Reminiscent

Lista utworów:
Highland Fling (Robert Jager)

Unlike most other mineteenth-century Italian opera composers (with the notable exeption of Rossini), the vast catalogue of Gaetano Donizetti's (1797-1848) composition includes a large number of works scored for orchestra and chamber groups. Most of these pieces were composed between 1816 and 1821 - the five-year period, that is, during which the Lombard composer was perfecting the musical education begun in his native Bergamo and making his first attempts at operatic composition. The composition of Etude for B-flat clarinet dates from this period - from 1821, to be precise. It was dedicated to a clarinetist with whom we are unfamiliar but whom the autograph manuscript, housed in the Donizetti Museum at Bergamo designates as <>. Compositions for clarinet were quite rare in the instrumental literature of the time, and not anly in Italy. Taking into consideration the date of composition as well as vartious other compositional analogies, we have cause to believe that Nicoló Paganini's Etude for solo clarinet, published by Giovani Ricordi the year before, i.e. in 1820, served as the model for Donizetti's piece. The composition of Etude is also reminiscent of Paganini's Capricci, in its aim to archive technical virtuosity not as an end in itself but imbued, on the contrary, with an articulated and coberent musical content.

Minnesota brothers Tim & Ryan O'Neill have made a name for themselves playing together on two pianos. They've sold nearly a million copies of their 16 CDs, performed for President Bush and provided music for the NBC, ESPN and HBO networks. This superb songbook/CD pack features their original recordings of 16 preludes, processionals, recessionals and ceremony and reception songs, plus intermediate to advanced piano solo arrangements for each.

In 1952 I was writing some duets for one piano to play with a friend, and Lincoln Kirstein suggested that I orchestrate them for a ballet. Commissioned by Ballet Society, the suite consists of a waltz, schotische, pas de deux, two-step, hesitation-tango, and galop. One might imagine a divertissement in a setting reminiscent of the Palm Court of the Hotel Plaza in New York, the year about 1914, epoch of the first tangos: "Souvenirs" - remembered with affection, not in irony or with tongue in the cheek, but in amused tenderness. S. B.

In his "Chantefleurs et chantefables", Lutosławski set nine short rhymes about flowers and animals written by the French poet Robert Desnos (1900 - 45) in 1940. The word "Chantefables" ("song-fables") was invented by Desnos to refer to miniature stories about animals, birds and insects, whereas the word "Chantefleurs" ("song-flowers") denotes correspondingly short lirycal poems about flowers. Lutosławski had already used Desnos' poetry in his songs for baritone and orchestra, Les espaces du sommeil. The work Chantedleurs et chantefables also begins with a dream-like atmosphere - reminiscent of the surrealistic Les espaces du sommeil (1975) - in The Beauty of the Night (La Belle-de-nuit), denoting a flower, which blooms after the sunset and therefore is called like that in France. The music helps us to form in our minds an image of dreams floating to the moon. The Rose (La Rose) drifts into sleep in the heat of the summer sun. Throughout his life Lutosławski declared himself an opponent of programmatic and illustrative music, but the sound painting in Chantefleurs et chantefables is simply striking. Musical humour appears, in the first place, in the four zoological portraits - of the grasshopper, the tortoise, the alligator and a swarm of butterflies. The grasshoper hops with abandon, the tortoise plods along and dreams. The hungry alligator tries in vain to entrap an appetizing little black boy, while the swarm of 300 million butterflies drink up a cup of broth in Chatillon, taking it away from the local people.

Lista utworów:
La Belle de nuit (Lutosławski Witold)
La Sauterelle (Lutosławski Witold)
La Véronique (Lutosławski Witold)
L'Eglantine, l'aubépine et la glycine (Lutosławski Witold)
La Tortue (Lutosławski Witold)
La Rose (Lutosławski Witold)
L'Alligator (Lutosławski Witold)
L'Angelique (Lutosławski Witold)
Le Papillon (Lutosławski Witold)