St. Petersburg March

This original march is evocative of this city’s rich and exciting history of intrigue revolution and mystery. Musically grand and powerful.• Perfect for incomplete or unbalanced instrumentation• Scored with just five parts• Playable with combinations of woodwinds brass or strings• Includes traditional percussion parts

Par TCHAIKOVSKI PIOTR ILITCH. The Nutcracker Suite is a piano arrangement of the concert version of the ballet of that name. Tchaikovsky used only part of the music for the ballet in the suite. The Overture, and the March which is the most important of the characteristic dances in the Suite, come from the first act of the ballet. The remaining dances originate from the second act. They are: The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, in which the leading part is, in the original composition, played typically by the celeste almost all the way through; the fiery Russian 'Trepak' which reminds us of Tchaikovsky's national origins; the Arab Dance tinged with a gentle melancholy; the Chinese Dance with its tripping ostinato rhythm; the graceful Dance of the Reed Flutes; and finally the longest piece in the Suite: the Waltz of the Flowers in which Tchaikovsky, writing in the penultimate year of his life, showed his musical affinity with Johann Strauss. The Nutcracker Suite was perfomed for the first time, with great success, on 7 March 1892 at the Ninth Symphony Concert of the Russian Musical Society in St Petersburg./ Répertoire / Piano 4 Mains

March Waltz And Polka were first composed in 1915 as a collection of three Piano duets Three Easy Pieces by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. They were written for the composer to playwith his children as they were learning the Piano so had a considerably easier second part. They have been arranged for Clarinet and Piano by the American musician Ray Jackendoff a Professor of Linguistics who has also had awide-ranging performance career s a classical clarinettist. Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) was born and brought up in Saint Petersburg before settling first in Paris and finally in America. Despite his classical musicaleducation he is best remembered as one of the main proponents of serialism.

Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) came from an aristocratic family which lived near Novgorod. When he appeared to be musically gifted as a child his parents did not hesitate one moment to map out a more honourable profession for him – he wasto make a career in the navy as a marine officer. Rimsky-Korsakov however succeeded in secretly studying the cello next to his studies at the Naval Academy at St Petersburg. Through his cello teacher he came into contact with the composerBalakirev. In this way he suddenly became a member of The Mighty Five (a group of Russian composers consisting of Balakirev Moussorgsky Cui Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov himself). Rimsky-Korsakov turned out to be so talented that he evenbecame a teacher at the St Petersburg Conservatory.‘Procession of the Nobles’ comes from the opera-ballet ‘Mlada’.The opera has a remarkable history for between 1868 and 1870 five different composers worked on this project. The finalresult was never executed however. Twenty years later Rimsky-Korsakov started work on the opera once more and composed his own version of Mlada.The theme of the opera is a tragic love story that is set in the early Middle Ages in a realm on theBaltic Sea. In ‘Processsion of the Nobles’ all the princesses of the country gather for a grand feast on the occasion of the summer holidays.

2me Polonaise brillante pour violon avec acompagnement de piano op.21Henryk Wieniawski wrote only two polonaises. The first one, op. 4 in D minor, is one of his youthful works; the other, op. 21 in A major, is one of the last works he composed. Moreover, H. Wieniawski is the co-author of another polonaise, op. 8, for violin and piano, which he wrote with his brother Józef Wieniawski, a pianist. The latter polonaise, like the Polonaise in D minor op. 4, is also a youthful composition (1852). The polonaise as a genre, therefore, does not occupy much space in Wieniawskis heritage. Nonetheless, both polonaises, in D minor and A major, constitute an essential part of his artistic inheritance. Likewise, both polonaises had been composed in two versions: for violin and orchestra, and for violin and piano. The Polonaise in A major was completed in 1870. It is not known precisely which of the versions, the one with the piano, or the one with the orchestra first came into being. It was the version with orchestra that the composer performed for the first time on 17 March 1870, in the Grand Theatre in St. Petersburg. But merely two months later he performed the Polonaise in Warsaw, accompanied by his brother Józef at the piano. It is quite possible that Wieniawski had already performed this version of the Polonaise. It is certain, nonetheless, that both versions either appeared simultaneously, or one was composed shortly after the other. From its first public performance until the end of his concert career, Wieniawski often included this Polonaise in his concert repertoire, playing one version or another, the choice depending on the needs and circumstances. Just to mention one occasion, he played the orchestral version during a concert tour of Sweden in 1870, when he dedicated and presented a manuscript of this piece to King Charles XV of Sweden. The dedication, however, was changed in print, and both versions were eventually dedicated to François van Hal. Both versions were published simultaneously, by Schott Publishers in Mainz, with the same plate number, though the orchestral version appeared only in parts, which was a common practice in those days. The piece was most probably not published earlier than 18751. The Polonaise was praised by the critics. The reviews reported that it was a magnificent piece2, and this opinion was shared by later critical reviews, both Russian and West European. The Polonaise remained popular after the composer had died, which is evident from the number of later editions of the piece (more than ten) issued by different publishers, mostly German, and prepared by different editors. In Poland, the Polonaise was published twice after the Second World War. All the editions introduced some more or less significant changes into the text, mostly concerning performance indications, but in a sense blurring the composers intentions. All those changes were pertinent to the violin and piano version, and it was mostly in this form that the piece appeared in concert and teaching repertoires. The performances with an orchestra were much more seldom which was, among other factors, due to limited availability of the orchestral version, as it had never been published again after the first edition, until now. The Polonaise in A major was composed approximately at the same time as the Violin Concerto No. 2 in D minor3. This convergence in time had influenced a certain similarity with regard to both composition and technical means, and also to the themes. In particular, the similarity becomes quite obvious in the second theme of the Allegro in the Concerto, and in the theme of the Polonaise. The Polonaise in A major is also in a certain way similar to the first Polonaise (in D minor), the motifs of the themes in both polonaises are alike. However, both pieces differ in style. The Polonaise in D minor shows the composers fascination with technical writing. Wieniawski makes the most of double-stops, chords, and all other sophisticated virtuoso techniques. The Polonaise in A major, written 18 years later, is much more mature. Although it is a virtuosic piece as well, the techniques used are somewhat more limited and subordinated to the expression. The virtuoso character of this piece is more fragile, much closer to the brillant style. At the same time, the Polonaise is typical of Wieniawskis violin playing technique. Here the composer uses the means regarded by his contemporaries to be typical of him, e.g., long staccato fragments played with one bow. The Polonaise is a concert piece in one movement extended form with a considerably abbreviated return of the first section at the end. The middle section is contrasting in character, due to the modulation to F major, change of tempo (meno mosso) and the reduction in the number of instruments (in the orchestral version). All the sections show thematic similarity. The first section, too, consists of three subsections, including a contrasting middle subsection (in E major). Zofia Chechli?ska Footnotes 1. See The Critical Commentary, p. ' and onward. 2. See V. Grigoriev, Henryk Wieniawski. ?ycie i twórczo??. [Life and Work] Warszawa - Pozna? 1986, p. 184. 3. The first version of the Concerto No. 2 in D minor was completed in 1862, but in 1870, i.e., not until the Polonaise in A major was completed, Wieniawski had been working on the Concerto and implemented quite a few changes.Publisher: PWM/Towarzystwo Muzyczne im. Henryka Wieniawskiego w PoznaniuSeries: Henryk Wieniawski - Complete WorksCover: softbackNr ISMN: 979-0-2740-0753-9Number of pages: 34 8Format: N4 stoj. 235x305Language version of text: pol., Eng.