Barbara Arens writes... A fact: I love Scotland. Every time I come home after travelling in Scotland I feel myself bursting with ideas inspired by all I've seen and experienced there. The heather-covered hills and the dusky forests the wind the amazingly pure air the mysterious ruins - and especially the water - be it a dark brown burn a roaring waterfall heavy clouds a gentle mist or the waves of the North Sea or a loch just begging to be explored - and the people I meet and their lovely almost always comprehensible speech...What a source of inspiration! And then there's the music - nothing is more thrilling than hearing massed bands of pipes and drums aswell as the rich tradition of folk music. So I come home and sit down at the piano and try to put these impressions into music trying always to keep the pieces as easily playable as possible - I want my piano students to enjoy them and express themselves through them without struggling with technical difficulties.So some of these pieces reflect my impression of a landscape standing stones a sunset over a loch; but some of the pieces are based on actual traditional gaelic songs and tunes. A wonderful discovery was finding the Scots Musical Museum the collection of traditional songs assembled and revised to a great extent by Robert Burns which appeared in Edinburgh 1769 1803 - a fantastic resource.I'm hoping you'll enjoy playing this collection of Scottish Piano pieces.

Cityscapes (?Paysages urbains?) est une œuvre inspirée d?une série d?impressions et de paysages de la métropole de New York la plus grande ville des États-Unis.Dans le premier mouvement l?impressionnante ligne d?horizon de « La Grosse Pomme » s?étire devant nous. Manhattan le pont de Brooklyn et la Statue de la Liberté sont l?essence du thème principal. Les dernières mesures de ce premier mouvement font référence à la célèbre Symphonie n° 9 dite « du Nouveau Monde » que le compositeur tchèque Antón Dvorák composa lors d?un séjour à New York.Le second mouvement est consacré à Central Park l?immense parc new-yorkais construit au XIXe siècle etdestiné aux loisirs au divertissement et à la relaxation. Plusieurs bâtiments célèbres tels que le Metropolitan Museum of Art jalonnent Central Park.Le troisième et dernier mouvement de ce triptyque dépeint l?esprit bouillonnant de Manhattan quartier célèbre pour abriter d?impressionnants gratte-ciel et la Bourse de Wall Street. La musique palpite au rythme du trafic intense et suit le tourbillon d?activité tumultueux. Elle décrit également les immenses buildings comme l'Empire State Building.

Cityscapes (?Paysages urbains?) est une œuvre inspirée d?une série d?impressions et de paysages de la métropole de New York la plus grande ville des États-Unis.Dans le premier mouvement l?impressionnante ligne d?horizon de « La Grosse Pomme » s?étire devant nous. Manhattan le pont de Brooklyn et la Statue de la Liberté sont l?essence du thème principal. Les dernières mesures de ce premier mouvement font référence à la célèbre Symphonie n° 9 dite « du Nouveau Monde » que le compositeur tchèque Antón Dvorák composa lors d?un séjour à New York.Le second mouvement est consacré à Central Park l?immense parc new-yorkais construit au XIXe siècle etdestiné aux loisirs au divertissement et à la relaxation. Plusieurs bâtiments célèbres tels que le Metropolitan Museum of Art jalonnent Central Park.Le troisième et dernier mouvement de ce triptyque dépeint l?esprit bouillonnant de Manhattan quartier célèbre pour abriter d?impressionnants gratte-ciel et la Bourse de Wall Street. La musique palpite au rythme du trafic intense et suit le tourbillon d?activité tumultueux. Elle décrit également les immenses buildings comme l'Empire State Building.

Sacred Children's Musical-Heroes of the Faith is a unique field trip. Biblical characters come to life to teach modern day children how to become heroes. The children learn lessons of faith when they discover David Deborah Elijah and Moses whiletouring a museum exhibition. These Bible heroes tell about their exciting adventures and how ordinary people become extraordinary heroes who can change the world - or at least their world - when they listen and follow God'scommand.Available separately: Accompanist/Director's Edition Singer's Edition 5-Pak Preview Pack (CD) Preview CD CD 10-Pak Accompaniment/Split Track CD. Performance Time: 40 minutes. Grades 1-6.

Per Nørgård's Wölfli - A Discarded MisfitDramatic Choir Montage for an Actor/Recitator and Chamber Chorus (2007). Extracts from the preface:No idyll without catastrophe – no catastrophe without idyll.Adolf Wölfli (1864-1931 Switzerland) is a central figure in the so called mad arts i.e. art created by patients who are certifyably mentally ill. Wölfli’s vast and eclectic production consists of approximately 20.000 pages of prose poetry pictures and fragmentary musical compositions. All of which was created at an institutionin Waldau Bern from 1900-1931 (...). Danish composer Per Nørgård (born 1932) discovered by accident Wölfli’s art at the Louisiana Museum while on his way to a Schönberg concert a concert he never made it to. The encounter with Wölfli’s art was to become a major source of inspiration for Nørgård in the 1980’s. The inspiration resulted in Nørgård’s SYMPHONY NO. 4 (1981) entitled Indischer Roosen-Gaarten und Chineesischer Hexensee (after the title on a planned Musikbüchlein by Wölfli) and the opera THE DIVINE TIVOLI (1982) and numerous choral works. Nørgård’s works from the 1980’s inspired by Wölfli are characterised by being wild dramatic and moving.The present work WÖLFLI has its point of departure in the choral works of the 1980’s and songs and interludes from the opera. All this is combined with additional prose poetry and pictures by Wölfli which come together to form a music-dramatic portrait of the confined his thoughts and artistic universe. Whereas the opera was a scenic tour de force of intense drama polyphonic scenarios and whirling instrumentation thefocus in WÖLFLI is monologue and

Four Pieces For Orchestra was composed by Hans Abrahamsen in 2000-2003. Programme note: In 1983 Hans Abrahamsen wrote the first seven of his Ten Studies for Piano. In the early eighties most composers who wrote for the piano were still making strenuous efforts to distance themselves from the instrument?s romantic past for example treating it as a percussion instrument rather than exploiting its expressive ?singing? potential. The piano?s modern identity as a mechanical rational emotionally cool instrument is reflected in Abrahamsen?s studies 5 7; but in the first four studies Abrahamsen allows the piano to?recollect? its past: especially what the composer calls ?the golden German romantic time full of expression night timelessness dream and the irrational?. Accordingly these first four studies were given German one might specifically say Schumanesque - titles: Traumlied (?Dreamsong?) Sturm (?Storm?) Arabeske (?Arabesque?) and Ende (?End?). While Abrahamsen was in no way dissatisfied with the first four Studies as piano music he soon felt the urge to expand them in both time and space. In their new identity as Four Pieces for Orchestra created between 2000-2003 the original studies nearly doubled in length while the forces required expanded from one soloist to an orchestra of Mahlerian/Straussian dimensions including instruments beloved by the late-romantics: Wagner tubas bass trumpet guitar mandolin and the hammer used so memorably in Mahler?s Sixth Symphony and Alban Berg?s Three Pieces for Orchestra. The results are not so much ?arrangements? of the four piano studies more recompositions. A helpful comparison might be made with certain painters: Cézanne portraying the same mountain from different angles; or Monet obsessively returning to Rouen Cathedral in different lights and weather conditions. Abrahamsen himself remembers an important visit to the Munch Museum in Oslo where he saw how Munch painted the same subject

Cityscapes (?Paysages urbains?) est une œuvre inspirée d?une série d?impressions et de paysages de la métropole de New York la plus grande ville des États-Unis.Dans le premier mouvement l?impressionnante ligne d?horizon de « La Grosse Pomme » s?étire devant nous. Manhattan le pont de Brooklyn et la Statue de la Liberté sont l?essence du thème principal. Les dernières mesures de ce premier mouvement font référence à la célèbre Symphonie n° 9 dite « du Nouveau Monde » que le compositeur tchèque Antón Dvorák composa lors d?un séjour à New York.Le second mouvement est consacré à Central Park l?immense parc new-yorkais construit au XIXe siècle etdestiné aux loisirs au divertissement et à la relaxation. Plusieurs bâtiments célèbres tels que le Metropolitan Museum of Art jalonnent Central Park.Le troisième et dernier mouvement de ce triptyque dépeint l?esprit bouillonnant de Manhattan quartier célèbre pour abriter d?impressionnants gratte-ciel et la Bourse de Wall Street. La musique palpite au rythme du trafic intense et suit le tourbillon d?activité tumultueux. Elle décrit également les immenses buildings comme l'Empire State Building.

...Around And A Round... for Flute and Piano (2015) was originally a solo Piano piece entitled Nocturne 1 ..around and a round.. (from Lunae: Four Nocturnes composed in 2012). It is a slow midnightmerry-go-round with a bass line that repeats with variations throughout the work. Marked gently expressive it is inspired by Song a beautiful piece by contemporary pianist and composer John Law.The Flute and Pianoversion was premiered by Elizabeth Walker and Richard Shaw on 2 June 2015 as part of the Holbourne Museum Lunchtime Concert Series in Bath.Duration: c. 3 mins

Cityscapes (?Paysages urbains?) est une œuvre inspirée d?une série d?impressions et de paysages de la métropole de New York la plus grande ville des États-Unis.Dans le premier mouvement l?impressionnante ligne d?horizon de « La Grosse Pomme » s?étire devant nous. Manhattan le pont de Brooklyn et la Statue de la Liberté sont l?essence du thème principal. Les dernières mesures de ce premier mouvement font référence à la célèbre Symphonie n° 9 dite « du Nouveau Monde » que le compositeur tchèque Antón Dvorák composa lors d?un séjour à New York.Le second mouvement est consacré à Central Park l?immense parc new-yorkais construit au XIXe siècle etdestiné aux loisirs au divertissement et à la relaxation. Plusieurs bâtiments célèbres tels que le Metropolitan Museum of Art jalonnent Central Park.Le troisième et dernier mouvement de ce triptyque dépeint l?esprit bouillonnant de Manhattan quartier célèbre pour abriter d?impressionnants gratte-ciel et la Bourse de Wall Street. La musique palpite au rythme du trafic intense et suit le tourbillon d?activité tumultueux. Elle décrit également les immenses buildings comme l'Empire State Building.