To every young musician, the first concert is a special experience. The choice of the 'right' performance piece is of vital importance: It should be technically and musically manageable, make a strong impression and give great pleasure in practising.
The edition .My First Concert .contains easy pieces for trumpet in B flat and piano for music lessons and first auditions. The selection of the works invites the performer on a trip through various music epochs - starting from 16th-century music via Baroque, Classical and Romantic to contemporary music. The musical journey through time ends in pleasant, modern pieces from the areas of pop and rock music which would add variety to lessons.
Most pieces can be played after 1-2 years of music lessons. .The edition also contains an easy piano part for accompaniment. It is deliberately kept simple so that the piano accompaniment can also be played by students - for example at concerts in music schools or at competitions.

To every young musician, the first concert is a special experience. The choice of the 'right' performance piece is of vital importance: It should be technically and musically manageable, make a strong impression and give great pleasure in practising.
The edition .My First Concert .contains easy pieces for trumpet in B flat and piano for music lessons and first auditions. The selection of the works invites the performer on a trip through various music epochs - starting from 16th-century music via Baroque, Classical and Romantic to contemporary music. The musical journey through time ends in pleasant, modern pieces from the areas of pop and rock music which would add variety to lessons.
Most pieces can be played after 1-2 years of music lessons. Approaching the works is made easier by the enclosed CD which contains all pieces as a demo version and as a play-along version with just piano accompaniment. The edition also contains an easy piano part for accompaniment. It is deliberately kept simple so that the piano accompaniment can also be played by students - for example at concerts in music schools or at competitions.

I composed the Piano Concerto in two stages: the first three movements during the years 1985-86, the next two in 1987, the final autograph of the last movement was ready by January, 1988. The concerto is dedicated to the American conductor Mario di Bonaventura. .

The markings of the movements are the following: .

1. Vivace molto ritmico e preciso .
2. Lento e deserto .
3. Vivace cantabile .
4. Allegro risoluto .
5. Presto luminoso.

The first performance of the three-movement Concerto was on October 23rd, 1986 in Graz. Mario di Bonaventura conducted while his brother, Anthony di Bonaventura, was the soloist. Two days later the performance was repeated in the Vienna Konzerthaus. After hearing the work twice, I came to the conclusion that the third movement is not an adequate finale. my feeling of form demanded continuation, a supplement. That led to the composing of the next two movements. The premiere of the whole cycle took place on February 29th, 1988, in the Vienna Konzerthaus with the same conductor and the same pianist. .

The orchestra consisted of the following: flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, tenor trombone, percussion and strings. The flautist also plays the piccoIo, the clarinetist, the alto ocarina. The percussion is made up of diverse instruments, which one musician-virtuoso can play. It is more practical, however, if two or three musicians share the instruments. Besides traditional instruments the percussion part calls also for two simple wind instruments: the swanee whistle and the harmonica. The string instrument parts (two violins, viola, cello and doubles bass) can be performed soloistic since they do not contain divisi. For balance, however, the ensemble playing is recommended, for example 6-8 first violins, 6-8 second, 4-6 violas, 4-6 cellos, 3-4 double basses. .

In the Piano Concerto I realized new concepts of harmony and rhythm. .

The first movement is entirely written in bimetry: simultaneously 12/8 and 4/4 (8/8). This relates to the known triplet on a doule relation and in itself is nothing new. Because, however, I articulate 12 triola and 8 duola pulses, an entangled, up till now unheard kind of polymetry is created. The rhythm is additionally complicated because of asymmetric groupings inside two speed layers, which means accents are asymmetrically distributed. These groups, as in the talea technique, have a fixed, continuously repeating rhythmic structures of varying lengths in speed layers of 12/8 and 4/4. This means that the repeating pattern in the 12/8 level and the pattern in the 4/4 level do not coincide and continuously give a kaleidoscope of renewing combinations. .

In our perception we quickly resign from following particular rhythmical successions and that what is going on in time appears for us as something static, resting. This music, if it is played properly, in the right tempo and with the right accents inside particular layers, after a certain time rises, as it were, as a plane after taking off: the rhythmic action, too complex to be able to follow in detail, begins flying. This diffusion of individual structures into a different global structure is one of my basic compositional concepts: from the end of the fifties, from the orchestral works Apparitions and Atmospheres I continuously have been looking for new ways of resolving this basic question. The harmony of the first movement is based on mixtures, hence on the parallel leading of voices. This technique is used here in a rather simple form. later in the fourth movement it will be considerably developed. .

The second movement (the only slow one amongst five movements) also has a talea type of structure, it is however much simpler rhythmically, because it contains only one speed layer. The melody is consisted in the development of a rigorous interval mode in which two minor seconds and one major second alternate therefore nine notes inside an octave. This mode is transposed into different degrees and it also determines the harmony of the movement. however, in closing episode in the piano part there is a combination of diatonics (white keys) and pentatonics (black keys) led in brilliant, sparkling quasimixtures, while the orchestra continues to play in the nine tone mode. .

In this movement I used isolated sounds and extreme registers (piccolo in a very low register, bassoon in a very high register, canons played by the swanee whistle, the alto ocarina and brass with a harmon-mute' damper, cutting sound combinations of the piccolo, clarinet and oboe in an extremely high register, also alternating of a whistle-siren and xylophone). The third movement also has one speed layer and because of this it appears as simpler than the first, but actually the rhythm is very complicated in a different way here. Above the uninterrupted, fast and regular basic pulse, thanks to the asymmetric distribution of accents, different types of hemiolas and inherent melodical patterns appear (the term was coined by Gerhard Kubik in relation to central African music). If this movement is played with the adequate speed and with very clear accentuation, illusory rhythmic-melodical figures appear. These figures are not played directly. they do not appear in the score, but exist only in our perception as a result of co-operation of different voices. .

Already earlier I had experimented with illusory rhythmics, namely in Poeme symphonique for 100 metronomes (1962), in Continuum for harpsichord (1968), in Monument for two pianos (1976), and especially in the first and sixth piano etude Desordre and Automne a Varsovie (1985). .

The third movement of the Piano Concerto is up to now the clearest example of illusory rhythmics and illusory melody. In intervallic and chordal structure this movement is based on alternation, and also inter-relation of various modal and quasi-equidistant harmony spaces. The tempered twelve-part division of the octave allows for diatonical and other modal interval successions, which are not equidistant, but are based on the alternation of major and minor seconds in different groups. The tempered system also allows for the use of the anhemitonic pentatonic scale (the black keys of the piano). From equidistant scales, therefore interval formations which are based on the division of an octave in equal distances, the twelve-tone tempered system allows only chromatics (only minor seconds) and the six-tone scale (the whole-tone: only major seconds). .

Moreover, the division of the octave into four parts only minor thirds) and three parts (three major thirds) is possible. In several music cultures different equidistant divisions of an octave are accepted, for example, in the Javanese slendro into five parts, in Melanesia into seven parts, popular also in southeastern Asia, and apart from this, in southern Africa. This does not mean an exact equidistance: there is a certain tolerance for the inaccurateness of the interval tuning. .

These exotic for us, Europeans, harmony and melody have attracted me for several years. However I did not want to re-tune the piano (microtone deviations appear in the concerto only in a few places in the horn and trombone parts led in natural tones). After the period of experimenting, I got to pseudo- or quasiequidistant intervals, which is neither whole-tone nor chromatic: in the twelve-tone system, two whole-tone scales are possible, shifted a minor second apart from each other. Therefore, I connect these two scales (or sound resources), and for example, places occur where the melodies and figurations in the piano part are created from both whole tone scales. in one band one six-tone sound resource is utilized, and in the other hand, the complementary. In this way whole-tonality and chromaticism mutually reduce themselves: a type of deformed equidistancism is formed, strangely brilliant and at the same time slanting. illusory harmony, indeed being created inside the tempered twelve-tone system, but in sound quality not belonging to it anymore. .

The appearance of such slantedequidistant harmony fields alternating with modal fields and based on chords built on fifths (mainly in the piano part), complemented with mixtures built on fifths in the orchestra, gives this movement an individual, soft-metallic colour (a metallic sound resulting from harmonics). .

The fourth movement was meant to be the central movement of the Concerto. Its melodc-rhythmic elements (embryos or fragments of motives) in themselves are simple. The movement also begins simply, with a succession of overlapping of these elements in the mixture type structures. Also here a kaleidoscope is created, due to a limited number of these elements - of these pebbles in the kaleidoscope - which continuously return in augmentations and diminutions. .

Step by step, however, so that in the beginning we cannot hear it, a compiled rhythmic organization of the talea type gradually comes into daylight, based on the simultaneity of two mutually shifted to each other speed layers (also triplet and duoles, however, with different asymmetric structures than in the first movement). While longer rests are gradually filled in with motive fragments, we slowly come to the conclusion that we have found ourselves inside a rhythmic-melodical whirl: without change in tempo, only through increasing the density of the musical events, a rotation is created in the stream of successive and compiled, augmented and diminished motive fragments, and increasing the density suggests acceleration. .

Thanks to the periodical structure of the composition, always new but however of the same (all the motivic cells are similar to earlier ones but none of them are exactly repeated. the general structure is therefore self-similar), an impression is created of a gigantic, indissoluble network. Also, rhythmic structures at first hidden gradually begin to emerge, two independent speed layers with their various internal accentuations. .

This great, self-similar whirl in a very indirect way relates to musical associations, which came to my mind while watching the graphic projection of the mathematical sets of Julia and of Mandelbrot made with the help of a computer. I saw these wonderful pictures of fractal creations, made by scientists from Brema, Peitgen and Richter, for the first time in 1984. From that time they have played a great role in my musical concepts. This does not mean, however, that composing the fourth movement I used mathematical methods or iterative calculus. indeed, I did use constructions which, however, are not based on mathematical thinking, but are rather craftman's constructions (in this respect, my attitude towards mathematics is similar to that of the graphic artist Maurits Escher). .I am concerned rather with intuitional, poetic, synesthetic correspondence, not on the scientific, but on the poetic level of thinking. .

The fifth, very short Presto movement is harmonically very simple, but all the more complicated in its rhythmic structure: it is based on the further development of ''inherent patterns of the third movement. The quasi-equidistance system dominates harmonically and melodically in this movement, as in the third, alternating with harmonic fields, which are based on the division of the chromatic whole into diatonics and anhemitonic pentatonics. Polyrhythms and harmonic mixtures reach their greatest density, and at the same time this movement is strikingly light, enlightened with very bright colours: at first it seems chaotic, but after listening to it for a few times it is easy to grasp its content: many autonomous but self-similar figures which crossing themselves. .

I present my artistic credo in the Piano Concerto: I demonstrate my independence from criteria of the traditional avantgarde, as well as the fashionable postmodernism. Musical illusions which I consider to be also so important are not a goal in itself for me, but a foundation for my aesthetical attitude. I prefer musical forms which have a more object-like than processual character. Music as frozen time, as an object in imaginary space evoked by music in our imagination, as a creation which really develops in time, but in imagination it exists simultaneously in all its moments. The spell of time, the enduring its passing by, closing it in a moment of the present is my main intention as a composer. .
(Gyorgy Ligeti)

Song List: Hero Of The Faith The Most High God Moses Led His People Deborah Elijah When I Turn My Heart To Heaven Goliath I Am His Lamb Hero Of The Faith Reprise

English.

Carl Orff devoted much of his life to the development of a philosophy of Music for Children, based on his belief that music is the natural outcome of speech, rhythm and movement. His ideas and pioneering work have had a major influence on music and dance education throughout the world and today that work continues under the guidance of leading teachers and educators in many countries. The five basic German volumes of Music for Children by Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman were published between 1950 and 1954. Editions have since been published in Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Estonia, France, Ghana, Great Britain (including a special Welsh edition), Greece, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latin-America, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan and the USA. In 1952 the first edition in translation appeared an English language adaptation by Doreen Hall and Arnold Walter for their Canadian and American students. A few years later, Margaret Murray independently developed a version (1957-1966), essentially to fulfil the needs of United Kingdom teachers. Inevitably the considerable growth of Orff-Schulwerk in the United States led to the publication of the American Edition (1977) to satisfy the requirements of a different educational system and national heritage. Orff-Schulwerk: Music for Children has proved itself to be a stimulating source of material for music teaching. Carl Orff's fundamental educational ideas have revitalized music education in nursery schools, at all levels of primary and secondary education and in special music schools, based on the concepts that: - music, dance and language are inter-related and animated through rhythm. - when children discover, invent, improvise and compose, their experience of music is intensified. These creative activities are complementary to those of interpreting and listening to music. - all who take part are encouraged to contribute, not only vocally but also instrumentally. - the Orff approach to music education is many sided. it is concerned with practical music-making, it provides fundamental experiences and it lays the foundation for a comprehensive musical training. - movement games and activities for body awareness in space, time and flow, lead to movement improvisation and dance forms. - music and dance have been notated in many different ways in history. Various ways of writing down sounds and music, as well as playing from and interpreting different kinds of sources are being explored. Today, countless teachers and institutions are using these ideas. More and more teachers look for ways of involving their students in active music making. In particular, they seek to challenge their pupils' creativity by the use of music, dance and speech - as media of human expression - as a foundation of all education. A prerequisite for work in Orff-Schulwerk is the artistic and pedagogical training of teachers. The Orff Institute was founded in 1961 as a Department of the 'Mozarteum', in Salzburg, Austria. Training offered includes a four-year diploma course, a two-year post-graduate course, and a one-year-course in English. At the opening of the Orff Institute in Salzburg in 1963, Carl Orff ended his speech with a quotation from Schiller: 'I have done my part, now do yours.' That challenge has been taken up by teachers worldwide. Murray Edition English adaption, with additional material, by Margaret Murray. Besed on, and containing all the rhythmic and instrumental material from the main five volumes of the original German edition. Contents of this fifth volume: Songs and pieces making further use of the modes introduced in Vol. 4, with the addition of the more usual forms of the minor scale with the sharpened seventh. The settings of short dramatic scenes concludes the book.

My blue violin draws both musicians and listeners into the world of swing and jazz. Fast cheerful pieces alternate with pensive ones. Titles like My Cat and Me or Die Radtour [The Bicycle Ride] make the poetry of small things resound. Like a musical diary, they make us notice the beautiful things in everyday life. The pieces are of easy to intermediate difficulty and suitable for performances as well as music lessons.

I composed the orchestral piece Melodien in 1971. I tried to loosen up the dense micropolyphony of my musical language, to make it more transparent. Basically, I stayed true to my earlier style: the musical form unfolds like a stretched fabric in the continuously flowing time, but the individual voices no longer merge (as in my earlier music), rather they can be heard individually in their overlapping and interweaving . The voices become individual melodies, with their own style, their own tempo, rhythm and interval structure. If you listen to the work for the first time, it appears as a chaos of discrepant melodies - but if you know the music better, the internal connections become tangible, the hidden harmonic skeleton of the form becomes tangible. (Gyorgy Ligeti)

This facsimile edition offers an impressive access to the composer's work. A study score in modern notation is also available.

The present volume contains a selection of very easy recital pieces for violoncello and piano which can be played in the first position after 1-2 years of cello lessons. The selected pieces are original works from the Renaissance period to the present day: from the Baroque minuet, the classical sonatina or the Romantic character piece to contemporary music and tango, blues or pop. The pieces are suitable for individual, group and chamber music lessons, for practising on one's own and especially for the first auditions, concerts or competitions. A musical journey through 500 years of cello music!

German.

My First Bach and My First Mozart are now followed by a third edition of easy-to-play original works from one of the most important composers of the Romantic era: Robert Schumann. This collection includes pieces from Album for the Young and Scenes from Childhood, enabling young players to experience Romantic piano music for the first time. Ideal for teaching the first use of the pedal, pupils can learn how to play expressively and to distinguish between melody and accompaniment.

German.

Ludwig van Beethoven wrote numerous piano pieces to teach to his pupils. Still, today, his works are an integral part of piano lessons.
My first Beethoven is perfect for pianists of every age to become acquainted with these works. This volume contains Beethoven's most popular and easiest piano pieces - from the frequently played Sonatinas in G and F major to Fur Elise and the famous Moonlight Sonata. Ideal for music lessons and music-making at home! Great works for little masters!

German - English.

'My First Grieg' contains a selection of the easier to moderately difficult Lyric Pieces from Op. 12, 38, 43, 47, 54, 68 and 71 as well as three pieces from the Peer Gynt Suites Op. 46 and 55. Including the famous Morning Mood in the original duet version by the composer. Ideal for music lessons and for playing at home. Great works for little masters!

German - English.

My First Tchaikovsky contains easy and intermediate level piano pieces beginning with a selection from the Album for the Young Op. 39. The pieces from the cycle The Seasons and 12 Pieces of medium difficulty as well as the arrangements from the ballet The Nutcracker with their more demanding piano writing are easy to master by advanced players.

Ideal for teaching and playing at home. Great works for little masters!

German - English.

Learning to play the piano with Bach
Easy to intermediate pieces by the master

* Bach as a teacher
* Easy piano pieces
* For beginners with basic knowledge

Learn from the master. Johann Sebastian Bach composed countless pieces specifically for his many students. My First Bach contains many of these educational pieces which are, for the most part, arranged in increasing difficulty. Easy two-part chorales and dances are followed by more demanding little preludes, two-part inventions and the first Prelude from the Well-Tempered Clavier.

Chopin - this is passion, elegance and melancholy! And it is exactly what makes him well liked in piano lessons and while music-making at home. Chopin's music is technically quite demanding, but thanks to the suitable fingerings of the composer most technical figures are very comfortable in the hands and can be easily played by advanced pianists. The collection contains Chopin's easiest piano pieces in one volume which is perfect for piano lessons - but also for playing the piano at home.

The official sheet music edition of the same-named CD album Piano Songbook (Sony Classical). Includes arrangements and fantasies of popular works, ranging from baroque to romantic as well as own compositions by Martin Stadtfeld. Easy to intermediate difficulty - ideal for young pianists and returnees to the piano.

The works collected in this volume have accompanied me through my life. In difficult times, this music gives me stability and certainty.

The arrangements are partly free and subjective and distil what is essential for me. The motto was: as few notes as possible. This was also what I aspired to achieve in my 10 compositions in the third part. This means that most pieces can be used in piano lessons. Even those who return to the piano after a long time can pick up where they left off with these pieces. I hope that many people playing them will feel what I felt when making this volume: contemplation, absorption, inner strength.

(Martin Stadtfeld)

My idea of developing music from Richard of Gloucester's monologue 'Now is the winter of our discontent', and of generating more music from that material, was conceived during the 1960s. Ten years later it took a more concrete form, when Julian Bream suggested to me that I should write a substanial new guitar work for him. More time went by, and only having finished 'We Come to the River' could I begin to realise our plan. Then began a collaboration with the instrumentalist that went through various phases, from which I gained a more profound knowledge of the technicalities and of the sound-world of the guitar. I would even go so far as to say that this collaboration gave me a new concept of how to write for an instrument with a rich tradition. The guitar is a 'knowing' or 'knowledgeable' instrument, with many limitations but also many unexplored spaces and depths within these limits. It possesses a richness of sound capable of embracing everything one might find in a gigantic contemporary orchestra. but one has to start from silence in order to notice this: one has to pause, and completely exclude noise.
The dramatis personae of this piece enter through the sound of the guitar as if it were curtain. Through masks, voices and gestures, they speak to us of great passion, of tenderness, sadness and comedy: strange events in people's lives. Into this, the whispering voices of spirits are mingled. The epilogue is spoken by Oberon, pacified and reconciled, as though Nature had been subjected to Man.
- Hans Werner Henze.

Peteris Vasks occupies a special position in the circle of Baltic composers. He is not only the most significant and popular composer ever to come out of Latvia. he always speaks to his listeners with a fervent intensity that seems to point to something higher. This higher aspect is without a doubt something that stands above the world of humanity but is also present within each person: divine nature.

"I am deeply rooted in nature, in the nature of the North. It influences all of my music. The nature we know is also quite various. we have four very distinct seasons. The winter is very long, the summer very short and therefore all the more beautiful and longed for. The seasons in between are quite dramatic."

The first of Peteris Vasks's Seasons pieces was not written with the intention of forming a complete cycle. For his friend, Talivaldis Deksnis, he composed in 1980 Balta ainava - White Landscape (Winter), in 1981 Rudens muzika - Autumn Music, and in 1995 the Pavasara muzika - Spring Music. In 2008, Zala ainava - Green Landscape (Summer) came into being, the piece which completed the cycle.

In 2009, as a kind of "encore", Vasks wrote Vasaras vakara muzika - Music for a Summer Evening based on old sketches. this, of all the pieces, is the one most anchored in tradition. Only the two newest pieces - both of which have to do with summer - have a fixed metrical structure. The three earlier works are metrically free, notated without bar lines, which gives them an improvisatory character.

Vasks says of the individual pieces in the cycle: "In Balta ainava everything is white. A new year begins. It is a quiet meditation, a new beginning, with only two themes.

Pavasara muzika. Quasi una Sonata - the most demanding piece in this cycle - is intense, an impressive development. Spring comes slowly, with much drama. It is like a battle, until it is simply there. This multi-faceted piece, with its bird songs, lives from conflicts and dramatic intensification and ends in ecstatic rapture. Zala ainava is based on two themes. Our summer is very brief and offers a respite after the battles. And it is so beautiful! The music reflects joy and contentment. The first theme brings a kind of pure energy. the second is more devoted to tone painting. At the end, a five-note quotation from a well-known Latvian folksong about a drunkard is heard.

Rudens muzika begins pianissimo on a quiet September day, in a peaceful, sunny atmosphere. Now the autumn storms sweep over the land. a gentle sadness settles on the people and on nature, which surrenders its splendor. After a last great storm, the snow comes again as a symbol of purified conclusion and a new beginning. Vasaras vakara muzika takes place at the quiet end of a summer day. The sun sets. Slowness. Memories of previous experiences surface. With the memories' appearance comes an increase in intensity. Towards the end, a kind of folksong is heard: 'We have survived the time of tyranny and retained our identity'. The ending is quiet, everything is asleep."

Christoph Schluren

Translation: John Patrick Thomas and W. Richard Rieves

Song List: Hero Of The Faith The Most High God Moses Led His People Deborah Elijah When I Turn My Heart To Heaven Goliath I Am His Lamb Hero Of The Faith Reprise