Symphonic Essay

SKU: AP.37833S

UPC: 038081430768. English.

Sure to become a staple of the concert band repertoire, Symphonic Essay is a dramatic work featuring brass fanfares, tonal pyramids, and startling polyharmonies. The mysterious undertones of the piece are interwoven with moments of lyricism, counterpoint, and a multiplicity of timbres and creative settings which culminate in a spectacular coda.

SKU: BR.OB-3210-15

ISBN 9790004300695. 10 x 12.5 inches.

Johannes Brahms' first Piano Concerto was the fruit of a complex, protracted, and extremely trying creative process. Its origin goes back to a sonata in D minor for two pianos conceived in spring 1854. The impulse for the creation of the main subject was however a shocking event: According to Joseqph Joachim, the theme originated after hearing about Schumanns suicide attempt. A few months earlier, Schumann had revealed Brahms to the musical world in his essay New Paths. In this article, Brahms is extolled as the musician who is called to give expression to the feeling of his times in an ideal fashion. The unusually rapid genesis of the D-minor sonata and its prevailingly dark, monumental mood can be interpreted as an impassioned compositional response to Schumann's suicide attempt. However, the year-long struggle to arrive at the final form of the work should perhaps also be seen in the context of the resounding praise of Schumann's prophetic article. Brahms undoubtly felt a growing inner pressure to live up to the expectations aroused therein.Together with Clara Schumann, Brahms played the three so far existing movements of the sonata, but he was very self-critical. He felt that he had not been able to realize the monumentality he had envisioned, and which Clara Schumann felt, by merely doubling the piano sound. He soon decided to transform the sonata into a symphony (his first orchestral project). However, this idea did not seem to fit his vision either. Only in spring 1855 did he strike upon the definitive solution: a piano concerto. With Brahms as soloist, this concerto premiered in 1859, though he initially had little success. He wrote to Joachim about one of the first performances that the concerto was a brilliant and unmistakable - failure. This hardly surprised Brahms, for he was undoubtedly aware of the newness of the work, which surpassed the expectations of the audience. The work's complex structure and symphonic dimensions, the solo part's rejection of showy, elegant brilliance, and the uniquely Brahmsian orchestral density it maintains throughout; all of these qualities inevitably exasperated audiences at first - until they raised this work to the ranks of the most celebrated concertos of all time.

SKU: BR.OB-3210-16

ISBN 9790004300701. 10 x 12.5 inches.

Johannes Brahms' first Piano Concerto was the fruit of a complex, protracted, and extremely trying creative process. Its origin goes back to a sonata in D minor for two pianos conceived in spring 1854. The impulse for the creation of the main subject was however a shocking event: According to Joseqph Joachim, the theme originated after hearing about Schumanns suicide attempt. A few months earlier, Schumann had revealed Brahms to the musical world in his essay New Paths. In this article, Brahms is extolled as the musician who is called to give expression to the feeling of his times in an ideal fashion. The unusually rapid genesis of the D-minor sonata and its prevailingly dark, monumental mood can be interpreted as an impassioned compositional response to Schumann's suicide attempt. However, the year-long struggle to arrive at the final form of the work should perhaps also be seen in the context of the resounding praise of Schumann's prophetic article. Brahms undoubtly felt a growing inner pressure to live up to the expectations aroused therein.Together with Clara Schumann, Brahms played the three so far existing movements of the sonata, but he was very self-critical. He felt that he had not been able to realize the monumentality he had envisioned, and which Clara Schumann felt, by merely doubling the piano sound. He soon decided to transform the sonata into a symphony (his first orchestral project). However, this idea did not seem to fit his vision either. Only in spring 1855 did he strike upon the definitive solution: a piano concerto. With Brahms as soloist, this concerto premiered in 1859, though he initially had little success. He wrote to Joachim about one of the first performances that the concerto was a brilliant and unmistakable - failure. This hardly surprised Brahms, for he was undoubtedly aware of the newness of the work, which surpassed the expectations of the audience. The work's complex structure and symphonic dimensions, the solo part's rejection of showy, elegant brilliance, and the uniquely Brahmsian orchestral density it maintains throughout; all of these qualities inevitably exasperated audiences at first - until they raised this work to the ranks of the most celebrated concertos of all time.

SKU: BR.EB-9413

ISBN 9790004188873. 9 x 12 inches.

For a long time after Romanticism had come to the fore, it was generally agreed that Brahms somehow did not get it: History and Progress - it was thought - were proceeding along one clear path and Brahms - who was composing sonatas and symphonies instead of nocturnes and symphonic poems - had taken the wrong way. Almost one century later, Schonberg wrote an essay, Brahms, der Fortschrittliche (Brahms, the progressive), in which he explained that it wasn't like that at all.Fully assuming the risk to appear somehow irreverent, I have to confess: Over the years, I came to the conclusion that the present - and the future - can be created only by loving the past. As Brahms had shown us, it is only by accepting the challenge of taking our heritage into our own hands, that we can create something new. We cannot avoid engaging with the past. Therefore, starting with my Sinfonia n. 1, I began to flirt with such a strong and effective musical structure like the sonata form. I re-read and freely transformed it, because it is a sturdy and resilient structure, but also a theatrical and colorful one. For me, it is a happy structure. And I think that today more than ever we need something like this: We need to find places - even imaginary ones - where we can give happiness a form of its own.Nicola Campogrande, December 2020

World premiere: Bologna/Italy, Streaming, April 11, 2021Commissioned by the Fondazione Musica Insieme.

SKU: UT.APS-4

ISBN 9788881094677. 6.5 x 9.5 inches.

Essays by Tomasz Baranowski, Andrzej Chwalba, Stephen Downes, Peter Franklin, Stefan Keym, Ryszard D. Golianek, Agata Mierzejewska, Michael Murphy, Jadwiga Paja-Stach, Luca Sala, Renata Suchowiejko, Emma Sutton, Andrzej Tuchowski, Alistair Wightman, James L. Zychowicz

In this volume I aim to examine the figure of Mieczyslaw Karlowicz in the broader sociocultural context which fostered his work. The attempt to contextualize an immense intellectual patrimony -- despite being restricted to a tiny number of works when compared to more prolific authors, especially in the context of the xix and the xx centuries -- is always a complex and hazardous task. My primary intention in organizing the volume has been to explicate Karlowicz the man as well as Karlowicz the composer, against the complex background of the European fin-de-siecle. The various essays aim to present the reader with an exhaustive reconstruction of Karlowicz's intellectual work. Karlowicz's oeuvre offers a broad artistic portrayal of Poland at the end of the nineteenth century as a fast-evolving country, politically divided and filled with contradictions. Hence the necessity to investigate the fin-de-siecle context with its social and historical implications, showing the influence of the European cultural milieu on the composer's poetics and on his thought. We shall examine the spectrum of relationships and affinities linking Karlowicz's works to the Polish cultural world (on the wave of the rising 'autochthonous' avant-garde movements) and to the wider cultural life pulsating beyond its borders, with special reference to German Wagnerism and Symphonism. Essentially, we are striving to define the uniqueness of his oeuvre, which -- in relation to the manifold influences co-existing in Poland, an insubstantial nation from the political viewpoint and divided along three socio-cultural fronts -- could be defined as distinctively Polish, yet ultimately European. (Luca Sala).