The Dreamers - A Gothic Tale for Horn Trio by Niels Marthinsen. Programme note: The Dreamers for horn violin and piano is the sixth of a series of seven compositions named after Karen Blixen's collection of short stories Seven Gothic Tales. My musical gothic tales are written for very different ensembles - THE SUPPER AT ELSINORE is a saxophone quartet THE OLD CHEVALIER is for bass trombone and piano THE MONKEY is a chamber orchestra work - but they all share musical material in a criss-cross of contextual references reminiscent of Blixen's narrative complexity: Themes and motivs from one pieceappear in others in new and surprising shapes and combinations. Karen Blixen's THE DREAMERS has the most complex narrative structure of all her seven gothic tales. The story is made up of three tales with different narrators but with the same principal caracter in various disguises all three imbedded within a fourth tale that serves as a framework for the entire short story.The main story line unravels the life of a famous opera diva who looses her voice during a terrible fire. Before this her life was perpetual bliss and the tragedy drives her into assuming different personality guises in order to escape reality.Toward the end she is confronted with her true identity and dies.THE DREAMERS isn't 'about' anything. The music is inspired by the artistic content of Blixen's short story - it's emotionalism dramatic construction atmosphere period and settings - but unfolds in time and musical space in ways that are completely independent of the story's narrative progression...except one might say that the three players try their best to either catch or escape each other and that when they finally meet it happens abruptly even tragically - and only barely provides a little consolation.

Le Carnaval des animaux. Written in March 1886 as a humorous occasional work for the traditional carnival concert organized by his cellist friend Charles-Joseph Lebouc, the Carnival of the Animals was so successful that Saint-Saëns banned performances and publication soon afterwards. He was worried that this ?grand zoological fantasy? - consisting of 14 short individual pieces for eleven instruments - might overshadow his serious works. Yet only five months after the composer?s death, it appeared in print after all, beginning its worldwide victory march - in its original setting as well as in numerous arrangements. Thus, the Carnival did in fact arguably become the most popular work by this French composer and, owing to its musical originality, it is also a favourite in music lessons or for school orchestra performances. With this combination of a study edition and an edition in parts (for which additional parts for larger numbers of strings may be ordered), G. Henle Publishers now presents the perfect resource for such occasions.

Gustav Holst's The Wandering Scholar a one-act chamber opera for Baritone Soprano Tenor Bass and Orchestra. Edited by Benjamin Britten and Imogen Holst. Full score and Orchestral parts are availble for hire. The Wandering Scholar Holst’s last opera was written in 1929-30 and was first performed in The David Lewis Theatre Liverpool in 1934 conducted by Dr. J. E. Wallace and produced by Frederick Wilkinson. This was a few months before Holst’s death and he was too ill to go to the performance. He had no chance to revise the score which has remained unpublished until now. He leftseveral pencil queries in the margins such as ‘Tempo?’ ‘More?’ ‘More harmony?’ etc. And in one of his note-books he left queries about several words in the libretto which he had doubts about. The editors have answered these queries by making some alterations in speed and dynamics and by suggesting metronome marks throughout the work. They have also made several alterations in the libretto which they feel that Holst might have made himself if he had had the chance to revise the work with his friend Clifford Bax.

The sheet music for Nico Muhly's Doublespeak arranged for Chamber Ensemble and composed for the orchestral sextet 'eighth blackbird'. The piece is arranged for Flute (Soprano Recorder) Clarinet in B flat Percussion (Castanets Tenor Drum Pedal Bass Drum) Glockenspiel Piano Violin and Cello. It works for 2-6 players and this item includes the full score as well as the parts. Doublespeak had its debut at the Edlis Neeson Theatre in Chicago performed by the new musical six-piece 'eighth blackbird'. The piece is a slow and repetitive one punctuated bymoments of stark beauty. It is according to Muhly something of a tribute to the great Philip Glass the forefather of minimalist classical music. It takes implicit inspiration from his entire oeuvre but also explicitly incorporates portions of his most famous and valued works interweaving them inside a new composition that captures what 'eighth blackbird' do best.  The Doublespeak sheet music would be ideal for Chamber Ensembles looking to perform or practise minimalist music drawn from the 1960s and 1970s. If you love Philip Glass or Nico Muhly or both this composition is a real treat.

Serenade no. 1 H 217. Unusual instrumentations were by no means the exception in the chamber music works of Bohuslav Martinu, most notably the works he wrote in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s being characterised by his experimentation with sound and form. It is from this period that four short serenades also originate, of which the Serenade No. 1 was composed in 1932. The serenades were published by the Prague publishing house of Melantrich in 1949. Although the study score of the Serenade No. 1 was published while the composer was still alive, he was in fact not involved in preparing this edition: indeed, the performance material also appeared in print without his participation in 1954. It was therefore decided to use the autograph score as the principal source for this edition.

Fine edition contains all eight Piano trios the two Piano quartets and the Piano quintet reprinted from the definitive Breitkopf and Hartel editions. All of these works display the melodic richness inventiveness and inimitable grace that characterize Mozart's finest compositions. Indispensable for pianists and chamber musicians.

Rabl?s Quartet in E-Flat Major won first prize in 1896 in a prestigious competition for young composers sponsored by the Vienna Tonkünstlerverein of which Johannes Brahms was honorary president and a judge of the competition. Brahms recommended the piece to his own publisher Simrock who released it the following year along with three other Rabl works: the Fantasy Pieces for Piano Trio Op. 2 and two sets of Four Songs Op. 3 and Op. 4. The Op. 1 quartet appears to be the first work ever written for that combination which was later more famously used by Messiaen in his Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the end of time) composed in 1941.

for flute viola and harp-Three Shades Without Angles is a piece that plays with the idea of transformation of musical shapes. When writing this piece I was inspired by Auguste Rodin’s sculpture The Three Shades a detail sitting atop the sculptor’s work The Gates of Hell depicting a scene from Dante’s The Inferno. Although my music is not representative or depictive of Dante or an image of hell I was deeply drawn to the sinewy character of Rodin’s work its intensity muscularity consistency and the way in which movement and energy is represented in his shapes - Hannah Lash

'...The present collection has been conceived right from the outset so as to form an organic component of and a supplement to the teaching of solfeggio. The original text and their relevant translations have been omitted with the intention that the pedagogical aim namely that which is achieved through solmization could be proprely emphasized. There is hardly any need to recommend these pieces for cultivation. Luckily enough solfeggio has become so wide-spread and in particular singing canons has gained such popularity that its praise would suggest an irony of the same kind as Erasmus' eulogy of foolishness. Nevertheless it cannot be left unsaid how immensely this domaincontributes to raising the musical standards of the greatest number of people possibile.' (Antal Molnár)