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: BR.PB-15164-07

ISBN 9790004215906. 6.5 x 9 inches.

The piano concerto in a minor stands out in Edvard Grieg's oeuvre. Besides this famous concerto, he composed only a few other large orchestral works. Because of its popularity even in Grieg's lifetime, it was often performed, not least by the composer himself. So it is not surprising that Grieg made many changes to the score up to 1907. But at the same time, the concerto's size, form and substance remained completely unaltered. Interventions in the piano part basically involved subtleties of nuance, and only a very few places in the music text were altered. The situation was different with the orchestration. Here Grieg was keen to experiment and kept filing away at the orchestra sound right up to the last. Melodies were moved to other instruments, accompanying string chords were reconstructed, and above all the list of scored instruments was changed. The main source of the Urtext edition by Ernst-Gunter Heinemann is the new edition of the score originally published in 1907 by C. F. Peters, thus several years after the first edition of 1872. Taken into account in the present edition are the changes that Grieg made up to the time of his death. Piano reduction and fingering by Einar Steen-Nokleberg.

SKU: BR.PB-15160

ISBN 9790004215654. 10 x 12.5 inches.

Paganini's Capricci served as inspiration for many composers. In addition to Brahms, Schumann and Liszt, Rachmaninoff was also inspired by the idea. His Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini has since become one of his best known and most popular works and was an immediate success. In 1934, between two intense concert seasons, Rachmaninoff took advantage of the peace and quiet at his villa on Lake Lucerne to compose the Variations. Paganini's virtuosity and joy of playing are juxtaposed with the Gregorian sequence Dies irae. A symbol of the evil spirit to which Paganini sold his soul? At least that is how Rachmaninoff wrote it in a letter to the choreographer Fokine. For the demanding piano part, the composer and celebrated pianist himself had to start practicing very early: The composition is very difficult, and I should really start practicing now, but I get lazier with my finger exercises year after year.The editor, Norbert Gertsch, presents with this edition for the first time an Urtext edition of the work that Joachim Kaiser described as Rachmaninoff's most spiritual, witty, elegant work for piano..

SKU: BR.PB-5507

A repertoire work in an Urtext performing editionEB 8655 is printed in score form; two copies are needed for performance.

ISBN 9790004211663. 10 x 12.5 inches.

The music text is based on the volume of the Leipzig Mendelssohn Complete Edition, in which Christoph Hellmundt rightly pointed to the existence of a secondary version for piano and string orchestra as well as an arrangement for piano solo made by the composer. Nevertheless, Mendelssohn's op. 40 remains foremost a Concerto for piano and orchestra - a fact that is unequivocally underscored by the practical new edition.

A repertoire work in an Urtext performing edition.

SKU: BR.PB-4960

ISBN 9790004207451. 10 x 12.5 inches.

The roller coaster of opinions - worthless, absolutely unplayable (claims Nikolaj Rubinstein, basically Tchaikovsky's desired pianist for his Concerto in B flat minor); brilliant, magnificent (Hans von Bulow, then first performer and dedicatee of the work) - demonstrates the work's initially ambivalent reception. Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No.1 is one of the most powerful and popular compositions of the classical music repertoire altogether; and it is also quite unconventional and runs counter to the norms of the time. Though it may seem strange to us today, let us recall that during his lifetime, Tchaikovsky was regarded disputable abroad (and especially in Germany), was considered an ultra-modern Russian composer, and was even accused of being a musical nihilist and primitivist. But one glance at the score of the piano concerto suffices to reveal its truly amazing character ...