Stimulating string pieces for quintet, sextet etc. with up to 18 independent parts of highly varying degrees of difficulty an absurd notion? No! Angelika Bachmann has supplied convincing proof to the contrary with her Hamburg ensemble "Die Coolen Streicher." In her "Flexible Strings," she now transposes this fascinating concept into the form of an edition. The basis for the arrangements is a string quintet that can be expanded at will to include everyone from children just barely able to hold their instrument to youths getting ready for the entrance exam at the conservatory. The form of the new edition is also cool: it's obvious that the ensemble needs a score, and a few imaginative instructions as a guide but all 18 different parts? No problem! All the parts are found on the CD-ROM enclosed in the book. The required parts can be "flexibly" printed, so that after the concert "even the coolest rapper from the 8th grade will be begging his parents the next day to let him learn the violin..."

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