SKU: HL.14019848

8.25x11.75x0.065 inches. Lyrics by William Shakespeare.

Like many composers who found themselves in exile during the war years, Castelnuovo-Tedesco composed in a very neoclassical and neoromantic style, reviving more traditional or antiquated ideas of melody, tonality and texture. His collection of Shakespeare Songs feature settings of verse from across the full range of the Bard's plays, and have proved to be great critical successes still widely performed today. Suitable to be adapted by most voices. the songs are interwoven with complex and thrilling Piano accompaniments that bring colour and energy to the often liberally edited texts. Book eight contains three songs adapted from A Winter's Tale and Cymberline.

SKU: BR.EB-9412

ISBN 9790004188866. 9 x 12 inches.

Joachim Raff's 12 piano pieces Fruhlingsboten op. 55, originating in 1852/53, mark a new creative start in his compositional oeuvre, in which the composer left behind his previously written and published piano works. The title of the work, translated as Heralds of Spring, is multilayered: It refers not only to spring in nature as expressed in the headings of the first two pieces, Winterruhe [Hibernation] and Fruhlingsnahen [Spring's Approach], but the words Heralds of Spring also indicate love's spring, the blossoming of love for his future wife, the actress Doris Genast. This appears in the headings of the pieces as of no. 3, sketching the path of an imaginary couple approaching union via various annoyances. And ultimately, Raff saw in his new piano work the harbingers of his future works, created under happy circumstances. In Fruhlingsboten Raff repeatedly demonstrates his ability to adapt idioms and compositional techniques from works by Liszt, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and others. The pieces do nonetheless possess their own thoroughly original diction with a character spectrum just as diverse as their stylistic piano design. Mahlert's new edition, as beautifully presented as ever from this publisher, is exemplary, and can easily be recommended to advanced pianists with a love of nineteenth-century repertoire. Superb.(Andrew Eales, Pianodao).