New Works from Ingolf Dahl, Pierre Jalbert, Fred Lerdahl, and More...

by Ted Gordon on March 26, 2013, 11 a.m.

For the first time ever, the full score for Ingolf Dahl's "Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Wind Ensemble" is available for sale! Previously only available as a piano reduction, the full score for this work can now be purchased and used by conductors, educators, and scholars alike. Dahl's concerto-- among the most performed of his repertoire-- was commissioned and premeired in 1949 by Sigurd Raschér, who was instrumental in integrating the Saxophone into the classical repertoire. After escaping Nazi persecution, Dahl had settled as an ex-patriot in California, among many other European composers and intellectials, including Arnold Schoenberg, Thomas Mann, Ernst Krenek, and others. His students-- including Michael Tilson Thomas-- carry on his legacy as a composer, conductor, pedagogue, and all-around Musikant. We are extremely happy to make this full score available, and hope that it fosters more awareness and performances of this masterwork for saxophone.

Pierre Jalbert's "Icefield Sonnets" for soprano, baritone, and ensemble, and "Trio" for clarinet, violin, and piano are also now available. This new version of Jalbert's "Icefield Sonnets" includes settings of these poems to spectacular effect:

Fred Lerdahl's "Time After Time" and "Fantasy Etudes" are also now available. "Time After Time", which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2001, employs Lerdahl's signature process of expanding variations on singular musical units, often to surprising new multiplicities. Throughout these processual, inevitable-sounding evolutions and mutations, melodic lyricism remains a vital part of this piece, especially in the second movement.

Also among new works now available on PSNY: Douglas Cuomo's "A Far Playground" for cello and piano, and his work for solo cello, "...and Disbelievers". The first of these works was originally written for viola, and is now expanded; listen to an excerpt of the original here: