Through the Looking Glass: Five musical pictures from Lewis Carroll, Player's Edition

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Through the Looking Glass: Five musical pictures from Lewis Carroll, Player's Edition Details

It is so good to have a two-piano edition of Through The Looking Glass by the great Deems Taylor. It is imaginative and beautiful music which should certainly be better known, and this version offers an opportunity for performance revealing its many colors. The exact date of publication of this piano version is not printed in the original edition, but according to the Yale University Library collections catalog it would have appeared around 1936. The heartfelt sincerity and nobility of the "Dedication" introduces this musical depiction of Lewis Carroll's wildly imaginative "fairy tale". "The Garden Of Live Flowers" immediately transports us to the world of fantastic events to follow. "Jabberwocky" is multi-segmented to reflect the narrative aspects of the subject. "Looking Glass Insects" is the shortest movement. It is fascinating and dazzling, and reflects the composer's admiration for Stravinsky in a subtle, but unmistakable way. Finally, "The White Knight", like "Jabberwocky", is a longer section and reflects the "program" of the poem. The first performance of "Looking Glass" (1919) was scored for a chamber group. In the fully orchestrated version the piano is always present as a "voice" in the orchestra. This is significant in regard to the present edition. Piano versions of orchestral music can reveal elements of the composition in a new way, and I feel that will certainly be the case with this masterpiece of early 20th century music. --George Small

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