SKU: ST.H474
ISBN 9790220222900.
A Short Sonata is a work written at around Grade 8 standard for euphonium and piano. In each of the work's three movements, different qualities of the instrument are utilised and explored. In the first movement, an Allegro in 6/8 time, these qualities are the instrument's general agility, and its ability to play fast-moving melodies in a way that drives the music forward. Throughout, different ways of phrasing similar material are used to create interest and a varied sound. In the second, slow movement, the resonant and majestic way in which the euphonium can deliver lyrical melodic lines is explored. The movement is made up of four long phrases which peak dynamically at the third, giving room for interpretation and feeling. The third movement exploits the instrument's ability to play loudly and aggressively, using lots of accented notes, hairpin crescendos and quick double-tonguing. A Short Sonata was the winner of the first Stainer & Bell Award for Brass Composition, held at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in Cardiff in May 2010.
SKU: CY.CC2722
The Chants du Rhin (Songs of the Rhine), a cycle of six pieces, based on poems by Joseph Mery, were written in 1865, and Bizet performed two of them on 16 April 1866 at a soiree of the Beaujolais Philharmonic Society. The songs are grouped symmetrically around La bohemienne as the central piece, framed by two meditatively yearning pieces (in E and D flat major) and two vividly exuberant ones (similarly in E and D flat major), with L'aurore serving as an introduction.In this cycle Bizet takes up the theme of the gypsy girl which had already entered European music in the operas The Bohemian Girl by the Irish composer Michael William Balfe and Verdi's Il trovatore, as well as in Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies for piano. Bizet will return to it one year later in La jolie fille de Perth and ten years later in Carmen. The fourth piece Les confidences shows similarities in tonality, structure and motifs to the middle part of the third movement of Chopin's Sonata in B minor.This version includes parts in B-flat treble clef as well as bass clef.
