Britten

Tuesday, 06 November 2012

Top Gear: Britten V1000 Racing Motorcycle

Benjamin Britten: Phantasy Quartet (1932)

Full length - Britten: The Young Person's Guide to the orchestra

Benjamin Britten - Variations on a theme of Frank Bridge

Britten: Albert Herring - Glyndebourne Festival Opera

LEONARD BERNSTEIN - Britten - Sea Interludes - 1 - Dawn

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Aldeburgh
Aldeburgh () is a coastal town in Suffolk, East Anglia, England. Located on the River Alde, the town is notable for its Blue Flag shingle beach and fisherman huts where freshly caught fish are sold daily, and the Aldeburgh Yacht Club. The internationally renowned Aldeburgh Festival of arts, which takes place at nearby Snape Maltings, was created in 1948 by the resident and acclaimed composer Benjamin Britten.
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Aldeburgh Festival
The Aldeburgh Festival is an English arts festival devoted mainly to classical music. It takes place each June in the Aldeburgh area of Suffolk, centred on the main concert hall at Snape Maltings.
http://wn.com/Aldeburgh_Festival
Bali
Bali is an Indonesian island located in the westernmost end of the Lesser Sunda Islands, lying between Java to the west and Lombok to the east. It is one of the country's 33 provinces with the provincial capital at Denpasar towards the south of the island.
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Denmark
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Gresham College
Gresham College is an institution of higher learning located at Barnard's Inn Hall off Holborn in central London, England. it enrols no students and grants no degrees; instead, its eight appointed professors—of
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Lowestoft
http://wn.com/Lowestoft
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in the London district of Covent Garden. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The Royal Ballet and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. Originally called the Theatre Royal, it served primarily as a playhouse for the first hundred years of its history. In 1734, the first ballet was presented. A year later Handel's first season of operas began. Many of his operas and oratorios were specifically written for Covent Garden and had their premieres there.
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Teatro La Fenice
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Westminster Abbey
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Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland (November 14, 1900 – December 2, 1990) was an American composer of concert and film music. Instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, he was widely known as "the dean of American composers." Copland's music achieved a balance between modern music and American folk styles. The open, slowly changing harmonies of many of his works are said to evoke the vast American landscape.
http://wn.com/Aaron_Copland
Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett (born 9 May 1934) is an English playwright, screenwriter and author. Born in Leeds, he attended Oxford University where he studied history and performed with The Oxford Revue. He stayed to teach and research medieval history at the university for several years. His collaboration as writer and performer with Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Peter Cook in the satirical revue Beyond the Fringe at the 1960 Edinburgh Festival brought him instant fame. He gave up academia, and turned to writing full time, his first stage play Forty Years On being produced in 1968.
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Alban Berg
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Alberto Cavalcanti
Alberto de Almeida Cavalcanti (February 6, 1897 – August 23, 1982) was a Brazilian-born film director and producer.
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Alfred Brendel
Alfred Brendel KBE (born 5 January 1931) is an Austrian pianist, born in Czechoslovakia and a resident of the United Kingdom. He is also a poet and author of the surreal.
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András Schiff
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André Obey
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Andrés Segovia
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Anne-Sophie Mutter
Anne-Sophie Mutter (born June 29, 1963) is a German violin virtuoso.
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Arthur Benjamin
:For the mathematician, see Arthur T. Benjamin
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Arthur Oldham
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Arthur Rubinstein
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Arvo Pärt
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Benjamin Britten
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Billy the Kid
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Birgit Nilsson
Birgit Nilsson (May 17, 1918 – December 25, 2005) was a celebrated Swedish dramatic soprano who specialized in operatic and symphonic works. Her voice was noted for its overwhelming force, bountiful reserves of power and the gleaming brilliance and clarity in the upper register.
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Cecilia Bartoli
Cecilia Bartoli (; born June 4, 1966 in Rome) is an Italian mezzo-soprano opera singer and recitalist. She is best-known for her interpretation of the music of Mozart and Rossini, as well as for her performances of lesser-known Baroque and classical music. She is known for having the versatility to play both soprano and mezzo roles, and is sometimes considered a soprano with a low tessitura. Bartoli's coloratura skill has earned her the title the Queen of Agility.
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Colin McPhee
http://wn.com/Colin_McPhee
Daniel Barenboim
Daniel Barenboim (born 15 November 1942) is an Argentine-born Israeli pianist and conductor. He is also known for his work with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, a Sevilla-based orchestra of young Arab and Jewish musicians.
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David Hemmings
David Hemmings (18 November 1941 – 3 December 2003) was an English film actor and director, whose most famous role was the photographer in Blowup. In his later acting career, he was known for his distinctive eyebrows and gravelly voice.
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Dmitri Shostakovich
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Dmitry Shostakovich
http://wn.com/Dmitry_Shostakovich
E. M. Forster
http://wn.com/E_M_Forster
Elgar
http://wn.com/Elgar
Estonians
Estonians (, previously ) are a Finnic people closely related to the Finns and inhabiting, primarily, the country of Estonia. The Estonians speak a Finno-Ugric language, known as Estonian. Although Estonia is traditionally grouped as one of the Baltic countries, Estonians are linguistically and ethnically unrelated to the Baltic peoples of Latvia and Lithuania.
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Frederick Ashton
Sir Frederick William Mallandaine Ashton OM, CH, CBE (17 September 190418 October 1988) was a leading international dancer and choreographer. He is most noted as the founder choreographer of The Royal Ballet in London, but also worked as a director and choreographer of opera, film and theatre revues.
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George Crabbe
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Giacomo Puccini
http://wn.com/Giacomo_Puccini
Gidon Kremer
Gidon Kremer () (born February 27, 1947) is a Latvian violinist and conductor. In 1980 he left the USSR and settled in Germany.
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Gustav Mahler
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Guy de Maupassant
http://wn.com/Guy_de_Maupassant
György Kurtág
http://wn.com/György_Kurtág
György Ligeti
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Heinz Holliger
Heinz Holliger (born ) is a Swiss oboist, composer and conductor.
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Henry James
http://wn.com/Henry_James
Henry Purcell
http://wn.com/Henry_Purcell
Herman Melville
Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet, whose work is often classified as part of the genre of dark romanticism. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd.
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Hildegard Behrens
Hildegard Behrens (9 February 1937 in Varel, Germany18 August 2009 in Tokyo, Japan) was a German soprano with a wide repertory including Wagner, Weber, Mozart, Richard Strauss, and Alban Berg roles.
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Humphrey Carpenter
Humphrey William Bouverie Carpenter (29 April 1946 – 4 January 2005) was an English biographer, author, and radio broadcaster.
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Igor Stravinsky
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Imogen Holst
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Isaac Stern
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Janet Baker
Dame Janet Abbott Baker, CH, DBE, FRSA (born 21 August 1933) is an English mezzo-soprano best known as an opera, concert, and lieder singer.
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Jean-Pierre Rampal
http://wn.com/Jean-Pierre_Rampal
John Dowland
John Dowland (1563 – buried 20 February 1626) was an English composer, singer, and lutenist. He is best known today for his melancholy songs such as "Come, heavy sleep" (the basis for Benjamin Britten's Nocturnal), "Come again", "Flow my tears", "I saw my Lady weepe" and "In darkness let me dwell", but his instrumental music has undergone a major revival, and has been a source of repertoire for classical guitarists during the twentieth century.
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John Eliot Gardiner
http://wn.com/John_Eliot_Gardiner
John Piper (artist)
http://wn.com/John_Piper_(artist)
Jordi Savall
Jordi Savall i Bernadet (born 1941, in Igualada, Catalonia, Spain) is a Spanish Catalan viol player, conductor, and composer. He has been one of the major figures in the field of early music since the 1970s, largely responsible for bringing the viol (viola da gamba) back to life on the stage. His characteristic repertory ranges from Medieval to Renaissance and Baroque music, though he has occasionally ventured into the classical or even the romantic period.
http://wn.com/Jordi_Savall
Julian Lloyd Webber
Julian Lloyd Webber (born 14 April 1951) is a British solo cellist, described as 'the doyen of British Cellists'.
http://wn.com/Julian_Lloyd_Webber
Keith Jarrett
Keith Jarrett (born May 8, 1945, in Allentown, Pennsylvania) is an American pianist/composer who has performed in both jazz and classical music.
http://wn.com/Keith_Jarrett
Krystian Zimerman
Krystian Zimerman (born December 5, 1956) is a Polish classical pianist who is widely regarded as one of the finest pianists alive.
http://wn.com/Krystian_Zimerman
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein (, ; August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim. He was probably best known to the public as the longtime music director of the New York Philharmonic, for conducting concerts by many of the world's leading orchestras, and for writing the music for West Side Story, Candide, Wonderful Town, and On the Town. Bernstein was the first classical music conductor to make numerous television appearances between 1954 and 1989. He had a formidable piano technique and as a composer also wrote symphonies and other concert music. According to The New York Times, he was "one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history."
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Lytton Strachey
http://wn.com/Lytton_Strachey
Maggi Hambling
Maggi Hambling CBE (born 23 October 1945 in Sudbury, Suffolk) is an English painter and sculptor. Perhaps her best known public works are a memorial to Oscar Wilde in central London and Scallop, a 4 metre high steel sculpture of two interlocking scallop shells on Aldeburgh beach dedicated to Benjamin Britten. Both works have proved controversial.
http://wn.com/Maggi_Hambling
Malcolm Sargent
http://wn.com/Malcolm_Sargent
Marie-Claire Alain
Marie-Claire Alain (born August 10, 1926) is a French organist and organ teacher best known for her prolific recording career. She is particularly known for her ability to perform substantial works entirely from memory.
http://wn.com/Marie-Claire_Alain
Michala Petri
Michala Petri (born 7 July 1958 in Copenhagen, Denmark) is a Danish recorder player. Petri is sought after as a soloist with many noted orchestras, including the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. She has released 34 recordings, toured extensively over four continents, and has had dozens of pieces written for her. Her debut as a soloist was in 1969.
http://wn.com/Michala_Petri
Miles Davis
http://wn.com/Miles_Davis
Mogens Wöldike
http://wn.com/Mogens_Wöldike
Montagu Slater
Charles Montagu Slater (23 September 1902 – 19 December 1956) was an English poet, novelist, playwright and librettist.
http://wn.com/Montagu_Slater
Mozart
http://wn.com/Mozart
Myfanwy Piper
http://wn.com/Myfanwy_Piper
Neville Marriner
Sir Neville Marriner (born 15 April 1924) is an English conductor and violinist.
http://wn.com/Neville_Marriner
Nikolaus Harnoncourt
Nikolaus Harnoncourt ('''Count Nikolaus de la Fontaine und d'Harnoncourt-Unverzagt''') (born 6 December 1929) is an Austrian conductor, particularly known for his historically informed performances of music from the Classical era and earlier.
http://wn.com/Nikolaus_Harnoncourt
Olivier Messiaen
http://wn.com/Olivier_Messiaen
Paul Wittgenstein
Paul Wittgenstein (November 5, 1887March 3, 1961) was an Austrian-born concert pianist, who became known for his ability to play with just his left hand, after he lost his right arm during the First World War. He devised novel techniques, including pedal and hand-movement combinations, that allowed him to play chords previously regarded as impossible for a five-fingered pianist. He commissioned several pieces for the left hand from prominent composers.
http://wn.com/Paul_Wittgenstein
Per Nørgård
http://wn.com/Per_Nørgård
Percy Grainger
George Percy Grainger (8 July 188220 February 1961) was an Australian-born composer and pianist who worked under the stage name of Percy Aldridge Grainger.
http://wn.com/Percy_Grainger
Peter Pears
Sir Peter Neville Luard Pears CBE ( "peerz";22 June 1910 – 3 April 1986) was an English tenor and the life partner of the composer Benjamin Britten.
http://wn.com/Peter_Pears
Peter Schreier
Peter Schreier (born July 29, 1935) is a German tenor and conductor.
http://wn.com/Peter_Schreier
Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez () (born March 26, 1925) is a French composer of contemporary classical music and a conductor.
http://wn.com/Pierre_Boulez
Rafael Kubelík
http://wn.com/Rafael_Kubelík
Reynolds Stone
http://wn.com/Reynolds_Stone
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss (11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known particularly for his operas, Lieder, and tone poems. Strauss, along with Gustav Mahler, represents the extraordinary late flowering of German Romanticism after Richard Wagner, in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined with an advanced harmonic style. Strauss's music had a profound influence on the development of music in the twentieth century. Strauss was also a prominent conductor.
http://wn.com/Richard_Strauss
Ronald Duncan
Ronald Duncan (6 August 1914 - 3 June 1982) was a writer, poet and playwright, now best known for preparing the libretto for Benjamin Britten's opera The Rape of Lucretia, first performed in 1946.
http://wn.com/Ronald_Duncan
Sergiu Celibidache
http://wn.com/Sergiu_Celibidache
Sofia Gubaidulina
Sofia Asgatovna Gubaidulina, (, ) (born October 24, 1931) is a Russian composer of half Russian, half Tatar ethnicity.
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Sviatoslav Richter
http://wn.com/Sviatoslav_Richter
Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann (6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual. His analysis and critique of the European and German soul used modernized German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Goethe, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer. His older brother was the radical writer Heinrich Mann, and three of his six children, Erika Mann, Klaus Mann and Golo Mann, also became important German writers. When Hitler came to power in 1933, the anti-fascist Mann fled to Switzerland. When World War II broke out in 1939, he emigrated to the United States, from where he returned to Switzerland in 1952. Thomas Mann is one of the most known exponents of the so called Exilliteratur.
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W. H. Auden
http://wn.com/W_H_Auden
William Plomer
http://wn.com/William_Plomer
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564; died 23 April 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His surviving works, including some collaborations, consist of about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.
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Witold Lutosławski
http://wn.com/Witold_Lutosławski
Yehudi Menuhin
http://wn.com/Yehudi_Menuhin
Yo-Yo Ma
Yo-Yo Ma (; born October 7, 1955) is an American cellist, virtuoso, orchestral composer and winner of multiple Grammy Awards. He is one of the most famous cellists of the modern age.
http://wn.com/Yo-Yo_Ma
Yousuf Karsh
Yousuf Karsh, CC (December 23, 1908 – July 13, 2002) was a Canadian photographer of Armenian heritage, and one of the most famous and accomplished portrait photographers of all time.
http://wn.com/Yousuf_Karsh

Top Gear: Britten V1000 Racing Motorcycle

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published: 28 Oct 2007

author: 71bsab50

Young Person's Guide - Britten

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published: 25 Mar 2011

author: symphony

Benjamin Britten: Phantasy Quartet (1932)

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published: 27 Nov 2011

author: TheWelleszCompany

Full length - Britten: The Young Person's Guide to the orchestra

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published: 04 May 2012

author: WSOrchesterfreunde

One Man's Dream: The Britten Bike Story

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published: 25 Oct 2010

author: Ben Ruffell

Benjamin Britten - Variations on a theme of Frank Bridge

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published: 20 Jul 2012

author: MartiClare

Britten: Albert Herring - Glyndebourne Festival Opera

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published: 29 Feb 2012

author: classicalmusictv

LEONARD BERNSTEIN - Britten - Sea Interludes - 1 - Dawn

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published: 16 Oct 2008

author: ichnusa66

Benjamin Britten - Variations

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published: 18 May 2009

author: NCOArmenia

Britten - Ceremony of Carols

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published: 06 Dec 2011

author: SimonOxfPhys

B.Britten "Phantasy Quartet"

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published: 03 Mar 2012

author: AlexanderVvedenskiy

Benjamin Britten - War Requiem

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published: 30 May 2012

author: luzifersgruss

The Young Persons Guide to the Orchestra

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published: 31 Jul 2008

author: BenedictHickson

Arvo Pärt Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten - Proms 2010

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published: 21 Aug 2010

author: RupertJones

HibOO d'Live : Revolver "Balulalow" (Benjamin Britten Cover)

From the Ceremony of Carols by Benjamin Britten (1913 -- 1976) Le Hiboo Acoustic session a...

published: 13 Jul 2010

author: lehibooparis

Britten Suite for Solo Cello No. 1, Op. 72 (Live Performance)

A theatrical visual - acoustic performance of Britten's Suite for Solo Cello No. 1, Op...

published: 04 Jul 2009

author: baltapena

A Far Cry - Arvo Pärt: Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten (1977)

A Far Cry's debut at the acoustically exquisite, Jordan Hall in Boston, MA inside the ...

published: 07 Jan 2009

author: violafisher

Marie-Nicole Lemieux & Karina Gauvin sing Benjamin Britten - LIVE!

from a concert in Montreal with Michael McMahon, piano. Canada should be very, VERY proud ...

published: 22 Dec 2010

author: kadoguy2006

Benjamin Britten - Serenade for tenor, horn and strings - 1st part (LIVE)

LIVE, 2008. Ondrej Vrabec - solohornplayer of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor ...

published: 30 Jul 2010

author: CzechHorn

Tal Hurwitz plays Nocturnal by Benjamin Britten,[part 1]live in Belgrade

Tal Hurwitz,recital at the Madlenianum theatre,Beograd,Guitar Art Festival2009...

published: 08 Feb 2009

author: ivanovic241

Tal Hurwitz plays Nocturnal by Benjamin Britten{part 2},live in Belgrade

Tal Hurwitz,recital at the Madlenianum theatre,Beograd,Guitar Art Festival2009...

published: 06 Feb 2009

author: ivanovic241

Yes Live - Benjamin Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra HQ

from the album: An Evening of Yes Music Plus ALL CONTENT IN THIS VIDEO BELONGS TO THE BAND...

published: 20 Jun 2011

author: reallygoodmusichoe

Benjamin Britten - Serenade for tenor, horn and strings - 2nd part (LIVE)

LIVE, 2008. Ondrej Vrabec - solohornplayer of the Czech Philharmonic, conductor (www.vrabc...

published: 30 Jul 2010

author: CzechHorn

A. Pärt - Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten - Proms 2010 (Live)

Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten (Live) Orchestra: BBC Symphony Orchestra Conductor: Ed...

published: 16 Dec 2011

author: thiagoblanco

LEONARD BERNSTEIN - Britten - Sea Interludes - 1 - Dawn

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) Four Sea Interludes (from the opera Peter Grimes op. 33) 01 -...

published: 16 Oct 2008

author: ichnusa66

3. Sentimental Saraband from Simple Symphony

The Swedish national string orchestra plays "Sentimental Saraband", the 3rd move...

published: 08 Jul 2009

author: johantj

LEONARD BERNSTEIN - Britten - Sea Interludes - 3 - Moonlight

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) Four Sea Interludes (from the opera Peter Grimes op. 33) 03 -...

published: 16 Oct 2008

author: ichnusa66

Peter Pears sings British Folksongs - Live at Aldeburgh '72

Sir Peter Pears with Lord Benjamin Britten, piano, performing folksong settings by Britten...

published: 10 Aug 2010

author: kadoguy2006

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Photo: US Navy / MCS2 Terah L. Mollise

Rockaway Beach, N.Y. (Nov. 4, 2012) Sailors of USS San Antonio (LPD 17) walk the streets of Rockaway Beach, N.Y to the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy Nov. 4, 2012.

Super Storms but Not so Super Rulers

WorldNews.com

05 Nov 2012

Article by WN.com Correspondent Dallas Darling "Of the best rulers, the people do not know they exist." -Lao Tzu Unlike pseudo messianic governments and their virtual political pretenders, super...

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Photo: WN / Ahmed Deeb

A mural depicting the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (R) in Gaza City as French prosecutors in Paris opened up an official inquiry into Yasser Arafat's death in Gaza City on August 28, 2012. Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas welcomed a decision by French prosecutors to open a murder inquiry into claims the Arafat may have been poisoned.

Arafat's remains to be exhumed on Nov. 26, examined for deadly radioactive isotope

Star Tribune

05 Nov 2012

RAMALLAH, West Bank - A Western diplomat says the exhumation of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's remains will take place Nov. 26....

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Photo: AP / Sergey Ponomarev

In this Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2012 file photo feminist punk group Pussy Riot members, center from left, Yekaterina Samutsevich, Maria Alekhina, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova sit in a glass cage at a court room in Moscow. Russia's Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Friday Nov. 2, 2012 that he detested the Pussy Riot act, but added the women have been in prison long enough and should be released.

Russia PM wants Pussy Riot members freed

Al Jazeera

03 Nov 2012

Russia's prime minister has said that members of the Pussy Riot punk band serving two-year prison sentences should be set free. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Friday that he detested the Pussy...

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Photo: AP / Hatem Moussa

Palestinians march during a protest against president Mahmoud Abbas in the Jabaliya Refugee Camp, northern Gaza Strip Saturday, Nov. 3, 2012. Gazans protested against Abbas' remarks at an Israeli television that suggested millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants would not be able to return to the places they fled.

Comment by Abbas spurs uproar

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

05 Nov 2012

JERUSALEM -- The question seemed simple enough: Would President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority like to go to Safed, the city in northern Israel where he was born in 1935? But there are no...

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Photo: FEMA / Jocelyn Augustino

Rockaway, N.Y., Nov. 3, 2012 --National Guard members provide water and meals ready to eat at a Point of Distribution (POD) at a local Disaster Recovery Center to residents impacted by Hurricane Sandy.

Iran's and U.S.'s New and Old World Orders

WorldNews.com

05 Nov 2012

Article by WN.com Correspondent Dallas Darling As Iran's Red Crescent Organization readied hundreds of aid workers to fly to New York City, even offering tons of foodstuffs and medical equipment and...

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Timeline:
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2001

Total Immersion: Oliver Knussen – review 05 Nov 2012

The Guardian Barbican, London 4...(size: 3.2Kb)

Total Immersion: Oliver Knussen at 60, Britten Sinfonia, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Barbican 05 Nov 2012

The Independent It wasn’t the packed gallery, it was the row upon row of composers in the stalls whose presence indicated the importance of the Barbican’s ‘total immersion’ weekend devoted to the works of Oliver Knussen for his sixtieth birthday. Those works number just 35 in all, but as the musicologist Bayan...(size: 2.4Kb)

Raikkonen and Lotus win 05 Nov 2012

The News & Observer Some of the action during the World of Outlaws World Finals in Concord, N.C., on Saturday, Nov. 3, 2012. Charlotte Motor Speedway/Harold Hinson Photography Email Print Order Reprint Share This Text tool name tool goes here By Keith Cannon - Correspondent...(size: 12.5Kb)

Music review: An impressive performance by the Escher Quartet 04 Nov 2012

The Washington Post Three years ago, the youthful Escher Quartet played here, and I carped about the musician’s Schubert, saying “here, perceptiveness, imagination and aesthetic context are at a premium, and here the Escher has a ways to go. . . . The interpretation too often substituted tempo...(size: 2.5Kb)

Jamaica hits the right notes 04 Nov 2012

Jamaica Observer JAMAICA'S reputation for extending a warm welcome to visitors has received a major endorsement from the world-famous Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO). Benjamin Pope, conductor of the orchestra, showered glowing praise on Jamaica and its people in a letter to the editor of the Jamaica Observer...(size: 5.1Kb)

Owens victorious again, Lanigan claims points title 04 Nov 2012

The Charlotte Observer CONCORD Jimmy Owens of Newport, Tenn., took the lead in the sixth lap and eased to his fourth straight victory at The Dirt Track in the Late Models feature, closing the World of Outlaws World Finals on Saturday night. Owens, who also won the Late Models feature race on Friday night, finished...(size: 3.0Kb)

UFOs, aliens and friendship: graphic short story competition winner 04 Nov 2012

The Guardian Corban Wilkin, winner of the 2012 Observer/Jonathan Cape/Comica award, explains that the prize money will be useful for his rent, as well as art materials...(size: 6.1Kb)

Ensemble 10/10; Scottish Ensemble; Edgar, New Sussex Opera – review 04 Nov 2012

The Guardian Epstein theatre, Liverpool; Wigmore Hall; Cadogan Hall, both London...(size: 7.3Kb)

Strictly Come Dancing 2012, bonfire night, review 03 Nov 2012

The Daily Telegraph Related Articles Strictly Come Dancing 2012, bonfire night: as it happened 03 Nov 2012 Are the Strictly Come Dancing outfits too sexy? 12 Nov 2011 The Strictly Come Dancing romances 30 Sep 2011 Strictly contestants in pictures 10 Sep 2012...(size: 9.1Kb)

The Classical Beat | Choral gems will sparkle 03 Nov 2012

Kansas City Star This week provides abundant evidence that Kansas City is a major choral music town. Lovers of the genre will find much to choose from as four regional choirs will perform music ranging from the lush Romanticism of Anton Bruckner to a newly composed jazz Mass. Two of the concerts are Sunday. The...(size: 7.0Kb)

Portrait of a Cuban Dancer 03 Nov 2012

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Carla van Zon: The emotional reach of music 02 Nov 2012

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"Britten" redirects here. For other uses, see Britten (disambiguation).

Photo by Yousuf Karsh, mid 1950s

Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten,^[1] OM CH (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist; and one of the central figures of 20th century British classical music. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to international fame. For the next fifteen years he devoted much of his compositional attention to writing operas, establishing him as one of the leading 20th century figures in this genre.

Britten's interests as a composer were wide-ranging; he produced important music in such varied genres as orchestral, choral, solo vocal (much of it written for his life partner, tenor Peter Pears), chamber and instrumental, as well as film music. He also took a great interest in writing music for children and amateur performers, and was an outstanding pianist and conductor.

1 Life
- 1.1 Early professional life
- 1.2 Return to England
2 Music
- 2.1 Operas
- 2.2 Other genres
3 Reputation
- 3.1 Awards
- 3.2 Recordings by Britten
4 See also
5 References
6 Sources
7 External links

Life [link]

Britten was born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, on 22 November 1913, the youngest of four children. His father, Robert, was a dentist, and his mother Edith, a talented amateur musician who gave Britten his first lessons in piano and notation. He showed musical gifts very early in life, making his first attempts at composition aged five, and thereafter composing prolifically as a child.^[2] He started piano lessons with a teacher from his pre-prep school when aged 7, and viola lessons with Audrey Alston when 10 years old.

John Piper's Benjamin Britten memorial window in the Church of St Peter and St Paul, Aldeburgh

Britten heard Frank Bridge’s orchestral poem The Sea at a festival and was, as he put it, ‘knocked sideways’.^[2] Alston was a family friend of Frank Bridge and was able to arrange an introduction. After examining Britten's work, Bridge took him on as a composition pupil, and the first lesson took place on 10 January 1928, a few weeks after Britten's 14th birthday.^[3] One of the first pieces composed during the period of Bridge's tutelage was the Quatre Chansons françaises for soprano and orchestra, though it appears that Britten's abilities as an orchestrator were essentially self-taught rather than learned from Bridge.^[4]

He was educated at Gresham's School, Holt and then studied, 1930–33, at the Royal College of Music under John Ireland (composition) and Arthur Benjamin (piano). Britten also used his time in London to attend concerts and become better acquainted with the music of Igor Stravinsky, Gustav Mahler, and Dmitry Shostakovich. Although ultimately dissuaded by his parents (at the suggestion of College staff), Britten had also intended postgraduate study with Alban Berg in Vienna.

Britten was a prolific juvenile composer: some 800 works and fragments precede his early published works. His first compositions to attract wide attention were the Sinfonietta Op. 1, A Hymn to the Virgin (1930) and a set of choral variations A Boy was Born, written in 1934 for the BBC Singers. In this same period he wrote Friday Afternoons, a collection of 12 songs mostly for unison singing, for the pupils of Clive House School, Prestatyn where Britten's brother, Robert, was headmaster.^[5]

Early professional life [link]

In April 1935 he was approached by the film director Alberto Cavalcanti to write the film score for the documentary The King's Stamp, produced by the GPO Film Unit.^[6] He subsequently met W. H. Auden, who was also working for the GPO Film Unit; together they worked on the films Coal Face and Night Mail.^[7] They also collaborated on the song cycle Our Hunting Fathers Op. 8, radical both in politics and musical treatment, and other works.

Of more lasting importance to Britten was his meeting in 1937 with the tenor Peter Pears, who was to become his musical collaborator and inspiration as well as his life partner. In the same year he composed a Pacifist March (words, Ronald Duncan) for the Peace Pledge Union, of which, as a pacifist, he had become an active member, but the work was not a success and soon withdrawn. One of Britten's most noteworthy works from the 1930s was Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge for string orchestra, Op. 10, written in 1937.

In April 1939 Britten and Pears followed Auden to America. There, in 1940, Britten composed Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, the first of many song cycles for Pears. Already friends with the composer Aaron Copland, Britten encountered his latest works Billy the Kid and An Outdoor Overture, both of which manifestly influenced his own music.^[8] While in America Britten wrote his first music drama, Paul Bunyan, an operetta (to a libretto by Auden). The period in America was also remarkable for a number of orchestral works, including the Violin Concerto Op. 15, and Sinfonia da Requiem Op. 20 (for full orchestra).

In the meantime, Britten had had his first encounter with Balinese gamelan music through the transcriptions for two pianos made by the Canadian composer Colin McPhee. Britten first met McPhee at Stanton Cottage in the summer of 1939, and the two subsequently performed a number of McPhee's transcriptions for a recording.^[9] This musical encounter was to bear fruit decades later in several Balinese-inspired works including The Prince of the Pagodas,^[10] Noye's Fludde^[11] and Death in Venice.^[12]

Return to England [link]

Britten and Pears returned to England in April 1942, and both applied for recognition as conscientious objectors; Britten was initially allowed only non-combatant service in the military, but gained unconditional exemption on appeal. He completed the choral works Hymn to St. Cecilia (his last large-scale collaboration with Auden) and A Ceremony of Carols during the long sea voyage. He had already begun work on his opera Peter Grimes based on the writings of Suffolk poet George Crabbe; its première at Sadler's Wells in 1945 was his greatest success thus far. However, Britten encountered opposition from sectors of the English musical establishment and gradually withdrew from the London scene, founding the English Opera Group in 1947 and the Aldeburgh Festival the following year, partly (though by no means solely) to perform his own works. From 1949 to 1951 he had his only private pupil, Arthur Oldham. One of Oldham's achievements was the setting for full orchestra of Britten's Variations on a Theme by Frank Bridge, for the Frederick Ashton ballet Le Rêve de Léonor (1949).^[13]

Peter Grimes was the first in a series of English operas, of which Billy Budd (1951) and The Turn of the Screw (1954) were particularly admired. His Shakespeare opera, A Midsummer Night's Dream, followed in 1960. These operas share common themes. Even in his comic opera Albert Herring of 1947, all feature an 'outsider' character excluded or misunderstood by society. Often this is the eponymous protagonist, as in Peter Grimes and Owen Wingrave.

Britten was appointed a Companion of Honour (CH) in the Coronation Honours, 1953.^[14]

An increasingly important influence was the music of the East, an interest that was fostered by a tour with Pears in 1957, when Britten was struck by the music of the Balinese gamelan and by Japanese Noh plays. The fruits of this tour include the ballet The Prince of the Pagodas (1957) and the series of semi-operatic "Parables for Church Performance": Curlew River (1964), The Burning Fiery Furnace (1966) and The Prodigal Son (1968). The greatest success of Britten's career was, however, the War Requiem, written for the 1962 consecration of the newly reconstructed Coventry Cathedral.

Britten developed close friendships with Russian musicians Dmitri Shostakovich and Mstislav Rostropovich in the 1960s. He composed his Cello Suites, Cello Symphony and Cello Sonata for Mstislav Rostropovich, and conducted the first Western performance of Shostakovich's Fourteenth Symphony. Shostakovich dedicated this score to Britten, and often spoke very highly of his music. Britten himself had previously dedicated The Prodigal Son (the third and last of the 'Church Parables') to Shostakovich. He was honoured again by appointment to the Order of Merit (OM) on 23 March 1965.^[15]

In his last decade, Britten's health deteriorated, and his later works became more and more sparse in texture. They include the operas Owen Wingrave (1970) and Death in Venice (1971–1973), the Suite on English Folk Tunes "A Time There Was" (1974) and Third String Quartet (1975)— which drew on material from Death in Venice— as well as the dramatic cantata Phaedra (1975), written for Janet Baker.

	Op92; A Birthday Hansel for high voice and harp (1975) Part 1 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Performance by Alexander Kaimbacher (Tenor) and Volker Kempf (Harp).
Problems listening to these files? See media help.

Having previously declined a knighthood, Britten accepted a life peerage on 2 July 1976 as Baron Britten, of Aldeburgh in the County of Suffolk.^[16] A few months later he died of heart failure at his house in Aldeburgh. He is buried in the churchyard of St. Peter and St. Paul's Church there, with a gravestone carved by Reynolds Stone. The grave of his partner, Sir Peter Pears, lies next to his, and near to that of Imogen Holst, a close friend. A memorial stone to him was unveiled in the north choir aisle of Westminster Abbey in 1978.

The Red House in Aldeburgh, where Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears lived and worked together for almost thirty years, is now the home of the Britten-Pears Foundation, established to promote their musical legacy.

Music [link]

Operas [link]

Britten's operas are firmly established in the international repertoire. According to Operabase, he has more operas played worldwide than any other composer born in the 20th century,^[17] and only Puccini and Richard Strauss come ahead of him if the list is extended to all operas composed after 1900.^[18]

Title	Opus	Description	Libretto and source	Premiere	Publ.
Paul Bunyan	Op. 17	Operetta in two acts, 114'	W. H. Auden, after the American folktale	1941-05-055 May 1941, Brander Matthews Hall, New York	Faber
Peter Grimes	Op. 33	Opera in a prologue and three acts, 147'	Montagu Slater, after the poem The Borough by George Crabbe	1945-06-077 June 1945, Sadler's Wells, London	B&H
RapeThe Rape of Lucretia	Op. 37	Opera in two acts, 107'	Ronald Duncan, after the play Le Viol de Lucrèce by André Obey	1946-07-1212 July 1946, Glyndebourne	B&H
Albert Herring	Op. 39	Comic opera in three acts, 137'	Eric Crozier, loosely after the short story Le Rosier de Mme. Husson by Guy de Maupassant	1947-06-2020 June 1947, Glyndebourne	B&H
BeggarThe Beggar's Opera	Op. 43	Ballad opera, 108'	after the ballad opera by John Gay	1948-05-2424 May 1948, Cambridge Arts Theatre	B&H
LetLet's Make an Opera (The Little Sweep)	Op. 45	An Entertainment for Young People, 130'	Eric Crozier	1949-06-1414 June 1949, Jubilee Hall, Aldeburgh Festival	B&H
Billy1Billy Budd	Op. 50	Opera in four acts, 162'	E. M. Forster and Eric Crozier, after the novella by Herman Melville	1951-12-011 December 1951, Royal Opera House, London	B&H
Billy2Billy Budd (revised)	Op. 50	Opera in two acts, 158'		1964-01-099 January 1964, Royal Opera House, London (revised version)	B&H
Gloriana	Op. 53	Opera in three acts, 148'	William Plomer, after Elizabeth and Essex by Lytton Strachey	1953-06-088 June 1953, Royal Opera House, London	B&H
TurnThe Turn of the Screw	Op. 54	Opera in a prologue and two acts, 101'	Myfanwy Piper, after the novella by Henry James	1954-09-1414 September 1954, Teatro La Fenice, Venice	B&H
Noye's Fludde	Op. 59	Music-theatre for community performance, 50'	After the Chester Miracle Play	1958-06-1818 June 1958, Orford Church, Aldeburgh Festival	B&H
MidsummerA Midsummer Night's Dream	Op. 64	Opera in three acts, 144'	the composer and Peter Pears, after the play by Shakespeare	1960-06-1111 June 1960, Jubilee Hall, Aldeburgh Festival	B&H
Owen Wingrave	Op. 85	Opera for television in two acts, 106'	Myfanwy Piper, after the short story by Henry James	1971-05-1616 May 1971, BBC2 TV broadcast; 10 May 1973, Royal Opera House, London (staged)	Faber
Death in Venice	Op. 88	Opera in two acts, 145'	Myfanwy Piper, after the short story by Thomas Mann	1973-06-1616 June 1973, Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh Festival	Faber

Other genres [link]

Britten was an accomplished pianist, frequently performing chamber music and accompanying lieder and song recitals. However, apart from the Holiday Diary (1934), Piano Concerto (1938), Young Apollo (1939), Diversions (written for Paul Wittgenstein in 1940), Scottish Ballad (1941), he wrote relatively little music that puts the piano in the spotlight, and in a 1963 interview for the BBC said that he thought of it as "a background instrument".

One of Britten's best known works is The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (1946), which was composed to accompany Instruments of the Orchestra, an educational film produced by the British government, narrated and conducted by Malcolm Sargent. Its subtitle is Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell; the theme is a melody from Henry Purcell's Abdelazar. Britten gives individual variations to each of the sections of the orchestra, starting with the woodwind, then the string instruments, the brass instruments and finally the percussion. Britten then brings the whole orchestra together again in a fugue before restating the theme to close the work. The original film's spoken commentary is often omitted in concert performances and recordings.

Britten's church music is also considerable: it contains frequently performed 'classics' such as Rejoice in the Lamb, composed for St Matthew's Northampton (where the Vicar was Revd Walter Hussey), as well as A Hymn to the Virgin, and Missa Brevis for boys' voices and organ.

As a conductor, Britten performed the music of many composers, as well as his own. Among his celebrated recordings are versions of Mozart's 40th Symphony and Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius (with Pears as Gerontius), and an album of works by Grainger in which Britten features as pianist as well as conductor.

Nocturnal after John Dowland for guitar (1963) has an indisputably central place in the repertoire of its instrument. This work is typically spare in his late style, and shows the depth of his lifelong admiration for Elizabethan lute songs. In each of the eight variations Britten focuses on a different feature of the work's theme, Dowland's song Come, Heavy Sleep, or its lute accompaniment, before the theme emerges complete at the close of the work.

In 2005, the Britten-Pears Foundation in partnership with the University of East Anglia was awarded funding from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to produce a thematic catalogue of Britten's works. The project is distinguished by being the first composer thematic catalogue to be published initially online. (All previous thematic catalogues have been print publications, though some have been published online later.) The work involves gathering and cataloguing manuscript and published notation and published recordings, producing a chronology, and assigning identifiers to Britten's works. These identifiers are in addition to Britten's own opus numbers and, after the style of preceding thematic catalogues such as BWV for J.S. Bach, comprise the letters 'BTC' followed by numbers assigned in chronological order. The catalogue includes numerous unpublished works and is expected, when completed in 2013, to include around 1,200 works. (Britten's published output includes around 200 works, of which 95 were assigned opus numbers.)

Reputation [link]

The Scallop by Maggi Hambling is a sculpture dedicated to Benjamin Britten on the beach at Aldeburgh. The edge of the shell is pierced with the words "I hear those voices that will not be drowned" from Peter Grimes.

Early in his career, Britten made a conscious effort to set himself apart from the English musical mainstream, which he regarded as complacent, insular and amateurish. Many contemporary critics distrusted his facility, cosmopolitanism and admiration for composers such as Mahler, Berg, and Stravinsky, not at the time considered appropriate models for a young English musician. Britten's status as one of the greatest composers of the 20th century is now secure among professional critics. However, criticism of his music is apt to become entangled with consideration of his personality, his politics (especially his pacifism in World War II) and his sexuality.^[19]^{[not in citation given]} Humphrey Carpenter's 1992 biography further described Britten's often fraught social, professional and sexual relationships, as did Alan Bennett's 2009 play The Habit of Art, set while Britten is composing the opera Death in Venice and centred on a fictional meeting between Britten and W. H. Auden (Britten was played in the premiere production by Alex Jennings).

In 2003, a selection of Britten's writings, edited by Paul Kildea, revealed other ways that he addressed such issues as his pacifism.^[20] A further study along the lines begun by Carpenter is John Bridcut's Britten's Children, 2006, which describes Britten’s infatuation with a series of pre-adolescent and adolescent boys throughout his life, most notably David Hemmings.^[21]

For many musicians, however, Britten's technique, broad musical and human sympathies and ability to treat the most traditional of musical forms with freshness and originality place him at the head of composers of his generation. A notable tribute is Cantus In Memoriam Benjamin Britten, an orchestral piece written in 1977 by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt.

Awards [link]

UNESCO’s International Rostrum of Composers 1961, (for A Midsummer Night's Dream)
Grammy Awards 1963 – Classical Album of the Year, Best Classical Composition by a Contemporary Composer, Best Classical Performance – Choral (Other Than Opera) (all for War Requiem)
Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal, 1964
Sonning Award 1967 (Denmark)
Ernst von Siemens Music Prize 1974
BRIT Awards 1977 – Best Orchestral Album (of the past 25 years) (for War Requiem)
Grammy Hall of Fame Award 1998 (for War Requiem)

Recordings by Britten [link]

Facets of Benjamin Britten Pearl, Pavilion Records (0220 GEM)
Benjamin Britten – Premiere recordings 1938–46 Pearl, Pavilion Records (0002 GEM)
Britten the Performer (BBC Legends Music)
Benjamin Britten: In Rehearsal and Performance with Peter Pears

References [link]

^ Bridcut, p. 289
^ ^a ^b Boosey and Hawkes. Survey of Benjamin Britten's Life and Works. Retrieved 3 May 2011.
^ Trevor Bray Frank Bridge pages. Retrieved 3 May 2011.
^ See Carpenter, p.18; and Oliver, p.23
^ Oliver, p.217
^ Michael Kennedy (1981), p.16
^ Michael Kennedy (1981), p.17
^ See Peter Evans (1979), p.57
^ Michael Kennedy (1981), p. 31
^ Michael Kennedy (1981), p. 213
^ Michael Kennedy (1981), p. 216
^ Michael Kennedy (1981), p. 256
^ Eric Walter White, Benjamin Britten: His life and operas
^ London Gazette: (Supplement) no. 39863. p. 2976. 26 May 1953. Retrieved 16 July 2008.
^ London Gazette: (Supplement) no. 43610. p. 3047. 26 March 1965. Retrieved 16 July 2008.
^ London Gazette: no. 46954. p. 9295. 6 July 1976. Retrieved 16 July 2008.
^ List of top composers, Operabase. Retrieved 28 April 2011.
^ Britten-Pears Foundation press release. Retrieved 28 April 2011.
^ Hywel Williams, "The Puccini of Lowestoft", The Guardian, 5 December 2006.
^ Paul Kildea, "In his own words". The Guardian, 18 July 2003.
^ See Donald Mitchell and Philip Reed (eds.), Letters from a Life: Selected Letters and Diaries of Benjamin Britten 1913–1976, Faber and Faber, 1991; Humphrey Carpenter Benjamin Britten – a Biography, London. Faber and Faber, 1992; John Bridcut, Britten's Children, Faber and Faber, 2006.

Sources [link]

F. Avellar de Aquino. "Song of Sorrow". in The Strad Magazine, London, v. 117, Vol. 1391, p. 52–57, 2006. (on Britten's 3rd. Cello Suite)
Philip Brett. "Benjamin Britten", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (accessed 18 October 2004), grovemusic.com (subscription access).
Bridcut, John, Britten's Children, Faber and Faber, 2006. ISBN 0-571-22839-9
Britten, Benjamin (edited by Philip Reed, Mervyn Cooke and Donald Mitchell) Letters from a Life: The Selected Letters of Benjamin Britten, Volume IV, 1952–1957 The Boydell Press, 633pp
Britten, Benjamin (edited by John Evans) Journeying Boy: the Diaries of the Young Benjamin Britten, 1928–1938 (London: Faber and Faber), 2009)
Humphrey Carpenter, Benjamin Britten: a biography (London: Faber and Faber, 1992) ISBN 0-571-14324-5
Peter Evans. The Music of Benjamin Britten (London: J. M. Dent, 1979) ISBN 0-460-04350-1
Michael Kennedy, 1981. Britten (London: J. M. Dent, 1983) ISBN 0-460-02201-6
Donald Mitchell, "Britten, (Edward) Benjamin, Baron Britten (1913–1976)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. Accessed 18 October 2004: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/30853
Michael Oliver. Benjamin Britten (London: Phaidon Press, 1996) ISBN 0-7148-3277-4

External links [link]

Britten-Pears Foundation: biographies of Britten and Pears, timelines, work lists and descriptions, performance schedules.
Boosey & Hawkes (Britten's publishers up to 1963): biographies, work lists and descriptions, recordings, performance schedules
Faber Music (Publishers set up by Britten for his works after 1963): biography, work lists, recordings, performance schedules

Biographies and profiles [link]

MusicWeb International. Benjamin Britten (1913–1976), by Rob Barnett
Gresham College. 'Britten and Bridge', lecture and performance investigating the relation between the two composers, 5 February 2008 (available for download as text, audio or video file).
On An Overgrown Path (blog). Photo essay on Britten's childhood home, November 2008.
BBC. Audio (.ram files) of 1957 and 1963 interviews

Portraits [link]

National Portrait Gallery. Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten (1913–1976), 109 portraits.

Worklists and performances [link]

Scott Eric Smith. An extensive list of Benjamin Britten's works (archived / current)
Britten-Pears Foundation/AHRC. A thematic catalogue of Britten's works (under development)
Operabase. Recent and future performances of Britten operas.

Interpretations [link]

Britten: A Ceremony of Carols (op. 28). Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge/ Harp: Frances Kelly/ Conductor: Richard Marlow (1997)
Britten: On This Island, Kishani Jayasinghe
Britten: Cello Symphony performed by cellist Julian Lloyd Webber and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields conducted by Sir Neville Marriner
University of Iowa. Audio recording of Lachrymae, Viola: Christine Rutledge, piano: Darlene Lawrence. Clapp Recital Hall (1998).

v t e Léonie Sonning Music Prize Laureates

1959–1980	Igor Stravinsky (1959) Leonard Bernstein (1965) Birgit Nilsson (1966) Witold Lutosławski (1967) Benjamin Britten (1968) Boris Christoff (1969) Sergiu Celibidache (1970) Arthur Rubinstein (1971) Yehudi Menuhin (1972) Dmitri Shostakovich (1973) Andrés Segovia (1974) Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (1975) Mogens Wöldike (1976) Olivier Messiaen (1977) Jean-Pierre Rampal (1978) Janet Baker (1979) Marie-Claire Alain (1980)

1981–2000	Mstislav Rostropovich (1981) Isaac Stern (1982) Rafael Kubelík (1983) Miles Davis (1984) Pierre Boulez (1985) Sviatoslav Richter (1986) Heinz Holliger (1987) Peter Schreier (1988) Gidon Kremer (1989) György Ligeti (1990) Eric Ericson (1991) Georg Solti (1992) Nikolaus Harnoncourt (1993) Krystian Zimerman (1994) Yuri Bashmet (1995) Per Nørgård (1996) András Schiff (1997) Hildegard Behrens (1998) Sofia Gubaidulina (1999) Michala Petri (2000)

2001–present	Anne-Sophie Mutter (2001) Alfred Brendel (2002) György Kurtág (2003) Keith Jarrett (2004) John Eliot Gardiner (2005) Yo-Yo Ma (2006) Lars Ulrik Mortensen (2007) Arvo Pärt (2008) Daniel Barenboim (2009) Cecilia Bartoli (2010) Kaija Saariaho (2011) Jordi Savall (2012)

Persondata
Name	Britten, Benjamin
Alternative names
Short description	English composer
Date of birth	22 November 1913
Place of birth	Lowestoft, Suffolk, England
Date of death	4 December 1976
Place of death	Aldeburgh, Suffolk, England

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The Orchestra
The Orchestra 2008, performing at the Sweden Rock Festival.
Background information
Origin	Birmingham, England
Genres	Rock music, Pop music
Years active	2000–present
Associated acts	Electric Light Orchestra ELO Part II Styx
Website	theorchestra.net
Members
Louis Clark Eric Troyer Mik Kaminski Gordon Townsend Phil Bates Glen Burtnik
Past members
Kelly Groucutt Parthenon Huxley

The Orchestra is a rock band formed by former members of the Electric Light Orchestra and ELO Part II. It is the continuation of ELO Part II following Bev Bevan's departure and selling of the rights to Jeff Lynne.

1 History
2 Members
- 2.1 Current members
- 2.2 Former Members
3 Discography
4 References
5 External links

History [link]

By 2000 Bev Bevan had sold his fifty per cent share of the Electric Light Orchestra name as well as the rights to the ELO Part II name to Jeff Lynne. Lynne, now the full owner of the ELO name, took legal action to prevent the band from continuing to call themselves “ELO Part II”. They initially tried to alter their name to “ELO2”, but they eventually submitted and changed their name to The Orchestra.

In 2001 The Orchestra released a limited number of their CD No Rewind which was produced and released without involvement from a major record label (but was subsequently released in Argentina by Art Music in 2005 and reissued worldwide in 2006). The album contains The Orchestra's best known non-ELO song, Over London Skies, a loving homage to the classic ELO sound in Jewel & Johnny and a cover of Twist and Shout which begins in a slow, plaintive minor key with arpeggiated chords before building to the familiar, rocking major progression. With the release of No Rewind, The Orchestra worked more original material into their set, with Jewel & Johnny and the album's title song becoming staples. The band continues to tour and regularly sells out shows in Chile, Argentina, the UK, Eastern Europe and elsewhere around the world.

In late 2004, a legal dispute almost erupted between The Orchestra and a Florida-based rock band called theOrchestra, but the issue was settled out-of-court.

The Orchestra toured the UK extensively in 2006 following the re-issue of No Rewind. The band were promoted using the descriptive phrase "Electric Light Orchestra Part II Former Members". Lynne sued The Orchestra, claiming copyright infringement. The matter went to litigation and in August 2006, a Los Angeles judge ruled in favour of the members of The Orchestra.^[1]

During The Orchestra's 2006 UK tour, Phil Bates, formerly a member of Trickster, ELO Part II and Bev Bevan's Move, stood in for Parthenon Huxley at a couple of gigs when Huxley had to return unexpectedly to the States to attend the funeral of his father. In July 2007 Huxley left the band to spend more time with his family and was replaced by Bates.

In 2008 The Orchestra participated in the Sweden Rock Festival.

On February 18, 2009 the group returned from a sell out concert in Berlin. But a few hours after returning home, Kelly Groucutt collapsed of a massive heart attack and died the following day. The band decided to carry on and brought in former Styx man Glen Burtnik on bass (Glen had filled in for Kelly previously during a 1998 ELO Part II tour when the latter had taken ill). On July 17, 2009 they opened for the Alan Parsons Live Project at DTE Theater in Clarkston, Michigan. Also in 2009 German bassist Ralf Vornberger played with the band in Israel when Glen was unavailable due to other work commitments booked before he joined the band.

In November 2011 guitarist Phil Bates left The Orchestra again, and Parthenon Huxley reclaimed his position as guitarist/singer. With Huxley on board The Orchestra ended 2011 with a 17-city tour of Eastern Europe, including stops in Russia, Belarus, Poland, Lithuania and the Czech Republic.

Members [link]

Current members [link]

Louis Clark - keyboards, orchestral arranger and conductor (2000–present) (from ELO and ELO Part II)
Eric Troyer - keyboards, vocals, guitar (2000–present) (from ELO Part II)
Mik Kaminski - violin (2000–present) (from ELO and ELO Part II)
Gordon Townsend - drums (2000–present)
Parthenon Huxley - guitar, vocals (2000–2007 and 2011 to present) (from ELO Part II)
Glen Burtnik - bass guitar, vocals (2009–present)

Former Members [link]

Kelly Groucutt - bass guitar, vocals (2000–2009) (from ELO and ELO Part II)
Phil Bates - guitar, vocals (2007-2011) (from ELO Part II)

Discography [link]

No Rewind (2001)

Live albums [link]

The Orchestra Live (2008)

Videos [link]

Live in Reno (DVD), (2006)

Live Lineup History [link]

2000–2007	Eric Troyer - keyboards, vocals Louis Clark - keyboards, conductor Kelly Groucutt - bass, vocals Mik Kaminski - violin, keyboards Parthenon Huxley - guitar, vocals Gordon Townsend - drums, percussion
2007–2009	Eric Troyer - keyboards, vocals Louis Clark - keyboards, conductor Kelly Groucutt - bass, vocals Mik Kaminski - violin, keyboards Gordon Townsend - drums, percussion Phil Bates - guitar, vocals
2009–2011	Eric Troyer - keyboards, vocals Louis Clark - keyboards, conductor Mik Kaminski - violin, keyboards Gordon Townsend - drums, percussion Phil Bates - guitar, vocals Glen Burtnik - bass, vocals
2011–Present	Eric Troyer - keyboards, vocals Louis Clark - keyboards, conductor Mik Kaminski - violin, keyboards Gordon Townsend - drums, percussion Parthenon Huxley - guitar, vocals Glen Burtnik - bass, vocals

References [link]

^ The P. Hux Chronicles Issue Number Nine

External links [link]

[1] The Orchestra on Facebook

v t e Electric Light Orchestra

Jeff Lynne Personnel

Studio albums	The Electric Light Orchestra (No Answer) ELO 2 (Electric Light Orchestra II) On the Third Day Eldorado Face the Music A New World Record Out of the Blue Discovery Time Secret Messages Balance of Power Zoom

Soundtracks	Xanadu

Live albums	The Night the Light Went On (In Long Beach) Live at Winterland '76 Live at Wembley '78 Live at the BBC

Compilations	Showdown Olé ELO The Light Shines On Three Light Years The Light Shines On Vol 2 ELO's Greatest Hits A Box of Their Best Four Light Years Afterglow ELO's Greatest Hits Vol. 2 The Very Best of the Electric Light Orchestra Strange Magic Light Years Definitive Collection Flashback The Ultimate Collection The Essential Electric Light Orchestra All Over the World Ticket to the Moon

Videography	Discovery (1979) Live at Wembley (1980) Fusion – Live In London (1990) The Very Best of ELO (1991) Zoom Tour Live (2001) Total Rock Review (2006) In Performance (2010) Live – The Early Years (2010)

Related articles	Discography Don Arden Reinhold Mack Jet Records The Move Wizzard ELO Part II The Orchestra List of songs produced by Jeff Lynne Jeff Lynne and The Beatles

Book:Electric Light Orchestra Category:Electric Light Orchestra

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Leonard Bernstein by Jack Mitchell

An unverified autograph

Leonard Bernstein ( /ˈbɜrnstaɪn/ US dict: bûrn′·stīn;^[1] August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim. According to The New York Times, he was "one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history."^[2]

His fame derived from his long tenure as the music director of the New York Philharmonic, from his conducting of concerts with most of the world's leading orchestras, and from his music for West Side Story, as well as Candide, Wonderful Town, On the Town and his own Mass.

Bernstein was also the first conductor to give numerous television lectures on classical music, starting in 1954 and continuing until his death. In addition, he was a skilled pianist,^[3] often conducting piano concertos from the keyboard.

As a composer he wrote in many styles encompassing symphonic and orchestral music, ballet, film and theatre music, choral works, opera, chamber music and pieces for the piano. Many of his works are regularly performed around the world, although none has matched the tremendous popular and commercial success of West Side Story.

Biography [link]

Early life [link]

He was born Louis Bernstein in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the son of Ukranian Jewish parents Jennie (née Resnick) and Samuel Joseph Bernstein, a hair-dressing supplies wholesaler originating from Rovno (now Ukraine).^[4]^[5] Despite his surname he was not related to film composer Elmer Bernstein, but the two men were friends, and even shared a certain physical similarity.^[6] Within the world of professional music, they were distinguished from each other by the use of the nicknames Bernstein West (Elmer) and Bernstein East (Leonard).^[7]

His family spent their summers at their vacation home in Sharon, Massachusetts. His grandmother insisted that his first name be Louis, but his parents always called him Leonard, which they preferred. He officially changed his name to Leonard when he was fifteen, shortly after his grandmother's death.^[8] To his friends and many others he was simply known as "Lenny."

His father, Sam Bernstein, was a businessman and owner of a bookstore in downtown Lawrence; it is standing today on the corners of Amesbury and Essex Streets. Sam initially opposed young Leonard's interest in music. Despite this, the elder Bernstein took him to orchestra concerts in his teenage years and eventually supported his music education. At a very young age, Bernstein listened to a piano performance and was immediately captivated; he subsequently began learning the piano seriously when the family acquired his cousin Lillian Goldman's unwanted piano. As a child, Bernstein attended the Garrison Grammar School and Boston Latin School.^[9] As a child he was very close to his younger sister Shirley, and would often play entire operas or Beethoven symphonies with her at the piano. He had a variety of piano teachers in his youth including Helen Coates who later became his secretary.

After graduation from Boston Latin School in 1935, Bernstein attended Harvard University, where he studied music with, amongst others, Edward Burlingame Hill and Walter Piston, the author of many harmony and counterpoint textbooks. Although he majored in music with a final year thesis (1939) entitled "The Absorption of Race Elements into American Music" (reproduced in his book Findings), Bernstein's main intellectual influence at Harvard was probably the aesthetics Professor David Prall, whose multidisciplinary outlook on the arts Bernstein shared for the rest of his life. One of his friends at Harvard was philosopher Donald Davidson, with whom he played piano four hands. Bernstein wrote and conducted the musical score for the production Davidson mounted of Aristophanes' play The Birds in the original Greek. Bernstein reused some of this music in the ballet Fancy Free. During his time at Harvard he was briefly an accompanist for the Harvard Glee Club.^[10] Bernstein also mounted a student production of The Cradle Will Rock, directing its action from the piano as the composer Marc Blitzstein had done at the premiere. Blitzstein, who heard about the production, subsequently became a friend and influence (both musically and politically) on Bernstein.

Bernstein also met the conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos at this time. Although he never taught Bernstein, Mitropoulos's charisma and power as a musician was a major influence on Bernstein's eventual decision to take up conducting. Mitropoulos was not stylistically that similar to Bernstein, but he probably influenced some of Bernstein's later habits such as his conducting from the keyboard, his initial practice of conducting without a baton and perhaps his interest in Mahler. The other important influence that Bernstein first met during his Harvard years was composer Aaron Copland, whom he met at a concert and then at a party afterwards on Copland's birthday in 1938. At the party Bernstein played Copland's Piano Variations, a thorny work Bernstein loved without knowing anything about its composer until that evening. Although he was not formally Copland's student as such, Bernstein would regularly seek advice from Copland in the following years about his own compositions and would often cite him as "his only real composition teacher".^[11]

After completing his studies at Harvard in 1939 (graduating with a B.A. cum laude), he enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. During his time at Curtis, Bernstein studied conducting with Fritz Reiner (who anecdotally is said to have given Bernstein the only "A grade" he ever awarded), piano with Isabelle Vengerova,^[12] orchestration with Randall Thompson, counterpoint with Richard Stöhr, and score reading with Renée Longy Miquelle.^[13] Unlike his years at Harvard, Bernstein appears not to have greatly enjoyed the formal training environment of Curtis, although often in his later life he would mention Reiner when discussing important mentors.^[11]

1940–1950 [link]

Bernstein conducting the New York City Symphony (1945)

After he left Curtis, Bernstein lived in New York. He shared a flat with his friend Adolph Green and often accompanied Green, Betty Comden and Judy Holliday in a comedy troupe called The Reviewers who performed in Greenwich Village. He took jobs with a music publisher, transcribing music or producing arrangements under the pseudonym Lenny Amber (the German meaning of his name in English). During this period in New York City, Bernstein enjoyed an exuberant social life that included relationships with both men and women. In 1940, Bernstein began his study at the Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer institute, Tanglewood, in the conducting class of the orchestra's conductor, Serge Koussevitzky.

Bernstein's friendships with Copland (who was very close to Koussevitsky) and Mitropoulos were important in him being recommended for a place in the class. Other students in the class included Lukas Foss who also became a lifelong friend. Koussevitsky perhaps did not teach Bernstein much basic conducting technique (which he had already developed under Reiner), but instead became a sort of father figure to him, and was perhaps the major influence on Bernstein's emotional way of interpreting music. Bernstein later became Koussevitzky's conducting assistant^[14] and would later dedicate his second symphony, "The Age of Anxiety", to him.^[15]

On November 14, 1943, having recently been appointed assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, he made his major conducting debut at sudden notice—and without any rehearsal—after Bruno Walter came down with the flu. The next day, The New York Times carried the story on their front page and their editorial remarked, "It's a good American success story. The warm, friendly triumph of it filled Carnegie Hall and spread far over the air waves."^[16] He became instantly famous because the concert was nationally broadcast, and afterwards started to appear as a guest conductor with many US orchestras. The program included works by Schumann, Miklos Rozsa, Wagner and Richard Strauss's Don Quixote with soloist Joseph Schuster, solo cellist of the orchestra. Before the concert Bernstein briefly spoke to Bruno Walter, who discussed particular difficulties in the works he was to perform. It is possible to hear this concert (apart from the Wagner work) on a recording of the CBS radio broadcast that has been issued on CD by the orchestra.

Bernstein in 1944

From 1945 to 1947 Bernstein was the Music Director of the New York City Symphony Orchestra, which had been founded the previous year by the conductor Leopold Stokowski. The orchestra (with support from the Mayor) was aimed at a different audience with more modern programs and cheaper tickets than the New York Philharmonic.

In addition to becoming known as a conductor, Bernstein also emerged as a composer in the same period. In January 1944 he conducted the premiere of his Jeremiah Symphony in Pittsburgh. His score to the ballet Fancy Free choreographed by Jerome Robbins opened in New York in April 1944 and this was later developed into the musical On the Town with lyrics by Comden and Green that opened on Broadway in December 1944.

After World War II, Bernstein's career on the international stage began to flourish. In 1946 he made his first trip to Europe conducting various orchestras and recorded Ravel's Piano Concerto in G as soloist and conductor with the Philharmonia Orchestra. In 1946, he conducted opera for the first time, with the American première at Tanglewood of Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes, which had been a Koussevitzky commission. That same year, Arturo Toscanini invited Bernstein to guest conduct two concerts with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, one of which again featured Bernstein as soloist in the Ravel concerto.^[17]

In 1947, Bernstein conducted in Tel Aviv for the first time, beginning a lifelong association with Israel. The next year he conducted an open air concert for troops at Beersheba in the middle of the desert during the Arab-Israeli war. In 1957, he conducted the inaugural concert of the Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv; he subsequently made many recordings there. In 1967, he conducted a concert on Mt. Scopus to commemorate the reunification of Jerusalem. During the 1970s, Bernstein recorded his symphonies and other works with the Israel Philharmonic for Deutsche Grammophon.

In 1949, he conducted the world première of the Turangalîla-Symphonie by Olivier Messiaen, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Part of the rehearsal for the concert was released on CD by the orchestra. When Koussevitzky died two years later, Bernstein became head of the orchestral and conducting departments at Tanglewood, holding this position for many years.

1951–1959 [link]

After much personal struggle and a turbulent on-off engagement, he married the Chilean actress Felicia Cohn Montealegre on September 10, 1951. One suggestion is that he chose to marry partly to dispel rumors about his private life to help secure a major conducting appointment, following advice from his mentor Dimitri Mitropoulos about the conservative nature of orchestra boards.^[18] Bernstein's sexuality has been a matter of speculation and debate. Arthur Laurents (Bernstein's collaborator in West Side Story) said that Bernstein was "a gay man who got married. He wasn't conflicted about it at all. He was just gay."^[19] Shirley Rhoades Perle, another friend of Bernstein's, said that she thought "he required men sexually and women emotionally."^[20] But the early years of his marriage seem to have been happy, and no one has suggested they didn't love one another. They had three children, Jamie, Alexander, and later Nina.^[21] There are reports though that Bernstein did sometimes have brief extramarital liaisons with young men, which several family friends have said his wife knew about.^[20]

In 1951, Bernstein conducted the New York Philharmonic in the world première of the Symphony No. 2 of Charles Ives, which was written around half a century earlier but had never been previously performed. Throughout his career Bernstein often talked about the music of Ives, who died in 1954. The composer, old and frail, was unable (or some reports say "unwilling") to attend the concert, but his wife did. He reportedly listened to a radio broadcast of it on a radio in his kitchen some days later. A recording of the "premiere" was released in a 10 CD box set Bernstein LIVE by the orchestra, but the notes indicate it was a repeat performance from three days later, and this is perhaps what Ives heard. In any case, reports also differ on Ives's exact reaction, but some suggest he was thrilled and danced a little jig. Bernstein recorded the 2nd symphony with the orchestra in 1958 for Columbia and 1987 for Deutsche Grammophon. There is also a 1987 performance with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra available on DVD.

Bernstein was a visiting music professor from 1951 to 1956 at Brandeis University, and he founded the Creative Arts Festival there in 1952.^[22] He conducted various productions at the first festival including the premiere of his opera Trouble in Tahiti and Blitzstein's English version of Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera. The festival was named after him in 2005, becoming the Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts. In 1953 he was the first US conductor to appear at La Scala in Milan, conducting Maria Callas in Cherubini's Medea. The same year he produced his score to the musical Wonderful Town at very short notice, working again with his old friends Comden and Green, who wrote the lyrics.

In 1954 Bernstein made the first of his television lectures for the CBS arts program Omnibus. The live lecture, entitled "Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony", involved Bernstein explaining the work with the aid of musicians from the former NBC Symphony Orchestra (recently renamed the "Symphony of the Air") and a giant page of the score covering the floor. Bernstein subsequently performed concerts with the orchestra and recorded his Serenade for Violin with Isaac Stern. Further Omnibus lectures followed from 1955 to 1958 (later on ABC and then NBC) covering jazz, conducting, American musical comedy, modern music, J.S. Bach, and grand opera. These programs were made available in the USA in a DVD set in 2010.

In late 1956, Bernstein conducted the New York Philharmonic in concerts that were to have been conducted by Guido Cantelli, who had tragically died in an air crash in Paris. This was the first time Bernstein had conducted the orchestra in subscription concerts since 1951. Partly due to these appearances, Bernstein was named the music director of the New York Philharmonic in 1957, replacing Dimitri Mitropoulos. He began his tenure in that position in 1958, having held the post jointly with Mitropoulos from 1957 to 1958. In 1958, Bernstein and Mitropoulos took the New York Philharmonic on tour to South America. In his first season in sole charge, Bernstein included a season-long survey of American classical music. Themed programming of this sort was fairly novel at that time compared to the present day. Bernstein held the music directorship until 1969 (with a sabbatical in 1965) although he continued to conduct and make recordings with the orchestra for the rest of his life and was appointed "laureate conductor".

He became a well-known figure in the United States through his series of fifty-three televised Young People's Concerts for CBS, which grew out of his Omnibus programs. His first Young People's Concert was televised a few weeks after his tenure began as principal conductor of the New York Philharmonic. He became as famous for his educational work in those concerts as for his conducting. The Bernstein Young People's Concerts were the first and probably the most influential series of music appreciation programs ever produced on television, and they were highly acclaimed by critics.^[23] Some of Bernstein's music lectures were released on records, with at least one winning a Grammy award. The programs were shown in many countries around the world, often with Bernstein dubbed into other languages. Twenty-five of them were released on DVD by Kultur Video.

Bernstein at the piano, making annotations to a musical score

Prior to taking over the New York Philharmonic, Bernstein produced the music for two shows. The first was for the operetta Candide, which was first performed in 1956 with a libretto by Lillian Hellman based on Voltaire's novel. The second was Bernstein's collaboration with the choreographer Jerome Robbins, the writer Arthur Laurents, and the lyricist Stephen Sondheim to produce the musical West Side Story. The first three had worked on it intermittently since Robbins first suggested the idea in 1949. Finally, with the addition of Sondheim to the team and a period of concentrated effort, it received its Broadway premiere in 1957 and has since proven to be Bernstein's most popular and enduring score.

In 1959, he took the New York Philharmonic on a tour of Europe and the Soviet Union, portions of which were filmed by CBS. A highlight of the tour was Bernstein's performance of Dmitri Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony, in the presence of the composer, who came on stage at the end to congratulate Bernstein and the musicians. In October, when Bernstein and the orchestra returned to the US, they recorded the symphony for Columbia. He recorded it for a second time with the orchestra on tour in Japan in 1979. Bernstein seems to have limited himself to only conducting certain Shostakovich symphonies, namely the numbers 1, 5, 6, 7, 9, and 14. He made two recordings of Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony, one with the New York Philharmonic in the 1960s and another one recorded live in 1988 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the only recording he ever made with them (including Shostakovich's Symphony No. 1).

1960–1969 [link]

In 1960 Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic held a Mahler Festival to mark the centenary of the composer's birth. Bernstein, Walter and Mitropoulos conducted performances. The composer's widow, Alma, attended some of Bernstein's rehearsals. In 1960 Bernstein also made his first commercial recording of a Mahler symphony (the fourth) and over the next seven years he made the first complete cycle of recordings of all nine of Mahler's completed symphonies. (All featured the New York Philharmonic except the 8th Symphony which was recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra following a concert in the Royal Albert Hall in London in 1966.) The success of these recordings, along with Bernstein's concert performances and television talks, was an important part of the revival of interest in Mahler in the 1960s, especially in the US.

Other non-US composers that Bernstein championed to some extent at the time include the Danish composer Carl Nielsen (who was perhaps then only a little known in the US) and Jean Sibelius, whose popularity had perhaps by then started to fade. Bernstein eventually recorded a complete cycle in New York of Sibelius's symphonies and three of Nielsen's symphonies (Nos. 2, 4, and 5), as well as conducting recordings of his violin, clarinet and flute concertos. He also recorded Nielsen's 3rd Symphony with the Royal Danish Orchestra after a critically acclaimed public performance in Denmark. Bernstein championed US composers, especially those that he was close to like Aaron Copland, William Schuman and David Diamond. He also started to more extensively record his own compositions for Columbia Records. This included his three symphonies, his ballets and the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story with the New York Philharmonic. He also conducted an LP of his 1944 musical On The Town, the first (almost) complete recording of the original featuring several members of the original Broadway cast, including Betty Comden and Adolph Green. (The 1949 film version only contains four of Bernstein's original numbers.)

In one oft-reported incident, in April 1962 Bernstein appeared on stage before a performance of the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor with the pianist Glenn Gould. During rehearsals, Gould had argued for tempi much broader than normal, which did not reflect Bernstein's concept of the music. Bernstein gave a brief address to the audience starting with "Don't be frightened; Mr Gould is here..." and going on to "In a concerto, who is the boss (audience laughter)—the soloist or the conductor?" (Audience laughter grows louder). The answer is, of course, sometimes the one and sometimes the other, depending on the people involved."^[24] This speech was subsequently interpreted by Harold C. Schonberg, music critic for The New York Times, as abdication of personal responsibility and an attack on Gould, whose performance Schonberg went on to criticize heavily. Bernstein always denied that this had been his intent and has stated that he made these remarks with Gould's blessing.^[25] Throughout his life, he professed admiration and friendship for Gould. Schonberg was often (though not always) harshly critical of Bernstein as a conductor during his tenure as Music Director. However his views were not shared by the audiences (with many full houses) and probably not by the musicians themselves (who had greater financial security arising from Bernstein's many TV and recording activities amongst other things).

In 1962 the New York Philharmonic moved from Carnegie Hall to Philharmonic Hall (now Avery Fisher Hall) in the new Lincoln Center. The move was not without controversy because of acoustic problems with the new hall. Bernstein conducted the gala opening concert featuring vocal works by Mahler, Beethoven and Vaughan Williams, and the premiere of Aaron Copland's Connotations, a serial-work that was merely politely received. During the interval Bernstein kissed the cheek of the President's wife Jacqueline Kennedy, a break with protocol that was commented on at the time. In 1961 Bernstein had conducted at President John F. Kennedy's pre-inaugural gala, and he was an occasional guest in the Kennedy White House. He also conducted at the funeral mass in 1968 for the late President Kennedy's brother Robert Kennedy.

In 1964 Bernstein conducted Franco Zeffirelli's production of Verdi's Falstaff at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. In 1966 he made his debut at the Vienna State Opera conducting Luchino Visconti's production of the same opera with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as Falstaff. During his time in Vienna he also recorded the opera for Columbia Records and conducted his first subscription concert with the Vienna Philharmonic (which is made up of players from the Vienna State Opera) featuring Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde with Fischer-Dieskau and James King. He returned to the State Opera in 1968 for a production of Der Rosenkavalier and in 1970 for Otto Schenk's production of Beethoven's Fidelio. Sixteen years later, at the State Opera, Bernstein conducted his sequel to Trouble in Tahiti, A Quiet Place. with the ORF orchestra. Bernstein's final farewell to the State Opera happened accidentally in 1989: following a performance of Modest Mussorgsky's Khovanshchina, he unexpectedly entered the stage and embraced conductor Claudio Abbado in front of a cheering audience.

With his commitment to the New York Philharmonic and his many other activities, Bernstein had little time for composition during the 1960s. The two major works he produced at this time were his Kaddish Symphony dedicated to the recently assassinated President John F. Kennedy and the Chichester Psalms which he produced during a sabbatical year he took from the Philharmonic in 1965 to concentrate on composition. To try to have more time for composition was probably a major factor in his decision to step down as Music Director of the Philharmonic in 1969, and to never accept such a position anywhere again.

1970–1979 [link]

Leonard Bernstein by Allan Warren

After stepping down from the New York Philharmonic, Bernstein continued to appear with them in most years until his death, and he toured with them to Europe in 1976 and to Asia in 1979. He also strengthened his relationship with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra – he conducted all nine completed Mahler symphonies with them (plus the adagio from the 10th) in the period from 1967 to 1976. All of these were filmed for Unitel with the exception of the 1967 Mahler 2nd, which instead Bernstein filmed with the London Symphony Orchestra in Ely Cathedral in 1973. In the late 1970s Bernstein conducted a complete Beethoven symphony cycle with the Vienna Philharmonic, and cycles of Brahms and Schumann were to follow in the 1980s. Other orchestras he conducted on numerous occasions in the 1970s include the Israel Philharmonic, the Orchestre National de France, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

In 1970 Bernstein wrote and narrated a ninety-minute program filmed on location in and around Vienna as a celebration of Beethoven's 200th birthday. It featured parts of Bernstein's rehearsals and performance for the Otto Schenk production of Fidelio, Bernstein playing the 1st piano concerto and the Ninth Symphony with the Vienna Philharmonic and the young Placido Domingo amongst the soloists. The program was first telecast in 1970 on Austrian and British television, and then on CBS in the US on Christmas Eve 1971. The show, originally entitled Beethoven's Birthday: A Celebration in Vienna, won an Emmy and was issued on DVD in 2005.

Like many of his friends and colleagues, Bernstein had been involved in various left wing causes and organizations since the 1940s. He was blacklisted by the US State Department and CBS in the early 1950s, but unlike others his career was not greatly affected, and he was never required to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee.^[26] His political life received substantial press coverage though in 1970 due to a gathering hosted at his Manhattan apartment. Bernstein and his wife held the event seeking to raise awareness and money for the defense of several members of the Black Panther Party against a variety of charges.^[27] The New York Times initially covered the gathering as a lifestyle item, but later posted an editorial harshly unfavorable to Bernstein following generally negative reaction to the widely publicized story.^[28]^[29] This reaction culminated in June 1970 with the appearance of "Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny's", an essay by satirist Tom Wolfe featured on the cover of the New York Magazine.^[30] The article contrasted the Bernsteins' comfortable lifestyle in one of the world's most expensive neighborhoods with the anti-establishment politics of the Black Panthers. It led to the popularization of "radical chic" as a critical term.^[31] Both Bernstein and his wife Felicia responded to the criticism, arguing that they were motivated not by a shallow desire to express fashionable sympathy but by their concern for civil liberties.^[32]^[33]

Bernstein's major compositions during the 1970s were probably his MASS: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players, and Dancers; his score for the ballet Dybbuk; his orchestral vocal work Songfest; and his US bicentenary musical 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue written with lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner which was his first real theatrical flop, and last original Broadway show. The world premiere of Bernstein's MASS took place on September 8, 1971. Commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy for the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., it was partly intended as an anti-war statement. Hastily written in places, the work represented a fusion not only of different religious traditions (Latin liturgy, Hebrew prayer and plenty of contemporary English lyrics) but also of different musical styles including classical and rock music. It was originally a target of criticism from the Roman Catholic Church on the one hand, and contemporary music critics who objected to its Broadway/populist elements on the other. In the present day it is perhaps seen as less blasphemous and more a piece of its era – in 2000 it was even performed in the Vatican.

In 1972 Bernstein recorded Bizet's Carmen, with Marilyn Horne in the title role and James McCracken as Don Jose, after leading several stage performances of the opera at the Metropolitan Opera. The recording was one of the first in stereo to use the original spoken dialogue between the sung portions of the opera, rather than the musical recitatives that were composed by Ernest Guiraud after Bizet's death. The recording was Bernstein's first for Deutsche Grammophon and won a Grammy.

Bernstein was appointed in 1973 to the Charles Eliot Norton Chair as Professor of Poetry at his alma mater, Harvard University, and delivered a series of six televised lectures on music with musical examples played by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Taking the title from a Charles Ives work, he called the series "The Unanswered Question"; it was a set of interdisciplinary lectures in which he borrowed terminology from contemporary linguistics to analyze and compare musical construction to language. The lectures are presently available in both book and DVD form. The DVD video was not taken directly from the lectures at Harvard, rather they were recreated again at the WGBH studios for filming. This appears to be the only surviving Norton lectures available to the general public in video format. Noam Chomsky wrote in 2007 on the Znet forums about the linguistic aspects of the lecture: "I spent some time with Bernstein during the preparation and performance of the lectures. My feeling was that he was onto something, but I couldn't really judge how significant it was."

A major period of upheaval in Bernstein's personal life began in 1976 when he took the decision that he could no longer repress his homosexuality and he left his wife Felicia for a period to live with the writer Tom Cothran. The next year she was diagnosed with lung cancer and eventually Bernstein moved back in with her and cared for her until she died on June 16, 1978.^[18] Cothran himself died of AIDS in 1981. Bernstein is reported to have often spoken of his terrible guilt over his wife's death.^[18] Most biographies of Bernstein describe that his lifestyle became more excessive and his personal behavior sometimes cruder after her death. However his public standing and many of his close friendships appear to have remained unaffected, and he resumed his busy schedule of musical activity.

In 1978, Bernstein returned to the Vienna State Opera to conduct a revival of the Otto Schenk production of Fidelio, now featuring Gundula Janowitz and Rene Kollo in the lead roles. At the same time, Bernstein made a studio recording of the opera for Deutsche Grammophon and the opera itself was filmed by Unitel and released on DVD by Deutsche Grammophon in late 2006. In May 1978, the Israel Philharmonic played two US concerts under his direction to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Orchestra under that name. On consecutive nights, the Orchestra, with the Choral Arts Society of Washington, performed Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and Bernstein's Chichester Psalms at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and at Carnegie Hall in New York.

In 1979, Bernstein conducted the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra for the first and only time, in two charity concerts for Amnesty International involving performances of Mahler's Ninth Symphony. The invitation for the concerts had come from the orchestra and not from its principal conductor Herbert von Karajan. There has been speculation about why Karajan never invited Bernstein to conduct his orchestra. (Karajan did conduct the New York Philharmonic during Bernstein's tenure.) The full reasons will probably never be known – reports suggest they were on friendly terms when they met, but sometimes practiced a little mutual one-upmanship.^[18] One of the concerts was broadcast on radio and was posthumously released on CD by Deutsche Grammophon.

1980–1990 [link]

Bernstein received the Kennedy Center Honors award in 1980. For the rest of the 1980s he continued to conduct, teach, compose and produce the occasional TV documentary. His most significant compositions of the decade were probably his opera A Quiet Place which he wrote with Stephen Wadsworth and which premiered (in its original version) in Houston in 1983; his Divertimento for Orchestra; his Halil for flute and orchestra, his Concerto for Orchestra "Jubilee Games"; and his song cycle Arias and Barcarolles, which was named after a comment President Dwight D. Eisenhower had made to him in 1960.

In 1982 in the US, PBS aired an 11-part series of Bernstein's late 1970s films for Unitel of the Vienna Philharmonic playing all nine Beethoven symphonies and various other works. Bernstein gave spoken introduction and actor Maximilian Schell was also featured on the programs, reading from Beethoven's letters. The original films have since been released on DVD by Deutsche Grammophon. In addition to conducting in New York, Vienna and Israel, Bernstein was a regular guest conductor of other orchestras in the 1980s. These included the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam with whom he recorded Mahler's First, Fourth, and Ninth Symphonies amongst other works; the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Munich with whom he recorded Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, Haydn's Creation, Mozart's Requiem and Mass in C Minor; and the orchestra of Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome with whom he recorded some Debussy and Puccini's La Boheme.

In 1982, he and Ernest Fleischmann founded the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute as a summer training academy along the lines of Tanglewood. Bernstein served as Artistic Director and taught conducting there until 1984. Around the same time he performed and recorded some of his own works with the Los Angeles Philharmonic for Deutsche Grammophon. Bernstein was also at the time a committed supporter of Nuclear Disarmament. In 1985 he took the European Community Youth Orchestra in a "Journey for Peace" tour around Europe and to Japan.

In 1985, he conducted a recording of West Side Story, the first time he had conducted the entire work. The recording, featuring what some critics felt were miscast opera singers such as Kiri Te Kanawa, José Carreras, and Tatiana Troyanos in the leading roles, was nevertheless an international bestseller. A TV documentary showing the making of the recording was made at the same time and is available on DVD.

In his later years, Bernstein's life and work was celebrated around the world (as it has been since his death). The Israel Philharmonic celebrated his involvement with them at Festivals in Israel and Austria in 1977. In 1986 the London Symphony Orchestra mounted a Bernstein Festival in London with one concert that Bernstein himself conducted attended by the Queen. In 1988 Bernstein's 70th birthday was celebrated by a lavish televised gala at Tanglewood featuring many performers who had worked with him over the years.

In December 1989 Bernstein conducted live performances and recorded in the studio his operetta Candide with the London Symphony Orchestra. The recording starred Jerry Hadley, June Anderson, Adolph Green and Christa Ludwig in the leading roles. The use of opera singers in some roles perhaps fitted the style of operetta better than some critics had thought was the case for West Side Story, and the recording (released posthumously in 1991) was universally praised. One of the live concerts from the Barbican Centre in London is available on DVD. Candide had had a troubled history, with many re-writes and writers involved. Bernstein's concert and recording were based on a "final" version that had been first performed by Scottish Opera in 1988. The opening night (which Bernstein attended in Glasgow) was conducted by Bernstein's former student John Mauceri.

Bernstein's grave in Green-Wood Cemetery

On December 25, 1989, Bernstein conducted Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in East Berlin's Schauspielhaus (Playhouse) as part of a celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall. He had conducted the same work in West Berlin the previous day. The concert was broadcast live in more than twenty countries to an estimated audience of 100 million people. For the occasion, Bernstein reworded Friedrich Schiller's text of the Ode to Joy, substituting the word Freiheit (freedom) for Freude (joy).^[34] Bernstein, in his spoken introduction, said that they had "taken the liberty" of doing this because of a "most likely phony" story, apparently believed in some quarters, that Schiller wrote an "Ode to Freedom" that is now presumed lost. Bernstein added, "I'm sure that Beethoven would have given us his blessing."

In the summer of 1990, Bernstein and Michael Tilson Thomas founded the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan. Like his earlier activity in Los Angeles, this was a summer training school for musicians modeled on Tanglewood, and is still in existence. Bernstein was already at this time suffering from the lung disease that would lead to his death. In his opening address Bernstein said that he had decided to devote what time he had left to education. A video showing Bernstein speaking and rehearsing at the first Festival is available on DVD in Japan.

Bernstein made his final performance as a conductor at Tanglewood on August 19, 1990, with the Boston Symphony playing Benjamin Britten's "Four Sea Interludes" from Peter Grimes, and Beethoven's Seventh Symphony.^[35] He suffered a coughing fit in the middle of the Beethoven performance which almost caused the concert to break down. The concert was later issued on CD by Deutsche Grammophon.

He announced his retirement from conducting on October 9, 1990,^[36] and died of pneumonia and a pleural tumor five days later. He was 72 years old.^[2] A longtime heavy smoker, he had battled emphysema from his mid-50s. On the day of his funeral procession through the streets of Manhattan, construction workers removed their hats and waved, yelling "Goodbye, Lenny."^[37] Bernstein is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York, next to his wife and with a copy of Mahler's Fifth lying across his heart.^[38]

Social activism [link]

While Bernstein is very well known for his music compositions and conducting he is also known for his outspoken political views and his strong desire to further social change. His first aspirations for social change were made apparent in his producing (as a student) a recently banned opera, The Cradle Will Rock, about disparagement between the working and upper class. As he went on in his career Bernstein would go on to fight for everything from the influences of "American Music" to the disarming of nuclear weapons.^[39]

Philanthropy [link]

Among the many awards Bernstein earned throughout his life one allowed him to make one of his philanthropic dreams a reality. He had for a long time wanted to develop an international school to help promote the integration of arts into education. When he won the Japan Arts Association award for lifetime achievement,^[40] he used the 100 thousand dollars that came with the award to build such a school in Nashville, that would strive to teach teachers how to better integrate music, dance, and theater into the school system which was "not working".^[41] Unfortunately, the school was not able to open until shortly after Bernstein's death.

Influence and characteristics as a conductor [link]

Leonard Bernstein in 1971

Bernstein was one of the major figures in orchestral conducting in the second half of the 20th century. He was held in high regard amongst many musicians, including the members of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, evidenced by his honorary membership; the London Symphony Orchestra, of which he was President; and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, with which he appeared regularly as guest conductor. He was probably the main conductor from the 1960s onwards who acquired a sort of superstar status similar to that of Herbert von Karajan, although unlike Karajan he conducted relatively little opera and part of Bernstein's fame was based on his role as a composer. As the first American-born music director of the New York Philharmonic, his rise to prominence was a factor in overcoming the perception of the time that the top conductors were necessarily trained in Europe.

Bernstein's conducting was characterized by extremes of emotion with the rhythmic pulse of the music conveyed visually through his balletic podium manner. Musicians often reported that his manner in rehearsal was the same as in concert. As he got older his performances tended to be overlaid to a greater extent with a personal expressiveness which often divided critical opinion. Extreme examples of this style can be found in his Deutsche Grammophon recordings of Nimrod from Elgar's Enigma Variations (1982), the end of Mahler's 9th Symphony (1985), and the finale of Tchaikovsky's Pathetique Symphony (1986), where in each case the tempos are well below those typically chosen.

Bernstein performed a wide repertoire from the baroque era to the 20th century, although perhaps from the 1970s onwards he tended to focus more on music from the romantic era. He was considered especially accomplished with the works of Gustav Mahler and with American composers in general, including George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, Charles Ives, Roy Harris, William Schuman, and of course himself. Some of his recordings of works by these composers would likely appear on many music critics' lists of recommended recordings. A list of his other well-thought-of recordings would probably include individual works from Haydn, Beethoven, Berlioz, Schumann, Liszt, Nielsen, Sibelius, Stravinsky, Hindemith, and Shostakovich, among others.^[42] His recordings of Rhapsody in Blue (full-orchestra version) and An American in Paris for Columbia Records, released in 1959, are considered definitive by many, although Bernstein cut the Rhapsody slightly, and his more 'symphonic' approach with slower tempi is quite far from Gershwin's own conception of the piece, evident from his two recordings. (Oscar Levant, Earl Wild, and others come closer to Gershwin's own style.) Bernstein never conducted Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F, or Porgy and Bess, although he did discuss the latter in his article Why Don't You Run Upstairs and Write a Nice Gershwin Tune?, originally published in The New York Times and later reprinted in his 1959 book The Joy of Music.

In addition to being an active conductor, Bernstein was a very influential teacher of conducting. During his many years of teaching at Tanglewood and elsewhere, he directly taught or mentored many conductors who are performing now, such as Marin Alsop, Herbert Blomstedt, Edo de Waart, Alexander Frey, Paavo Järvi, John Mauceri, Eiji Oue, Seiji Ozawa (who made his US TV debut as the guest conductor on one of the Young People's Concerts), Carl St.Clair, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Jaap van Zweden. He also undoubtedly influenced the career choices of many US musicians who grew up watching his television programmes in the 1950s and 60s.

Recordings [link]

Bernstein recorded extensively from the 1950s until just a few months before his death. Aside from a few early recordings in the mid-1940s for RCA Victor, Bernstein recorded primarily for Columbia Masterworks Records, especially when he was music director of the New York Philharmonic. His typical pattern of recording at that time was to record major works in the studio immediately after they were presented in the orchestra's subscription concerts, with any spare time used to record short orchestral showpieces and similar works. Many of these performances were digitally remastered and reissued by Sony as part of their 100 Volume, 125 CDs "Royal Edition" and their later "Bernstein Century" series. In 2010 many of these recordings were repackaged in a 60 CD "Bernstein Symphony Edition".

His later recordings (starting with Bizet's Carmen in 1972) were mostly made for Deutsche Grammophon, though he would occasionally return to the Columbia Masterworks label. Notable exceptions include recordings of Gustav Mahler's Song of the Earth and Mozart's 15th piano concerto and "Linz" symphony with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra for Decca Records (1966); Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique and Harold in Italy (1976) for EMI; and Wagner's Tristan und Isolde (1981) for Philips Records, a label that like Deutsche Grammophon was part of PolyGram at that time. Unlike his studio recordings for Columbia Masterworks, most of his later Deutsche Grammophon recordings were taken from live concerts (or edited together from several concerts with additional sessions to correct errors). Many replicate repertoire that he recorded in the 1950s and 60s.

In addition to his audio recordings, many of Bernstein's concerts from the 1970s onwards were recorded on motion picture film by the German film company Unitel. This included a complete cycle of the Mahler symphonies (with the Vienna Philharmonic and London Symphony Orchestra), as well as complete cycles of the Beethoven, Brahms and Schumann symphonies recorded at the same series of concerts as the audio recordings by Deutsche Grammophon. Many of these films appeared on Laserdisc and are now on DVD.

In total Bernstein was awarded 16 Grammys for his recordings in various categories including several for recordings released after his death. He was also awarded a Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 1985.

Influence and characteristics as a composer [link]

Bernstein was an eclectic composer whose music fused elements of jazz, Jewish music, theatre music and the work of older composers like Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky, Darius Milhaud, George Gershwin, and Marc Blitzstein. Some of his works, especially his score for West Side Story, helped bridge the gap between classical and popular music. His music was rooted in tonality but in some works like his Kaddish Symphony and the opera A Quiet Place he mixed in 12-tone elements. Bernstein himself said his main motivation for composing was "to communicate" and that all his pieces, including his symphonies and concert works, "could in some sense be thought of as 'theatre' pieces."^[43] According to the League of American orchestras,^[44] he was the second most frequently performed American composer by US orchestras in 2008-9 behind Copland, and he was the 16th most frequently performed composer overall by US orchestras. (Some performances were probably due to the 90th anniversary of his birth in 2008.) His most popular pieces were the Overture to Candide, the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, the Serenade for Violin, Strings, Harp and Percussion and the Three Dance Episodes from On the Town. His shows West Side Story, On the Town, Wonderful Town and Candide are regularly performed, and his symphonies and concert works are programmed from time to time by orchestras around the world. Since his death many of his works have been commercially recorded by artists other than himself. The Serenade, which has been recorded more than 10 times, is probably his most recorded work not taken from an actual theatre piece.

Despite the fact that he was a popular success as a composer, Bernstein himself is reported to have been disillusioned that some of his more serious works were not rated more highly by critics, and that he himself had not been able to devote more time to composing because of his conducting and other activities.^[37] Professional criticism of Bernstein's music often involves discussing the degree to which he created something new as art versus simply skillfully borrowing and fusing together elements from others. In the late 1960s, Bernstein himself reflected that his eclecticism was in part due to his lack of lengthy periods devoted to composition, and that he was still seeking to enrich his own personal musical language in the manner of the great composers of the past, all of whom had borrowed elements from others.^[45] Perhaps the harshest criticism he received from some critics in his lifetime though was directed at works like his Kaddish Symphony, his MASS and the opera A Quiet Place, where they found the underlying message of the piece or the text as either mildly embarrassing, clichéd or offensive. Despite this, all these pieces have been performed, discussed and reconsidered since his death.

Although he taught conducting, Bernstein was not a teacher of composition as such, and he has no direct composing heirs. Perhaps the closest are composers like John Adams who from the 1970s onwards indirectly adopted elements of his eclectic, theatrical style.

Works [link]

Ballet [link]

Fancy Free, 1944
Facsimile – Choreographic Essay for Orchestra, 1946
Dybbuk (ballet), 1974

Opera [link]

Trouble in Tahiti, 1952
Candide, 1956 (new libretto in 1973, operetta final revised version in 1989)
A Quiet Place, 1983

Incidental music and other theatre [link]

Peter Pan, 1950
The Lark, 1955
The Firstborn, 1958
Mass (theatre piece for singers, players and dancers), 1971
"Side by Side by Sondheim"* 1976

Film scores [link]

On the Town, 1949 (only part of his music was used)
On the Waterfront, 1954
West Side Story, 1961

Orchestral [link]

Symphony No. 1, Jeremiah, 1942
Fancy Free and Three Dance Variations from "Fancy Free,", concert premiere 1946
Three Dance Episodes from "On the Town," concert premiere 1947
Symphony No. 2, The Age of Anxiety, (after W. H. Auden) for Piano and Orchestra, 1949 (revised in 1965)
Serenade for Solo Violin, Strings, Harp and Percussion (after Plato's "Symposium"), 1954
Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs for Solo Clarinet and Jazz Ensemble, 1949
Symphonic Suite from "On the Waterfront", 1955
Symphonic Dances from "West Side Story", 1961
Symphony No. 3, Kaddish, for Orchestra, Mixed Chorus, Boys' Choir, Speaker and Soprano Solo, 1963 (revised in 1977)
Dybbuk, Suites No. 1 and 2 for Orchestra, concert premieres 1975
Songfest: A Cycle of American Poems for Six Singers and Orchestra, 1977
Three Meditations from "Mass" for Violoncello and Orchestra, 1977
Slava! A Political Overture for Orchestra, 1977
Divertimento for Orchestra, 1980
Halil, nocturne for Solo Flute, Piccolo, Alto Flute, Percussion, Harp and Strings, 1981
Concerto for Orchestra, 1989 (Originally Jubilee Games from 1986, revised in 1989)

Choral [link]

Hashkiveinu for Cantor (tenor), Mixed Chorus and Organ, 1945
Missa Brevis for Mixed Chorus and Countertenor Solo, with Percussion, 1988
Chichester Psalms for Boy Soprano (or Countertenor), Mixed Chorus, and Orchestra, 1965 (Reduced version for Organ, Harp and Percussion)

Chamber music [link]

Vocal music [link]

I Hate Music: A cycle of Five Kids Songs for Soprano and Piano, 1943
Big Stuff, sung by Billie Holiday
La Bonne Cuisine: Four Recipes for Voice and Piano, 1948
Silhouette (Galilee), 1951
Two Love Songs, 1960
So Pretty, 1968
Piccola Serenata, 1988
Arias and Barcarolles for Mezzo-Soprano, Baritone and Piano four-hands, 1988

Piano music [link]

Music for Two Pianos, 1937
Piano Sonata, 1938
7 Anniversaries, 1944
4 Anniversaries, 1948
5 Anniversaries, 1952
Bridal Suite, 1960
Moby Diptych, 1981 (republished as Anniversaries nos. 1 and 2 in Thirteen Anniversaries)
Touches, 1981
13 Anniversaries, 1988

Other music [link]

Other occasional works, written as gifts and other forms of memorial and tribute
"The Skin of Our Teeth": An aborted work from which Bernstein took material to use in his "Chichester Psalms"
"Simhu Na" (arrangement of traditional song)
"Waltz for Mippy III" for Tuba and Piano
"Elegy for Mippy II" for Trombone alone
"Elegy for Mippy I" for Horn and Piano
"Rondo for Lifey" for Trumpet and Piano
"Fanfare for Bima" for Brass Quartet: composed in 1947 as a birthday tribute to Koussevitzky using the tune he whistled to call his cocker spaniel^[46]
"Shivaree: A Fanfare" for Double Brass Ensemble and Percussion. 1970. Commissioned by and dedicated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in honor of its Centenary. Musical material later used in "Mass."

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Bibliography [link]

Bernstein, Leonard (1993 – reprinting) [1982]. Findings. New York: Anchor Books. ISBN 0-385-42437-X.
Bernstein, Leonard (1993 – reprinting) [1966]. The Infinite Variety of Music. New York: Anchor Books. ISBN 0-385-42438-8.
Bernstein, Leonard (2004 – reprinting) [1959]. The Joy of Music. Pompton Plains, New Jersey: Amadeus Press. ISBN 1-57467-104-9.
Bernstein, Leonard (2006 – reprinting) [1962]. Young People's Concerts. Milwaukee; Cambridge: Amadeus Press. ISBN 1-57467-102-2.
Bernstein, Leonard. [1976] The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard, Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-92001-5.

Videography [link]

The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard. West Long Branch, New Jersey: Kultur Video. VHS ISBN 1-56127-570-0. DVD ISBN 0-7697-1570-2. (videotape of the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures given at Harvard in 1973.)
Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts with the New York Philharmonic. West Long Branch, New Jersey: Kultur Video. DVD ISBN 0-7697-1503-6.
Bernstein on Beethoven: A Celebration in Vienna/Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 1. West Long Branch, Kultur Video. DVD
Leonard Bernstein: Omnibus – The Historic TV Broadcasts ,2010, E1 Ent.
Bernstein: Reflections (1978), Euroarts.
Bernstein/Beethoven (1982), Deustche Grammophon, DVD
Bernstein Conducts "West Side Story" (1985) (retitled The Making of West Side Story in re-releases) Deutsche Grammophon, DVD
"The Rite of Spring" in Rehearsal

Awards [link]

Main article: List of Leonard Bernstein awards

Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1951^[47]
Sonning Award (Denmark), 1956
Ditson Conductor's Award, 1958
George Peabody Medal – Johns Hopkins University, 1980
Ernst von Siemens Music Prize 1987
Royal Philarmonic Society Gold Medal (UK), 1987
Knight Grand Cross Order of Merit (Italy), 1989
Grammy Award for Best Album for Children
Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance
Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance
Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording
Grammy Award for Best Classical Vocal Performance
Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance
Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition
Grammy Award for Best Classical Album
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award
Tony Award for Best Musical
Special Tony Award
Japan Arts Association Lifetime Achievement Award
Gramophone Hall of Fame entrant^[48]

References [link]

^ Karlin, Fred (1994) (recording). Listening to Movies 8. New York City: Schirmer. p. 264. Bernstein's pronunciation of his own name as he introduces his Peter and the Wolf.
^ ^a ^b Henahan, Donal (October 15, 1990). "Leonard Bernstein, 72, Music's Monarch, Dies". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE0DA1F3DF936A25753C1A966958260. Retrieved February 11, 2009. "Leonard Bernstein, one of the most prodigally talented and successful musicians in American history, died yesterday evening at his apartment at the Dakota on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He was 72 years old. Mr. Bernstein's spokeswoman, Margaret Carson, said he died of a heart attack caused by progressive lung failure."
^ Laird, Paul R. Leonard Bernstein: A Guide to Research. Routledge, 2002. p. 10.
^ Dougary, Ginny (March 13, 2010). "Leonard Bernstein: ‘charismatic, pompous – and a great father'". The Times (UK). http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/classical/article7059407.ece. Retrieved March 12, 2010.
^ Oliver, Myrna (October 15, 1990). "Leonard Bernstein Dies; Conductor, Composer Music: Renaissance man of his art was 72. The longtime leader of the N.Y. Philharmonic carved a niche in history with `West Side Story.'". Los Angeles Times. http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/60165868.html?dids=60165868:60165868&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Oct+15%2C+1990&author=MYRNA+OLIVER&pub=Los+Angeles+Times+(pre-1997+Fulltext)&desc=Leonard+Bernstein+Dies%3B+Conductor%2C+Composer+Music%3A+Renaissance+man+of+his+art+was+72.+The+longtime+leader+of+the+N.Y.+Philharmonic+carved+a+niche+in+history+with+%60West+Side+Story.'&pqatl=google. Retrieved March 12, 2010.
^ "Great Escape composer dies at 82". BBC News. August 19, 2004. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/3578820.stm.
^ "Introduction". Bernstein West. http://www.bernsteinwest.com/elmerbernstein1.html. Retrieved May 3, 2012.
^ Peyser, Joan (1987). Bernstein, a biography. New York: Beech Tree Books. pp. 22–24. ISBN 0-688-04918-4.
^ Peyser (1987), p. 34.
^ Peyser (1987), p. 39–40.
^ ^a ^b See for instance Bernstein's 1980 TV Documentary, Teachers and Teaching available on a Deutsche Grammophon DVD.
^ Peyser (1987) (Bernstein complained later that she taught him an incorrect piano technique), pp. 38–9.
^ "Bernstein Chronology". http://www.leonardbernstein.com/lifeswork/timeline/timeline01.asp.
^ "About Bernstein". Leonard Bernstein Official Site. http://www.leonardbernstein.com/about.php. Retrieved January 15, 2007.
^ "Leonard Bernstein – Biography". Sony Classical. http://www.sonyclassical.com/artists/bernstein/bio.html. Retrieved January 15, 2007.
^ Deems Taylor (July 25, 2007), Pathétique, Music-Appreciation Records
^ Arturo Toscanini: the NBC years – Google Books. Google Books. 2002. ISBN 978-1-57467-069-1. http://books.google.com/?id=wBD_ujAW520C&pg=PA85&lpg=PA85&dq=Leonard+Bernstein,+NBC+Symphony,+Mortimer+Frank#v=onepage&q=Leonard%20Bernstein&f=false. Retrieved September 20, 2010.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Burton,Humphrey (1994). Leonard Bernstein. New York: Doubleday.
^ Charles Kaiser, The Gay Metropolis, New York City: 1940–1996.
^ ^a ^b Meryle Secrest (1995), Leonard Bernstein: A Life.
^ Peyser (1987), pp. 196, 204, 322.
^ The Official Leonard Bernstein Web Site. http://www.leonardbernstein.com/about.php.
^ "Young People's Concerts". Leonard Bernstein. http://www.leonardbernstein.com/ypc_publications.htm. Retrieved September 20, 2010.
^ Transcription of Bernstein's Glenn Gould Introduction (from a Rutgers University webpage).
^ Glenn Gould: Variations, Ed. John McGreevy (1983).
^ Seldes, Barry (2009). Leonard Bernstein: The Political Life of an American Musician. University of California Press.
^ "Radical Chic". Hope for America: Performers, Politics and Pop Culture. Library of Congress. http://myloc.gov/Exhibitions/hopeforamerica/causesandcontroversies/polarization/ExhibitObjects/RadicalChic.aspx. Retrieved December 12, 2010.
^ "False Note on Black Panthers". The New York Times. January 16, 1970.
^ Wolfe, Tom. "Tom Wolfe on Radical Chic and Leonard Bernstein's Party for the Black Panthers". Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny's. New York. http://nymag.com/news/features/46170/index15.html. Retrieved December 11, 2010.
^ Wolfe, Tom (June 8, 1970). "Radical Chic: that Party at Lenny's". New York. http://nymag.com/docs/07/05/070529radical_chic.pdf. Retrieved March 1, 2010.
^ "Leonard Bernstein: A political life". The Economist. May 28, 2009. http://www.economist.com/node/13726549. Retrieved December 12, 2010.
^ Bernstein, Felicia M. (January 21, 1970). "Letters to the Editor of The Times: Panthers' Legal Aid". The New York Times.
^ "The Social Activist". Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds. Carnegie Hall Corporation. http://www.carnegiehall.org/bernstein/leonardbernstein/socialactivist.aspx. Retrieved December 12, 2010.
^ Naxos (2006). "Ode To Freedom – Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 (NTSC)". Naxos.com Classical Music Catalogue. http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=2072038. Retrieved November 26, 2006.
^ Garrison Keillor (August 25, 2003). "The Writer's Almanac". American Public Media. http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/programs/2003/08/25. Retrieved January 17, 2007.
^ Name * (October 14, 2009). "» Died On This Date (October 14, 1990) Leonard Bernstein / World Renowned Composer The Music's Over". Themusicsover.wordpress.com. http://themusicsover.wordpress.com/2009/10/14/leonard-bernstein/. Retrieved May 3, 2012.
^ ^a ^b See the TV Documentary: Leonard Bernstein: Reaching for the Note originally shown in the series American Masters on PBS in the US, now on DVD.
^ Davis, Peter G. (May 17, 2011). "When Mahler Took Manhattan." Retrieved 2011-5-18. "Small wonder that Bernstein is buried with the score of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony placed over his heart."
^ Bernstein:The Best of All Possible Worlds. "Causes and Effecting Change". http://www.carnegiehall.org/bernstein/leonardbernstein/essays/nr_socialactivist.html.
^ "Temple Emanuel". http://www.emanuelnyc.org/composer.php?composer_id=28.
^ Harrison, Eric (1993). "The maestro's legacy reverberates in Nashville : Leonard Bernstein's dream of creating a center that integrates the arts and the classroom is in full swing". Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles). http://articles.latimes.com/1993-08-09/news/mn-22033_1_leonard-bernstein. Retrieved Oct 11, 2011.
^ Holmes, John L. (1982). Conductors on Record. UK: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-22990-2.
^ In the 1978 Peter Rosen documentary Leonard Bernstein: Reflections, now available on a Medici Arts DVD.
^ Retrieved January 21, 2011.
^ Gruen, John and Heyman, Ken (1968).The Private World of Leonard Bernstein. New York: The Viking Press.
^ Copland, Aaron and Perlis, Vivian (1984). Copland Since 1943, p119.
^ "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter B". American Academy of Arts and Sciences. http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterB.pdf. Retrieved June 24, 2011.
^ "Leonard Bernstein (composer, conductor and pianist)". Gramophone. http://www.gramophone.co.uk/HallofFame/ArtistPage/Bernstein.

External links [link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Leonard Bernstein

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Leonard Bernstein

Official website
Discography
The Leonard Bernstein Collection at the Library of Congress Music Division
Leonard Bernstein discography at MusicBrainz
Discography at SonyBMG Masterworks
Bernstein's Boston, a Harvard University research project
FBI file on Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts
Gay Great – Leonard Bernstein
Radical Chic, a book by Tom Wolfe describing a gathering at Bernstein's apartment of New York's social elite and the Black Panther Party.
Leonard Bernstein: A Total Embrace of Music, written by Peter Gutmann, music journalist.
Arias and Barcarolles, The Leonard Bernstein Pages
Leonard Bernstein at the Internet Movie Database
Leonard Bernstein at the Internet Broadway Database
Leonard Bernstein at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
Leonard Bernstein's maximum card from Israel
Obituary, New York Times, October 15, 1990
Leonard Bernstein: American Original (HarperCollins, 2008) Chapters by Alan Rich, Paul Boyer, Carol J. Oja, Tim Page, Burton Bernstein, Jonathan Rosenberg, Joseph Horowitz, Bill McGlaughlin, James M. Keller, John Adams

v t e Léonie Sonning Music Prize Laureates

1959–1980	Igor Stravinsky (1959) Leonard Bernstein (1965) Birgit Nilsson (1966) Witold Lutosławski (1967) Benjamin Britten (1968) Boris Christoff (1969) Sergiu Celibidache (1970) Arthur Rubinstein (1971) Yehudi Menuhin (1972) Dmitri Shostakovich (1973) Andrés Segovia (1974) Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (1975) Mogens Wöldike (1976) Olivier Messiaen (1977) Jean-Pierre Rampal (1978) Janet Baker (1979) Marie-Claire Alain (1980)

1981–2000	Mstislav Rostropovich (1981) Isaac Stern (1982) Rafael Kubelík (1983) Miles Davis (1984) Pierre Boulez (1985) Sviatoslav Richter (1986) Heinz Holliger (1987) Peter Schreier (1988) Gidon Kremer (1989) György Ligeti (1990) Eric Ericson (1991) Georg Solti (1992) Nikolaus Harnoncourt (1993) Krystian Zimerman (1994) Yuri Bashmet (1995) Per Nørgård (1996) András Schiff (1997) Hildegard Behrens (1998) Sofia Gubaidulina (1999) Michala Petri (2000)

2001–present	Anne-Sophie Mutter (2001) Alfred Brendel (2002) György Kurtág (2003) Keith Jarrett (2004) John Eliot Gardiner (2005) Yo-Yo Ma (2006) Lars Ulrik Mortensen (2007) Arvo Pärt (2008) Daniel Barenboim (2009) Cecilia Bartoli (2010) Kaija Saariaho (2011) Jordi Savall (2012)

v t e Musicals and operas of Leonard Bernstein

On the Town Peter Pan Trouble in Tahiti Wonderful Town Candide West Side Story 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue A Quiet Place The Race to Urga

New York Philharmonic Music Directors

Ureli Corelli Hill (1842)
Theodore Eisfeld (1848)
Carl Bergmann (1855)
Leopold Damrosch (1876)
Theodore Thomas (1877)
Adolf Neuendorff (1878)
Anton Seidl (1891)
Emil Paur (1898)
Walter Damrosch (1902)
Vasily Safonov (1906)
Gustav Mahler (1909)
Josef Stránský (1911)
Willem Mengelberg (1922)
Arturo Toscanini (1928)
John Barbirolli (1936)
Artur Rodziński (1943)
Bruno Walter (1947)
Leopold Stokowski (1949)
Dimitri Mitropoulos (1949)
Leonard Bernstein (1958)
George Szell (1969)
Pierre Boulez (1971)
Zubin Mehta (1978)
Kurt Masur (1991)
Lorin Maazel (2002)
Alan Gilbert (2009)

v t e Kennedy Center Honorees (1980s)

1980	Leonard Bernstein James Cagney Agnes de Mille Lynn Fontanne Leontyne Price

1981	Count Basie Cary Grant Helen Hayes Jerome Robbins Rudolf Serkin

1982	George Abbott Lillian Gish Benny Goodman Gene Kelly Eugene Ormandy

1983	Katherine Dunham Elia Kazan Frank Sinatra James Stewart Virgil Thomson

1984	Lena Horne Danny Kaye Gian Carlo Menotti Arthur Miller Isaac Stern

1985	Merce Cunningham Irene Dunne Bob Hope Alan Jay Lerner & Frederick Loewe Beverly Sills

1986	Lucille Ball Hume Cronyn & Jessica Tandy Yehudi Menuhin Antony Tudor Ray Charles

1987	Perry Como Bette Davis Sammy Davis, Jr. Nathan Milstein Alwin Nikolais

1988	Alvin Ailey George Burns Myrna Loy Alexander Schneider Roger L. Stevens

1989	Harry Belafonte Claudette Colbert Alexandra Danilova Mary Martin William Schuman

complete list 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s

Persondata
Name	Bernstein, Leonard
Alternative names	Bernstein, Louis
Short description	Composer, conductor, pedagogue, pianist, writer
Date of birth	August 25, 1918
Place of birth	Lawrence, Massachusetts, United States
Date of death	October 14, 1990
Place of death	New York City, New York, U.S.

http://wn.com/Leonard_Bernstein

http://it.wn.com/Leonard Bernstein

http://cs.wn.com/Leonard Bernstein

http://id.wn.com/Leonard Bernstein

http://es.wn.com/Leonard Bernstein

http://ru.wn.com/Бернстайн, Леонард

http://nl.wn.com/Leonard Bernstein

http://pl.wn.com/Leonard Bernstein

http://fr.wn.com/Leonard Bernstein

http://de.wn.com/Leonard Bernstein

http://pt.wn.com/Leonard Bernstein

This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Bernstein

This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.

Arvo Pärt in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, 2008

Arvo Pärt (born 11 September 1935; Estonian pronunciation: [ˈɑrvo ˈpært]) is an Estonian classical composer and one of the most prominent living composers of sacred music.^[1] Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs his self-invented compositional technique, tintinnabuli. His music also takes inspiration from Gregorian chant.^[2]

Pärt was born in Paide, Järva County, Estonia. A prolonged struggle with Soviet officials led him to emigrate with his wife and their two sons in 1980. He lived first in Vienna, where he took Austrian citizenship, and then re-located to Berlin. He returned to Estonia around the turn of the 21st century and now lives alternately in Berlin^[3] and in Tallinn.^[4]

1 Musical development
- 1.1 Musical oeuvre
2 List of Works
3 Awards
4 International Arvo Pärt Centre
5 References
6 Sources
7 Further Reading
8 External links

Musical development [link]

Familiar works by Pärt are Cantus In Memoriam Benjamin Britten for string orchestra and bell (1977) and the string quintet "Fratres I" (1977, revised 1983), which he transcribed for string orchestra and percussion, the solo violin "Fratres II" and the cello ensemble "Fratres III" (both 1980).

Pärt is often identified with the school of minimalism and, more specifically, that of mystic minimalism or holy minimalism.^[5] He is considered a pioneer of the latter style, along with contemporaries Henryk Górecki and John Tavener.^[6] Although his fame initially rested on instrumental works such as Tabula Rasa and Spiegel im Spiegel, his choral works have also come to be widely appreciated.

Pärt's musical education began at age seven. He began attending music school in Rakvere, where his family lived. By the time he reached his early teen years, Pärt was writing his own compositions. While studying composition with Heino Eller at the Tallinn Conservatory in 1957,^[4] it was said of him that "he just seemed to shake his sleeves and notes would fall out."

In this period of Estonian history, Pärt was unable to encounter many musical influences from outside the Soviet Union except for a few illegal tapes and scores. Although Estonia had been an independent Baltic state at the time of Pärt's birth, the Soviet Union occupied it in 1940 as a result of the Soviet-Nazi Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact; and the country would then remain under Soviet domination—except for the three-year period of German wartime occupation—for the next 51 years.

Musical oeuvre [link]

Arvo Pärt in 2011

Pärt's oeuvre is generally divided into two periods. He composed his early works using a range of neo-classical styles influenced by Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and Bartók. He then began to compose using Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique and serialism. This, however, not only earned the ire of the Soviet establishment, but also proved to be a creative dead-end. When early works were banned by Soviet censors, Pärt entered the first of several periods of contemplative silence, during which he studied choral music from the 14th to 16th centuries.^[4] In this context, Pärt's biographer, Paul Hillier, observed that "He had reached a position of complete despair in which the composition of music appeared to be the most futile of gestures, and he lacked the musical faith and will-power to write even a single note."

The spirit of early European polyphony informed the composition of Pärt's transitional Third Symphony (1971); and thereafter, he immersed himself in early music, re-investigating the roots of Western music. He studied plainsong, Gregorian chant, and the emergence of polyphony in the European Renaissance.

The music that began to emerge after this period was radically different. This period of new compositions included Fratres, Cantus In Memoriam Benjamin Britten, and Tabula Rasa.^[4] Pärt describes the music of this period as tintinnabuli—like the ringing of bells. Spiegel im Spiegel (1978) is a well-known example which has been used in many films. The music is characterised by simple harmonies, often single unadorned notes, or triads, which form the basis of Western harmony. These are reminiscent of ringing bells. Tintinnabuli works are rhythmically simple and do not change tempo. Another characteristic of Pärt's later works is that they are frequently settings for sacred texts, although he mostly chooses Latin or the Church Slavonic language used in Orthodox liturgy instead of his native Estonian language. Large-scale works inspired by religious texts include St. John Passion, Te Deum, and Litany. Choral works from this period include Magnificat and The Beatitudes.^[4]

Of his popularity, Steve Reich has written: "Even in Estonia, Arvo was getting the same feeling that we were all getting .... I love his music, and I love the fact that he is such a brave, talented man .... He's completely out of step with the zeitgeist and yet he's enormously popular, which is so inspiring. His music fulfills a deep human need that has nothing to do with fashion."^[7] Pärt's music came to public attention in the West, largely thanks to Manfred Eicher who recorded several of Pärt's compositions for ECM Records starting in 1984.

Invited by Walter Fink, he was the 15th composer featured in the annual Komponistenporträt of the Rheingau Musik Festival in 2005 in four concerts. Chamber music included Für Alina for piano, played by himself, Spiegel im Spiegel and Psalom for string quartet. The chamber orchestra of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra played his Trisagion, Fratres and Cantus along with works of Bach. The Windsbach Boys Choir and soloists Sibylla Rubens, Ingeborg Danz, Markus Schäfer and Klaus Mertens performed Magnificat and Collage über B-A-C-H together with two cantatas of Bach and one of Mendelssohn. The Hilliard Ensemble, organist Christopher Bowers-Broadbent, the Rostock Motet Choir and the Hilliard instrumental ensemble, conducted by Markus Johannes Langer, performed a program of Pärt's organ music and works for voices (some a cappella), including Pari Intervallo, De profundis and Miserere.

A new composition, Für Lennart, written for the memory of the Estonian President Lennart Meri, was played at his funeral service on 2 April 2006.

In response to the murder of the Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya in Moscow on 7 October 2006, Pärt declared that all of his works performed in 2006–2007 would be in honour of her death, issuing the following statement: "Anna Politkovskaya staked her entire talent, energy and—in the end—even her life on saving people who had become victims of the abuses prevailing in Russia."^[8]

Pärt was honoured as the featured composer of the 2008 RTÉ Living Music Festival^[9] in Dublin, Ireland. He was also commissioned by Louth Contemporary Music Society^[10] to compose a new choral work based on St. Patrick's Breastplate, which premiered in 2008 in Louth, Ireland. The new work is called The Deers Cry. This is the composer's first Irish commission, having its debut in Drogheda and Dundalk in February 2008.

His recent (2008) Symphony No. 4 is named “Los Angeles” and was dedicated to Mikhail Khodorkovsky. It is Pärt's first symphony written in over 37 years, since 1971's Symphony No. 3. It premiered in Los Angeles, California, at the Walt Disney Concert Hall on 10 January 2009,^[11] and has been nominated for a GRAMMY for Best Classical Contemporary Composition.

On 10 December 2011 he was appointed a member of the Pontifical Council for Culture for a five year renewable term by Pope Benedict XVI.^[12]

List of Works [link]

Main article: List of works by Arvo Pärt

Awards [link]

1996 – American Academy of Arts and Letters Department of Music
1996 – Honorary Doctor of Music, University of Sydney^[13]
1998 – Honorary Doctor of Arts, University of Tartu
2003 – Honorary Doctor of Music, University of Durham^[14]
2008 – Léonie Sonning Music Prize
2010 – Honorary Doctor of Music, University of St Andrews^[15]
2011 – Chevalier (Knight) of Légion d'honneur^[16]
2011 – Membership of the Pontifical Council for Culture^[17]

International Arvo Pärt Centre [link]

The International Arvo Pärt Centre is being created in the Estonian village of Laulasmaa. The centre will include a research institute, an education and music centre, a museum, a publishing facility and an archive of the composer's works. It is planned to open in 2015.^[18]

References [link]

^ Arvo Part Answers
^ found in Larry Sitsky, Music of the twentieth-century avant-garde: a biocritical sourcebook, 2002.
^ www.swr.de/swr2/.../swr2-musikstunde-20110427.pdf
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e New York City Ballet program notes in Playbill, January 2008.
^ For example, in an essay by Christopher Norris called "Post-modernism: a guide for the perplexed," found in Gary K. Browning, Abigail Halcli, Frank Webster, Understanding Contemporary Society: Theories of the Present, 2000.
^ Thomas, Adrian. Górecki. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. 135. ISBN 0-19-816393-2
^ Hodgkinson, Will. "The Reich stuff". The Guardian, 2 January 2004. Retrieved, 18 February 2011.
^ "Arvo Pärt commemorates Politkovskaja". Universal Edition Newsletter (Universal Edition) (Winter 2006/2007): 13. 2007. http://www.universaledition.com/tl_files/News_Dateien/Newsletter_pdf/2007_01_en.pdf. Retrieved 19 February 2011.
^ RTÉ Web site
^ Louth web site
^ In Detail: Arvo Pärt's Symphony No. 4 'Los Angeles'. Retrieved: 27 January 2009.
^ NOMINA DI MEMBRI DEL PONTIFICIO CONSIGLIO DELLA CULTURA
^ "Honorary Awards: University of Sydney". http://www.usyd.edu.au/senate/honawardshistoricalyear.shtml#1996. Retrieved 12 January 2009.
^ "Arvo Pärt: Doctor of Music" (PDF). 15 October 2003. http://www.dur.ac.uk/resources/ceremonies/congregation/part_arvo.pdf. Retrieved 31 May 2008.
^ "Honorary Degrees June 2009". 17 June 2009. http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/news/Title,34332,en.html. Retrieved 18 June 2009.
^ "Le compositeur Arvo Pärt décoré de l'ordre de la Légion d'Honneur". http://www.ambafrance-ee.org/Le-compositeur-Arvo-Part-decore-de. Retrieved 3 November 2011.
^ "Vatican information service". 12 December 2011. http://visnews-en.blogspot.com/2011/12/other-pontifical-acts_12.html. Retrieved 12 December 2011.
^ http://www.arvopart.ee/en/

Sources [link]

Hillier, Paul. (1997). Arvo Pärt. Oxford : Oxford University Press. 10-ISBN 0-19-816616-8; 13-ISBN 978-0-19-816616-0 (paper)

External links [link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Arvo Pärt

Arvo Pärt biography and works on the UE website (publisher)
Arvo Pärt discography at Classical Net
Arvo Pärt discography at MusicBrainz
Arvo Pärt Conference at Boston University
Complete Listing of Arvo Pärt's Works
Arvo Pärt – extensive site
arvopart.info – another comprehensive site with current news
David Pinkerton's Arvo Pärt archive – yet another extensive site, with some good analytical writing.
Biography in MUSICMATCH Guide – Small biography and list of works.
Arvo Pärt and the New Simplicity – Article by Bill McGlaughlin, with audio selections
Steve Reich about Arvo Pärt, in an interview with Richard Williams, The Guardian, 2 January 2004
Spike Magazine Interview
Lancing College Commission 'Original' Claudio Records Recording in the presence of the composer – Review/Information
International Arvo Pärt Centre – most up-to-date info and more

v t e Léonie Sonning Music Prize Laureates

1959–1980	Igor Stravinsky (1959) Leonard Bernstein (1965) Birgit Nilsson (1966) Witold Lutosławski (1967) Benjamin Britten (1968) Boris Christoff (1969) Sergiu Celibidache (1970) Arthur Rubinstein (1971) Yehudi Menuhin (1972) Dmitri Shostakovich (1973) Andrés Segovia (1974) Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (1975) Mogens Wöldike (1976) Olivier Messiaen (1977) Jean-Pierre Rampal (1978) Janet Baker (1979) Marie-Claire Alain (1980)

1981–2000	Mstislav Rostropovich (1981) Isaac Stern (1982) Rafael Kubelík (1983) Miles Davis (1984) Pierre Boulez (1985) Sviatoslav Richter (1986) Heinz Holliger (1987) Peter Schreier (1988) Gidon Kremer (1989) György Ligeti (1990) Eric Ericson (1991) Georg Solti (1992) Nikolaus Harnoncourt (1993) Krystian Zimerman (1994) Yuri Bashmet (1995) Per Nørgård (1996) András Schiff (1997) Hildegard Behrens (1998) Sofia Gubaidulina (1999) Michala Petri (2000)

2001–present	Anne-Sophie Mutter (2001) Alfred Brendel (2002) György Kurtág (2003) Keith Jarrett (2004) John Eliot Gardiner (2005) Yo-Yo Ma (2006) Lars Ulrik Mortensen (2007) Arvo Pärt (2008) Daniel Barenboim (2009) Cecilia Bartoli (2010) Kaija Saariaho (2011) Jordi Savall (2012)

Persondata
Name	Pärt, Arvo
Alternative names
Short description	Estonian composer
Date of birth	1935-09-11
Place of birth	Paide, Estonia
Date of death
Place of death

This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arvo_Pärt

This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.

Britten, Tony Filmography

Britten, Benjamin Filmography

Britten, Judy Filmography

Born: ['1913-11-22']

Died: ['1976-12-04']

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