Stainer & Bell Ltd New for Piano, Organ & Harpsichord

New for Piano, Organ & Harpsichord

New Titles

New for Piano, Organ & Harpsichord

By Babylon's Streams Ref: H455

Organ music of the English Romantic School
Selected and edited by Martin Ellis

This album presents some of the finest and most ambitious works written by English organist composers active between the late-Victorian period and the years following the First World War. Its contents include the Scherzoso of Walter Battison Haynes, the Nunc Dimittis of Charles Wood, the Fantasy on the Tune 'Babylon's Streams' by William Harris, the Impromptu No. 2 in D by Sydney Nicholson, the Lament by Harvey Grace, and Epinikion (Song of Victory) by Cyril Bradley Rootham. Martin Ellis brings his great experience of the repertoire to the notes for performance and textual commentary for each piece, which will prove invaluable for contemporary
players.

Price: £10.95

Hayes, Morgan: Lute Stop Ref: Y215

Lute Stop, inspired by the legendary playing of Glen Gould and Alexis Weissenberg, is the latest bravura solo from Morgan Hayes, an outstanding young British composer of piano music. The interpretative style of these performers, favouring a block-like rather than a nuanced approach to dynamics, is mirrored in the formal aspect of the piece and the extreme dynamic contrasts of its material. Sudden shifts in register, octave doublings and quiet left-hand punctuations also feature prominently in the textures, suggesting changes of registration on a harpsichord - hence the title.

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Price: £5.50

Hayes, Morgan: Strides. Book 1 Ref: Y229

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Morgan Hayes is a noted young British composer of piano music, whose work has been programmed by leading contemporary pianists including Andrew Ball, Stephen Gutman, Rolf Hind, Sarah Nicolls and Ian Pace. For friends and fellow performers he often writes short, celebratory bagatelles entitled Strides, and three of them are collected here in the first book of an ongoing series. Fugitive visions that include 'Wisps of Melody', a bright fanfare and a disjointed march, they are within the range of younger pianists possessing a confident technique of around Grade 5 or above, and pianists of any age with an appetite for bold new repertoire.

Price: £5.50

Helyer, Marjorie: The Greenwood Tree Ref: H459

Ten Pieces for Piano

The tradition of writing short programmatic piano pieces for children, more or less invented by Schumann in his Kinderszenen of 1836, is among the most enduring traditions of Western music, having survived every change of style and fashion over the years. The twelve piano pieces by Marjorie Helyer in The Greenwood Tree are conceived in the mood of Schumann, translated perhaps to an English landscape, with haymakers, dragonflies, the merry cricket, the silver birch, the rabbit's playtime and the village green all portrayed in sound. As well as being beautifully written for small hands learning their way around the keyboard, these pieces also provide valuable preparation in sharpening imaginative responses to a a broad range of more complex music, to be encountered by young pianists in due course. First published in 1952 but unavailable for some time, The Greenwood Tree is now reissued in a fresh and contemporary engraving, which includes the composer's original fingering.

Price: £4.25

Northcott, Bayan: Fandango Ref: AC234

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The Fandango for harpsichord was composed between January and March 2006
and first performed by its dedicatee, Chau-Yee Lo, in the Library of the Reform
Club, Pall Mall, on 6 April 2006.
Duration: c.6 minutes

Price: £5.50

Ogden, Nigel: At Your Service Ref: H456

Fifteen Practical Voluntaries for Church Organists.

Easy liturgical organ music in an accessible modern style is always welcome, and Nigel Ogden, well-known contributor to Stainer & Bell's 'Light Organ' series and host of 'the Organist Entertains' on BBC Radio 2, has composed fifteen new pieces for use within the communion service or other acts of worship. They are suitable both for traditional and electronic keyboard instruments, and may be performed on single or multi-manuals, with the bass played optionally on pedals as desired. There are fanfares and festal voluntaries to accompany the dramatic high-points of the liturgy, as well as tranquil melodies for reposeful moments of meditation and private devotion, plus preludes on familiar hymns to collect the thoughts of the whole congregation. Flexibility is the watchword of At Your Service, which offers a really practical contribution to the repertoire of useful music for church organists.

Price: £5.25

Ogden, Nigel: Mr Mozart Takes a Sleigh Ride Ref: H451

For his latest seasonal entertainment, Nigel Ogden has arranged a sequence of favourite tunes by Mozart and capped them all with a surprise quotation of Leroy Anderson's classic Sleigh Ride melody. Well within the range of organists of intermediate ability who are able to master a simple pedal part, the music offers spirited versions of the Rondo alla Turca, the Exultate Jubilate, Eine kleine Nachtmusik , the Piano Sonata K. 545 and the G minor Symphony, and more laughs per minute than the average Christmas cracker.

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Price: £4.25

Ogden, Nigel: Saints on a Spree Ref: H461

The latest addition to Stainer & Bell's much-admired Light Organ series, Saints on a Spree is a stylish and not altogether reverent fantasy on several popular tunes associated with saintliness. Lively episodes in Latin-American and schmaltzy-waltz mood pull the carpet from under a solemn, hymn-like opening. Things get even more wild when Widor's Toccata from the Fifth Symphony and Brahms's Lullaby put in an appearance. With his usual masterly craftsmanship, Nigel Ogden, leading light-organist and host of long-running Radio 2 series The Organist Entertains, draws all these ideas into a grand and saintly peroration, which will sound as good whether played on an electronic instrument as on a church organ.

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Price: £3.95

Samuel, Rhian: Copper Ribbons. Harpsichord Ref: Y231

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Written for harpsichordist Jane Chapman, and clearly inspired by her virtuosity, Copper Ribbons is a fantasy-movement of throbbing tremolandi and scrunchy arpeggiated chords that both support and intrude upon a recitative-like 'line' of elusive, questioning melody. Exploiting the instruments rich variety of tone colours with a Debussian passion for texture and timbre, the composer here creates a miniature tone-poem, which sustains to its closing bars a sense of mystery and suggestion. The work may stand alone, or as a pair with its companion-piece Silver Threads, which should precede it.

Price: £5.50

Samuel, Rhian: Gaslight Square II. Piano Duet Ref: Y223

It's often a composer's experience that the idea planted in one piece may also germinate unexpectedly in another, which is how Gaslight Square II, a seven-minute scherzo for piano duet, grew from a brief study of boogie-woogie style in Gaslight Square1 for solo piano. So, in addition to this jazz-derived element that is developed and extended in the more ambitious piece, there's also a set of little canons shared between the players, and a wistful melody heard in the setting of haunting four-part counterpoint.

Players of Grades 7 or 8 standard and above will find Gaslight Square II not only hugely enjoyable to play but also a valuable study in duet textures that require their interaction in a variety of characteristic ways.

Duo Antithesis premiered Gaslight Square II at the Ruglander Wasserschlosse in Bavaria, Germany in July 2005, and the work has been broadcast on Bavarian Radio.

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Price: £7.50

Samuel, Rhian: Serenade Duo Ref: Y219

Music for two pianos is among the most satisfying of collaborative genres, and Rhian Samuel has caught its spirit of verve and playfulness in her new Serenade Duo. Repartee between the pianists drives this effervescent score from mysterious beginnings, in which the serenade alternates with fleet, toccata-like material, through crosstalk growing ever more boisterous until the serenade itself is heard in a singing statement 'molto rubato'. An up-tempo conclusion in a flurry of scales returns enigmatically to the mood of the opening. Serenade Duo is of just over five minutes' duration, and was premiered by Dimitris Barydis and Petros Moschos on 13 February 2005 at the Purcell Room.

Price: £9.50

Samuel, Rhian: Silver Threads Ref: Y232

Harpsichord

With Copper Ribbons, Silver Threads is one of a pair of virtuoso harpsichord pieces by Rhian Samuel, and the two may be programmed together or performed as separate recital items. The music of Silver Threads is the restless pursuit of a single idea through fleet textures, dividing an unbroken line of melody between the hands and manuals throughout the register of the instrument.

Price: £6.50

Wedding Gala (arr John Norris) Ref: H449

Sixteen celebrated pieces for a perfect wedding. Selected and arranged for organ by John Norris

A well-known teacher and compiler of Stainer & Bell's Opera Gala series, John Norris has created Wedding Gala with an ear to giving church organists a mix of favourites and exciting discoveries to brighten the routine of music for the service of holy matrimony.

No album would be complete without the traditional wedding music of Mendelssohn and Wagner, and it can be found here in this collection alongside other classics of the wedding repertoire by Jeremiah Clarke, Bach and Handel. But there's also a thoroughly contemporary leavening, with arrangements of Sydney Carter's One More Step and Lord of the Dance, both firm favourites, plus Musorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition and Charpentier's Prelude, adding a note of splendour.

But the real bonus is for lovers of English music, with Elgar's Chanson de Matin and 'The Call' from the Five Mystical Songs by Ralph Vaughan Williams, seldom found in comparable collections. And there's also a rare new discovery: the ravishing Chosen Tune by Herbert Howells, transcribed from his Three Pieces for violin and piano, Op. 28, and available as an organ piece for the first time.

Each piece is comprehensively registered by the arranger, and the collection as a whole will be welcomed by all organists of intermediate standard as a source of new material not only for liturgical use but also for recitals.

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Price: £11.95

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