Par SENFTER JOHANNA. The number of well-known clarinet quintets is quite small. The only major composers whose clarinet quintets are relatively widespread are Mozart, Brahms, Weber and Reger. The composer Johanna Senfter (1879-1961) from Oppenheim admired the music of Johannes Brahms and of Max Reger who was her teacher. Her chamber music œuvre conveys a certain closeness to the clarinet. She even…

The surviving second and third acts of Catone in Utica, one of Metastasio's most dramatic libretti, premiered in Verona in the spring of 1737 in a setting by Vivaldi, contain some of his finest, most mature, and most original arias, and are published here for the first time. They evince a potential dramatic intensity that makes us regret all the more the loss of the first act. Only one aria of Act…

Opera in Seven Scenes. Par BENJAMIN GEORGE. Picture a day like this is the fourth collaboration between George Benjamin and Martin Crimp, whose acclaimed partnership produced Written on Skin, Lessons in Love and Violence, and Into the Little Hill. The 60-minute opera is cast in seven scenes and scored for five voices (S-S-MS-Ct-Bar) and twenty-two instrumentalists. It premiered at the Aix-en-Prove…

Par SCHLEE THOMAS DANIEL. A suite whose movements always deliver something other than what they seem to promise. But throughout, the two instruments and respectively their players act like two people in very specific situations: I.: The opening movement is reserved for the piano; the initially earnest, solitary cantilena intensifies creating expectation. Suddenly II.: the violin sounds. Its movin…

Variations on a melody by Adriaen Valerius (1575-1625). Par SPARKE PHILIP. Dutch artist and poet Adriaen Valerius (c. 1575-1625) is mostly remembered today for his collection of 79 songs for voice and lute or cittern published posthumously in 1626. The melody used for this set of variations is Merck toch hoe sterck, whose words tell about the War of Independence with Spain. The melody originally d…

Par NYMAN MICHAEL. For violin, cello and piano 'The title 'Time Will Pronounce'is taken from the last lines of Joseph Brodsky's poem 'Bosnia Tune' which deals with the horror of the unnecessary, unacceptable daily deaths in Bosnia during 1992 (and still in 1993): 'Time, whose sharp blood-thirsty quill parts the killed from those who kill, will pronounce the latter tribe as your type'. The violin a…

The musical appeal of the Blues, as they began to be heard in the early twentieth century, was so infectious that musicians with open minds and ears were drawn to it as soon as they heard it. And that appeal crossed the racial and ethnic divides that characterized American society. So it was, that even before African American guitarists were recorded playing fingerstyle blues guitar, their white n…

Par WEIR JUDITH. Celebrate HM The Queen's 90th Birthday with your choir Sing Judith Weir's special new choral piece I Love All Beauteous Things Master of the Queen's Music, Judith Weir, has been commissioned by St Paul's Cathedral in London to write a piece for SATB choir and organ in celebration of HM The Queen's 90th birthday in 2016. The piece is now available from Chester Music, so that choir…