REPRINT SERIES The Symphonies of Wind Instruments (French title: Symphonies d'instruments à vent) is a concert work written by Igor Stravinsky in 1920, for an ensemble of woodwind and brass instruments. The piece is in one movement, lasting about...

REPRINT SERIES Agon is a 22-minute ballet for twelve dancers with music by Igor Stravinsky. It was choreographed by George Balanchine. The composition's long gestation period covers an interesting juncture in Stravinsky's composing career, in which he...

REPRINT SERIES Orpheus is a thirty-minute neoclassical ballet in three tableaux composed by Igor Stravinsky in collaboration with choreographer George Balanchine. The score is among Stravinsky's most melodious. The original cast consisted of 30...

The music derives from Prokofiev's opera The Fiery Angel, a touching love story set against the backdrop of demonic possession.This opera had been accepted for performance in the 1927–28 season at the Berlin State Opera by Bruno Walter, but this...

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...

REPRINT SERIES The Gong on the Hook and Ladder or Firemen's Parade on Main Street, is a short composition by American composer Charles Ives. This revised orchestrated version premiered in 1934 and is scored for a chamber orchestra, consisting of a flute,...

REPRINT SERIES This is the 1947 Revised Version, as scored by the composer. Petrushka is a ballet and orchestral concert work by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. It was written for the 1911 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company;...

REPRINT SERIES Prokofiev wrote his Symphony No. 2 in D minor, Op. 40, in Paris in 1924-25, during what he called "nine months of frenzied toil". He characterized this symphony as a work of "iron and steel". Prokofiev modeled the symphony's structure on...

REPRINT SERIES  As admirers of Kodály are aware, the composer was well known for his work in ethnomusicology. The Peacock Variations falls into this vast realm of the composer's output, using a melody that has Hungarian and possibly Mari...

REPRINT SERIES   After he departed the Soviet Union in 1918, Sergei Prokofiev (1891 - 1953) spent a fair amount of time in the U.S. concertizing. On one such tour in 1930, the Library of Congress commissioned him to compose a string quartet; the...

The Pulcinella Suite, derived from the ballet, was written in 1922 and has no vocal parts. Pulcinella marked the beginning of Stravinsky's second phase as a composer, his neoclassical period. The suite consists of eight...

REPRINT SERIES Fountains of Rome or Fontane di Roma is a symphonic poem written by Ottorino Respighi in 1916 and first published in 1918. It is the first orchestral work in his "Roman trilogy", followed by Pines of Rome (1924) and Roman Festivals (1928)...

Respighi composed Metamorphoseon in 1930, for the fiftieth anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and it is in fact something of a concerto for orchestra. The 30-minute long work consists of a theme and twelve variations or 'modes', an allusion to...

Uirapuru is an orchestral piece with an elaborate program about the mythical Uirapuru bird in the Amazon jungle.  It's dedicated to ballet choreographer Serge Lifar. It is characteristic of the composer in blending Brazilian national inspiration...

REPRINT SERIES This Suite No.2 was composed in 1923. It was based on pieces for lute, archlute, and viol by Fabritio Caroso, Jean-Baptiste Besard, Bernardo Gianoncelli, and an anonymous composer. It also includes an aria attributed to Marin Mersenne...

REPRINT SERIES   The suite is in four movements, and lasts around 20 minutes. It is based on Prokofiev's ballet "Ala e Lolli" (Ala and Lolly).1. Invocation to Veles and Ala - barbaric and colorful music describing the Scythians' invocation of the...

REPRINT SERIES The orchestral Tanzsuite aus Klavierstücken von François Couperin, TrV 245 consists of eight movements, each one based on a selection of pieces from Couperin's Pièces de Clavecin written for the solo harpsichord over the...

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...