Four Wedding Dances

SKU: AP.1-ADV6401

UPC: 805095064018. English.

A Klezmer Wedding is a set of four dances, newly-composed but based on traditional models. The Doina is an expressive chant for three successive soloists; it twists and turns with the wailing lament of a shepherd's pipe. Next follows the Hora, a slow Rumanian dance in three with a mood that reflects the wedding's solemn vows. A Chusidl, with a moderate speed and bouncy rhythms, gets the party to the dance floor. The concluding Freylach (happy, but still in a minor key!) takes the bride, groom, and guests to the edge of frenzy.

Titles: Doina * Hora * Chusidl * Freylach.

SKU: AP.1-ADV8405

UPC: 805095084054. English.

A Klezmer Wedding is a set of four dances, newly-composed but based on traditional models. The Doina is an expressive chant for three successive soloists; it twists and turns with the wailing lament of a shepherd's pipe. Next follows the Hora, a slow Rumanian dance in three with a mood that reflects the wedding's solemn vows. A Chusidl, with a moderate speed and bouncy rhythms, gets the party to the dance floor. The concluding Freylach (happy, but still in a minor key!) takes the bride, groom, and guests to the edge of frenzy.

Titles: Doina * Hora * Chusidl * Freylach.

SKU: SU.90110060

Text: Leo Lionni.

This CD Sheet Music™ collection brings together over 570 works for solo and duo piano (including concerto reductions) by both familiar and lesser-known 19th century Russian and Eastern European composers. Works include: Balakirev (Islamey, Rèverie), Borodin (Petite Suite), Dussek (Six Sonatinas, Partant pour la Syrie), Dvorák (Silhouettes, Slavonic Dances, Legends, Mazurkas, Poetic Tone Pictures, Humoresques), Janácek (On the Overgrown Path, Zdenka Variations, Collected Moravian Dances), Moszkowski (Spanish Dances, Fifteen Études de Virtuosité), Mussorgsky (over 20 works including: Pictures at an Exhibition, Duma, Intermezzo in Modo Classico), Rimsky-Korsakov (Six Variations on B-A-C-H, Capriccio Espagnole, Sheherezade), Rubinstein (Ondine, Kamennïy-ostrov, Lezghinka), Scharwenka (Polish National Dances, Scriabin (over 50 works including: Piano Sonata Nos. 1-10), Poème-Nocturne, Preludes, Impromptus, Mazurkas), Smetana (over 30 works including: Louisiana Polka, Album Leaves, Wedding Scenes, Czech Dances Books I&II), Tchaikovsky (over 30 works for solo piano & piano four hands including: Album for the Young, The Seasons, Grand Sonata in G, Dumka, Scherzo à la Russe, Swan Lake, Sleeping BeautyThe Nutcracker, The Nutcracker Suite, Piano Concerto Nos. 1&2), and more Also includes composer biographies and relevant articles from the 1911 edition of Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians 4000+ pages [2 CDR Set]

Please note, customers using Macintosh computers running macOS Catalina (version 10.5) have reported hardware compatibility issues with this product. If you encounter these issues, we recommend copying the entire contents of the disk to a contained folder on a thumb drive or other storage device for use on your Mac.

SKU: PR.11641373L

UPC: 680160680337.

The concerto has always seemed an especially attractive medium to me, not necessarily because of its expectations of virtuosity (although flaunting it when you've got it certainly has its place), and emphatically not because of the perception of a concerto as a contest, but because so much of what I write feels song-like; I'm very much at home with the age-old texture of melody and accompaniment. I hope, before I move on, to have the opportunity to write concertos for all the major instruments, and perhaps some of the rarer ones as well. The oboe is not only one of the major instruments, it is one of my favorite instruments. I've always loved its sound, but since moving to New York I have gotten to hear and, in some cases, know some extremely fine oboists who broadened my appreciation of the instrument's possibilities. I especially remember a concert, probably in the late 1960's, in which Humbert Lucarelli played a Handel concerto, filling out large melodic leaps with cascading scale passages in a way that raised the hair on the back of your neck, somewhat in the way that John Coltrane's sheets of sound did. The sweeping scales in the second movement of my concerto were definitely inspired by Bert Lucarelli's performance. The first, third and fifth movements of the Concerto for Oboe and Orchestra are song-like, whereas the second and fourth have strong scherzo and dance qualities, including a couple of sections that sound like out-and-out pirate dances to me. The hymn-like tune at the beginning of the middle movement was originally begun as a vocal piece to be sung by my wife, son and daughter at my brother's wedding, but I couldn't come up with good works for it, so it ended up as an instrumental chant. The opening and closing of the concerto make use of the oboe's uniquely soulful singing. I had not heard Pamela Woods Pecha's solo playing in person when she approached me about writing a concerto, but I had heard her fine recording of chamber music for oboe and strings by the three B's (English, that is: Bliss, Bax and Britten) with the Audubon Quartet. I actually already had some oboe concerto ideas in my sketchbooks; although I didn't end up using any of those earlier ideas, it's interesting that most of them tended to share the general feeling and tonality of the eventual opening of the concerto. The work was completed on October 13, 1994. I hate the compromises involved in making piano reductions -- perhaps I would feel differently if I were a more accomplished pianist -- so I often decide to make piano reductions for four hands rather than two. My good friend Jon Kimura Parker is a terrific sight-reader, and I roped him into coming over to my place on February 17, 1995, to help me accompany Pamela on the first read-through of the piece. The first performance of the work took place on July 21, 1995, at the American Music Festival in Duncan, Oklahoma, with Mark Parker conducting the Festival Orchestra.