condition (record/cover): NM / VG+ (light ring wear on back)
Gatefold sleeve.
One of the most charming and historically significant collective gestures in the history of post-war music publishing - a garland of short pieces presented to Alfred A. Kalmus, the director of the London branch of Universal Edition, on the occasion of his 70th birthday in 1969. Kalmus, who had fled Vienna in 1936 and rebuilt one of the world's most important music publishing houses in London, had been personally responsible for making the works of the Viennese school and the post-war European avant-garde available to performers and publishers in the English-speaking world; the composers who contributed to this LP are, in effect, acknowledging a debt that was as much cultural as professional.
The contributors include Luciano Berio, György Ligeti, Witold Lutosławski, Hans Werner Henze, and many others from across the full spectrum of the UE catalogue - each piece a miniature that demonstrates in compressed form the composer's essential voice. As a document of the relationship between publishing, composers, and musical culture in post-war Europe, A Garland For Dr. K. is irreplaceable. Universal Edition, UE 15043.