concertclassic.com, an internet site devoted to classical music, has particularly enjoyed  the last organ work composed by Julien Bret, "Oliver Twist"! In his very laudatory article, Michel Roubinet echoes  the concert during which the work (a commission) was premiered by Hervé Désarbre:

World premiere of Oliver Twist, by Julien Bret's (been born in 1974): a radiant and sensitive page where we find this moving charm and this lyricism tinged with soft melancholy, a characteristic of the other works of the composer,  of which the delicious "idée fixe" would be the recurrence of a tempo of waltz - a moment of timeless poetry.

To read the complete article:

www.concertclassic.com/journal/articles/actualite_20120129_4177.asp

Julien Bret, Olivier Twist, for organ
duration cc 8 mn
20 pages under cover - réf. OR4820
public price : 14,50 euros

Oscar Strasnoy was the guest of the 2012 edition of the annual Radio France 'Présences' Festival, which just ended on 22 January. In the framework of the festival, the France Musique radio station devoted an Alla Breve programme to the Franco-Argentinean composer's Bloc-notes d’Ephemera (2) for two pianos.
The principle of the Alla Breve is to commission a five-movement work from a composer, with each movement lasting two minutes. Then one movement is broadcast per day, for five days.
To watch the video devoted to the recording of this work, please follow the link.

Bloc-notes d'Ephemera (2) is published by Les Editions Le Chant du Monde. To purchase the score, please follow the link.

Composer Oscar Strasnoy's a cappella operetta Geschichte, after Witold Gombrowicz, was performed at the Konzerthaus in Berlin by the Neuen Vocalsolisten on 9, 10 and 11 December. Titus Selge was directing the production.

The work can next be heard in Paris by the same artists on 15 January 2012 (Théâtre du Châtelet) during the 'Présences' Festival, which is devoted this year to the Franco-Argentinian composer. It will also be performed in Draguignan (5 January 2012, Théâtre des Quatre Saisons), Quimper (15 January, Théâtre de Cornouaille), Stuttgart (18 and 19 March, Theaterhaus) then Madrid.

During Présences 2012,  one will also be able to hear two other operas by Oscar Strasnoy: Fabula, for countertenor and viola d’amore (Daniel Gloger and Garth Knox, 22 January 2012, 2.30 pm, Foyer of the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris), and L'Instant, with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Radio France Chorus (Lionel Sow, director), the Maîtrise de Radio France (Sofi Jeannin, director), Andrew Watts (countertenor) and Benjamin Lazar (narrator), conducted by Oscar Strasnoy (22 January, 6.30 pm, Théâtre du Châtelet).

In the newsletter of l’Education musicale, Edith Weber hails the publication of our new scores:

Nikolai MIASKOVSKY: Sonata for Violin & Piano, Op.70
Le Chant du Monde continues its publication of the works of Nikolai Miaskovsky (1881-1950) with his sole Violin Sonata (Op. 70 in F major), composed in 1946, four years before his death. A student of Liadov (in composition) and Rimsky-Korsakov (orchestration), this 'People's Artist of the USSR' taught composition at the Moscow Conservatory from 1921 up until the end of his life. The Allegro animato, after a 9-bar introduction on the piano, gives the violin a lilting melody. The very rhythmic Tema, Andante con moto e molto cantabile is based on a triad structure giving rise to 12 variations, the last of which serves as the finale, ending fortissimo with brio. Of progressive difficulty, speculating on contrasting dynamics and virtuosity (numerous runs in demisemiquavers), this Sonata requires superior violin technique and a seasoned accompanist.
To know more about this work, or to order, please follow this link

Charles EWANJÉ ÉPÉE: African Strings. Berceuse à Morgane for guitar
Cameroon-born Charles Ewanjé Épée, professor of guitar and ear training, is very keen on classical music and jazz. For quite some time now, affirming his 'artistic Afritude', he has worked at bequeathing a written oeuvre -- and not simply one of oral tradition or recorded -- to posterity. This instalment includes African Strings, a piece evolving essentially in semiquavers and occasionally with runs in demisemiquavers; well engraved with all the indications for performance on the guitar. This is also true of the short, slightly syncopated Lullaby for Morgane.
To know more about these works, or to order, please follow this link

Oscar STRASNOY: Bloc-notes d’Ephemera (2)
(Seven small pieces for two pianos)
Composer, conductor and pianist, Oscar Strasnoy will be the guest of honour — from 13 to 22 January 2012 — at Radio-France's Festival of Musical Creation (Théâtre du Châtelet). Born 12 November 1970 in Buenos-Aires, he studied at the conservatories of Paris and Frankfurt. The recipient of numerous distinctions, he has carried out an international career. Author of a number of stage works, he has also written for his instrument, amongst others, two volumes entitled Bloc-notes d’Ephemera (Scratch Pads of Ephemera). The second proposes seven small pieces for two pianos: Valse, Peri, Rock, Mélodie, Épisode, Pinball, and Twist. Owing to the difficulty in reading and the profusion of complex rhythmic plays, each pianist must, paradoxically, demonstrate total independence for his part and subjection to the other. Those without an innate sense of rhythm would do best to refrain. 'Small pieces', admittedly, but highly demanding technically: a definite enrichment of the repertoire for two pianos.
To know more about this work, or to order, please follow this link

Pierre CHOLLEY:  Alouette.  Il était un petit navire.  Gentil coquelicot.  Il court le furet
(Four (separate) pieces for mixed chorus a cappella)
These four new works for a cappella chorus are part of the 'Musique au Val-de-Grâce' series, bringing together works commissioned and premiered by the professional vocal ensemble 'La Chapelle-Musique du Val-de-Grâce', directed by Étienne Ferchaud. These highly elaborate scores reprise French folk songs on melodies sung by so many generations. Nonetheless, Pierre Cholley exploits them not in a note against note harmonisation but in the musical language of our time, with repeated interjections, repetitions of words, successive entrances, and changes of key, time and tempo that only an experienced chorus, accustomed to volubility, will be able to perform in keeping with the composer's intentions. An excellent initiative to the credit of Val-de-Grâce and Le Chant du Monde.
To know more about these works, or to order, please follow this link

A new organ work by Julien Bret (2011) :

Oliver Twist

For the bicentenary of Charles Dickens

On January, Hervé Désarbre will give the first performance at the Val-de-Grace, during a concert dedicated to Dickens.

Other works, wih the choir La Chapelle-Musique du Val-de-Grâce : Gibbons, Purcell, Rawsthorne, Berio

Score available in the middle of January

The Editions Le Chant du Monde organ catalogue is doubtless one of the most diversified to be found anywhere. It includes, often within albums of totally original themes, highly demanding works of great loftiness of conception (Morançon, Fleury, Jevtic, Yanov-Yanovsky, Kasparov...), whereas others are lighter but feature equally accomplished writting (Bret, Vercken, Cholley), and finally pieces that are playable in a liturgical context (Morançon's popular, well known Noëls provençaux, and Fleury's works, amongst many others). In addition, one will find works for organ combined with other instruments, as well as many transcriptions, including those of excerpts from Rameau operas realised by Yves Rechsteiner.

Varvara Gaygerova, a woman composer among the Soviets

Varvara Gaygerova was born in Orekhovo-Zuevo (Russia) in 1903 in a musical family. Her father, Adrian Gaygerov, was one of the founders of the Opera Theatre for amateur singers who were workers at the Morozov family's factory. Savva Morozov was an important Russian patron of the arts who generously supported Gaygerov's ideas. Amongst the family's friends, we can mention Constantin Stanislavsky. Thanks to the theatre, this little town was known throughout Russia.

In her youth, Varvara worked as a piano accompanist with the soloists and chorus of her father's theatre. She knew all the Russian and European opera scores in detail and by heart, at the same time as she adapted classic operas or folksongs. In the early 1920s, she enrolled in the piano and composition classes at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, where she was one of the best students of Heinrich Neuhaus and Nikolai Miaskovsky. She learned to 'sing at the piano' and acquired considerable knowledge of the repertoire. Her classmates in composition included Dmitri Kabalevsky, Vissarion Shebalin, Vladimir Ferét and Leonid Polovinkin.

Beginning in 1935 and up until the end of her life, she worked at the Bolshoi, an era called the golden age of the theatre. She prepared programmes with great soloists such as Ivan Koslovsky, Natalia Rozhdestvenskaya (Gennady Rozhdestvensky's mother), conductors Boris Khaikin and Nikolai Golovanov, the Komitas Quartet, violist Vadim Borisovsky, cellist Serge Knushevitsky and harpist Xenia Erdeli.

The catalogue of her works includes piano pieces and sonatas, string quartets, three symphonies, an opera, Bella, after the great Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov, chamber music, song cycles (on poems by Pushkin, Lermontov, Alexander Blok, Yakub Kolas), and a cantata, The Soldier's Flesh (1944), after Russian poets of the Second World War. She was fascinated by the folklore of the peoples of the USSR, and she used the themes she collected on her very numerous expeditions in the regions of the Caucasus and Central Asia in her works. Even though she fully mastered the harmonic language of her time, and despite demonstrating great lyric talent, her music also increasingly denoted real harmonic boldness, abrupt shifts in mood, emotional intensity, and a powerful dramatic nature, yet she ever abandoned simplicity, sincerity and transparency. Her music is indissociable from the great Russian poets, especially Pushkin and Lermontov, who are found in arias that are as majestic as they are severe but always of great lyric beauty.

In 1937, Varvara Gaygerova was imprisoned, thereby becoming one of the numerous victims of the Red Terror. Thanks to the intervention of Miaskovsky and leading soloists of the Bolshoi, the prison sentence was commuted to exile. Her friends did everything possible for her return to Moscow, which finally occurred in 1940 and at the time, was nearly a miracle. Unfortunately, she her health had suffered, and she died in 1944. She remained in Moscow throughout the war and worked in ensembles of Bolshoi artists who performed on the military front, playing for the soldiers more than one hundred times. Her living conditions were disastrous, but in spite of everything, she wrote the cantata The Soldier's Flesh, for large orchestra and soloist, which became, along with Shostakovich's 'Leningrad' Symphony, one of the first major Russian works to come out of the war.

A recording of Shebalin's complete cycles for a cappella chorus, interpreted by the Russian Conservatory Chamber Choir, under the direction of Nikolai Khondzinsky, was released by Toccata Classics (TOCC0112) on 19 September 2011. This inaugurates the Shebalin year: the 110th anniversary of the composer's birth (2012) and, in 2013, the 50th anniversary of his death; an additional step in the rediscovery of a great body of music long and unfairly forgotten. For further information, click here.

f his death; an additional step in the rediscovery of a great body of music long and unfairly forgotten. For further information, click here.

Dr Patrick Zuk and Durham University (Great Britain) have just hosted a seminar devoted primarily to two great Soviet composers. This was the occasion to discover songs with piano by these two masters, never heard before, as well as Shebalin's String Trio, Op. 39. The 110th anniversary of his birth will be commemorated in 2012, and the 50th anniversary of his death the following year.

With Nataliya Kompaniyets (soprano), Patrick Zuk and Richard Casey (piano), Mieko Kanno (violin) and Michael Atkinson (cello).

For some time now, we have been led to note that a number of orchestral parts of Peter and the Wolf undoubtedly seem to be in circulation, either in the work's original version or in unauthorised arrangements, without our having been requested to make them available. We must therefore recall that, for France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Andorra, Monaco and French-speaking African countries, Les Editions Le Chant du Monde owns the rights to this work and alone is authorised to provide the rental of said parts. The fact that some of these parts were bought or ordered by conservatories or orchestras, in particular in countries outside the European Union, does not make their use licit for all that. We shall therefore be forced to consider any use that is not the object of a rental contract with our publishing house unauthorised, with the resulting consequences.

 We remain at your disposal for all further information and promise that we shall do everything possible to ensure the best rates.

The catalogue of all new scores, reissues and new impressions published by Editions Le Chant du Monde since 2008 is available online:

www.chantdumonde.com./fr/editions/catalogues.php

 It is also possible to order directly from us:

by phone: 00 33 (0)1 53 80 12 30
by fax: 00 33 (0)1 53 80 12 18
by e-mail: jjouvanceau@chantdumonde.com

Les Editions Le Chant du Monde are pleased to announce that their catalog (to the exception of Shostakovitch, Prokofiev, Kabalevsky and  Khatchaturian whose rights are owned by Schirmer Inc) are from now on distributed in North America par Carl Fischer Music.

Our scores and albums, as well as our works for orchestra or ensemble, are henceforth available through this prestigious American publisher.

Carl Fischer Music
65 Bleecker St
New York, NY 10012
Tel: 212-777-0900
Fax: 212-477-6996
cf-info@carlfischer.com