Visions Of Light

SKU: XC.ISO2006

UPC: 812598034752. 9 x 12 inches.

This new work for string orchestra is exciting and lush! Alan Lee Silva makes an orchestra sound good, and Peripheral Visions is no exception. Soaring melodic lines and ample opportunity to work on light articulation abound in this wonderful new addition to the string repertoire.

SKU: HL.14033692

1. The Native Land of Light (for mixed chorus, SATB) 2. Come lift me up (for mixed chorus, SATB -) -) the second movement may be performed by a children's chorus or by the female voices (SSA) from a mixed chorus Programme Note From my very first aquaintance with these Andersen poems, I was deeply moved by the simple, almost naive, yet evocative imagery, with which Andersen realized his visions, images like: The Melody of the Heart, The Poem of Beauty, A Spiritual Hindustan, Fly, Death, over the Sea of Time, fly to Eternal Summer. Along with this childishness Hans Christian Andersen's poetry encompasses enormous - almost Willim Blake-ish - cosmic visions, in theinterpolations between e.g. reaching the Heaven as opposed to you'll find it in a Rosebud, or the juxtaposition of Everyday Life and Eternal Poetry - which become one. Thus the music came to life in my immediate encounter with these words, which almost sang themselves into my Musical Furnace - if you will. Per Norgard.

SKU: FG.55011-372-5

ISBN 9790550113725.

Images of the sea figure prominently throughout my life and memories: from holidays on the Atlantic coast during my Canadian childhood to my current Baltic home, and the imagined, only later experienced Mediterranean of my ancestral heritage. As an immigrant (son of an immigrant) bound to two northern countries, the sea is emblematic of my twin homelands, from the expanses of water surrounding them to those separating them. A Mari usque ad Mare. The sea is also an enduring image of the unknown, of expanses unexplored, of the raw power of nature and, for too many currently, of terror holding a hope of refuge - or the pain of loss.
Such disparate ideas were captured for me in the seascapes of the New York painter MaryBeth Thielhelm, whom I met in 2008 during a residency on the Gulf of Mexico. Her vast, abstract, nearly monochromatic depictions of imaginary seas in wildly varying moods were the catalyst for a concerto where the piano is frequently far from a hero battling a collective, but rather acts as a channel for elemental forces surging up from the orchestra, floating - sometimes barely so - on its constantly shifting surface. There are few themes to speak of, beyond a handful of iconic ideas that periodically cycle upward. Rather, the piano's material is largely an ornamentation of the more primal rhythmic and harmonic impulses from the orchestra below - a poetic interpretation, if you will, of the more immediate experience of facing the vastness of some unknown body of water.
The title Nameless Seas is borrowed from one of Thielhelm's exhibitions, as are those of the four movements, which are bridged together into two halves of roughly equal weight - one rhapsodic and free, the other more single-minded and direct, separated only by a short breath. The opening movement, Nocturne, is predominantly calm, if brooding, darkness and light alternating throughout. Lyrical arabesques sparkle over gently lapping cross-currents in the strings and mirrored timpani, the piano's full power only rarely deployed. The waves gradually build, drawing in the full orchestra for a meeting of forces in Land and Sea, a brighter, more warmly lyrical scene that unfolds in series of dreamlike, sometimes even nostalgic visions, which for me carry strong memories of sitting on rocks above surging Atlantic waves. The third movement, Wake, is a fast, perpetual-motion texture of glinting, darting rhythms and sudden shafts of light, with a prominent part for the steel drums, limning the piano's quicksilver figurations. An ecstatic climax crashes into a solo cadenza that grows progressively calmer and more introspective rather than virtuosic. Much of the tension finally releases into Unclaimed Waters, a drifting, meditative seascape in which the piano is progressively engulfed by a series of ever-taller waves, ultimately dissolving into a tolling, rippling continuum of sound.
It has been a great privilege to realize such a long-held dream as this piece, and to write it for not one, but two great pianists. Risto-Matti Marin and Angela Hewitt, both of whose friendship and support have been unfailing and humbling, share the dedication. Nameless Seas was commissioned by the PianoEspoo festival and Canada's National Arts Centre, with the premieres in Ottawa and Helsinki led by Hannu Lintu and Olari Elts. Thanks are due also to the Jenny and Antti Wihuri fund, whose generous grant provided me with much-needed time, and Escape to Create in Seaside, Florida, the source to which I returned to do a large part of the work.

SKU: AP.12-0571572316

ISBN 9780571572311. English.

Carl Vine's Concerto for Orchestra was premiered to critical acclaim by the West Australian Symphony Orchestra in October 2014. Vine describes the way the 20-minute work (like his recent piano trio The Village) evolves organically through a chain of episodes to create a web of melodies and harmonies that are related, but not identical. This network of ideas is tied together by strong lateral bonds but remains fluid and flexible, creating a series of fleeting glimpses---what Prokofiev called visions fugitives---abstract patterns glimpsed in the half-light or imagined behind clouds.

SKU: JK.01531

1 Nephi 1:20.

Original anthem arranged for mixed chorus (SATB) and piano, with scriptural text from 1 Nephi 1:20: The tender mercies of the Lord are over all those whom he hath chosen because of their faith. Originating from A. Laurence Lyon's oratorio Visions of Light and Truth.
Composer: A. Laurence Lyon
Arranger: A. Laurence Lyon
Lyricist: 1 Nephi 1:20
Difficulty: Moderate
Reference: 1 Nephi 1:20.