SKU: HL.50511769

ISBN 9790080144718. Bach (23 x 30,2 cm) inches. Hungarian, English. Gyula Csapo.

The composer writes the following about this work: 'As if we could only walk sideways in a tilted force field, Petruska-Harlequin in my piece evokes waltz fragments on a capsized 'Titanic', or Berlioz's Romeo und Juliet. Vertiginous chromatic martellato-staccato sequences keep tearing apart the clarinet's virtuosic aerial gymnastics interspersed among the fragments and half-heard wisps of sound. We suddenly find ourselves now in the depths, now in the highest regions, sidelong, as if all these fragments of musical memories were dancing on the edge of the event-horizon of a black hole...' This work, dedicated to the clarinettist Csaba Klenyan, was composed in 2002 in Saskatoon (Canada).

SKU: HL.14028008

ISBN 9788759852521. English.

The Dante-Sonata was composed in 1970, inspired by two quotations from Dante's La Divina Comedia, Inferno, each in its turn forming the program of the two movements. Movement 1: Wandering through Inferno Dante sees all those who during their life on earth were ill-tempered and discontented, and who are now doomed for all eternity to stand in mud up to their necks, fighting each other, tearing and scratching each other's flesh. Movement 2: Here the doomed wretches recollect life on earth - the blessed sun and the green meadows; but it is too late to repent. Apart from having this connection with La Divina Comedia the title: Dante-Sonata has a dialectical and music-historical reference, a reference to Franz Liszt's Dante Sonata, without quoting from it in any way. An elusive air of the music of bygone days can be percieved in the second movement, which with its many types of graces is reminiscent of a slow movement of a Baroque dance. Dante-Sonata is dedicated to Elisabeth Klein.

SKU: HL.14042598

ISBN 9788759827482.

Programme Note Poul Ruders WIND-DRUMMING WIND-DRUMMING was written in 1979 on a commission from The Danish Percussion Ensemble. The piece is a clash of two kinds of sound-associations, the mystic, exotic impact of Latin-American drumming, and the more well dressed reputation of Western concert-instruments, in this case a wind-quintet (w. electric flute). The two instrumental camps either melt into one soft humming ritual or are split wide apart, the winds tearing their way through the undergrowth of rainforest-drumming. There is more than one way of getting on to WIND-DRUMMING: obviously it is about the confrontation of two incongruent ways of living, a lament on the damage done tothe tropical rainforests of the world by modern civilisation. One can hear it plainly as a direct rhythm-show, a downright number or a joyous homage to the most exiting kind of folkloristic music at all: the carnal spell of the Brazilian Samba. Poul Ruders.