Eight contrasing pieces with descriptive titles comprise the "Fantasy Pieces", Op. 12. Although the eight pieces form a homogeneous whole, each can be played individually without loss of effect. They are challenging works with strong, unusual rhythms, and melodic charm. This edition discusses the history of the collection and provides performance suggestions for each piece. Included is an outstanding CD recording from the Naxos label.

This book is the first biography of 20th-century pianist Rudolf Serkin, providing a narrative of Serkin's life with emphasis on his European roots and the impact of his move to America. Based on his personal papers and correspondence, as well as extensive interviews with friends, family, and colleagues, the authors focus on three key aspects of Serkin's work, particularly as it unfolded in America: his art and career as a pianist, his activities as a pedagogue, including his long association with the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, and his key role in institutionalizing a redefinition of musical values in America through his work as artistic director of the Marlboro Music School and Festival in Vermont. A candid and colorful blend of narrative and interviews, it offers a probing look into the life and character of this very private man and powerful musical personality.

Analysis of 18th- and 19th-Century Musical Works in the Classical Tradition is a textbook for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in music analysis. It outlines a process of analyzing works in the Classical tradition by uncovering the construction of a piece of music—the formal, harmonic, rhythmic, and voice-leading organizations—as well as its unique features. It develops an in-depth approach that is applied to works by composers including Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms. The book begins with foundational chapters in music theory, starting with basic diatonic harmony and progressing rapidly to more advanced topics, such as phrase design, phrase expansion, and chromatic harmony. The second part contains analyses of complete musical works and movements. The text features over 150 musical examples, including numerous complete annotated scores. Suggested assignments at the end of each chapter guide students in their own musical analysis.

Revised edition: Adolf Busch (1891-1952) was an all-round musician and a moral beacon in troubled times. As first violin of the Busch String Quartet, founded in 1912, he was the greatest quartet-player of the last century and he led a famous conductorless orchestra, the Busch Chamber Players. He was also the busiest solo violinist of the inter-War years, regularly performing major concertos with such conductors as Nikisch, Toscanini, Weingartner, Walter, Furtwängler, Boult, Wood, Barbirolli and his elder brother Fritz. He was, moreover, an outstanding composer whose works enjoyed performances in Germany and further afield. Frequently he appeared as soloist and composer in the same concert. His courageous decision to boycott his native country from April 1933 - despite Hitler's efforts to persuade 'our German violinist' to return - drastically reduced his income and damaged his career as soloist and composer. In 1938, because of Mussolini's race laws, he imposed a similar boycott on Italy, where he was wildly popular. The following year he emigrated with his quartet colleagues to the United States, where he was not fully appreciated, although he had many successes with a new chamber orchestra and founded the Marlboro summer school. This biography, based on more than thirty years' research, examines Busch's exemplary behaviour in the context of a tumultuous era. Volume One traces his progress from childhood in Westphalia, through friendships with Fritz Steinbach, Donald Tovey and Max Reger, early triumphs in Berlin, London and Vienna, years of maturity and fulfilment, rejection of Hitler's Germany and close bonds with British musicians and concert-goers in the 1930s. It ends just before his move into American exile. Volume Two follows Busch through the Second World War, his return to give concerts in Europe in the late 1940s and his founding of the Marlboro summer school in Vermont shortly before his untimely death. A series of appendices consider Busch as violinist, violist and teacher, his taste and repertoire, his interpretations, his colleagues, his celebrated recordings and his compositions.

This book has become a key text for listeners, performers, and scholars interested in the life, work, and times of one of the nineteenth century's most celebrated composers. In this edition, the editors reflect new perspectives on Brahms that have developed over the years. To this end, the original essays by leading experts are retained and revised, and supplemented by contributions from a new generation of Brahms scholars. Together, they consider such topics as Brahms's relationship with Clara and Robert Schumann, his musical interactions with the "New German School" of Wagner and Liszt, his influence upon Arnold Schoenberg and other young composers, his approach to performing his own music, and his productive interactions with visual artists. The essays are complemented by a new selection of criticism and analyses of Brahms's works published by the composer's contemporaries, documenting the ways in which Brahms's music was understood by nineteenth- and early twentieth-century audiences in Europe and North America. A selection of memoirs by Brahms's friends, students, and early admirers provides intimate glimpses into the composer's working methods and personality. And a catalog of the music, literature, and visual arts dedicated to Brahms documents the breadth of influence exerted by the composer upon his contemporaries.