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Ailbhe McDonagh is a celebrated Irish composer with works for orchestra, chamber music and solo instruments. Notable commissions include her Irish Isles Suite recorded by the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, the Irish Four Seasons recorded by violinist Lynda O’Connor, String Quartets No. 1 and No. 2, Dance Suite for Solo Cello and Westland Glow – an eight-hand piece for piano. Ailbhe has also written pedagogical music including her It’s a Piano Thing and It’s a Cello Thing repertoire books published by Boosey & Hawkes. As a cellist, Ailbhe performs as a soloist and chamber musician. She recently released an album of the complete Bach Suites and also the complete Beethoven Cello Sonatas with pianist John O’Conor on the Steinway label.

• 34 distinctive pieces
• perfect for developing ukulele players
• inventive progressive repertoire (beginner to intermediate level)
• informative tips on style and technique for every piece
• audio demonstrations online

ISMN: 979-0-060-15057-9 Price: £ 14.99 / € 17.00 Order No: BH 15057   View in store

Carefully selected by Liz Partridge, this practical anthology provides the complete repertoire resource for a violinist and creates the perfect package for teaching, exam preparation and performance.

Dmitri Shostakovich

• Orchestral Score

• Revised and corrected new edition of Symphony No. 8

• Large format study scores for optimal legibility

Shostakovich's Symphony No. 8 was composed within a period of only a few weeks in 1943. Its unusual formal structure, with five very unevenly balanced movements, was not the only thing to alienate the critics at first: above all, the expected triumphant final movement was missing, which would have symbolised the turning point of the on-going war after the Battle of Stalingrad. While it was officially agreed that this symphony reflected the horror of war, the conductor Kurt Sanderling, a friend of Shostakovich, said that it was a representation of the "horror of an intellectual's life at that time".

This volume is part of the revised and corrected new edition of all 15 symphonies by Dmitri Shostakovich published by Boosey & Hawkes and Sikorski as large format study scores for optimal legibility. All scores and the related orchestral parts have been newly computer typeset, and the orchestral parts are also compatible for performance use with scores in ‘The New Collected Works of Dmitri Shostakovich’.

ISMN: 979-0-003-04375-3 Price: £ 40.50 / € 45.00 Order No: SIK2508   View in store

Dmitri Shostakovich

• Orchestral Score

• Revised and corrected new edition of Symphony No. 7

• Large format study scores for optimal legibility

While the German Wehrmacht besieged Leningrad, Shostakovich wrote his ‘Leningrad’ Symphony. More than a million people died during the 28-month-long isolation of the city. Against this backdrop, Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 became a symbol for the trapped Leningraders of their solidarity and will to survive. At its premiere and even more so at its first Leningrad performance on 9 August 1942, while the city was still under siege, the symphony was greeted with euphoric enthusiasm. The commentator at the live radio broadcast described the concert: "The whole hall stood up during the finale. You couldn't stay seated and listen. It was impossible."

This volume is part of the revised and corrected new edition of all 15 symphonies by Dmitri Shostakovich published by Boosey & Hawkes and Sikorski as large format study scores for optimal legibility. All scores and the related orchestral parts have been newly computer typeset, and the orchestral parts are also compatible for performance use with scores in ‘The New Collected Works of Dmitri Shostakovich’.

ISMN: 979-0-003-04374-6 Price: £ 51.50 / € 57.00 Order No: SIK2507   View in store

Dmitri Shostakovich

• Orchestral Score

• Revised and corrected new edition of Symphony No. 13

• Large format study scores for optimal legibility

In September 1961, Yevgeny Yevtushenko's poem ‘Babi Yar’ appeared in the Soviet Literaturnaya Gazeta, addressing the mass shooting in 1941 of more than 33,000 Jewish men, women and children on the outskirts of Kyiv by the city’s German occupiers. Deeply moved by the poem, Shostakovich took it as the starting point for his Symphony No. 13 for bass, male choir, and orchestra. The work was premiered on 18 December 1962 at the sold-out Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, despite resistance and intimidation from the political leadership which sought to avoid such an explicit reference to Jewish suffering. The first performance, which was acclaimed by the audience, was mentioned in Pravda the next day with only a brief single sentence.

This volume is part of the revised and corrected new edition of all 15 symphonies by Dmitri Shostakovich published by Boosey & Hawkes and Sikorski as large format study scores for optimal legibility. All scores and the related orchestral parts have been newly computer typeset, and the orchestral parts are also compatible for performance use with scores in ‘The New Collected Works of Dmitri Shostakovich’.

ISMN: 979-0-003-04380-7 Price: £ 53.50 / € 59.00 Order No: SIK2513   View in store

Dmitri Shostakovich

• Orchestral Score

• Revised and corrected new edition of Symphony No. 4

• Large format study scores for optimal legibility

The fateful Pravda article ‘Muddle Instead of Music’ appeared in January 1936, in which Shostakovich was directly attacked for his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, at which point the composer had completed about half of his Symphony No. 4. Although the new score already demonstrated the particularly criticised characteristics such as intellectualism, remoteness from the people, incomprehensibility and the like, Shostakovich continued to write his Fourth undeterred. However, a few days before the planned premiere in December 1936, Shostakovich decided to withdraw the new work and thus narrowly avoided an official ban. It was not until 1961 that Symphony No. 4 was finally premiered in Moscow under the direction of Kirill Kondrashin.

This volume is part of the revised and corrected new edition of all 15 symphonies by Dmitri Shostakovich published by Boosey & Hawkes and Sikorski as large format study scores for optimal legibility. All scores and the related orchestral parts have been newly computer typeset, and the orchestral parts are also compatible for performance use with scores in ‘The New Collected Works of Dmitri Shostakovich’.

ISMN: 979-0-003-04371-5 Price: £ 49.50 / € 55.00 Order No: SIK2504   View in store

Dmitri Shostakovich

• Orchestral Score

• Revised and corrected new edition of Symphony No. 10

• Large format study scores for optimal legibility

Nine months after Stalin's death on 10 December 1953, Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 was premiered as his first symphonic composition since the end of the war. It was later interpreted by Solomon Volkov as a coded description of Stalin and the years of his regime. Although the music can certainly be understood in that sense – both in the extremely carefully composed first movement and in the brutal Scherzo which is claimed to be a portrait of Stalin – such an interpretation has remained controversial to this day. What is clear is that this dark work contains not only allusions to compositions by Mahler and Sibelius, but also frequent and richly varied appearances of Shostakovich’s own monogram, DSCH, and that of one of his students Elmira Nazirova.

This volume is part of the revised and corrected new edition of all 15 symphonies by Dmitri Shostakovich published by Boosey & Hawkes and Sikorski as large format study scores for optimal legibility. All scores and the related orchestral parts have been newly computer typeset, and the orchestral parts are also compatible for performance use with scores in ‘The New Collected Works of Dmitri Shostakovich’.

ISMN: 979-0-003-04377-7 Price: £ 49.50 / € 55.00 Order No: SIK2510   View in store

Collection of Handel's easiest works 

By Melanie Spanswick

• Fascinating and mysterious ghost stories

• For beginners' lessons and first auditions

• Experimental playing techniques 

Ghostly Piano Tales is a collection of 24 imaginative solo piano pieces of very easy to medium difficulty, which are ideally suited for beginners' lessons and first auditions.

The selection presents mysterious stories of ghostly and supernatural phenomena from all over the world. Some of the numerous mythical legends, beings and places date back centuries. With interpretation notes on experimental playing techniques. 

ISMN: 979-0-001-21993-8 Price: £ 12.50 / € 14.50 Order No: ED 23833   View in store

By Don Davis

• Study Score

• Choral feature

• Orchestral Work

It was one of the most groundbreaking science fiction films of all time. The Matrix was an overwhelming success when it was released by Warner Bros. in 1999, praised by critics and audiences alike. The film follows the story of Neo, a computer hacker who discovers that the 'reality' known to most people is a computer-simulated world—the 'Matrix'—controlled by sentient machines. It is actually two hundred years in the future, and most humans have been cultivated so that our bodies can be harvested for energy. A group of rebels born into this dystopian future, led by Morpheus, recruit and extract Neo, who they believe will fulfil a prophecy to bring balance between man and machine. The Wachowskis' main inspiration was Baudrillard's 1981 book Simulacra & Simulation. They even made the cast read it. But they also looked to films from the past, such as Total Recall, Ghost in the Shell and the works of Kurosawa. With the story and their unique visual style in place, the Wachowskis turned to collaborator Don Davis to write the music.

Don Davis has enjoyed success ranging from his well-known film and television scores to contemporary orchestral and chamber works for the concert stage. For The Matrix, he turned to minimalism—specifically the work of Adams and Glass—as a model for the sound. He seamlessly fused concert music, elements of "Hollywood" style and many avant-garde compositional techniques to create a unique post-modern sound.

Central to the score is the recurring motif of cross-fading brass chords. As the shifting chords swell, each group struggles for dominance, mirroring the competing realities on the screen. Other features include the blurry effect of 16th notes in the low strings, representing the droplets of computer code. A choir appears periodically, signalling both the horror of humanity's enslavement and the hope that Neo will save them from their dystopian world and bring peace to man and machine.

Now musicians, music students, conductors—all music lovers—can study The Matrix in this durable, high-quality edition, carefully reproduced and edited from the original handwritten manuscript. The 2nd edition features a new layout, corrections to minor engraving errors, and a detailed analysis by Dr Chris Heckman based on his doctoral thesis.

ISMN: 979-89-85795-59-2 Price: £ 70.00/ € 79.00 Order No: OMNI 95592   View in store