REPRINT SERIES  Grażyna Bacewicz’s Akropolis is a cantata for mixed (SATB) chorus and orchestra composed in 1964 to mark the 600th anniversary of the Jagiellonian University. Setting a text by Stanisław Wyspiański, it was premiered on 10 May...

Luigi Dallapiccola’s Cinque Frammenti di Saffo (1942) is a song cycle for soprano and chamber orchestra setting Italian texts by Salvatore Quasimodo after five poems of Sappho. Though built on a twelve-tone row—his first work to foreground...

Dallapiccola’s Sex Carmina Alcaei is a vocal work that applies his mature serial techniques to a careful setting of poetic texts. The composition uses a meticulously structured tone row to shape both its melodic and harmonic material, resulting in...

Gerald Finzi’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Op. 35, is a choral work composed in 1950 for a two-part chorus and chamber orchestra. The text is taken from the biblical book Ecclesiasticus (Sirach 44), a passage that honors great figures from...

Luigi Dallapiccola’s Commiato (1972) is a masterful example of the composer’s late style, blending his deep engagement with serial techniques and his fascination with literary expression. Scored for soprano and a chamber ensemble of 15...

REPRINT SERIES Two short poems by the Russian symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont are set here. In both songs can be heard the combination of ‘diatonic’ and ‘octatonic’ procedures typical of Stravinsky at this time, which he...

The Quatre poèmes de Max Jacob, composed in 1921, show Poulenc at his most avant-garde. To the already edgy ensemble of flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and trumpet Poulenc adds lines of dissonant counterpoint punctuated by knotty chords, to the...

REPRINT SERIES Perséphone (Persephone) is a musical work (mélodrame) for female narrator, tenor solo, mixed chorus, children's chorus, dancers and orchestra with music by Igor Stravinsky and a libretto by André Gide.It was first...

REPRINT SERIES Tilimbom is the first movement of "3 Histoires pour Enfants" by Igor Stravinsky. First published for medium voice and piano, the composer later orchestrated it for Voice and Orchestra in 1954.

Poulenc's cantata Le Bal Masqué (for Baritone or Mezzo-Soprano and Chamber Orchestra) is written to texts by the poet Max Jacob, whose work can be seen as closely approaching surrealism; it dates from 1932. The instrumentation is strongly...

REPRINT SERIES In 1930 Ottorino Respighi composed Lauda per la Natività del Signore, the only sacred choral piece among his works. In this song of praise to the miracle of Christmas,0 majestic sounding choral passages alternate with the soloistic...

REPRINT SERIES Dies Natalis is a cantata for solo voice and string orchestra. The opening introductory orchestral movement is followed by four movements for accompanied voice in which Finzi set mystical texts by the seventeenth-century English poet...

The Gloria by Francis Poulenc, FP 177, scored for soprano solo, large orchestra, and chorus, is a setting of the Gloria text from the mass ordinary. One of Poulenc's most celebrated works, it was commissioned by the Koussevitsky Foundation in honor of...

In 1919 the premiere of Le Bestiaire on poems by Guillaume Apollinaire (with Suzanne Peignot, friend and first interpreter of the composer’s mélodies). 6 movements: I. Le dromadaire II. Le chèvre du Thibet III. La sauterelle IV...

Perhaps one of Finzi's finest compositions, this pacifist masterpiece is all too rarely performed. The beautiful music, scored for tenor and small orchestra, was composed over a span of about 20 years from the 1920s to 1944, as memories and realities...

REPRINT SERIES Litanies à la Vierge noire (French pronunciation: ​[litani a la vjɛʁʒ nwɑʁ]; "Litany to the Black Virgin"), FP 82, is a piece of sacred music composed by Francis Poulenc in 1936 for a three-part choir of women (or children) and...

The suite begins where the opera starts, famously, with the bold, erotic horn music that is "Der Rosenkavalier’s" calling card and always a welcome sound to opera lovers. The suite begins with the opera's orchestral prelude, depicting the night of...

REPRINT SERIES L'enfant et les sortilèges: Fantaisie lyrique en deux parties (The Child and the Spells: A Lyric Fantasy in Two Parts) is an opera in one act, with music by Maurice Ravel to a libretto by Colette. It is Ravel's second opera, his...