SKU: MN.10-999
UPC: 688670109997.
Fantasy on How Great Our Joy received its premiere at the London Winter Festival of Sound 2022 in London, England at the Croydon SDA Church by composer and organist, Professor Janise White. This organ work represents an exhilarating work of joy and adoration to our Saviour, Lord and King. As a clarion call for Christmas, soft flutes carry the melody over a dreamy pentatonic configuration with a drone in the pedals. Staccato trumpets exhibit the joy chordal motif, repeating and swelling to a joyous cadenza on the pedals in toccata style. This jubilant moment continues to intensify as syncopated harmonies join the final verse in elongation on 32' pedals to its majestic close.
SKU: SU.80101420
Sonatina No. 5 (2018) for organ is dedicated to Brenda Portman. The first movement, Fanfare, employs bright, polymodal harmonies. The second movement, Prayer, has a quiet, litany-like character. The third movement, Toccata, is joyous and festive in mood: alternating between a bright fanfare-like idea and buoyant, dancing music. Instrumentation: Organ Duration: 15'30 Composed: 2018 Published by: Zimbel Press.
SKU: PO.PE014
ISBN 9781877218149.
Ideal for pianists looking for a work heavy in bravura, Sepuluh Jari is an exhilarating toccata incorporating non-Western styles. Drawing on the Indian saraswati scale and Balinese pelog scale for its harmonic material, Farr creates cascading scalar passages that eventually arrive at joyous declamatory moments. Its challenging passages require swift finger work, with insistent pulsed material is interspersed with elastic rushes of energy and brief snatches of stillness and reflection.
SKU: PR.110406720
UPC: 680160001316.
I have always been fond of writing works for specific people or organizations. It has been my good fortune during most of my creative career to be asked to compose for many extraordinary performers. The Sonata for Harpsichord Solo is such a case in point: it was written in 1982 for Barbara Harbach, a superb performer, close friend, and collaborator on many musical projects. The Sonata was premiered on March 2, 1984, in a recital given by Dr. Harbach at Nazareth College in Rochester, New York. During my formative years as a composer, one seldom heard of the harpsichord as a modern instrument, though while I attended undergraduate school at Boston University, some of us banded together to construct a small harpsichord from one of the first do-it-yourself kits which began to appear in the late '40s. It was also during this time that I heard the Sonatina for Violin and Harpsichord by my teacher Walter Piston and consequently specified that the accompanying instrument for my second violin sonata could either be a piano or a harpsichord. It was not until recently, however, that my interest in the harpsichord as a solo instrument for new music was aroused. This was because of the emergence of so many young virtuosi, such as Barbara Harbach, who are interested in the performance of new music besides the great harpsichord music of the Classical, Baroque, and pre-Baroque eras. The keyboard music of Domenico Scarlatti has always intrigued and fascinated me. The brevity, excitement, and clarity of this sparkling music is charming as well as exhilarating. It is this type of Baroque sonata that inspired the conception and form of my harpsichord sonata. The entire work is loosely based on the musical translation of Barabara Harbach's name, especially the conflict of the B (B-flat) and H (B-natural in German notation). This secondo rub or dissonance especially pervades the first movement, which is in a modified sonata form, pitting jagged and tense melodic elements against most lyrical and smooth lines. This second movement is a song-like melody accompanied by rolled chords which may be played on the lute stop of the instrument if this sonata is performed on a two-manual harpsichord. The final movement is an ever-driving joyous toccata which brings the work to an exciting close with a coda made up of accelerating repeated chords. --Samuel Adler.
