John McCabe: Clarinet Quintet - 'La Donna': Clarinet: Score

For Clarinet and String Quartet.Published in 2011.Parts.This work was commissioned by Linda Merrick and the Kreutzer Quartet to whom it is dedicated as a project involving commission performance recording and  educational and outreach work. It was supported by funds provided by the PRS for  Music Foundation RVW Trust The Holst Foundation the Royal Northern College of Music and the Ida Carroll Trust. The first performance was given at the Royal Northern  College of Music Manchester on June 15th 2011.

Postcards was written in 1991 for the Vega Wind Quintet who first performed it at the Huddersfield Festival in the same year. It is a reworking of a set of eight Bagatelles written in 1965: each movement has been rewritten and enlarged to a greater or lesser extent. The title was chosen to emphasise the nature of the pieces which are in a sense brief postcards from different genres (fugato dance etc). John McCabe (1939-2015) was a British composer pianist and music administrator. He studied at the Royal Manchester College of Music and built a career as a virtuoso pianist. However he also wrote several hundred musical compositions ranging from large-scale orchestral works to chamber music and solo instrumental pieces - it is said the only classical genre he did not write for was opera.