Serenata for string orchestra

Presenting a collection of 15 all-time Anderson favorites arranged for string quartet or string orchestra. Complete works, not excerpts, these unique arrangements can be used by school or professional groups as concert pieces or as encores. Contents are: Belle of the Ball * Blue Tango * Fiddle-Faddle * Forgotten Dreams * Horse and Buggy * Jazz Legato * Jazz Pizzicato * Plink Plank Plunk * Sandpaper Ballet * Serenata * Sleigh Ride * The Syncopated Clock * Trumpeter's Lullaby * The Typewriter * The Waltzing Cat.

Presenting a collection of 15 all-time Anderson favorites arranged for string quartet or string orchestra. Complete works, not excerpts, these unique arrangements can be used by school or professional groups as concert pieces or as encores. Contents are: Belle of the Ball * Blue Tango * Fiddle-Faddle * Forgotten Dreams * Horse and Buggy * Jazz Legato * Jazz Pizzicato * Plink Plank Plunk * Sandpaper Ballet * Serenata * Sleigh Ride * The Syncopated Clock * Trumpeter's Lullaby * The Typewriter * The Waltzing Cat.

Serenata Notturna by Edward Gregson was first performed by Helena Smart (violin) and Caroline Jaya-Ratnam (piano) at the String Final of BBC Young Musicians 2000 Royal Northem College of Music Manchester 23 February 2000.'As the title suggests my Serenata Notturna evokes the atmosphere of night music. Following a reflective opening where the pitch development outlines a twelve-note series the music gradually becomes more agitated developing into a kind of danse macabre eventually reaching a powerful climax. The music then subsides into a much more tranquil atmosphere and the previous dissonant material transposes itself into a simple melody(like a lullaby) uttered by the violin the outline of which both melodically and in terms of the accompaniment figuration has already been present in the piece since the beginning. Thus the turmoil of the first part of the work becomes transfigured into something much more peaceful - hence the quotation that prefaces the score: ?out of darkness cometh light?. After I finished the work it became apparent to me that it might become the sketch for the slow movement of a Violin Concerto on which I had just begun working. It did indeed form the basis of that slow movement and the concerto was premiered by Lyn Fletcher and the Halle Orchestra conducted by Kent Nagano at Bridgewater Hall Manchester in February 2000 the same month as Serenata Notturna itself was first played in public.'Edward Gregson

Piano Reduction including solo part. Par DENISOV EDISON. The catalogue of Edison Denisov's works includes 16 concertos. It was a genre to which he returned time and again throughout his life, from the Concerto for Cello and Orchestra of 1972 to the Double Concerto for Flute, Clarinet and Orchestra of 1996. In Denisov's music the role of the soloist, or rather the protagonist, is extraordinarily important, not so much for its virtuosity as for its confessional character. The solo part is a monologue distinguished by poetic diction and a very personal message from the composer. The dramaturgical conception of the Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra, a reworking of the Viola Concerto of 1986, draws on traditional sonata form, thereby reaffirming the ubiquitous classicism in Denisov's thought. In this late work, we find all the typical features of his style: sinuous melodic lines layered into dense contrapuntal textures, and an interplay of orchestral colours, with pure sonorities contrasting with complex mixtures of sounds. It is a perfect dramaturgy that governs the evolution of the music to the very end. The first movement assumes the role of a sonata-allegro, with the standard formal sections of exposition, development, recapitulation and coda. The second movement is an Adagio for strings. The third takes the form of a little contrasting intermezzo that introduces both new thematic material and a new range of colours. Here tunefulness gives way to pointillism enriched with sonic effects. The only movement with a virtuosic solo part, its nervousness and inner tension set it worlds apart from the second and fourth movements that surround it. The fourth movement assumes the traditional form of a final set of variations. It is the dramaturgical and semantic heart of the concerto. The theme of the variations is Franz Schubert's Impromptu in B-flat major, op. 142, which in this case is 'born' from the celesta as the product of a dodecaphonic string cluster. This finale represents Denisov's homage to his great mentor, Schubert's music being for him a symbol of eternal and universal beauty. 'The attentive listener', Denisov stressed, 'will recognise that the Impromptu theme is already suggested very slowly in the course of the three preceding movements, not only thematically, but also psychologically. That's what makes the appearance of the Schubert theme sound so natural.' The variations relate to the variation genre less in their form than in their spiritual and conceptual metamorphoses. It is, one might say, 'music round about Schubert'. (Ekaterina Kouprovskaia-Denisova)/ Répertoire / Saxophone Alto et Piano

Solo Viola part for Rolf Wallin's Under City Skin for viola string orchestra and surround sound.