Music for Viola
 | String QuartetRobert Russell Bennett (composer) | The work was premiered by the Guilet String Quartet on 13 December 1956 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The members of the Quartet – all-stars of their time – were Daniel Guilet, violin 1, who already was a founding member of the famed Beaux Arts Trio; David Sackson, violin 2, who became an advocate of Henry Cowell’s violin music; Emanuel Vardi, viola, who, simply put, is considered to be one of the greatest violists of the 20th century; and Benar Heifetz, violoncello, principal with the Philadelphia Orchestra and a member of the highly regarded Coolidge String Quartet. | $24.50 | Click Here For More Details Or To Purchase. |
 | Water Music | Bennett said that he wrote it one day when he “stayed home from a ball game.” The music is based on the famous Sailors’ Hornpipe, but soon becomes a witty compendium of modernist techniques, though omitting 12-tone. Not very far into the piece, for example, Bennett puts each player in a different key. He fragments and reassembles the tune to dramatic effect well beyond what one would expect from an essentially trivial folk melody. The first concert performance was by the Walden Quartet in 1945 at the Festival of Contemporary Music at Columbia University in New York. | $44.75 | Click Here For More Details Or To Purchase. |
 | Three Chaucer Songs | For the music director of His Majesty's Theatre in London, Bennett chose to set the three poems of Merciless Beauty, ascribed to Geoffrey Chaucer, of Canterbury Tales fame. Bennett intended the work "for women's voice or voices" with string quartet. Bennett concurrently prepared a voice and piano version. | $35.00 | Click Here For More Details Or To Purchase. |
 | Seven Postcards to Old Friends | Bennett writes little thank-you notes to the best and brightest of the Broadway musical scene — Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Richard Rodgers, Vincent Youmans, Cole Porter, Noel Coward, and George Gershwin. Each composer's music he had orchestrated, and something of each's style peeks through in Bennett's impressions. | $35.50 | Click Here For More Details Or To Purchase. |
 | Three Pieces for Viola and PianoPaul Mack Somers (composer) | "Song", "Pastorale", "Prelude, Meditation, and Fugue" The prominent violist Brett Deubner, asked me for some short program fillers for an upcoming recital in 2010. Otherwise engaged at the time, I quickly arranged two earlier pieces. About a year after doing the arrangements, Brett requested a more substantial original piece. I hadn't composed a fugue in years, so decided to conclude the new piece with one. | $43.50 | Click Here For More Details Or To Purchase. |
 | Meditations on Jacob Wrestling | The Clarinet, March 2020, p. 6: Grounded in tonality, Somers achieves stunning harmonic effects by horizontal layering, but also by willingness to employ vertical sonorities that are chosen for being the desired sound at that moment, without regard for others’ established rules. This is a singular work of both rhythmic and expressive vitality. Highly recommended. – Gregory Barrett | $33.00 | Click Here For More Details Or To Purchase. |