Shostakovich Symphonies and Concertos


Book Description

SHOSTAKOVICH SYMPHONIES AND CONCERTOS: AN OWNER'S MANUAL - UNLOCKING THE MASTERS W/CD




Dmitri Shostakovich Suites From Operas and Ballets


Book Description

(DSCH). Includes: Suite from the Opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, Op. 29a; Five Interludes from the Opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (Katerina Izmailova) Op. 29/114 (a); Interlude between Scenes 6 and 7 from the Opera Katerina Izmailova, Op. 114 (b) Full Score. These volumes are the first releases of an ambitious series started in 1999 by DSCH, the exclusive publisher of the works of Dmitri Shostakovich. Each volume contains new engravings; articles regarding the history of the compositions; facsimile pages of Shostakovich's manuscripts, outlines, and rough drafts; as well as interpretations of the manuscripts. In total, 150 volumes are planned for publication.




Story of a Friendship


Book Description

This choice by the composer's close friend Isaak Glikman brought the tormented feelings of the musical genius into public view. Now those feelings resound in the first substantial collection of Shostakovich's letters to appear in English.




Dmitry Shostakovich Composer


Book Description

Dmitry Shostakovich has long been regarded as one of the leading modern composers, a reputation truly deserved. His talent is that of the bold explorer, the imaginative thinker, his individuality clear-cut and unmatched.His work covers practically every genre: operas and ballets, symphonies and concertos, orchestral suites and overtures, cantatas and oratorios, string quartets and chamber pieces with piano, incidental music for plays and films, popular songs and light music. His works exceed a hundred in number.




The Cambridge Companion to Schumann


Book Description

This Companion is an accessible introduction to Schumann: his time, his temperament, his style and his œuvre. An international team of scholars explores the cultural context, musical and poetic fabric, sources of inspiration and interpretative reach of key works from the Schumann repertoire ranging from his famous lieder and piano pieces to chamber, orchestral and dramatic works. Additional chapters address Schumann's presence in nineteenth- and twentieth-century composition and the fascinating reception history of his late works. Tables, illustrations, a detailed chronology and advice on further reading make it an ideally informative handbook for both the Schumann connoisseur and the music lover. An excellent textbook for the university student of courses on key composers of nineteenth-century Western Classical music, it is an invaluable guide for all who are interested in the thought, aesthetics and affective power of one of the most intriguing figures of a culturally rich and formative period.




Rough Ideas


Book Description

A collection of essays on music and life by the famed classical pianist and composer Stephen Hough is one of the world’s leading pianists, winning global acclaim and numerous awards, both for his concerts and his recordings. He is also a writer, composer, and painter, and has been described by The Economist as one of “Twenty Living Polymaths.” Hough writes informally and engagingly about music and the life of a musician, from the broader aspects of what it is to walk out onto a stage or to make a recording, to specialist tips from deep inside the practice room: how to trill, how to pedal, how to practice. He also writes vividly about people he’s known, places he’s traveled to, books he’s read, paintings he’s seen; and he touches on more controversial subjects, such as assisted suicide and abortion. Even religion is there—the possibility of the existence of God, problems with some biblical texts, and the challenges involved in being a gay Catholic. Rough Ideas is an illuminating, constantly surprising introduction to the life and mind of one of our great cultural figures.




Testimony


Book Description

With the composer's consent, the manuscript was smuggled out of Soviet Russia - but Shostakovich, fearing reprisals, stipulated that the book should not appear until after his death. Ever since its publication in 1979 it has been the subject of controversy, some suggesting that Volkov invented parts of it, but most affirming that it revealed a profoundly ambivalent Shostakovich which the world had never seen before - his life at once triumphant and tragic. Either way, it remains indispensable to an understanding of Shostakovich's life and work. Testimony is intense and fiercely ironic, both plain-spoken and outspoken.




The Rest Is Noise


Book Description

Winner of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism A New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book of the Year Time magazine Top Ten Nonfiction Book of 2007 Newsweek Favorite Books of 2007 A Washington Post Book World Best Book of 2007 In this sweeping and dramatic narrative, Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, weaves together the histories of the twentieth century and its music, from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties; from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies up to the present. Taking readers into the labyrinth of modern style, Ross draws revelatory connections between the century's most influential composers and the wider culture. The Rest Is Noise is an astonishing history of the twentieth century as told through its music.




Shostakovich


Book Description

For this biography the author has used many primary documents; Shostakovich's many letters, concert programmes, newspaper articles and diaries of his contemporaries. Showing his life as an example of the paradoxes of living as an artist in Russia.