Pieces from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book Vol. 1

Ed. Hogwood Christopher / Brown Alan. Complementary to MB96, the 85 items in MB102 complete the coverage of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book in Musica Britannica. With the exception of four pieces by Sweelinck available elsewhere, MB102 contains all the Fitzwilliam content not otherwise already published in individual MB virginalist-composer collections or in the three anthology volumes, MB1, MB55 and MB66. In addition, there are ten pieces from another important keyboard source in the collection of Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum, the Tisdale Virginal Book. The volume was a long-time project of the late Christopher Hogwood, and has been brought to completion by his co-editor Alan Brown./ Recueil / Piano

Eighteen pieces of Grade 3-4 standard edited for the ABRSM by Howard Ferguson. Includes works by Frescobaldi J.S. Bach Robert Schumann and Tchaikovsky.

Quirky New Piano Pieces-'In choosing to call this set of 25 pieces The FitzTanner Collection I make a tongue-in-cheek allusion to the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book.The FitzTanner Collection doffs its cap in the direction of this seminal ancient tome by borrowing some of the more fanciful and suggestive titles from which it is comprised but beyond this there is no musical connection with the original pieces at all. And yet stirred into the mix is my fondness for melding together bygone musical styles. Hence this album of piano pieces pitched at the more robust intermediate pianist combines quirky originality with older musical styles drawinginspiration not just from Renaissance dances and fantasies but from more elaborate Baroque and Classical styles too. That said the music is conceived very much with the qualities of the modern piano in mind and hence requires a good many pedal effects dynamics and plenty of expression. What emerges is I hope a collection of attractive piano pieces which cheerfully bear the traces of a time when the modern piano was but a twinkle in the eye.There is an enjoyable charisma to the Old English spellings of these pieces (as well as a healthy margin for idiosyncrasy I might add) and to my own creations I have taken great delight in adding a few light-hearted directions which I trust won't cause too much consternation. Not all of the Fitzwilliam titles are easily fathomed but the playful risqué and politically incorrect overtones are sometimes quite striking leading me to contemplate a similarly unserious vein in my own writing. To what (or indeed to whom) you may ask does 'Quodlings Delight' refer? I'm not sure I'd recognise a Quodling if it crawled out of my porridge (and likewise who the eponymous Barafostus might have been is anybody's guess). Perhaps on balance the music is best left to speak for itself and regardless of how many ways an old title can be reworked it will always come down to living breathing

Ten pieces from the Renaissance to the late Romantic period. Edited for the ABRSM by Howard Ferguson. Includes works by Domenico Scarlatti Schubert and Dvorak.

Fantasias and Selected Works. Par BYRD WILLIAM. William Byrd is one of the great English composers of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Today this creative Catholic at the Anglican court of Elisabeth I is known primarily for his masses, motets and madrigals. However, in addition to vocal music he also composed an impressive number of keyboard pieces that brook comparison in quality with those of his younger contemporaries Frescobaldi and Sweelinck. This edition contains a selection of his major works for keyboard instruments, some taken from such famous collections as the 'Fitzwilliam Virginal Book”, 'Parthenia” and 'My Ladye Nevells Booke”. In addition to five large-scale fantasias, including the monumental 'Fantasia in a”, there are smaller preludes and voluntaries and three contrapuntal hexachord settings. The Foreword offers a detailed overview and evaluation of the sources, brief descriptions of the pieces and valuable information on notation and performance practice./ Répertoire / Piano, Clavier ou Orgue

An Anthology-All eighteen pieces in this collection are reliably dated to the reign of James I and whether by named composers or anonymous ones appear in sources other than the notable Virginal books preserved in the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge. The contents demonstrate the variety of forms in the Keyboard repertoire of this period from plainsong-based compositions to dances by Orlando Gibbons. The 'Pretty ways for young beginners to look on' possibly by Thomas Tomkins are a fascinating example of music contemporary to the time written with the didactic purpose of instructing musicians in the techniques of counterpoint.