Par VAN DER ROOST JAN. ‘Toccata Festiva’ was commissioned in 1994 by the Dutch Brass Band Championships. The wind band version was made a year later by the composer himself. Historically speaking, the toccata is considered to be one of the first independent instrumental forms for keyboard instruments. Originally the toccata was typically more or less improvised, later this musical form was given a…

Reconstruction by Anssi Mattila. Par TULINDBERG ERIK. The first composer to warrant a place in the musical history of Finland, Erik Tulindberg (1761-1814) was an excellent violinist, and he also played the cello. His musical reputation spread all the way to Stockholm (Finland was at that time part of the Kingdom of Sweden), and in 1797 was there admitted as a member of the Royal Academy of Music. …

Grieg's incidental music for Henrik Ibsen's drama 'Peer Gynt? contains some of his best-known compositions, such as 'Morning Mood? and 'In the hall of the Mountain King?. Grieg later extracted the most beautiful pieces to form two orchestral suites and arranged himself these versions for piano solo and piano four-hands. There was a surprise in store for us when we were preparing our Urtext edition…

Critical edition by Michael Talbot. The vast majority of violin sonatas from Vivaldi's time, including those of Vivaldi himself, have come down to us in the form of a score employing two staves: one for violin, and one for bass. This guarantees that, although portions of the work may be missing, what survives is textually complete. Exceptionally, five of Vivaldi's violin sonatas are preserved sole…

10 Fugues For String Quartet Vol. 2. Par BACH JOHANN-SEBASTIAN. The idea for these arrangements came to me whilst listening to the Hagen Quartet's beautiful recording of the fugues that form part of Haydn's 'Sun Quartets', Op. 20. The spirit and influence of J.S. Bach, in particular his Well Tempered Clavier, Book II, courses through these three miraculous Haydn fugues. Like the viol consort, the …

Kantate Zum 3. Weihnachtstag. Par BACH JOHANN SEBASTIAN. The cantata 'Ich freue mich in dir' was first performed during Bach's second year as Thomaskantor, on the 3rd day of Christmas, and belongs to the so-called annual cycle of chorale cantatas. Here the focus of the composition is the hymn of the same name by Philipp Ziegler, in which the first and final strophes were adopted, word for word, in…

Trilogie Sacrée. Par BERLIOZ HECTOR. The history of the composition of the oratorio is odd: the kernel of this three-part work were the movements from the middle section, the “Flight to Egypt, ” which Berlioz composed on a whim in 1850 and which he passed off as the work of a baroque composer whose existence he himself had invented. In 1854 the triptych, which was completed with the parts entitled…

The fourth book in the Piano Gefällt Mir! series brings you 50 more chart and film hits, all arranged for Easy Piano by renowned composer Hans-Günter Heumann. Featuring an accompanying MP3 CD with both full and play-along backing tracks.This series has long been a favourite for Pianists looking to learn popular tracks from an authoritative source, and Hans-Günter Heumann has proven himself as a na…

Chopin's waltzes caused controversies. They reached a peak of popularity and were treated by many as masterpieces, by others as gravitating towards drawing-room music. Along with the nocturnes and impromptus, they are regarded as part of a ''female'' trend in Chopin's output. The ''Complete Works'' is the best known and most popular series of editions of Fryderyk Chopin's works, prepared by Ignacy…