SKU: BR.EOS-20472-19
Today, it is hard to believe that Bedrich Smetana kept receiving rejections when he tried to get his enormously popular Moldau printed.
ISBN 9790004184974. 10 x 12.5 inches.
What is also amazing is that the first text-critical edition prepared by the Czech Smetana expert Milan Pospisil in 1999, which had entailed an exhaustive evaluation of the sources and been given a full text-critical editorial treatment as a Eulenburg study score, had no resonance of any kind among performers since no performance material had been published. After 15 years, Pospisils edition is finally being completed in a manner suitable for practice: with a conducting score and orchestral parts which will ensure that all future performances are based on a musical text that is as reliable as can be.
The work depicts the course of the river Vltava, beginning with its first two sources, the cold and warm Vltava, and the confluence of the two streams that join to form a single river; then the course of the Vltava through forests and meadows, and through open countryside where a peasant wedding is being celebrated; water-sprites dance by the light of the moon; on the nearby cliffs castles, mansions and ruins rise proudly into the air; the Vltava eddies in the St John's Rapids, then flows in a broad stream as it continues its course towards Prague, where the Vysehrad appears, before the river finally disappears into the distance as it flows majestically into the Elbe.Vltava (The Moldau), Smetana's best-known and most frequently performed orchestral work, was written between 19 November and 8 December 1874, at a time when Smetana was already completely deaf. The world premiere took place in Prague on 4 April 1875, but the score was not published until 1880.
SKU: BO.B.3542
Staeliana was commissioned by the Fundacio Caixa de Catalunya in 2007 for the inauguration of an exposition of the work of Nicolas Staël at La Pedrera, Barcelona. In this work I wanted to compose homage to a painter who knew how to join together in his unique works both the traditions of the past along with the vanguard of his time. Beginning with figurative works which lead toward abstraction, his body of work can be defined as a contrast between these two concepts which, with extreme simplicity, define his entire artistic conception. Staeliana, an expressive chorale, at times both luminous and dramatic, dissolves into the most minimal expression. From the first joining together of the voices it concludes with utter simplicity of expression. The suicide of the artist in 1955 is representative of the dissolution of his existence as well as of his artistic works. This contrast between figurative and abstraction is reflected in the music by the contrast between stability and tension. I believe that this duality may be found both in his work and in his life, always oscillating between living a creative life or opting for death, which may be seen as a fusion in nothingness with the plenitude of purest simplicity.
SKU: PR.114406980
UPC: 680160010806.
Shulamit Ran’s second string quartet, subtitled “Vistas,†occupies a large canvas that is cast in a traditional fourmovement mold, where the outer movements present, explore, and later return to the work’s principal musical materials, surrounding a slow movement and scherzo-type third movement with a trio. In addition to tempo-based titles, the individual movements have subtitles that are evocative of each movement’s character, as follows: I. Concentric: from the inside out II. Stasis III. Flashes IV. Vistas.My second string quartet, “Vistasâ€, is a work cast in a traditional four-movement formal mold, with the outer movements, presenting and later returning to the work’s principal musical materials, surrounding a slow movement and a scherzo-type third movement.While the four movements’ “proper†names -- Maestoso con forza, Lento, Scherzo impetuoso, and Introduzione; Maestoso e grande – give some indication of the general character of the individual movements, I have also subtitled, less formally, each movement as follows: 1) Concentric: from the inside out 2) Stasis 3) Flashes 4) Vista. The images evoked by these titles tell one, I think, a bit more about the inner workings of the quartet.In the first movement, a prominently presented opening pitch (E) reveals itself, as the movement unfolds, to be a center of gravity from which ever-growing cycles of activity gradually evolve. While various important themes come into being as the movement progresses, their impact on the listener has, I believe, a great deal to do with their juxtaposition and relationship to the initial central point of gravity.Stasis is, as the name implies, a movement where activity seems, at times, almost suspended. Being also, as Webster’s Dictionary reminds us, “a state of static balance and equilibrium among opposing tendencies or forces,†it develops various materials, including ones from the first movement, without bringing them to points of resolution.Flashes is short and very fast, evoking in my mind the quick shimmer of fireflies, a “sudden burst of lightâ€, but also a “brief timeâ€. Perhaps, even, a “smileâ€?Finally, the last movement, Vista, is not only “a view or outlookâ€, but also “a comprehensive mental view of a series of remembered or anticipated events.â€Â After a brief recall of the opening of the second movement, this movement brings back all the important themes of the first movement in their original order. But just as going back can never really mean going back in time, the movement is much more than recapitulatory. By cutting through previously transitory passages and presenting the main ideas in a fashion more direct yet more evolved, it also sheds new light on earlier events, offering a retrospective, synoptic view of the first movement as it brings to culmination the work as a whole. “Vistas†was commissioned by C. Geraldine Freund for the Taneyev String Quartet of what was then Leningrad. It was the first commission given in this country to a Soviet chamber ensemble since the 1985 cultural exchange accord between the Soviet Union and the United States.
