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Work of the Week – Wolfgang Fortner: In seinem Garten liebt Don Perlimplin Belisa

A true re-discovery for the opera stage: Wolfgang Fortner's In seinem Garten liebt Don Perlimplin Belisa (‘Don Perlimplin’s Love for Belisa in His Garden’), will celebrate its premiere at Oper Frankfurt on 22 March 2024. The opera can be seen at the Bockenheimer Depot in a new production by Dorothea Kirschbaum, performed by the Frankfurt Opera and Museum Orchestra under the direction of Takeshi Moriuchi. The two title roles are sung by Karolina Bengtsson as Belisa and Sebastian Geyer as Don Perlimplín.

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Aribert Reimann 1936–2024

Aribert Reimann, one of the most distinguished composers of the post-war generation, has died at the age of 88. He passed away in Berlin on 13 March 2024. It is with great respect that we bid farewell to a great artist whose empathetic sense of humanity will continue to live on in his works.

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Work of the Week – Thomas Larcher: Love and the Fever

The rugged landscape of northern Japan as inspiration: the world premiere of Thomas Larcher's new work for choir and orchestra entitled Love and the Fever will take place at the Gewandhaus Leipzig on 10 March 2024. The piece was commissioned by MDR, the Bregenz Festival, the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra and the NTR Zaterdag Matinee. Dennis Russell Davies is conducting the MDR Rundfunkchor and the MDR Sinfonieorchester.

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Bernard Rands: 90th Birthday on March 2

Through more than a hundred published works and many recordings, Bernard Rands is recognized worldwide as a major figure in contemporary music. We send him our warm congratulations on this milestone birthday!

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Work of the Week – Toshio Hosokawa: Your Friends From Afar

Talking cats, living teddy bears and flying fish - quite normal! At least in Toshio Hosokawa's children's play Your Friends From Afar (German original title “Deine Freunde aus der Ferne”). It will be performed in Germany for the first time on 3 March 2024. Members of the SWR Symphony Orchestra will perform the German premiere together with narrator Rainer Strecker at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart.

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Songs and Dances of the Islands Suite No.2

For flute and piano by Dominique le Gendre 

• For flute and piano 
• Intermediate to advanced
• Suite in three movements 

Songs and Dances of the Islands was commissioned by the clarinet and piano duo, Luca Ferrini & Jože Kotar.
The Suite is in three movements and each movement is either inspired by, or an arrangement of songs and 
dances from the Caribbean islands of Martinique and Trinidad and Tobago.

The first, Biguine is a typical Martiniquan dance built on a simple verse chorus structure and without
doubt, the result of the fusion of African and European cultures over centuries. The dance is historically
associated with the town of Saint - Pierre (birthplace of my own maternal grandfather) and the form has
evolved from the beginning of the 20th century to encompass satirical themes, politics, love, and the
carnival. The clarinet is the main instrument of the Biguine, a name whose origins are highly contested
although the most widespread belief is that it comes from the English verb, “to begin”.

The second movement is an arrangement of a quadrille song, You know one Joseph Keeba from a field
recording in the village of Toco, in Trinidad. In 1939 an American couple, Melville and Frances Herskovits,
both scholars, undertook a series of field study recordings in villages across Trinidad and Tobago as part
of their life-long study of West African and African American societies. The Herskovits’ were among the
first scholars to paint accurate accounts of African culture in North America, The Caribbean and South
America and thanks to their recordings, traditional songs that have long disappeared from practise can
still be found and serve as inspiration for generations to come. The words of the song make fun of the
cuckold husband.

The third movement, Time for Man Go Home is an arrangement of a work song from a collection of
Trinidad Folk songs by the eminent Trinidadian musicologist Edric Connor. In this song, built on a call
and response, I have combined the solo melody with the chorus response to give the sense of a long
working day coming to its end at dusk and the workers calling out that it is time for man go home. Mr.
Connor’s note in the collection remarks that this is the only song calling to stop work that he knows.

(Dominique Le Gendre)

 

 


ISMN: 979-0-2201-3947-5
Price: £10.50/ €12.00
Order No: ED 14163