Format : Sheet music + CD-ROM
SKU: HL.49047386
ISBN 9798350125245. UPC: 196288208327.
Commissioned by the National Flute Association for the 2024 Piccolo Artist Competition.
SKU: HL.14042113
ISBN 9788759826058. International (more than one language).
THE DREAMERS for horn, violin and piano is the sixth of a series of seven compositions named after Karen Blixen's collection of short stories Seven Gothic Tales. My musical gothic tales are written for very different ensembles - THE SUPPER AT ELSINORE is a saxophone quartet, THE OLD CHEVALIER is for bass trombone and piano, THE MONKEY is a chamber orchestra work - but they all share musical material in a criss-cross of contextual references reminiscent of Blixen's narrative complexity: Themes and motivs from one piece appear in others in new and surprising shapes and combinations. Karen Blixen's THE DREAMERS has the most complex narrative structure of all her seven gothic tales.The story is made up of three tales with different narrators, but with the same principal caracter in various disguises, all three imbedded within a fourth tale that serves as a framework for the entire short story. The main story line unravels the life of a famous opera diva who looses her voice during a terrible fire. Before this her life was perpetual bliss, and the tragedy drives her into assuming different personality guises in order to escape reality. Toward the end she is confronted with her true identity, and dies. THE DREAMERS isn't 'about' anything. The music is inspired by the artistic content of Blixen's short story - it's emotionalism, dramatic construction, atmosphere, period and settings - but unfolds in time and musical space in ways that are completely independent of the story's narrative progression... except one might say that the three players try their best to either catch or escape each other, and that when they finally meet, it happens abruptly, even tragically - and only barely provides a little consolation. Duration: approximately 15 minutes.
SKU: FG.55011-071-7
ISBN 9790550110717.
Completed in Karstula, Finland during late July 2010, this carefully structured, but also free-ranging work is drawn from ideas for a much earlier work in four movements, Fantasy dating from the 1980s. Kai Nieminen has been for a long time an admirer of the work of artist Paul Klee (1879-1940), and the solo presented in its final form here is influenced by the painting Dances caused by Fear or as it is often refered to Dancing from Fear painted towards the end of Klee's life in Bern, 1938. Having left Germany for Switzerland in December 1933, Klee's later works were often full of signs and lines, very often represented in black, depicting human figures or various objects against a variety of coloured backgrounds, in the case of this painting of a brownish hue. This development in his painting style and technique is felt by some to be an effect perhaps of his long-term illness, systemic sclerosis, but in the case of Dances caused by Fear there is suggested an atmosphere of panic and terror, an attempt to escape from horrors to come (World War II), represented in the violent movement of the arms and legs of the figures, and the dark, indeed brooding nature of the colours. In Kai Nieminen's guitar work Images of Fear, there is only a very brief passage of calm at the very beginning, after which come three main connected sections in which a wide range of musically unsettling ideas emerge one by one, making use of the tritone, minor seconds, glissandos, tamboura, campanella, etc. The third and final section incorporates the grouping of 5 sixteenth-notes, to give an uneasy feeling to the music, with a short haunting and pleading five-note phrase (Cantando) heard immediately following this passage, before the work ends with further glissandos, and distant and diminishing harmonics. As with Kai Nieminen's other guitar works, the use of 'orchestral colour' is vital to the performance, and passages suggestive of for example brass, strings, woodwind, etc., should be taken into account and played with suitably considered contrast of tone. John Mills.
SKU: BA.BA04104-90
ISBN 9790006568222. 27 x 19 cm inches. Text Language: Italian. Preface: Hans Joachim Marx.
The episode from Ovid'sMetamorphosesin which Daphne attempts to escape Apollo's advances by turning into a laurel tree, causing the devastated god to weave a laurel crown in memory of the nymph, has inspired the masterworks of many artists. Gian Lorenzo Bernini, whose famous marble sculpture is housed in the Galleria Borghese in Rome, is only one example of this. Many composers set this myth to music including young George Frideric Handel with his grand-scale dramatic cantataApollo e Dafne. The composer started working on the work shortly before leaving Italy in 1709, most likely finishing it the following year in Hanover.Barenreiter now presents a vocal score of the opera-like cantata, the highlights of which include Dafne's ariaFelicissima quest'alma(accompanied by solo oboe) and Apollo's famous lamentCara pianta.
