony and put the finishing touches to it until 10 years later. One of its most remarkable features is its structure the individual movements – none of which is really completed – shall follow each other without a break thus leading to a great one-movement structure.The work is pervaded by common thematic rhythmic and harmonic connections. In 1841 such an approach to the symphonic form was still unusual in the second half of the 19th century however it was widely applied.

Excerpts from Movement 1. Par MOZART / STEPHEN BULLA. Mozart belongs to everyone! The experience of actually playing Mozart's music makes him real and more than just a name we associate with old music. Stephen Bulla's arrangement of the first movement of what may arguably be Mozart's greatest symphony has a great deal of authenticity. Much more than many 'just the tune' type transcription/ arrangements, Mr. Bulla's work ambitiously explores a good portion of Mozart's miraculous musical development, so that your musicians can begin to understand the true genius of the Classical icon. Those who know Mozart will appreciate the integrity of the transcription. Those who don't know Mozart have a wonderful treat in store! A classic! / Niveau : 4 / Répertoire / Concert Band ou Harmonie

Peter Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) composé de la sixième Symphonie entre février et août 1893. Le premier spectacle à Saint-Pétersbourg, 16 octobre 1893 au premier Concert de l'Orchestre symphonique de la société musicale russe a été réalisée par le compositeur. Tchaïkovski ajoutés par la suite le titre Pathétique au travail. La première représentation de l'Orchestre symphonique de 6ème à Moscou, le 4 décembre 1893, après que la mort du compositeur, au deuxième Concert symphonique de la société musicale russe a été réalisée par Vassili Safonov. L'ouvrage est dédié à Vladimir Lvovitch Davidov, le fils de la soeur de Tchaïkovski. Cette édition, préparée par le compositeur russe et musicologue Viktor Ekimovsky, est basée sur les publications antérieures et contient des commentaires éditoriaux vis-à-vis des erreurs d'impression et des bordereaux de plume du compositeur. / Orchestre

Par MAHLER GUSTAV. Over the years, the need for a new edition of Mahler's Symphony No. 2 became apparent for several reasons. First, many new sources for this work have become accessible since 1970, when Erwin Ratz completed the first critical edition of this symphony, the most significant being Mahler's personal reference score in which he recorded changes to be made (his last entries were made in September 1910). The second reason was the significant strengthening of the editorial standards of the critical edition in recent years. The music is now computer-generated. Previously, changes to the score could be made only by retouching the film of old engravings. Computerization also ensures a concurrence between the score and performance materials. Editorially, the new edition benefits from expanded texts that describe and assess the source materials, document and explain the editors' decisions and provide detailed information on the work's origin, the history of the published scores, performance practices, etc. Over the past five years, Renare Stark-Voit and Gilbert Kaplan, editors of the new edition of Symphony No. 2, have identified, evaluated and analyzed every significant source, and as a result of their work a substantial number of errors has been corrected./ Répertoire / Solistes, Choeur et Orchestre

Per Nørgård's Symphony No. 4 (1981) - Indischer Roosengaarten und Chineesischer Hexensee (Indian Rose Garden and Chinese Witch See). Programme Note: This symphony in two movements entitles “Indischer Roosen-Gaarten und Chineesischer Hexensee” was inspired by Adolf Wölfli’s works - consisting of 20.000 pages of prose poetry and pictures -. An English translation of the title would read: “Symphony no. 4 - Indian Rose Garden and Chinese Witch See; after an idea by Adolf Wölfli (1864-1930) and dedicated to him.”  Wölfli was from 1895 (31 yearsold) until his death in 1930 confined to the mental hospital at Waldau near Bern Switzerland. Although he had no technical knowledge of music he considered himself to be a great composer and his paintings were almost always covered with long festoons of six-lined (!) music staffs. In 1912 Wölfli ordered paints and paper for a planned ´Musikbüchlein´ which was to be published in 1920 under the title “Indischer Roosen-Gaarten und Chineesischer Hexensee”. (Wölfi uses his characteristic illustrative phonetic spellings with double vowels). The work was never completed and I took it upon myself to realize Wölfli’s idea according to his vision but of course within my own preconditions.  The double and suggestive title is typical of Wölfli´s polarized conception of the world which shifts between idyll and catastrophe. This polarization is of almost Chinese nature in that no idyll exists without catastrophic disturbances just as there is a black “spot” in the white “fish” and vice versa in the famous Yin/Yang symbol.  One might explain this idea with a quote by the Norwegian author Knut Hamsun: “A prisoner on his tumbrel is wheeled to the scaffold. A nail chafes at his behind; he moves over and feels more

Excerpts from Movement 4. Par MOZART WOLFGANG AMADEUS. Developing an intimate understanding of the world’s greatest musical accomplishments is an important part of a music education. Every musician should have the joy of playing the music of Mozart, and the G-minor Symphony (Number 40) is one of Mozart’s signature works, and one of the greatest musical achievements of all time. Stephen Bulla has carefully and effectively brought the themes of the G-minor Symphony finale to the concert band stage with this delightful transcription/arrangement. Your band won’t be playing a “band arrangement”- they’ll be playing MOZART! Don’t forget the opportunity for a music history lesson built into this piece. Masterful! / Niveau : 4 / Classique / Répertoire / Concert Band

In Tchaikovsky's symphonic output his Symphony No. 4 was a pivotal work. It announced the composer as a major symphonist of his time overshadowing his previous less-than-distinguished efforts in this form and opened the way to his last major works: the haunting Fifth Symphony and the biographical Sixth the profound 'Pathétique.'Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony ? written in 1877 at the age of thirty-seven ? offers itself as an intensely personal statement. Dramatically shaped and brilliantly orchestrated it captures a theatrical quality and orchestral color that shaped the composer's symphonic fantasy Francesca da Rimini written just a year earlier. The Fourth opensunequivocally with the thrust of a brass fanfare ? the 'fate' motive that is to reappear in the last movement ? then flows with the effortless quality that characterizes Tchaikovsky's great generously melodious ballet scores. The second movement lingers over one of the composer's most poignant melodies and the third ? the Scherzo ? offers a delightful fantasy from this master orchestrator: the charming Pizzicato ostinato a unique moment in the entire orchestral literature.The symphony is reproduced here from the authoritative Breitkopf & Härtel edition with bar-numbered movements and ample margins at the bottom of each score page for notes and analysis. Ideal for study in the classroom at home or in the concert hall this affordable high quality conveniently sized volume will be the edition of choice for music students and music lovers alike.Reprint of the Breitkopf & Härtel edition.

Excerpts from Movement 4-Developing an intimate understanding of the world?s greatest musical accomplishments is an important part of a music education. Every musician should have the joy of playing the music of Mozart and the G-minor Symphony (Number 40) is one of Mozart?s signature works and one of the greatest musical achievements of all time. Stephen Bulla has carefully and effectively brought the themes of the G-minor Symphony finale to the concert band stage with this delightful transcription/arrangement. Your band won?t be playing a ?band arrangement?- they?ll be playing MOZART! Don?t forget the opportunity for a music history lesson built into this piece.Masterful!