SKU: CU.EC8535
SKU: UT.NAP-4
ISBN 9790215318373. 9 x 12 inches.
Concerto in Mi bem. magg. per Violino principale, 2 Violini, Viola e Basso; Concerto in Re min. per 2 Violini e Basso (1728); Concerto in La magg. per 3 Violini e Basso (1728)_x0008_; Concerto in La min. per 3 Violini e Basso (1727)_x0008_; Concerto in La min. per 3 Violini e Basso; Sinfonia in Fa min. a 2 Violini e Basso; Sinfonia in Sol magg. a 3 Violini e Basso; Sinfonia fugata in Fa min. a 3 Violini e Basso; Sinfonia in Do min. a 4 Violini e Basso; Trio in Si min. per 2 Violini e CembaloNicola Fiorenza (1700?-1764), composer and virtuoso Neapolitan violinist, lived during the first half of the 1700s. His musical production, whose manuscripts are preserved for the big part in the Library of the Conservatorio di Musica S. Pietro a Majella in Naples, is composed of 15 concerts with different instrumental organics, 9 symphonies whose principal instrument is the violin – that sometimes proposes pieces with a lot of virtuosities typical of the solo concert –, some pieces for one or two instruments with continuo and two cantatas. Skilled virtuoso, Fiorenza had assimilated both the style of the elegant Baroque of French school, and the a terrazze style, the improvised language typical of the Venetian composers. He knew the style of the Concerto Grosso of Corelli very well, to which he joined a dressy counterpoint maybe too much present for the style of that time. Fiorenza elaborated different styles, filtering them through his sensitive predilection towards the Neapolitan party music and the popular melody, developing a personal composite language that doesn’t consider him belonging to one of the schools of his time. From a formal point of view and for the choice of the instrumental organic, his compositions have not a strong stylistic individuality in comparison with the composite canons of the first part of the XVIII century, but the production of Fiorenza seems to reflect the schemes and the composite forms typical of the late Baroque. His choice of the incisive brevity of the thematic figures is typical of the XVII century, that almost never overcomes the breath and the circle of one or few beats. Fiorenza’s solo compositions show his research of virtuosities, but he never lapses into a rash virtuosity, on the contrary he maintains a gallant taste.
SKU: HL.14008374
ISBN 9781846096150. UPC: 884088435202. 8.25x11.75x0.105 inches.
The Full Score for Peter Maxwell Davies' fourth in a series of ten string quartets commissioned by the Naxos Recording company, first performed by the Maggini Quartet on 20th August 2004 at the Chapel of the Royal Palace, Oslo, Norway, as part of the Olso Chamber Music Festival. Composer Note: The fourth Naxos quartet was written in January and February of 2004, with the intention of producing something lighter and much less fierce than its predecessor, an unpremeditated and spontaneous reaction to the illegal invasion of Iraq. I returned to the well-known Brueghel picture of children's games (1560, now in Vienna), which had been the inspiration for my sixth Strathclyde Concerto, for flute and orchestra. These illustrations liberated my musical imagination, but I feel it would limit the listener's perception to be too specific about which game relates to exactly which section of the work. Suffice it to say that there is vigorous play - leap-frog, bind the devil with a cord, truss, wrestling - alongside quieter pastimes - masks, guess whom I shall choose, courting, odds and evens. The single movement juxtaposes these activities as abruptly and intimately as they occur in Brueghel. Rather as the eye is taken into different perspectives and proportions of scale within the picture, taking liberties which would never be present in, for instance, Brunelleschi architectural drawings, so here, with a constant sequence of transformation processes, I have distorted the neat, precise implications of modal progression, expressed in the unison opening phrase (from F to B through A sharp/B flat), so that the ear is led, en route, into the sound equivalents of strange passageways and closed rooms: sicut exposition ludus. As work on the quartet progressed I became aware that I was reading into, and behind the games, adult motives and implications, concerning aggression and war, with their consequences. It was impossible to escape into innocent childhood fantasy. The nature of the F to B progression underlying the whole construction derives from a passage in the development of the first movement of Mahler's Third Symphony, and the opening of Schoenberg's Second String Quartet. However, unlike in these models, here a real - if temporary - sense of resolution occurs at the close of the quartet: as when the curtain falls on the reconciled Count and Countess in 'Figaro' one wonders how long the F/B truce will hold, and games break out again. The quartet is dedicated to Giuseppe Rebecchini, Roman architect, and friend since the nineteen-fifties.
