- published: 06 Jan 2011
- views: 47210
- author: ICAClassics
Vimeo results:
Youtube results:
More Videos
Loading...
![[Arthaus 101068] SOLTI, Georg: In Rehearsal](http://web.archive.org./web/20130102234107im_/http://i.ytimg.com/vi/TZFblJ297Wc/default.jpg "SOLTI, Georg: In Rehearsal (PAL) GEORG SOLTI - IN REHEARSAL Richard WAGNER: Tannhauser Overture - Rehearsal and Performance; Hector BERLIOZ: Hungarian March from")
Open Collage in a new Window
Email the Collage
- Loading...
Loading suggestions ...
- Adolph Green
- Adrian Boult
- Alan Blyth
- Albert Siklós
- Alfred Brendel
- Allan Warren
- Allmusic
- András Schiff
- André Previn
- Andrés Segovia
- Angela Gheorghiu
- Anne-Katrin Purkiss
- Anne-Sophie Mutter
- Antibes
- Anton Bruckner
- Arabella
- Aretha Franklin
- Arnold Schoenberg
- Arthur Jacobs
- Arthur Rubinstein
- Artur Rodziński
- Arturo Toscanini
- Arvo Pärt
- B.B. King
- Balatonfőkajár
- Bavarian State Opera
- Bayreuth Festival
- BBC
- BBC Music Magazine
- Benjamin Britten
- Benny Carter
- Bernard Haitink
- Bernard Levin
- Betty Comden
- Bill Cosby
- Billboard (magazine)
- Billy Budd (opera)
- Billy Wilder
- Birgit Nilsson
- Bob Dylan
- Boris Christoff
- Bruno Walter
- Bryn Terfel
- Buda
- Budapest
- Béla Bartók
- Carlo Bergonzi
- Carlo Maria Giulini
- Carmen
- Carnegie Hall
- Cecilia Bartoli
- Charles Ives
- Charlton Heston
- Chicago Defender
- Chicago Tribune
- Christoph Eschenbach
- Claire Watson
- Clemens Krauss
- Cleveland Orchestra
- Clifford Curzon
- Colin Davis
- Conducting
- Così fan tutte
- Daniel Barenboim
- Das Rheingold
- Decca Records
- Denazification
- DePaul University
- Der Rosenkavalier
- Die Walküre
- Dizzy Gillespie
- Dmitri Shostakovich
- Don Carlos
- Don Giovanni
- Donald Johanos
- Dudley Moore
- Désiré Defauw
- Düsseldorf
- Edinburgh Festival
- Eduard van Beinum
- Edward Albee
- Edward Elgar
- Edward Greenfield
- Edward Villella
- Egmont (Beethoven)
- Elektra (opera)
- Elisabeth Frink
- Elizabeth II
- Elliott Carter
- Elvis Presley
- EMI Classics
- Eric Ericson
- Erich Kleiber
- Erich Leinsdorf
- Ernő Dohnányi
- Erwartung
- Falstaff (opera)
- Farkasréti Cemetery
- Fayard Nicholas
- Felix Mottl
- Ferenc Fricsay
- Fidelio
- Frankfurt
- Franz Lachner
- Franz Welser-Möst
- Franz Wüllner
- Fred Ebb
- Frederick Stock
- Fritz Busch
- Fritz Reiner
- Furman University
- Georg Kulenkampff
- Georg Solti
- George Szell
- Gianni Schicchi
- Gidon Kremer
- Ginger Rogers
- Giuseppe Verdi
- Gottlob Frick
- Grammy Awards
- Grant Park (Chicago)
- Gregory Peck
- Gustav Mahler
- György Kurtág
- György Ligeti
- Götterdämmerung
- Hamburg State Opera
- Hans Hotter
- Hans Knappertsbusch
- Hans von Bülow
- Harold Nicholas
- Harold Prince
- Harvard University
- Harvey Sachs
- Heinz Holliger
- Herbert von Karajan
- Hermann Levi
- Hermann Zumpe
- Hildegard Behrens
- Hungarian language
- Idomeneo
- Igor Stravinsky
- Iphigénie en Tauride
- Irwin Hoffman
- Isaac Stern
- Jack Lemmon
- Jacques d'Amboise
- Janet Baker
- Jason Robards
- Jean Martinon
- Jean-Pierre Rampal
- Jessye Norman
- Joan Sutherland
- Joanne Woodward
- Johannes Brahms
- John Culshaw
- John Eliot Gardiner
- John Kander
- Johnny Carson
- Johnny Cash
- Jon Vickers
- Jordi Savall
- Josef Krips
- Joseph Haydn
- Joseph Keilberth
- José van Dam
- Judith Jamison
- Jule Styne
- Julius Katchen
- Kaija Saariaho
- Karl Böhm
- Katharine Hepburn
- Keith Jarrett
- Kent Nagano
- Kiri Te Kanawa
- Kirk Douglas
- Kirsten Flagstad
- Klaus Tennstedt
- Krystian Zimerman
- Kurt Masur
- Kyung-Wha Chung
- L'heure espagnole
- La forza del destino
- La Scala
- La traviata
- Lars Ulrik Mortensen
- Lauren Bacall
- Le nozze di Figaro
- Leo Weiner
- Leonard Bernstein
- Lincoln Park
- Lionel Hampton
- Lucerne
- Ludwig van Beethoven
- Main (river)
- Maria Tallchief
- Marie-Claire Alain
- Marilyn Horne
- Marion Williams
- Metropolitan Opera
- Michael Tippett
- Michala Petri
- Miklós Horthy
- Miles Davis
- Mogens Wöldike
- Morton Gould
- Moses und Aron
- Munich
- Nazis
- Nazism
- Neil Simon
- Nikita Magaloff
- Nikolaus Harnoncourt
- Nuremberg Laws
- Olivier Messiaen
- Orchestre de Paris
- Orfeo ed Euridice
- Otello
- Otto Klemperer
- Paavo Järvi
- Parsifal (opera)
- Pat Boone
- Patrice Chéreau
- Patrick Lichfield
- Paul Kletzki
- Paul Newman
- Per Nørgård
- Pete Seeger
- Peter Glossop
- Peter Schreier
- Pierre Boulez
- Plácido Domingo
- Rafael Kubelík
- Ravinia Festival
- RCA Records
- Riccardo Muti
- Richard Strauss
- Richard Wagner
- Rigoletto
- Risë Stevens
- Roy Acuff
- Royal Opera House
- Royal Opera, London
- Rudolf Kempe
- Régine Crespin
- Répétiteur
- Salome (opera)
- Salzburg Festival
- San Francisco Opera
- Savoy Hotel
- Sean Connery
- Sergiu Celibidache
- Shirley Temple
- Sidney Poitier
- Siegfried (opera)
- Sofia Gubaidulina
- Solt
- Soprano
- Stagione
- Stanley Sadie
- Stephen Sondheim
- Stevie Wonder
- Sviatoslav Richter
- Sylvia Stahlman
- Symphony Center
- The Flying Dutchman
- The Guardian
- The Independent
- The Magic Flute
- The Observer
- The Record Guide
- The Sunday Times
- The Times
- Thomas Beecham
- Ticker-tape parade
- Time (magazine)
- Tristan und Isolde
- United Nations
- University of Leeds
- University of London
- University of Oxford
- University of Surrey
- Valerie Pitts
- Valery Gergiev
- Victor Borge
- Victor Olof
- Vienna State Opera
- Vladimir Ashkenazy
- Vladimir Jurowski
- Walter Legge
- Wikipedia Persondata
- Wilhelm Furtwängler
- William Steinberg
- Willie Nelson
- Witold Lutosławski
- Wolfgang Sawallisch
- Wolfgang Windgassen
- Yale University
- Yehudi Menuhin
- Yo-Yo Ma
- Yuri Bashmet
- Zoltán Kodály
- Zubin Mehta
- Zurich
-
Antibes
Coordinates: 43°34′51″N 7°07′26″E / 43.5808°N 7.1239°E / 43.5808; 7.1239
Antibes (
/ɒnˈtiːb/, French: [ɑ̃. tib]; Provençal Occitan: Antíbol in classical norm or Antibo in Mistralian norm) is a resort town in the Alpes-Maritimes department in southeastern France.
It lies on the Mediterranean in the Côte d'Azur, located between Cannes and Nice. The town of Juan-les-Pins is within the commune of Antibes. The Sophia-Antipolis technology park is northwest of Antibes.
Antibes was founded as a 5th century BC Greek colony settled by Phocaeans from Massilia, called Ἀντίπολις, Antípolis (literally, the "city across"). Due to its naturally protected port, the town of Antibes has long been an important trading centre.
Rome gradually increased its hold over the Mediterranean coast and in 43 BC, Antipolis was officially incorporated in the propraetorial (senatorial from 27 BC) province of Gallia Narbonensis in which it remained for the next 500 years. Antipolis grew into the largest town in the region and a main entry point into Gaul. Roman artifacts such as aqueducts, fortified walls and amphoræ can still be seen today.
wn.com/Antibes -
Balatonfőkajár
Balatonfőkajár is a village in Veszprém county, Hungary.
wn.com/Balatonfőkajár -
Bayreuth Festival
The Bayreuth Festival (German: Bayreuther Festspiele) is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of operas by the 19th century German composer Richard Wagner are presented. Wagner himself conceived of and promoted the idea of a special festival to showcase his own works, in particular his monumental cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen and Parsifal.
Performances take place in a specially designed theatre, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. Wagner personally supervised the design and construction of the theatre, which contained many architectural innovations to accommodate the huge orchestras for which Wagner wrote as well as the composer's particular vision about the staging of his works. The Festival has become a pilgrimage destination for Wagner enthusiasts, who often must wait years to obtain tickets.
The origins of the Festival itself lie rooted in Richard Wagner's interest in establishing his financial independence. A souring of the relationship with his patron, Ludwig II of Bavaria, led to his expulsion from Munich, where he had originally intended to launch the festival. Wagner next considered Nuremberg, which would have reinforced the thematic significance of works such as Die Meistersinger. On the advice of Hans Richter, however, the focus fell upon Bayreuth which enjoyed three distinct advantages.
wn.com/Bayreuth_Festival -
Buda
Buda (German: Ofen, Turkish Budin) is the western part of the Hungarian capital Budapest on the west bank of the Danube. The name Buda takes its name from the name of Bleda the Hun ruler, whose name is also Buda in Hungarian.
Buda comprises about one-third of Budapest's complete territory and is mostly wooded and hilly. Notable landmarks include the Buda Castle and the Citadella.
While Pest was mostly Hungarian in the 15th century, Buda had a German majority. Germans — also clinging to their language — partly crowded out, partly assimilated the Hungarians and Serbians they have found here. With the rural population moving in the capital city, in the 19th century slowly Hungarians became the majority in Buda too.
Coordinates: 47°28′N 19°03′E / 47.467°N 19.05°E / 47.467; 19.05
wn.com/Buda -
Budapest
Budapest ( /ˈbuːdəpɛst/, /ˈbuːdəpɛʃt/ or /ˈbʊdəpɛst/; Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈbudɒpɛʃt] (
listen); names in other languages) is the capital and the largest city of Hungary, the largest in East-Central Europe and the seventh largest in the European Union. It is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre, sometimes described as the primate city of Hungary. According to 2011 Census, Budapest had 1.74 million inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2.1 million due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter Area is home to 3.3 million people. The city covers an area of 525 square kilometres (202.7 sq mi) within the city limits. Budapest became a single city occupying both banks of the river Danube with a unification on 17 November 1873 of west-bank Buda and Óbuda with east-bank Pest.
The history of Budapest began with Aquincum, originally a Celtic settlement that became the Roman capital of Lower Pannonia.Hungarians arrived in the territory in the 9th century. Their first settlement was pillaged by the Mongols in 1241-42. The re-established town became one of the centres of Renaissance humanist culture in the 15th century. Following the Battle of Mohács and nearly 150 years of Ottoman rule, development of the region entered a new age of prosperity in the 18th and 19th centuries, and Budapest became a global city after the 1873 unification. It also became the second capital of Austria-Hungary, a great power that dissolved in 1918. After the Treaty of Trianon in 1920, when Hungary lost 72% of its former territory, culturally and economically the country became wholly Budapest-dominated. The capital dominates the country both by the size of its population—which dwarfs those of Hungary's other cities Budapest was the focal point of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919, Operation Panzerfaust in 1944, the Battle of Budapest of 1945, and the Revolution of 1956.
wn.com/Budapest -
DePaul University
Coordinates: 41°55′25″N 87°39′13″W / 41.923558°N 87.653542°W / 41.923558; -87.653542
DePaul University is a private institution of higher education and research in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded by the Vincentians in 1898, the university takes its name from the 17th century French priest Saint Vincent de Paul. The student body consists of about 25,400 students (approximately 16,400 undergraduate and 9,000 graduate/law), making DePaul the largest Roman Catholic university and one of the 10 largest private universities in the United States; it is the largest private university in Illinois. DePaul is a member of the Big East Conference.
Originally named St. Vincent's College, DePaul University was founded in 1898 by the Congregation of the Mission priests and brethren, known as the Vincentians. Followers of 17th century French priest Saint Vincent de Paul, they founded the university to serve Roman Catholic children of immigrants.
Student enrollment grew from 70 in 1898 to 200 in 1903 in what is now the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago. In that year, James Quigley, Archbishop of Chicago, announced plans to create a preparatory seminary, now Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary, for the archdiocese and allow the Jesuit Saint Ignatius College, now Loyola University Chicago to move its collegiate programs to the north side, threatening St. Vincent College's survival. In response, the Vincentians re-chartered in 1907 as DePaul University, expressly offering all of its courses of study to men and women of any religious background. DePaul began admitting women in 1911 and awarded degrees to its first female graduates in 1912. It was one of the first Catholic universities to admit female students in a co-educational setting.
wn.com/DePaul_University -
Farkasréti Cemetery
Farkasréti Cemetery or Farkasrét Cemetery (Hungarian: Farkasréti temető) is one of the most famous cemeteries in Budapest. It was opened in 1894 and is noted for its spectacular sight towards the city (several people wanted it more to be a resort area than a cemetery).
It comprises tombs of numerous Hungarian notabilities and it is the most preferred place for actors and actresses and other artists (opera singers, musicians, painters, sculptors, architects, writers, poets). It also includes the tombs of several scientists, academicians and sportspeople.
Graves are often decorated with noteworthy sculptures. It was provided with parks in the 1950s, when it received its present looks and area. The mortuary hall and the new chapel was built in the 1980s by the plans of Imre Makovecz.
In the Socialist era, church funeral was forbidden in Kerepesi Cemetery, so it became the only place for those who wanted a religious funeral.
It is located in Buda (the Western part of Budapest), approx. 3 km away from the downtown.
wn.com/Farkasréti_Cemetery -
Furman University
Furman University is a private, coeducational, liberal arts college in Greenville, South Carolina, United States. Furman is one of the oldest institutions in South Carolina. Founded in 1826, Furman enrolls approximately 2,800 undergraduate and 525 graduate students on its 750-acre (304 ha) campus.
In recent years, more Furman University graduates have gone on to earn more Ph.D. degrees than those of any other private liberal arts college in the South, according to a survey conducted by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center. Today Furman offers majors and programs in 42 subjects. Most of Furman's 2,800 undergraduates are from the South Atlantic region, but more than 40 states and 15 foreign countries are represented in the student population. Furman is a member of Associated Colleges of the South.
Furman was founded in 1826 at Edgefield, SC as a Men's Academy and Theological Institute. It relocated in Greenville, South Carolina in 1850. It was named for Richard Furman of Charleston, SC, a prominent minister and president of the first Baptist convention in America, the Triennial Convention. The original school building from that campus was transported to the Greenville campus, where it still stands. In 1933, students from the Greenville Women's College began attending classes with Furman students. Shortly thereafter, the two schools merged to form the present institution.
wn.com/Furman_University -
Hamburg State Opera
The Hamburg State Opera (in German: Hamburgische Staatsoper) is one of the leading opera companies in Germany.
Opera in Hamburg dates back to 2 January 1678 when the Oper am Gänsemarkt was inaugurated with a performance of a biblical Singspiel by Johann Theile. It was not a court theatre but the first public opera house in Germany established by the art-loving citizens of Hamburg, a prosperous member of the Hanseatic League.
The Hamburg Bürgeroper resisted the dominance of the Italianate style and rapidly became the leading musical center of the German Baroque. In 1703, George Friedrich Handel was engaged as violinist and harpsichordist and performances of his operas were not long in appearing. In 1705, Hamburg gave the world première of his opera Nero.
In 1721, Georg Philipp Telemann, a central figure of the German Baroque, joined the Hamburg Opera, and in subsequent years Christoph Willibald Gluck, Johann Adolph Hasse and various Italian companies were among the guests.
To replace the aging wooden structure, the first stone was laid on 18 May 1826 for the Stadt-Theater on the present-day site of the Hamburg State Opera. The new theater, with seating for 2800, was inaugurated less than a year later with Beethoven's incidental music to Egmont.
wn.com/Hamburg_State_Opera -
Harvard University
Harvard University is an American private Ivy League research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation (officially The President and Fellows of Harvard College) chartered in the country. Harvard's history, influence, and wealth have made it one of the most prestigious universities in the world.
Harvard was named after its first benefactor, John Harvard. Although never formally affiliated with a church, the college primarily trained Congregationalist and Unitarian clergy. Harvard's curriculum and students became secular throughout the 18th century and by the 19th century had emerged as the central cultural establishment among Boston elites. Following the American Civil War, President Charles W. Eliot's forty year tenure (1869–1909) transformed the college and affiliated professional schools into a centralized research university, and Harvard became a founding member of the Association of American Universities in 1900.James Bryant Conant led the university through the Great Depression and World War II and began to reform the curriculum and liberalize admissions after the war. The undergraduate college became coeducational after its 1977 merger with Radcliffe College. Drew Gilpin Faust was elected the 28th president in 2007 and is the first woman to lead the university. Harvard has the largest financial endowment of any academic institution in the world, standing at $32 billion as of September 2011.
wn.com/Harvard_University -
La Scala
La Scala (Italian: Teatro alla Scala), is a world renowned opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the New Royal-Ducal Theatre at La Scala (Italian: Nuovo Regio Ducale Teatro alla Scala). The premiere performance was Antonio Salieri's Europa riconosciuta.
Most of Italy's greatest operatic artists, and many of the finest singers from around the world, have appeared at La Scala during the past 200 years. Today, the theatre is still recognised as one of the leading opera and ballet theatres in the world and is home to the La Scala Theatre Chorus, La Scala Theatre Ballet and La Scala Theatre Orchestra. The theatre also has an associate school, known as the La Scala Theatre Academy (Italian: Accademia Teatro alla Scala), which offers professional training in music, dance, stage craft and stage management.
La Scala's season traditionally opens on 7 December, Saint Ambrose's Day, the feast day of Milan's patron saint. All performances must end before midnight, and long operas start earlier in the evening when necessary.
wn.com/La_Scala -
Ravinia Festival
Ravinia Festival is the oldest outdoor music festival in the United States, with a series of outdoor concerts and performances held every summer from June to September. It has been the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 1936. Located in Highland Park, IL, the festival operates on the grounds of Ravinia Park, with a variety of outdoor and indoor performing arts facilities.
The park takes its name from the ravines found nearby along the shoreline of Lake Michigan.
In 1904, the A.C. Frost Company created Ravinia as an amusement park intended to lure riders to the fledgling Chicago and Milwaukee Electric Railroad. The amusement park boasted a baseball diamond, electric fountain and refectory or casino building with dining rooms and a dance floor. The prairie-style Martin Theatre (then called Ravinia Theatre) is the only building on the grounds that dates back to that original construction. When the park's existence became jeopardized following the railroad's bankruptcy, local residents (for the most part Chicago businessmen) formed a corporation in 1911 to purchase and operate the park. Music was a confirmed summer activity from then on, except for a brief hiatus during the Depression.
wn.com/Ravinia_Festival -
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. 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.
The current building is the third theatre on the site following disastrous fires in 1808 and 1857. The façade, foyer, and auditorium date from 1858, but almost every other element of the present complex dates from an extensive reconstruction in the 1990s. The Royal Opera House seats 2,256 people and consists of four tiers of boxes and balconies and the amphitheatre gallery. The proscenium is 12.20 m wide and 14.80 m high. The main auditorium is a Grade 1 listed building.
wn.com/Royal_Opera_House -
Savoy Hotel
The Savoy Hotel is a hotel located on the Strand, in the City of Westminster in central London. Built by impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte with profits from his Gilbert and Sullivan operas, the hotel opened on 6 August 1889. It was the first in the Savoy group of hotels and restaurants owned by Carte's family for over a century. It was also the first luxury hotel in Britain, introducing electric lights throughout the hotel, electric lifts, bathrooms inside most of the lavishly furnished rooms, constant hot and cold running water and many other innovations. Carte hired manager César Ritz and French chef Auguste Escoffier, who established an unprecedented standard of quality in hotel service, entertainment and elegant dining, attracting royalty and other wealthy guests and diners. Winston Churchill frequently took his cabinet to lunch at the hotel.
The hotel became Carte's most successful venture. Its bands, Savoy Orpheans and the Savoy Havana Band, became famous, and other entertainers (who were also often guests) included George Gershwin, Frank Sinatra, Lena Horne and Noël Coward. Famous guests have included Edward VII, Enrico Caruso, Charlie Chaplin, Harry Truman, Judy Garland, Babe Ruth, Laurence Olivier, Marilyn Monroe, John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, Elizabeth Taylor, Barbra Streisand, The Beatles and numerous others.
wn.com/Savoy_Hotel -
Solt
Solt (Croatian: Šolta) is a town in Bács-Kiskun county, Hungary. Near Solt there is a high-power medium wave transmitter.
The region has been populated since the Stone Age. The results of diggings brought up Roman coins, weapons, and bodies. The road from the province of Pannonia to Dacia cut through Solt. The first written documents mentioning Solt date back to 1145. Solt was under the jurisdiction of the bishop of Kalocsa from the 11th until the 13th century.
There is a local legend about the establishment of Solt. It is called the Legend of the Golden Key. According to the legend, Béla IV of Hungary gave two golden keys to the town of Solt for hiding him from the invading Mongolian tribes. The keys were hidden on top of the local Presbyterian church which was hit by lightning. The keys melted and were never found again. Since then they are only seen in the seal of the town.
When Hungary was occupied by the Ottoman Empire, Solt lost much of its population. The town is mentioned many times during the Hungarian uprising against the Habsburgs; Francis II Rákóczi kept his army in the region.
wn.com/Solt -
University of Leeds
Coordinates: 53°48′26″N 1°33′6″W / 53.80722°N 1.55167°W / 53.80722; -1.55167
The University of Leeds (informally Leeds University, or simply Leeds) is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. Originally named the Yorkshire College of Science and later simply the Yorkshire College, it incorporated the Leeds School of Medicine and became part of the federal Victoria University alongside Owens College (which eventually became the University of Manchester) and University College Liverpool (which became the University of Liverpool). In 1904, a royal charter was granted to the University of Leeds by King Edward VII.
The University is a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive universities, of which the university's Vice-Chancellor Prof Michael Arthur is the current Chairman, and the N8 Group for research collaboration. The university is also a founding member of the Worldwide Universities Network, the Association of Commonwealth Universities, the European University Association, the White Rose University Consortium, the Santander Network and CDIO and is also affiliated to the Association of MBAs, EQUIS and Universities UK.
wn.com/University_of_Leeds -
University of London
The University of London is a federal university made up of 31 affiliates: 19 separate university institutions, and 12 research institutes. As such, the University of London is the largest university in the UK by number of full-time students, with 135,090 campus-based students and over 50,000 in the University of London International Programmes.
The university was first established by a Royal Charter in 1836, which brought together in federation London University (now University College London) and King's College (now King's College London), to establish today's federally structured University of London.
Graduates of the University of London often use the post-nominal letters 'Lond.' or, more rarely, 'Londin.' (both from Londiniensis) after their degree abbreviations (see post-nominal abbreviations).
Founded in 1836, the University at first comprised just two colleges: University College London, which previously had no official chartered status and did not apply religious tests to its students, and King's College, which had been chartered since 1829 and which admitted only members of the Church of England. Both King's (founded 1829) and University College London (founded 1826) pre-date the University of London, which initially served solely as an examining body for the constituent colleges.
wn.com/University_of_London -
University of Oxford
Coordinates: 51°45′40″N 1°15′12″W / 51.7611°N 1.2534°W / 51.7611; -1.2534
The University of Oxford (informally Oxford University or Oxford) is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096. The University grew rapidly from 1167 when Henry II banned English students from attending the University of Paris. In post-nominals, the University of Oxford was historically abbreviated as Oxon. (from the Latin Oxoniensis), although Oxf is now used in official university publications.
After disputes between students and Oxford townsfolk in 1209, some academics fled north-east to Cambridge, where they established what became the University of Cambridge. The two ancient English universities have many common features and are often jointly referred to as Oxbridge. In addition to their cultural and practical associations, as a historic part of British society, they have a long history of rivalry with each other.
wn.com/University_of_Oxford -
University of Surrey
The University of Surrey is a university located within the county town of Guildford, Surrey in the South East of England. It received its charter on 9 September 1966, and was previously situated near Battersea Park in south-west London. The institution was known as Battersea College of Technology before gaining university status. Its roots however go back to the Battersea Polytechnic Institute, founded in 1891 to provide further and higher education for London's poorer inhabitants.
The university is a member of the 1994 Group. The university conducts extensive research on small satellites and has a high number of staff who are members of learned societies. The Research Assessment Exercise 2001 awarded nine departments at the university 5 or 5* ratings. The university has recently expanded into China by launching the Surrey International Institute with Dongbei University of Finance and Economics.
The university's main campus is located on Stag Hill close to the centre of Guildford and adjacent to Guildford Cathedral. A second campus, at Manor Park, is located a short distance away and has been developed to expand upon existing accommodation, academic buildings and sporting facilities.
wn.com/University_of_Surrey -
Vienna State Opera
The Vienna State Opera (Wiener Staatsoper) is an opera house – and opera company – with a history dating back to the mid-19th century. It is located in the centre of Vienna, Austria. It was originally called the Vienna Court Opera (Wiener Hofoper). In 1920, with the replacement of the Habsburg Monarchy by the First Austrian Republic, it was renamed the Vienna State Opera. The members of the Vienna Philharmonic are recruited from its orchestra.
The building was the first major building on the Vienna Ringstraße commissioned by the controversial Viennese "city expansion fund". Work commenced on the building in 1861 and was completed in 1869, following plans drawn up by architects August Sicard von Sicardsburg and Eduard van der Nüll, who lived together in the 6. Bezirk. It was built in the Neo-Renaissance style.
The Ministry of the Interior had commissioned a number of reports into the availability of certain building materials, with the result that stones long not seen in Vienna were used, such as Wöllersdorfer Stein, for plinths and free-standing, simply-divided buttresses, the famously hard stone from Kaisersteinbruch, whose colour was more appropriate than that of Kelheimerstein, for more lushly decorated parts. The somewhat coarser-grained Kelheimerstein (also known as Solnhof Plattenstein) was intended as the main stone to be used in the building of the opera house, but the necessary quantity was not deliverable. Breitenbrunner stone was suggested as a substitute for the Kelheimer stone, and stone from Jois was used as a cheaper alternative to the Kaiserstein. The staircases were constructed from polished Kaiserstein, while most of the rest of the interior was decorated with varieties of marble.
wn.com/Vienna_State_Opera -
Yale University
Yale University is an American private Ivy League research university located in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States.
Incorporated as the "Collegiate School," the institution traces its roots to 17th-century clergymen who sought to establish a college to train clergy and political leaders for the colony. In 1718, the College was renamed "Yale College" to honor a gift from Elihu Yale, a governor of the British East India Company. In 1861, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences became the first U.S. school to award the PhD. Yale became a founding member of the Association of American Universities in 1900. Yale College was transformed, beginning in the 1930s, through the establishment of residential colleges: 12 now exist and two more are planned. Yale employs over 1,100 faculty to teach and advise about 5,300 undergraduate and 6,100 graduate and professional students. Almost all tenured professors teach undergraduate courses, more than 2,000 of which are offered annually.
wn.com/Yale_University
-
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (German: [ˈadɔlf ˈhɪtlɐ] ( listen); 20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and dictator of Nazi Germany (as Führer und Reichskanzler) from 1934 to 1945. Hitler is commonly associated with the rise of fascism in Europe, World War II, and the Holocaust.
A decorated veteran of World War I, Hitler joined the German Workers' Party, precursor of the Nazi Party, in 1919, and became leader of the NSDAP in 1921. In 1923, he attempted a coup d'état, known as the Beer Hall Putsch, in Munich. The failed coup resulted in Hitler's imprisonment, during which time he wrote his memoir, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). After his release in 1924, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting Pan-Germanism, antisemitism, and anticommunism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda. After his appointment as chancellor in 1933, he transformed the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich, a single-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism. His aim was to establish a New Order of absolute Nazi German hegemony in continental Europe.
wn.com/Adolf_Hitler -
Adolph Green
Adolph Green (December 2, 1914 – October 23, 2002) was an American lyricist and playwright who, with long-time collaborator Betty Comden, penned the screenplays and songs for some of the most beloved movie musicals, particularly as part of Arthur Freed's production unit at MGM, during the genre's heyday. Many people thought the pair were married; they were not, but they shared a unique comic genius and sophisticated wit that enabled them to forge a six-decade-long partnership that produced some of Hollywood and Broadway's greatest hits.
Green was born in The Bronx to Hungarian-Jewish immigrants Daniel and Helen Weiss Green. After high school, he worked as a runner on Wall Street while he tried to make it as an actor. He met Comden through mutual friends in 1938 while she was studying drama at New York University. They formed a troupe called the Revuers, which performed at the Village Vanguard, a club in Greenwich Village. Among the members of the company was a young comedian named Judy Tuvim, who later changed her name to Judy Holliday, and Green's good friend, a young musician named Leonard Bernstein, frequently accompanied them on the piano. The act's success earned them a movie offer and the Revuers traveled west in hopes of finding fame in Greenwich Village, a 1944 movie starring Carmen Miranda and Don Ameche, but their roles were so small they barely were noticed, and they quickly returned to New York.
wn.com/Adolph_Green -
Adrian Boult
Sir Adrian Cedric Boult CH (8 April 1889 – 22 February 1983) was an English conductor. Brought up in a prosperous mercantile family, he followed musical studies in England and at Leipzig, Germany, with early conducting work in London for the Royal Opera House and Sergei Diaghilev's ballet company. His first prominent post was conductor of the City of Birmingham Orchestra in 1924. When the British Broadcasting Corporation appointed him director of music in 1930, he established the BBC Symphony Orchestra and became its chief conductor. The orchestra set standards of excellence that were rivalled in Britain only by the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO), founded two years later.
Forced to leave the BBC in 1950 on reaching retirement age, Boult took on the chief conductorship of the LPO. The orchestra had declined from its peak of the 1930s, but under his guidance its fortunes were revived. He retired as its chief conductor in 1957, and later accepted the post of president. Although in the latter part of his career he worked with other orchestras, including the London Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and his former orchestra, the BBC Symphony, it was the LPO with which he was primarily associated, conducting it in concerts and recordings until 1978, in what was widely called his "Indian Summer".
wn.com/Adrian_Boult -
Alan Blyth
Geoffrey Alan Blyth (27 July 1929, London – 14 August 2007, Lavenham) was an English music critic, author, and musicologist who was particularly known for his writings within the field of opera. He graduated from the Rugby School before attending the University of Oxford where he studied with Jack Westrup. During the early 1960s he began writing music criticism for The Times and later in The Listener, The Guardian, and Gramophone. He was an associate editor for the magazine Opera between 1967–1983, and worked as a staff critic for The Daily Telegraph between 1977–1989. A prolific writer, Blyth edited discographic reviews of opera and song, several entries in the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, and wrote the books Wagner’s Ring: an Introduction (London, 1980) and Remembering Britten (London, 1981) among other publications.
wn.com/Alan_Blyth -
Albert Siklós
Albert Siklós (born Albert Schönwald, * 26 June 1878 in Budapest, † 3 April 1942 in Budapest) was a Hungarian composer.
Siklós studied at Budapest's music academy under Hans von Koessler. From 1918 on he taught composition, aesthetic and choir singing at the academy; in 1928 he became a ministerialis commissioner at the conservatory.
He composed two operas and a pantomime, two symphonies and a symphony for twelve double basses, four orchestral suites, two cello concerts, a piano concert and one violin concert. On the side, he penned a Hungarian music lexicon and a musical treatise.
wn.com/Albert_Siklós -
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.
Brendel was born in Wiesenberg, Czechoslovakia, now Loučná nad Desnou, Czech Republic, to a non-musical family. They moved to Zagreb when Brendel was six, and later to Graz, where they lived during World War II, towards the end of which the 14-year old Brendel was sent to Yugoslavia to dig trenches. However, he developed frostbite and was taken to hospital. Brendel began piano lessons when he was six with Sofija Deželić, and at 14 he studied piano with Ludovica von Kaan and composition in the Graz Conservatory for the next two years, but otherwise had little formal music education.
After the war, Brendel composed music, as well as continuing to play the piano and to paint. However, he never had more formal piano lessons and although he attended masterclasses with Edwin Fischer and Eduard Steuermann, he was largely self-taught.
wn.com/Alfred_Brendel -
Allan Warren
Michael Allan Warren (born 26 October 1948 in Wimbledon, London) is an English society-photographer, writer and former actor. His work encompasses works of many celebrities during the late 1960s, 70s and into the 80s, such as members of the British Royal Family, influential politicians and artists in both music and literature as well as some of the most important people in Hollywood at their time.
After growing up in post-war London, Warren attended Terry's Juveniles, a stage school based in the Drury Lane Theatre. It was during this time that he attended auditions through which he received several assignments. One such piece of work was as a child presenter in "The Five O'clock Club", which afforded him the opportunity to associate with a variety of people, including a young Marc Bolan (then performing as "Toby Tyler") who would later employ Warren as his first manager.
Warren started his photographic career at the age of 17 when he was acting in Alan Bennett's play Forty Years On with John Gielgud in the West End at the Apollo Theatre. Around this time Warren bought his first second-hand camera and started to take photographs of his fellow actors. His first major assignment was when his friend Mickey Deans asked him to cover his wedding to Judy Garland, which marked the beginning of Warren's work as a professional photographer. Upon travelling to New York for personal reasons, he attended an audition for the Broadway production of Minnie's Boys. However, he later declined the role offered to him in favour of returning to London and pursuing photography as his vocation.
wn.com/Allan_Warren -
András Schiff
András Schiff (Hungarian pronunciation: [ˌɒndraːʃ ˈʃifː]) (born 21 December 1953) is a Hungarian-born British classical pianist and conductor, who made numerous recordings and is one of the most highly honored pianists of our time, having won numerous major awards. He has also become an outspoken critic of the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán, whom he has publicly accused of racism, anti-Semitism, and neo-fascism, stating in January 2012 that he would never again set foot in his native country.
Schiff was born in Budapest into a Jewish family and began piano lessons at the age five with Elisabeth Vadasz. He studied at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest until 1974 and in London with George Malcolm. He was a finalist in the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition in 1975. He emigrated from Hungary in 1979. He was unable to meet requirements for US citizenship because of his long absences for touring , and accepted Austrian citizenship in 1987 and established homes in London and Salzburg. He became a British citizen in 2001. He is married to the violinist Yuuko Shiokawa, and resides in London, England, and Florence, Italy.
wn.com/András_Schiff -
André Previn
André George Previn, KBE (born Andreas Ludwig Priwin; April 6, 1929) is a German-American pianist, conductor, and composer. He is considered one of the most versatile musicians in the world and is the winner of four Academy Awards for his film work and ten Grammy Awards for his recordings.
Previn was born in Berlin, Germany, the son of Charlotte (née Epstein) and Jack Previn, who was a lawyer, judge, and music teacher. He is said to be "a distant relative of" the composer Gustav Mahler. However, In a pre-concert public interview at the Lincoln Center, in May 2012, Previn laughed at the suggestion that he is related to Mahler. The year of his birth is uncertain. Whilst most published reports give 1929, Previn himself has stated that 1930 is his birth year. This situation is a consequence of his the family losing Previn's birth certificate when they left Germany in 1938.[citation needed] His elder brother was director Steve Previn.[citation needed] The Previn family, which was Jewish,[citation needed] emigrated to the United States in 1939 to escape the Nazi regime in Germany.[citation needed]
wn.com/André_Previn -
Andrés Segovia
Andrés Segovia Torres, 1st Marquis of Salobreña (pronounced: [anˈdɾes seˈɣoβja ˈtores]) (February 21, 1893 – June 2, 1987), known as Andrés Segovia, was a virtuoso Spanish classical guitarist from Linares, Jaén, Andalucia, Spain. He is widely considered to be one of the best known and most influential classical guitar personalities of the 20th century, having a considerable influence on later guitarists, particularly because of important guitar works that were dedicated to him by composers such as Federico Moreno Torroba.
Segovia is credited for his modern-romantic repertoire, mainly through works dedicated to him by modern composers, but he also created his own transcriptions of classical works that were originally for other instruments. He is remembered for his expressive performances: his wide palette of tone, and his distinctive (often instantly recognizable) musical personality in tone, phrasing and style.
Segovia stated that he began to play the guitar at the age of six.Angelo Gilardino, who has worked at the Fundación Andrés Segovia in Spain, noted: "Though it is not yet completely documented, it seems clear that, since his tender childhood, [Segovia] learnt playing as a flamenco guitarist. The first guitar he owned had formerly been played by Paco de Lucena who died when Segovia was five years old. Since then, Segovia was given some instruction by Agustinillo, an amateur flamenco player who was a fan of Paco de Lucena." Nevertheless, Segovia did not really play flamenco. Instead he preferred expressive art-music such as that by Federico Moreno Torroba, and revived interest in the instrument as an expressive medium for the performance of classical art-music.
wn.com/Andrés_Segovia -
Angela Gheorghiu
Angela Gheorghiu (Romanian pronunciation: [anˈd͡ʒela ɡe̯orˈɡi.u] ( listen); born Angela Burlacu September 7, 1965) is a Romanian soprano. Since her professional debut in 1990, she has performed in the leading roles of several operas at New York's Metropolitan Opera, London's Royal Opera House, the Vienna State Opera, Milan's La Scala, and many other opera houses in Europe and the United States. She has a substantial discography primarily with EMI Classics and Decca.
Gheorghiu was born in 1965 in Adjud, Romania. Along with her sister Elena Dan, she sang opera music from an early age. At age 14, Gheorghiu began to study singing at the National University of Music Bucharest, primarily under Mia Barbu. Her graduation in 1990 coincided with the overthrow and execution of Nicolae Ceaușescu the previous year, enabling her to seek an international career immediately. Her professional opera debut took place at the Cluj-Napoca Romanian National Opera as Mimì in La bohème in 1990, the same year she won the Belvedere International Competition.
wn.com/Angela_Gheorghiu -
Anton Bruckner
Anton Bruckner (help·info) ((1824-09-04)4 September 1824 – 11 October 1896(1896-10-11)) was an Austrian composer known for his symphonies, masses, and motets. The first are considered emblematic of the final stage of Austro-German Romanticism because of their rich harmonic language, strongly polyphonic character, and considerable length. Bruckner's compositions helped to define contemporary musical radicalism, owing to their dissonances, unprepared modulations, and roving harmonies.
Unlike other musical radicals, such as Richard Wagner or Hugo Wolf who fit the enfant terrible mould, Bruckner showed extreme humility before other musicians, Wagner in particular. This apparent dichotomy between Bruckner the man and Bruckner the composer hampers efforts to describe his life in a way that gives a straightforward context for his music.
His works, the symphonies in particular, had detractors, most notably the influential Austrian critic Eduard Hanslick, and other supporters of Johannes Brahms, who pointed to their large size, use of repetition, and Bruckner's propensity to revise many of his works, often with the assistance of colleagues, and his apparent indecision about which versions he preferred. On the other hand, Bruckner was greatly admired by subsequent composers, including his friend Gustav Mahler, who described him as "half simpleton, half God".
wn.com/Anton_Bruckner -
Aretha Franklin
Aretha Louise Franklin (born March 25, 1942) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and pianist. In a recording career that has spanned over half a century, Franklin's repertoire has included gospel, jazz, blues, R&B, pop, rock and funk. Franklin is known as one of the most important popularizers of the soul music genre and is referred to as the Queen of Soul, a title she was given early in her career. Franklin, the daughter of prominent Baptist minister and activist C. L. Franklin, began her singing career singing in her father's church at the age of ten and started recording four years later. After several years in the gospel circuit and with her father's blessing, she formed a secular pop music career at the age of eighteen, signing with Columbia Records, where she was branded by its CEO John Hammond as his most important act since Billie Holiday. Franklin's Columbia period wasn't as successful as hoped and in late 1966, Franklin switched over to Atlantic Records, where she began recording a string of popular hits including "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)", "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman", "Think", "Chain of Fools" and what later became her signature song, "Respect".
wn.com/Aretha_Franklin -
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg (help·info) (pronounced [ˈaːɐ̯nɔlt ˈʃøːnbɛɐ̯k]; 13 September 1874 – 13 July 1951) was an Austrian composer and painter, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School. He used the spelling Schönberg until after his move to the United States in 1934 (Steinberg 1995, 463), whereupon he altered it to Schoenberg "in deference to American practice" (Foss 1951, 401), though one writer claims he made the change a year earlier (Ross 2007, 45).
Schoenberg's approach, both in terms of harmony and development, is among the major landmarks of 20th-century musical thought; at least three generations of composers in the European and American traditions have consciously extended his thinking or, in some cases, passionately reacted against it. During the rise of the Nazi Party in Austria, his music was labeled, alongside jazz, as degenerate art[citation needed].
Schoenberg was widely known early in his career for his success in simultaneously extending the traditionally opposed German Romantic styles of Brahms and Wagner. Later, his name would come to personify pioneering innovations in atonality (although Schoenberg himself detested the term "atonality" as inaccurate in describing his intentions) that would become the most polemical feature of 20th-century art music. In the 1920s, Schoenberg developed the twelve-tone technique, a widely influential compositional method of manipulating an ordered series of all twelve notes in the chromatic scale. He also coined the term developing variation, and was the first modern composer to embrace ways of developing motifs without resorting to the dominance of a centralized melodic idea.
wn.com/Arnold_Schoenberg -
Arthur Jacobs
Arthur David Jacobs (14 June 1922 – 13 December 1996) was an English music critic, musicologist, teacher, librettist and translator. Among his many books, two of the best known are his Penguin Dictionary of Music, which was reprinted in several editions between 1958 and 1996, and his biography of Arthur Sullivan, which was praised by critics in Britain and America. As an academic, Jacobs taught at the Royal Academy of Music, Huddersfield Polytechnic and at universities in the U.S. and Australia.
Jacobs was born in Manchester, England, the son of Alexander Susman Jacobs and his wife Estelle (née Isaacs). He was educated at Manchester Grammar School and Merton College, Oxford, taking an honours degree in 1946. In World War II he served in the British Army, in which he was promoted to lieutenant. In 1953 he married the writer Betty Upton Hughes. They had two sons, Michael Jacobs and Julian Jacobs.
Jacobs was music critic of The Daily Express from 1947 to 1952, of The Sunday Citizen from 1959 to 1965, and of The Jewish Chronicle from 1963 to 1975. He reviewed records for Hi-Fi News and Record Review and The Sunday Times and wrote for the arts section of The Financial Times. He was deputy editor of Opera magazine from 1961 to 1971 and served on its editorial board from 1971 until his death.
wn.com/Arthur_Jacobs -
Arthur Rubinstein
Arthur Rubinstein (January 28, 1887 – December 20, 1982) was a Polish-American classical pianist who received international acclaim for his performances of the music written by a variety of composers; many regard him as the greatest Chopin interpreter of his time. He is widely considered one of the greatest classical pianists of the twentieth century.
Rubinstein was born in Łódź, Congress Poland (part of the Russian Empire for the entire time Rubinstein resided there) on January 28, 1887, to a family of assimilated Jews. He was the youngest of eight children, and his father was a wealthy factory owner.
Rubinstein's birth name was Artur Rubinstein, although in English-speaking countries, he preferred to be known as Arthur Rubinstein. However, his United States impresario Sol Hurok insisted he be billed as Artur, and records were released in the West under both versions of his name.
At the age of two, Rubinstein demonstrated perfect pitch and a fascination with the piano, watching his elder sister's piano lessons. By the age of four, he was recognised as a child prodigy. Rubinstein first studied piano in Warsaw. His early piano training came from Karl Heinrich Barth.
wn.com/Arthur_Rubinstein -
Artur Rodziński
Artur Rodziński (January 1, 1892 – November 27, 1958) was a Polish conductor of opera and symphonic music. He is especially noted for his tenures as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic in the 1930s and 1940s.
Artur Rodziński was born in Split, the capital of Dalmatia on January 1, 1892. Soon after, his father, of Polish descent, and a general in the army of the Habsburg empire returned with his family to Lwów, Poland. Artur studied music in Lwów, and then law in Vienna, where he simultaneously enrolled at the Academy of Music; his teachers there included Josef Marx and Franz Schreker (composition), Franz Schalk (conducting), and Emil von Sauer and Jerzy Lalewicz (piano). He returned to Lwów where he was engaged as chorus master at the Opera House, making his debut as a conductor in 1920 with Verdi's Ernani. The following year saw him conducting the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and at the Warsaw Opera House. While visiting Poland, Leopold Stokowski heard Rodziński leading a performance of Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and exclaimed "I have found that rare thing, a born conductor!" and invited him to conduct the Philadelphia Orchestra.
wn.com/Artur_Rodziński -
Arturo Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini (Italian pronunciation: [arˈtuːro toskaˈniːni]; March 25, 1867 – January 16, 1957) was an Italian conductor. One of the most acclaimed musicians of the late 19th and 20th century, he was renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his photographic memory. As music director of the NBC Symphony Orchestra he became a household name (especially in the United States) through his radio and television broadcasts and many recordings of the operatic and symphonic repertoire.
Toscanini was born in Parma, Emilia-Romagna, and won a scholarship to the local music conservatory, where he studied the cello. He joined the orchestra of an opera company, with which he toured South America in 1886. While presenting Aida in Rio de Janeiro, Leopoldo Miguez, the locally hired conductor, reached the summit of a two-month escalating conflict with the performers due to his rather poor command of the work, to the point that the singers went on strike and forced the company's general manager to seek a substitute conductor. Carlo Superti and Aristide Venturi tried unsuccessfully to finish the work. In desperation, the singers suggested the name of their assistant Chorus Master, who knew the whole opera from memory. Although he had no conducting experience, Toscanini was eventually convinced by the musicians to take up the baton at 9:15 P.M., and led a performance of the two-and-a-half hour opera. The public was taken by surprise, at first by the youth and sheer aplomb of this unknown conductor, then by his solid mastery. The result was astounding acclaim. For the rest of that season Toscanini conducted eighteen operas, all with absolute success. Thus began his career as a conductor, at age 19.
wn.com/Arturo_Toscanini -
Arvo Pärt
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. 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.
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 and in Tallinn.
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).
wn.com/Arvo_Pärt -
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten,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.
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. 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.
wn.com/Benjamin_Britten -
Benny Carter
Bennett Lester Carter (August 8, 1907 – July 12, 2003) was an American jazz alto saxophonist, clarinetist, trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader. He was a major figure in jazz from the 1930s to the 1990s, and was recognized as such by other jazz musicians who called him King. In 1958, he performed with Billie Holiday at the legendary Monterey Jazz Festival.
The National Endowment for the Arts honored Benny Carter with its highest honor in jazz, the NEA Jazz Masters Award for 1986. He was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987, winner of the Grammy Award in 1994 for his solo "Prelude to a Kiss", and also the same year, received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2000 awarded the National Endowment for the Arts, National Medal of Arts, presented by President Bill Clinton.
Born in New York in 1907, the youngest of three children and the only boy, received his first music lessons on piano from his mother. Largely self-taught, by age fifteen, Carter was already sitting in at Harlem night spots. From 1924 to 1928, Carter gained valuable professional experience as a sideman in some of New York's top bands. As a youth, Carter lived in Harlem around the corner from Bubber Miley who was Duke Ellington's star trumpeter, Carter was inspired by Miley and bought a trumpet, but when he found he couldn't play like Miley he traded the trumpet in for a saxophone. For the next two years he played with such jazz greats as cornetist Rex Stewart, clarinetist-soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet, pianists Earl Hines, Willie "The Lion" Smith, pianist Fats Waller, pianist James P. Johnson, pianist Duke Ellington and their various groups.
wn.com/Benny_Carter -
Bernard Haitink
Bernard Johan Herman Haitink, CH, KBE (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈbɛrnɑrd ˈhaːi̯tɪŋk]) (born 4 March 1929) is a Dutch conductor and violinist.
Haitink was born in Amsterdam, the son of Willem Haitink and Anna Haitink. He studied music at the conservatoire in Amsterdam. He played the violin in orchestras before taking courses in conducting under Ferdinand Leitner in 1954 and 1955.
Haitink became second conductor of the Netherlands Radio Union Orchestra in 1955. He took the post of chief conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic in 1957. His conducting debut with the Concertgebouw Orchestra was on 7 November 1956, substituting for Carlo Maria Giulini. After the sudden death of Eduard van Beinum, Haitink was named first conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra on 1 September 1959. He became principal conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1961, and shared that position jointly with Eugen Jochum until 1963, when Haitink became sole principal conductor. With the Concertgebouw Orchestra, Haitink made many recordings for the Philips label, and later Decca and EMI Classics, and toured widely with the orchestra.
wn.com/Bernard_Haitink -
Bernard Levin
Henry Bernard Levin CBE (19 August 1928 – 7 August 2004) was an English journalist, author and broadcaster, described by The Times as "the most famous journalist of his day". The son of a poor Jewish family in London, he won a scholarship to the independent school Christ's Hospital and went on to the London School of Economics, graduating in 1952. After a short spell in a lowly job at the BBC selecting press cuttings for use in programmes, he secured a post as a junior member of the editorial staff of a weekly periodical, Truth, in 1953.
Levin reviewed television for The Manchester Guardian and wrote a weekly political column in The Spectator noted for its irreverence. During the 1960s he wrote five columns a week for The Daily Mail on any subject that he chose. After a disagreement with the proprietor of the paper over attempted censorship of his column in 1970, Levin moved to The Times where, with one break of just over a year in 1981–82, he remained as resident columnist until his retirement, covering a wide range of topics, both serious and comic.
wn.com/Bernard_Levin -
Betty Comden
Betty Comden (May 3, 1917 – November 23, 2006) was one-half of the musical-comedy duo Comden and Green, who provided lyrics, libretti, and screenplays to some of the most beloved and successful Hollywood musicals and Broadway shows of the mid-20th century. Her writing partnership with Adolph Green lasted for six decades, during which time they collaborated with other leading entertainment figures such as the famed "Freed Unit" at MGM, Jule Styne and Leonard Bernstein.
Betty Comden was born Basya Cohen in New York City, attended Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, and studied drama at New York University. In 1938, mutual friends introduced her to Adolph Green, an aspiring actor. Along with the young Judy Holliday and Leonard Bernstein, Comden and Green formed a troupe called the Revuers, which performed at the Village Vanguard, a club in Greenwich Village. Due to the act's success, the Revuers appeared in the 1944 film Greenwich Village, but their roles were so small they barely were noticed, and they quickly returned to New York.
wn.com/Betty_Comden -
Bill Cosby
William Henry "Bill" Cosby, Jr. (born July 12, 1937) is an American comedian, actor, author, television producer, educator, musician and activist. A veteran stand-up performer, he got his start at various clubs, then landed a starring role in the 1960s action show, I Spy. He later starred in his own series, the situation comedy The Bill Cosby Show. He was one of the major characters on the children's television series The Electric Company for its first two seasons, and created the educational cartoon comedy series Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, about a group of young friends growing up in the city. Cosby has also acted in a number of films.
During the 1980s, Cosby produced and starred in what is considered to be one of the decade's defining sitcoms, The Cosby Show, which aired eight seasons from 1984 to 1992. The sitcom highlighted the experiences and growth of an affluent African-American family. He also produced the spin-off sitcom A Different World, which became second to The Cosby Show in ratings. He starred in the sitcom Cosby from 1996 to 2000 and hosted Kids Say the Darndest Things for two seasons.
wn.com/Bill_Cosby -
Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder (22 June 1906 – 27 March 2002) was an Austro-Hungarian born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age. Wilder is one of only five people to have won Academy Awards as producer, director, and writer for the same film (The Apartment).
Wilder became a screenwriter in the late 1920s while living in Berlin. After the rise of Nazi Party, Wilder, who was Jewish, left for Paris, where he made his directorial debut. He relocated to Hollywood in 1933, and in 1939 he had a hit when he co-wrote the screenplay to the screwball comedy Ninotchka. Wilder established his directorial reputation after helming Double Indemnity (1944), a film noir he co-wrote with mystery novelist Raymond Chandler. Wilder earned the Best Director and Best Screenplay Academy Awards for the adaptation of a Charles R. Jackson story The Lost Weekend, about alcoholism. In 1950, Wilder co-wrote and directed the critically acclaimed Sunset Boulevard.
wn.com/Billy_Wilder -
Birgit Nilsson
Birgit Nilsson (17 May 1918 – 25 December 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.
Nilsson made such strong imprints on many roles that they came to be known as the "Nilsson repertory". She sang the operas of Richard Strauss and made a specialty of Puccini's Turandot, but it was the music of Wagner that made her career; her command of his music was comparable to that of Kirsten Flagstad, who owned the Wagner repertory at the Metropolitan Opera during the years before World War II.[citation needed]
Märta Birgit Svensson was born on a farm at Västra Karup in Skåne (100 km/60 miles north of Malmö). When she was three years old she began picking out melodies on a toy piano her mother bought for her. She once told an interviewer that she could sing before she could walk, adding, "I even sang in my dreams". Her vocal talent was first noticed when she began to sing in her church choir. A choirmaster near her home heard her sing and advised her to take voice lessons.
wn.com/Birgit_Nilsson -
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan ( /ˈdɪlən/), born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941, is an American singer-songwriter, musician and artist. He has been an influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly reluctant figurehead of social unrest. A number of Dylan's early songs, such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'", became anthems for the US civil rights and anti-war movements. Leaving his initial base in the culture of folk music behind, Dylan's six-minute single "Like a Rolling Stone" has been described as radically altering the parameters of popular music in 1965. However, his recordings employing electric instruments attracted denunciation and criticism from others in the folk movement.
Dylan's lyrics incorporated a variety of political, social, philosophical, and literary influences. They defied existing pop music conventions and appealed hugely to the then burgeoning counterculture. Initially inspired by the songs of Woody Guthrie,Robert Johnson, and Hank Williams, as well as the music and performance styles of Buddy Holly and Little Richard, Dylan has both amplified and personalized musical genres. His recording career, spanning fifty years, has explored numerous distinct traditions in American song—from folk, blues and country to gospel, rock and roll, and rockabilly to English, Scottish, and Irish folk music, embracing even jazz and swing.
wn.com/Bob_Dylan -
Boris Christoff
Boris Christoff (Bulgarian: Борис Христов, by official transliteration Boris Hristov) (May 18, 1914 – June 28, 1993) was a Bulgarian opera singer, widely considered to have been one of the greatest basses of the 20th century.
Born in Plovdiv, Christoff demonstrated early his singing talent and sang as a boy at the choir of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Sofia. In the late 1930s he graduated in law and started on a career as a magistrate. He, however, continued singing in his spare time in the Gusla Chorus in Sofia, achieving an enormous success as the chorus soloist in 1940. Thanks to a government grant, Christoff left in May 1942 for Italy where he was tutored for two years in the core Italian bass repertoire by the great baritone of an earlier generation, Riccardo Stracciari.
After several guest appearances and recitals in Austria in 1944 and 1945, Christoff returned to Italy in December 1945. He made his operatic debut as Colline in La bohème at Reggio Calabria on March 12, 1946. The following years Christoff appeared in a number of roles at Milan's La Scala, Venice's La Fenice, the Rome Opera, Covent Garden in London, the opera theatres in Naples, Barcelona, Lisbon, Rio de Janeiro, etc.
wn.com/Boris_Christoff -
Bruno Walter
Bruno Walter (September 15, 1876 – February 17, 1962) was a German-born conductor. Born in Berlin, he lived in several countries between 1933 and 1939, before finally settling in the United States in 1939. Though he was born Bruno Schlesinger, he began using Walter as his surname in 1896, and officially changed his surname to Walter upon becoming a naturalised Austrian in 1911. Walter was active as a composer for many years, but his works have not entered the repertoire.
Born near Alexanderplatz in Berlin to a middle-class Jewish family as Bruno Schlesinger, he began his musical education at the Stern Conservatory at the age of eight, making his first public appearance as a pianist when he was nine. However, following visits to one of Hans von Bülow's concerts in 1889 and to Bayreuth in 1891, he changed his mind and decided upon a conducting career. He made his conducting début at the Cologne Opera with Albert Lortzing's Der Waffenschmied in 1894. Later that year he left for the Hamburg Opera to work as a chorus director. There he first met and worked with Gustav Mahler, whom he idolized and with whose music he later became strongly identified.
wn.com/Bruno_Walter -
Bryn Terfel
Bryn Terfel Jones CBE (Welsh pronunciation: [ˈbrɨn ˈtɛrvɛl]; born 9 November 1965) is a Welsh bass-baritone opera and concert singer. Terfel was initially associated with the roles of Mozart, particularly Figaro and Leporello, but has subsequently shifted his attention to heavier roles, especially those by Wagner.
Bryn Terfel Jones was born in Pant Glas, North Wales, the son of a farmer. His first language is Welsh. He knew of another Welsh baritone named Bryn Jones, so chose Bryn Terfel as his professional name. He had an interest in and talent for music from a very young age. A family friend taught him how to sing, starting with traditional Welsh songs. After winning numerous competitions for his singing, he moved to London in 1984 and entered the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where he studied under Rudolf Piernay. (He has recorded that he initially applied to the music college in Cardiff but when the reply was addressed to ‘Miss Terfel’ he was so annoyed a Welsh College did not know Bryn was a man's name that he switched to London.) He graduated in 1989, winning both the Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Award and the Gold Medal. The same year he came second behind Dmitri Hvorostovsky in the Cardiff BBC Singer of the World Competition, but won the Lieder Prize.
wn.com/Bryn_Terfel -
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók ( /ˈbɑrtɒk/; Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈbeːlɒ ˈbɒrtoːk]; March 25, 1881 – September 26, 1945) was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer (Gillies 2001). Through his collection and analytical study of folk music, he was one of the founders of ethnomusicology.
Béla Bartók was born in the small Banatian town of Nagyszentmiklós in the Kingdom of Hungary, Austria-Hungary (since 1920 Sânnicolau Mare, Romania) on March 25, 1881. Bartók's family reflected some of the ethno-cultural diversities of the country. His father, Béla Sr., considered himself thoroughly Hungarian, because on his father's side the Bartók family was a Hungarian lower noble family, originating from Borsod county (Móser 2006a, 44; Bartók 1981, 13), though his mother was from a Roman Catholic Serbian family (Bayley 2001, 16). His mother, Paula (born Paula Voit), had German as a mother tongue, but was ethnically of "mixed Hungarian" origin: Her maiden name Voit is German, probably of Saxon origin from Upper Hungary (Since 1920 in Czechoslovakia, since 1993 in Slovakia), though she spoke Hungarian fluently.[citation needed] Among her closest forefathers there were family names like Polereczky (Magyarized Polish or Slovak) and Fegyveres (Magyar). Béla displayed notable musical talent very early in life: according to his mother, he could distinguish between different dance rhythms that she played on the piano before he learned to speak in complete sentences (Gillies 1990, 6). By the age of four, he was able to play 40 pieces on the piano; his mother began formally teaching him the next year.
wn.com/Béla_Bartók -
Carlo Bergonzi
Carlo Bergonzi (born 13 July 1924) is an Italian operatic tenor. Although he performed and recorded some bel canto and verismo roles, he is above all associated with the operas of Giuseppe Verdi, including a large number of the composer's lesser-known works that he helped revive. Essentially a lyric tenor with spinto capabilities, Bergonzi was greatly admired during the peak of his career for his beautiful diction, smooth legato, warm timbre and elegant phrasing. Above all he was acclaimed for his attention to the style required in Verdi's operas.
Bergonzi was born in Vidalenzo, near Parma. He began his vocal studies as a baritone at Parma Conservatory with Maestro Ettore Campogalliani at the age of 14. During World War II, he was interned in a German prisoner-of-war camp. After the war, he returned to Italy and studied at the Boito Conservatory in Parma.
In a 1985 interview with Opera Fanatic's Stefan Zucker, Bergonzi cited 1948 as the date of his professional debut, as a baritone, in the role of Figaro in Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia. Other baritone roles that he undertook included: Arlesiana (Metifio), Don Pasquale (Dottor Malatesta), L'elisir d'amore (Belcore), Lucia di Lammermoor (Lord Enrico Ashton), Le astuzie di Bertoldo (Ghirlino), Pagliacci (Silvio), L'amico Fritz (Fritz Kobus), Cavalleria rusticana (Alfio), Werther (Albert), La bohème (Marcello), La fanciulla del West (Sonora), Madama Butterfly (Sharpless), Manon Lescaut (Lescaut), Mignon (Laerte), Rigoletto (Rigoletto) and La traviata (Giorgio Germont).
wn.com/Carlo_Bergonzi -
Carlo Maria Giulini
Carlo Maria Giulini (Italian pronunciation: [ˈkarlo maˈriːa dʒuˈliːni]; May 9, 1914 – June 14, 2005) was an Italian conductor.
Giulini was born in Barletta, Italy, to a father born in Lombardy and a mother born in Naples; but he was raised in Bolzano, which at the time of his birth was part of Austria (it was given to Italy in the Treaty of London (1915)). Therefore, most of the neighbors spoke a dialect of German, and the local music he heard tended to be Austrian/ Tyrolean. He recalled being transfixed by the town band.
Giulini was given a violin for Christmas in 1919, when he was five, and progressed rapidly with local instructors, notably a Bohemian violinist (and local pharmacist) whom he called "Brahms." In 1928, the distinguished Italian violinist/composer Remy Principe (1889–1977) gave a recital in Bolzano, and auditioned Giulini; he invited Giulini to study with him at Italy's foremost conservatory, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. Giulini undertook his studies there two years later, at the age of 16. He studied viola with Principe, composition with Alessandro Bustini (1876–1970), and conducting with Bernardino Molinari.
wn.com/Carlo_Maria_Giulini -
Cecilia Bartoli
Cecilia Bartoli, Cavaliere OMRI (Italian pronunciation: [tʃeˈtʃiːlja ˈbaɾtoli]; born June 4, 1966 in Rome) is an Italian coloratura 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.
Bartoli is considered a coloratura mezzo-soprano (Koloratur-Mezzosopran) with an unusual timbre. She is one of the most popular (and one of the top-selling) opera singers of recent years. Bartoli is much liked by the concert-going public for her vivacious on-stage persona,[citation needed] while her lyric voice and investigations of Baroque music have given her considerable recognition even among the non-opera-going public.[citation needed]
Bartoli's parents, Silvana Bazzoni and Pietro Angelo Bartoli, were both professional singers and gave her her first music lessons. Her first public performance was at age eight as the shepherd boy in Tosca. Bartoli later studied at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome.
wn.com/Cecilia_Bartoli -
Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives (October 20, 1874 – May 19, 1954) was an American modernistcomposer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown, though Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives came to be regarded as an "American Original". Ives combined the American popular and church-music traditions of his youth with European art music, and was among the first composers to engage in a systematic program of experimental music, with musical techniques including polytonality, polyrhythm, tone clusters, aleatoric elements, and quarter tones, foreshadowing many musical innovations of the 20th century.
Sources of Ives' tonal imagery are hymn tunes and traditional songs, the town band at holiday parade, the fiddlers at Saturday night dances, patriotic songs, sentimental parlor ballads, and the melodies of Stephen Foster.
Charles Ives was born in Danbury, Connecticut in 1874, the son of George Ives, a U.S. Army bandleader in the American Civil War, and his wife Mary Parmelee. A strong influence of Charles's may have been sitting in the Danbury town square, listening to his father's marching band and other bands on other sides of the square simultaneously. George Ives' unique music lessons were also a strong influence on Charles; George Ives took an open-minded approach to musical theory, encouraging his son to experiment in bitonal and polytonal harmonizations. It was from his father that Charles Ives also learned the music of Stephen Foster. Ives became a church organist at the age of 14 and wrote various hymns and songs for church services, including his Variations on 'America' .
wn.com/Charles_Ives -
Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston (born John Charles Carter; October 4, 1923 – April 5, 2008) was an American actor of film, theatre and television. Heston is known for heroic roles in films such as The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, El Cid, and Planet of the Apes. He also is well known for his roles in the films The Greatest Show on Earth and Touch of Evil.
Heston was also known for his political activism. In the 1950s and 1960s he was one of a handful of Hollywood actors to speak openly against racism and was an active supporter of the Civil Rights Movement. Initially a moderate Democrat, he later supported conservative Republican policies and was president of the National Rifle Association from 1998 to 2003.
Heston was born John Charles Carter, the son of Lilla (née Charlton; 1899–1994) and Russell Whitford Carter (1897–1966), a sawmill operator. Most sources state that he was born in Evanston, Illinois. Heston's autobiography, however, and some other sources place his birth in No Man's Land, Illinois, which usually refers to a then-unincorporated area now part of Wilmette, a wealthy northern suburb of Chicago. Heston said in a 1995 interview that he was not very good at remembering addresses or his early childhood.
wn.com/Charlton_Heston -
Christoph Eschenbach
Christoph Eschenbach (pronounced [ˈkʁɪstɔf ˈɛʃn̩bax]), born February 20, 1940, Breslau, Germany (now Wrocław, Poland) is a German-born pianist and conductor. He currently holds positions in Washington, D.C. as music director of the National Symphony Orchestra and music director of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Eschenbach's parents were Margarethe (née Jaross) and Heribert Ringmann. He was orphaned during World War II. His mother died giving birth to him; his father, a politically active anti-Nazi, was sent to the Eastern front as part of a Nazi punishment battalion where he was killed. As a result of this trauma, Eschenbach did not speak for a year, until he was asked if he wanted to play music. Wallydore Eschenbach (née Jaross), his mother's cousin, adopted him in 1946 and began to teach him to play the piano. At age 11, he attended a concert conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler which had a great impact on the youngster. In 1955 Eschenbach enrolled at the Musikhochschule in Cologne, studying piano with Hans-Otto Schmidt-Neuhaus and conducting with Wilhelm Brückner-Rüggeberg.
wn.com/Christoph_Eschenbach -
Claire Watson
Claire Watson (née McLamore) (February 3, 1927 - July 16, 1986) was an American soprano, particularly associated with Mozart and Richard Strauss roles.
Born in New York City, she studied at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, and later privately with Elisabeth Schumann and Sergius Kagen, in New York. She then left for Europe, where she studied in Vienna with Otto Klemperer. She made her stage debut in Graz, as Desdemona, in 1951.
She was engaged by the Frankfurt Opera in 1955, where she sang a wide range of roles, notably: Countess Almaviva, Pamina, Elisabeth, Leonora, Aida, Tatyana, Fiordiligi, Elisabeth de Valois, and the Die Marschallin, in which role she made her debut at the Royal Opera House in London in 1958, and at the Glyndebourne Festival in 1960.
In 1958, she became a member of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, where she sang as Eva and Sieglinde. She also made regular guest appearances in Berlin, Vienna, Salzburg, Milan, also appearing in America, notably in San Francisco, Chicago, and Buenos Aires. In 1971, Watson performed in Boston for the Peabody Mason Concert series.
wn.com/Claire_Watson -
Clemens Krauss
Clemens Heinrich Krauss (31 March 1893 – 16 May 1954) was an Austrian conductor and opera impresario, particularly associated with the music of Richard Strauss.
Krauss was born in Vienna, the out-of-wedlock child of Clementine Krauss, then a 15-year-old dancer in the Vienna Imperial Opera Ballet, later a leading actress and operetta singer, who was a niece of the prominent nineteenth-century operatic soprano, Gabrielle Krauss (1842-1904). His natural father, the chevalier Hector Baltazzi (1851-1916), belonged to a family of wealthy Phanariot bankers resident in Vienna. Baltazzi's older sister Helene was married to Baron Albin Vetsera and was the mother of Baroness Mary Vetsera, who was thus Clemens Krauss' first cousin.
As a boy, Krauss was a chorister in the Hofkapelle (Imperial Choir). He attended the Vienna Conservatory, graduating in 1912. He studied composition with Hermann Graedener and theory with Richard Heuberger. After graduation he was chorus master in the Brno Theater (1912-1913). There he made his conducting debut in 1913. The famous Romanian soprano Viorica Ursuleac, with whom he often performed, was his second wife.
wn.com/Clemens_Krauss -
Clifford Curzon
Sir Clifford Michael Curzon, CBE (18 May 1907 – 1 September 1982) was an English pianist.
Clifford Michael Siegenberg was born in London to Michael and Constance Mary Siegenberg (née Young). The family soon afterwards changed their name to Curzon.[citation needed]
Curzon studied at the Royal Academy of Music where he won the prestigious Macfarren Gold Medal in 1924, at the age of 17, Curzon was the youngest pupil ever to have been accepted into the senior school. In the same year he was made one of seven sub-professors, and completed his studies in 1926.
His public debut was at a Prom in 1923, when he played a Bach triple concerto under Henry J. Wood. Between 1928 and 1930 he took further instruction from Artur Schnabel in Berlin. He then studied under Wanda Landowska and Nadia Boulanger in Paris. He toured throughout Europe and the United States.
Curzon was particularly well known for his interpretations of Mozart and Schubert. Even though he left a considerable recording legacy, his distaste for recordings was well known, and he very often prohibited the release to the public of records which he felt were not up to his best standard. In his earlier years he had been noted for his championing of modern music; Lennox Berkeley's Piano Sonata is dedicated to him. Later, he tended to stay with the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Austro-German repertoire.
wn.com/Clifford_Curzon -
Colin Davis
Sir Colin Rex Davis, CH, CBE (born 25 September 1927) is an English conductor. His repertoire is broad, but among the composers with whom he is particularly associated are Mozart, Berlioz, Elgar, Sibelius, Stravinsky and Tippett.
He studied as a clarinettist, but was intent on becoming a conductor. After struggles as a freelance conductor from 1949 to 1957, he gained a series of appointments with orchestras including the BBC Scottish Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. He has been associated with the London Symphony Orchestra for over 50 years, including over ten years as its principal conductor. He has also held the musical directorships of Sadler's Wells Opera and the Royal Opera House, where he was principal conductor for over fifteen years. His guest conductorships include the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Dresden Staatskapelle, among many others.
As a teacher, Davis holds posts at the Royal Academy of Music, London, and the Carl Maria von Weber High School of Music in Dresden. He made his first gramophone recordings in 1958, and his discography built up in the succeeding five decades is extensive, with a large number of studio recordings for Philips Records and a growing catalogue of live recordings for the London Symphony Orchestra's own label.
wn.com/Colin_Davis -
Daniel Barenboim
Daniel Barenboim, KBE (born 15 November 1942) is an Argentine-born pianist and conductor. He has served as music director of several major symphonic and operatic orchestras and made numerous recordings.
Currently, he is general music director of La Scala in Milan, the Berlin State Opera, and the Staatskapelle Berlin; he previously served as Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre de Paris. Barenboim is also known for his work with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, a Sevilla-based orchestra of young Arab and Israeli musicians, and as an outspoken critic of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.
Barenboim has received many awards and prizes, including an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, France's Légion d'honneur both as a Commander and Grand Officier, the German Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz and Willy Brandt Award, and, together with the Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said, Spain's Prince of Asturias Concord Award. He has won seven Grammy awards for his work and discography.
wn.com/Daniel_Barenboim -
Dizzy Gillespie
John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie ( /ɡɨˈlɛspi/; October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer and, occasionally, singer.
Allmusic's Scott Yanow wrote, "Dizzy Gillespie's contributions to jazz were huge. One of the greatest jazz trumpeters of all time (some would say the best), Gillespie was such a complex player that his contemporaries ended up copying Miles Davis and Fats Navarro instead, and it was not until Jon Faddis's emergence in the 1970s that Dizzy's style was successfully recreated . . . Arguably Gillespie is remembered, by both critics and fans alike, as one of the greatest jazz trumpeters of all time."
Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and improviser, building on the virtuoso style of Roy Eldridge but adding layers of harmonic complexity previously unknown in jazz. His beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, his scat singing, his bent horn, pouched cheeks and his light-hearted personality were essential in popularizing bebop.
In the 1940s Gillespie, together with Charlie Parker, became a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz. He taught and influenced many other musicians, including trumpeters Miles Davis, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown, Arturo Sandoval, Lee Morgan, Jon Faddis and Chuck Mangione.
wn.com/Dizzy_Gillespie -
Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich Russian pronunciation: [ˈdmʲitrʲɪj ˈdmʲitrʲɪɪvʲɪt͡ɕ ʂəstɐˈkovʲɪt͡ɕ] (Russian: Дмитрий Дмитриевич Шостакович; 25 September 1906 – 9 August 1975) was a Soviet Russian composer and pianist and was one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century.
Shostakovich achieved fame in the Soviet Union under the patronage of Leon Trotsky's chief of staff Mikhail Tukhachevsky, but later had a complex and difficult relationship with the government. Nevertheless, he received accolades and state awards and served in the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR (1947–1962) and the USSR (from 1962 until death).
After a period influenced by Sergei Prokofiev and Igor Stravinsky, Shostakovich developed a hybrid style, as exemplified by Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (1934). This single work juxtaposed a wide variety of trends, including the neo-classical style (showing the influence of Stravinsky) and post-Romanticism (after Gustav Mahler). Sharp contrasts and elements of the grotesque characterize much of his music.
wn.com/Dmitri_Shostakovich -
Donald Johanos
Donald George Johanos (February 10, 1928–May 29, 2007) was a conductor and music director with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra. He was recognized for his support of contemporary classical music. He performed or conducted on at least 16 recordings.
Johanos was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1928. He attended the Eastman School of Music, receiving an undergraduate degree in violin, a master's degree in music theory and a performer's certificate in conducting.
After his graduation from Eastman, Johanos played violin for five years in the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, where he received coaching in conducting from the music director, Erich Leinsdorf. In 1958, Johanos won the International Conductors Competition run by the Netherlands Radio Union.
In 1962, Johanos became the music director and principal conductor with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. During this period, he conducted the orchestra in several recordings. However, he had problems with the musicians during his stint in Dallas, resulting in his departure in 1970.
wn.com/Donald_Johanos -
Dudley Moore
Dudley Stuart John Moore, CBE (19 April 1935 – 27 March 2002) was an English actor, comedian, composer and musician.
Moore first came to prominence as one of the four writer-performers in the ground-breaking comedy revue Beyond the Fringe in the early 1960s, and then became famous as half of the highly popular television double-act he formed with Peter Cook.
His fame as a comedy film actor was later heightened by success in hit Hollywood films such as 10 with Bo Derek and Arthur in the late 1970s and early 1980s, respectively. He received an Oscar nomination for the latter role. He was frequently referred to in the media as "Cuddly Dudley" or "The Sex Thimble", a reference to his short stature and reputation as a "ladies' man".
Moore was born in Charing Cross Hospital, London, the son of Ada Francis (née Hughes), a secretary, and John Moore, a railway electrician. He was brought up in Dagenham, Essex. He was notably short: 5 ft 2.5 in (1.588 m) and was born with club feet that required extensive hospital treatment and which, coupled with his diminutive stature, made him the butt of jokes from other children. His right foot responded well to corrective treatment and had straightened itself by the time he was six, but his left foot became permanently twisted and consequently his left leg below the knee was withered. Seeking refuge from his problems, he became a choirboy at the age of six and took up piano and violin. He rapidly developed into a highly talented pianist and organist and was playing the pipe organ at church weddings by the age of 14. He attended Dagenham County High School (now The Sydney Russell School) where he received musical tuition from a dedicated teacher, Peter Cork. Cork became a friend and confidant to Moore, corresponding with him until 1994.
wn.com/Dudley_Moore -
Désiré Defauw
Désiré Defauw (5 September 1885, Ghent, Belgium – 25 July 1960, Gary, Indiana, United States) was a Belgian conductor and violinist.
He was professor of conducting at the Brussels Conservatory and was the first conductor of the Orchestre National de Belgique from 1937. He left Belgium for North America in 1940 and was music director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra from 1941 to 1952. He was also music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1943 to 1947. In 1947 he recorded the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with the CSO and Mischa Elman as soloist. Defauw was also a composer.
wn.com/Désiré_Defauw -
Eduard van Beinum
Eduard van Beinum (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈɛdu̯ɑrd ʋɑn ˈbɛi̯nəm]) (September 3, 1901 – April 13, 1959, Amsterdam) was a Dutch conductor.
Beinum was born in Arnhem, Netherlands, where he received his first violin and piano lessons at an early age. He joined the Arnhem Orchestra as a violinist in 1918. His grandfather was conductor of a military band. His father played the double bass in the local symphony orchestra, the Arnhemse Orkest (later Het Gelders Orkest). His brother Co van Beinum was a violinist, and the two brothers performed as a violin-piano duo in concerts. As a student at the Amsterdam Conservatoire, he gained conducting experience with several concerts by amateur ensembles in Schiedam and Zutphen. He also conducted concerts by the choir of the church of St. Nicholas in Amsterdam.
Van Beinum was the conductor of the Haarlem Orchestral Society from 1927 to 1931. He first conducted the Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam in 1929. He became second conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1931, under the supervision of Willem Mengelberg. In 1938 he was named co-principal conductor, alongside Mengelberg. After World War II, Mengelberg was dismissed as principal conductor because of controversy over his (still-disputed) behavior and attitude towards the Nazi occupiers in the Netherlands. According to Kees Wisse, Van Beinum "detested the Nazis and kept himself as aloof as he could." Van Beinum did receive a reprimand after the post-war de-Nazification activities, but this was not so severe as to keep him from his post with the Concertgebouw. Van Beinum remained as sole principal conductor of the orchestra after the war.
wn.com/Eduard_van_Beinum -
Edward Albee
Edward Franklin Albee III ( /ˈɔːlbiː/ AWL-bee; born March 12, 1928) is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story (1958), The Sandbox (1959), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), and a rewrite of the book for the unsuccessful musical version of Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's (1966). His works are considered well-crafted, often unsympathetic examinations of the modern condition. His early works reflect a mastery and Americanization of the Theatre of the Absurd that found its peak in works by European playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, and Jean Genet. Younger American playwrights, such as Paula Vogel, credit Albee's daring mix of theatricalism and biting dialogue with helping to reinvent the post-war American theatre in the early 1960s. Albee continues to experiment in new works, such as The Goat: or, Who Is Sylvia? (2002).
According to Magill's Survey of American Literature (2007), Edward Albee was born somewhere in Virginia (the popular belief is that he was born in Washington, D.C.). He was adopted two weeks later and taken to Larchmont, New York in Westchester County, where he grew up. Albee's adoptive father, Reed A. Albee, the wealthy son of vaudeville magnate Edward Franklin Albee II, owned several theaters. Here the young Edward first gained familiarity with the theatre as a child. His adoptive mother, Reed's third wife, Frances tried to raise Albee to fit into their social circles.
wn.com/Edward_Albee -
Edward Elgar
Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet OM, GCVO (2 June 1857 – 23 February 1934) was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos for violin and cello, and two symphonies. He also composed choral works, including The Dream of Gerontius, chamber music and songs. He was appointed Master of the King's Musick in 1924.
Although Elgar is often regarded as a typically English composer, most of his musical influences were not from England but from continental Europe. He felt himself to be an outsider, not only musically, but socially. In musical circles dominated by academics, he was a self-taught composer; in Protestant Britain, his Roman Catholicism was regarded with suspicion in some quarters; and in the class-conscious society of Victorian and Edwardian Britain, he was acutely sensitive about his humble origins even after he achieved recognition. He nevertheless married the daughter of a senior British army officer. She inspired him both musically and socially, but he struggled to achieve success until his forties, when after a series of moderately successful works his Enigma Variations (1899) became immediately popular in Britain and overseas. He followed the Variations with a choral work, The Dream of Gerontius (1900), based on a Roman Catholic text that caused some disquiet in the Anglican establishment in Britain, but it became, and has remained, a core repertory work in Britain and elsewhere. His later full-length religious choral works were well received but have not entered the regular repertory. The first of his Pomp and Circumstance Marches (1901) is well known in the English-speaking world.
wn.com/Edward_Elgar -
Edward Greenfield
Edward Greenfield (born 1928, Westcliff-on-Sea, England) is an English music critic and broadcaster. He joined the Manchester Guardian in 1953, working as a lobby correspondent in the House of Commons. He has been a record critic for the newspaper since 1955, a music critic since 1964, and was chief music critic from 1977 until his retirement in 1993. He has contributed to Gramophone magazine since 1960, and has been joint editor of The Stereo Record Guide since 1960. A regular broadcaster on the BBC, he presented classical music programmes on the World Service, including The Greenfield Collection, and was a regular contributor to the 'Building a Library' feature of Radio 3's Record Review (now CD Review) for many years.
He is the author of monographs on Puccini (1958), Joan Sutherland (1972) and André Previn (1973). He was awarded the OBE in 1994.
Extracts from Edward Greenfield’s memoirs can be found here.
wn.com/Edward_Greenfield -
Edward Villella
Edward Villella (born October 1, 1936, Bayside), New York, is a danseur and choreographer, frequently cited as America's most celebrated male dancer at the time.
Villella enrolled in the School of American Ballet at age ten, but then interrupted his studies to complete his college education. He attended the New York Maritime Academy, where he lettered in baseball and was a championship boxer. He graduated with a marine science degree in 1959, and rejoined the School of American Ballet.
Villella became a member of the New York City Ballet in 1957, rising to soloist in 1958 and principal dancer in 1960. Among his most noteworthy performances were Oberon in George Balanchine's ballet A Midsummer Night's Dream (with music by Felix Mendelssohn), Tarantella, Rubies in the Balanchine ballet Jewels, and Prodigal Son.
Villella was the first American male dancer to appear with the Royal Danish Ballet, and the only American ever asked to dance an encore at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. He danced at the inaugural for President John F. Kennedy, and performed for Presidents Johnson, Nixon, and Ford. He won an Emmy Award in 1975 for his CBS television production of Harlequinade. He danced in two television versions of The Nutcracker (in different roles), in a ballet film version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and in a 1966 TV production of Brigadoon, in which he played the tragic suitor Harry Beaton. During the 1960s he and his dancing partner Patricia McBride, who starred together in a 1965 television version of The Nutcracker, appeared often on the Ed Sullivan Show. In 1973, Villella appeared as himself in an episode of The Odd Couple titled "Last Tango in Newark" during which he said (much to Felix's dismay) that he always wanted to be a professional football player; his son, Roddy, also appeared. In 1983, Villella guest-starred on the soap opera Guiding Light.
wn.com/Edward_Villella -
Elisabeth Frink
Dame Elisabeth Jean Frink, DBE, CH, RA (14 November 1930 – 18 April 1993) was an English sculptor and printmaker. Her The Times obituary noted the three essential themes in her work as the nature of Man; the "horseness" of horses; and the divine in human form.
Born in Thurlow, Suffolk, Frink studied at the Guildford School of Art (1946–1949), under Willi Soukop, at the Chelsea School of Art (1949–1953). Part of a post war group of British sculptors, dubbed the Geometry of Fear school - that included Reg Butler, Bernard Meadows, Kenneth Armitage and Eduardo Paolozzi. Frink’s subject matter included men, birds, dogs, horses and religious motifs, but very seldom any female forms. Bird (1952; London, Tate), one of a number of bird sculptures, and her first successful pieces (also Three Heads and the Figurative Tradition) with its alert, menacing stance, characterizes her early work.[citation needed]
Although she made many drawings and prints, she is best known for her bronze outdoor sculpture, which has a distinctive cut and worked surface. This is created by her adding plaster to an armature, which she then worked back into with a chisel and surform. This process contradicts the very essence of "modeling form" established in the modeling tradition and defined by Rodin's handling of clay.[citation needed]
wn.com/Elisabeth_Frink -
Elizabeth II
Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; born 21 April 1926) is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms, and head of the 54-member Commonwealth of Nations. She is also head of state of the Crown Dependencies.
Elizabeth was born in London, and educated privately at home. Her father acceded to the throne as George VI in 1936 on the abdication of his brother Edward VIII. She began to undertake public duties during the Second World War, in which she served in the Auxiliary Territorial Service. On the death of her father in 1952, she became Head of the Commonwealth and queen regnant of seven independent Commonwealth countries: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan, and Ceylon. Her coronation service in 1953 was the first to be televised. Between 1956 and 1992, the number of her realms varied as territories gained independence and some realms became republics. Today, in addition to the first four aforementioned countries, Elizabeth is Queen of Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize, Antigua and Barbuda, and Saint Kitts and Nevis.
wn.com/Elizabeth_II -
Elliott Carter
Elliott Cook Carter Jr. (born December 11, 1908) is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer born and living in New York City. He studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the 1930s, and then returned to the United States. After a neoclassical phase, he went on to write atonal, rhythmically complex music. His compositions, which have been performed all over the world, include orchestral and chamber music as well as solo instrumental and vocal works.
He has been extremely productive in his later years, publishing more than 40 works between the ages of 90 and 100, and over 14 more since he turned 100 in 2008.
Carter's father, Elliott Carter Sr., was a businessman and his mother was the former Florence Chambers. The family was well-to-do. As a teenager, he developed an interest in music and was encouraged in this regard by the composer Charles Ives (who sold insurance to his family). In 1924, a galvanized 15-year-old Carter was in the audience when Pierre Monteux conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the New York première of The Rite of Spring, according to a 2008 report. Carter was again in attendance (see below) at Carnegie Hall, on the occasion of his 100th birthday in 2008, when the orchestra, now under the baton of James Levine, again performed the Stravinsky piece as part of its tribute to Carter. Although Carter majored in English at Harvard College, he also studied music there and at the nearby Longy School of Music. His professors included Walter Piston and Gustav Holst. He sang with the Harvard Glee Club. He did graduate work in music at Harvard, from which he received a Master's degree in music in 1932. He then went to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger (as did many other American composers). Carter worked with Mlle Boulanger from 1932–35 and in 1935 he received a doctorate in music (D Mus) from the Ecole Normale in Paris. Later in 1935, he returned to the US where he wrote music for the Ballet Caravan.
wn.com/Elliott_Carter -
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977) was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King".
Born in Tupelo, Mississippi, Presley moved to Memphis, Tennessee, with his family at the age of 13. He began his career there in 1954, working with Sun Records owner Sam Phillips, who wanted to bring the sound of African American music to a wider audience. Accompanied by guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, Presley was the most important popularizer of rockabilly, an uptempo, backbeat-driven fusion of country and rhythm and blues. RCA Victor acquired his contract in a deal arranged by Colonel Tom Parker, who would manage the singer for over two decades. Presley's first RCA single, "Heartbreak Hotel", released in January 1956, was a number one hit. He became the leading figure of the newly popular sound of rock and roll with a series of network television appearances and chart-topping records. His energized interpretations of songs, many from African American sources, and his uninhibited performance style made him enormously popular—and controversial. In November 1956, he made his film debut in Love Me Tender.
wn.com/Elvis_Presley -
Eric Ericson
Eric Ericson (help·info) (born 26 October 1918, Borås), is a Swedish choral conductor and influential choral teacher. He graduated from the Royal College of Music (Kungl. Musikhögskolan) in Stockholm in 1943 and went on to complete his studies abroad, at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, Switzerland, and in Germany, Great Britain, and the United States.
Renowned for his innovative teaching methods and the wide-ranging nature of his repertoire, Ericson was the principal conductor of the Orphei Drängar choir at Uppsala University from 1951 until 1991, and choirmaster until 1982 of the Swedish Radio Choir which was established on his initiative in 1951. Also in 1951, he began his teaching career at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, where he became a legendary and inspirational figure, and he was appointed to the chair of choral conducting there in 1968.
He won the Nordic Council Music Prize in 1995, and in 1997 Ericson shared the Polar Music Prize with Bruce Springsteen: the citation was for "pioneering achievements as a conductor, teacher, artistic originator and inspirer in Swedish and international choral music". On the occasion of his 80th birthday in 1998, Swedbank of Sweden endowed an "Eric Ericson Chair in Choral Directing" to Uppsala University.
wn.com/Eric_Ericson -
Erich Kleiber
Erich Kleiber (5 August, 1890, Alsergrund, Vienna – 27 January, 1956, Zurich) was an Austrian conductor.
Born in Vienna, Kleiber studied in Prague. In 1923, after conducting a stirring performance of Beethoven's Fidelio at the Berlin State Opera, he became that institution's music director.
He was known for his interpretations of the standard symphonic and operatic repertoire, as well as for championing new works. In 1925 he conducted the première of Alban Berg's opera, Wozzeck. When Berg's second opera Lulu was branded Entartete Musik (degenerate music) by the Nazi Party, Kleiber, who was not Jewish and therefore could have continued his career under the Nazi regime, resigned from his post at the Berlin Opera in protest. Kleiber also repudiated his contract with La Scala in Milan in April 1939, shortly after the fascist Mussolini regime enacted its own anti-semitic legislation, saying: "...[since] la Scala is denied for Jews...both as a Christian and an artist, I can no longer co-operate."
wn.com/Erich_Kleiber -
Erich Leinsdorf
Erich Leinsdorf (born Erich Landauer) (February 4, 1912 – September 11, 1993) was an Austrian-born American conductor. He performed and recorded with leading orchestras and opera companies throughout the United States and Europe, earning a reputation for exacting standards as well as an acerbic personality. He also published books and essays on musical matters.
Leinsdorf was born to a Jewish family in Vienna, and was studying music at a local school by the age of 5. He played the cello and studied composition. In his teens, Leinsdorf worked as a piano accompanist for singers. He studied conducting at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, and later at the University of Vienna and the Vienna Academy of Music. From 1934 to 1937 he worked as an assistant to the noted conductors Bruno Walter and Arturo Toscanini at the Salzburg Festival.
In November 1937, Leinsdorf travelled to the United States to take up a position as assistant conductor at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. As it turned out, his departure from Austria came a few short months ahead of the Anschluss of March 1938, when the country was taken over by Nazi Germany. With the assistance of freshman Representative from Texas Lyndon B. Johnson, he was able to stay in the United States, and became a naturalized American citizen in 1942.
wn.com/Erich_Leinsdorf -
Ernő Dohnányi
Ernő Dohnányi (pronounced [ˈɛrnøː ˈdohnaːɲi]) (July 27, 1877 – February 9, 1960) was a Hungarian conductor, composer, and pianist. He used the German form of his name Ernst von Dohnányi for most of his published compositions.
The Dohnányi family was ennobled by Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Hungary.[citation needed]
Dohnányi was born in Pozsony, Kingdom of Hungary, Austria-Hungarian Empire, (today Bratislava, capital of Slovakia). He first studied music with his father, a professor of mathematics and amateur cellist, at gymnasium, but afterwards became a pupil at the Budapest Academy of Music, studying piano and composition with Carl Forstner, organist of the Bratislava Cathedral. In 1894 he became a pupil of István Thomán for piano and of Hans von Koessler (a cousin of Max Reger) for composition. Béla Bartók was one of his classmates there. Dohnányi's first published composition, his Piano Quintet in C minor, earned the approval of Johannes Brahms, who promoted the work in Vienna.
wn.com/Ernő_Dohnányi -
Fayard Nicholas
Fayard Antonio Nicholas (October 20, 1914 – January 24, 2006) was an American choreographer, dancer and actor. He, along with his brother Harold, made up the Nicholas Brothers tap-dance duo who starred in the MGM musicals An All-Colored Vaudeville Show (1935), Stormy Weather (1943), The Pirate (1948), The Five Heartbeats (1991) and Hard Four (2007). Fayard Nicholas was a member of the Bahá'í Faith.
Fayard was inducted into the National Museum of Dance C.V. Whitney Hall of Fame in 2001, along with his brother Harold Nicholas.
wn.com/Fayard_Nicholas -
Felix Mottl
Felix Josef von Mottl (1856 – 2 July 1911) was an Austrian conductor and composer. He was regarded as one of the most brilliant conductors of his day. He composed three operas, of which Agnes Bernauer (Weimar, 1880) was the most successful, as well as a string quartet and numerous songs and other music. His orchestration of Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder is still the most commonly performed version. He was also a teacher, counting among his pupils Ernest van Dyck and Wilhelm Petersen.
Born in Unter Sankt Veit, today Hietzing, Vienna, Mottl's birth date has been reported variously as 29 July, 24 August, and 29 August. After early voice training at the Löwenburg Konvikt, a training school for the Imperial Court Chapel, Mottl had a successful career at the Vienna Conservatoire. He became known as a gifted conductor of Wagner's music, and assisted Hans Richter in the preparations for the first complete Ring Cycle at Bayreuth; in 1886 he directed the performance of Tristan und Isolde at the Bayreuth Festival. From 1881 to 1903 he was conductor at the Karlsruhe Opera, and made a wide reputation for his activity there, particularly in producing the works of Wagner, Hector Berlioz and Emmanuel Chabrier, whose operas he championed; Mottl also orchestrated Chabrier's Bourrée fantasque and Trois valses romantiques. In later years, as a conductor of Wagner especially, he visited London and New York, where he was guest conductor for the Metropolitan Opera in 1903. In 1904 he was made a director of the Akademie der Künste at Berlin.
wn.com/Felix_Mottl -
Ferenc Fricsay
Ferenc Fricsay (9 August 1914 – 20 February 1963) (pronounced [ˈfɛrɛnts ˈfritʃɒj]) was a Hungarian conductor. From 1960 until his death, he was an Austrian citizen.
Fricsay was born in Budapest in 1914 and studied music under Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály, Ernst von Dohnányi, and Leo Weiner. With these and other faculty at the Budapest Academy of Music he studied piano, violin, clarinet, trombone, percussion, composition and conducting. Fricsay made his first appearance as a conductor at age 15, substituting for his father at the podium of the Young Musicians Orchestra of Budapest. In 1930, at the age of 16, he succeeded his father as conductor of the Young Musicians Orchestra.
On graduating in 1933, Fricsay became repetiteur for the chorus of the Budapest Opera; then, from 1933 to 1943, he was music director of the Szeged Philharmonic Orchestra (Szeged is the third largest city in Hungary); he also served as director of its military band from 1933. In 1942, he was court-martialed by the government of Miklós Horthy for wanting to employ Jewish musicians, and for having "Jewish blood" himself (according to reliable reports, his mother was Jewish). When the Nazis occupied Hungary in 1944, the chief editor of the Szeged daily newspaper warned Fricsay that the Gestapo planned to arrest him; he and his wife and three children avoided this fate by going underground in Budapest.
wn.com/Ferenc_Fricsay -
Franz Lachner
Franz Paul Lachner (2 April 1803 – 20 January 1890) was a German composer and conductor.
Lachner was born in Rain am Lech to a musical family (his brothers Ignaz, Theodor and Vinzenz also became musicians). He studied music with Simon Sechter and Maximilian, the Abbé Stadler. He conducted at the Theater am Kärntnertor in Vienna. In 1834, he became Kapellmeister at Mannheim. In 1835 he received the first prize for symphonic composition at Vienna with his Sinfonia passionata, and became royal Kapellmeister at Munich, becoming a major figure in its musical life, conducting at the opera and various concerts and festivals. His career there came to a sudden end in 1864 after Richard Wagner's disciple Hans von Bülow took over Lachner's duties. Lachner remained officially in his post on extended leave for a few years until his contract expired.
Lachner was a well-known and prolific composer in his day, though he is not now considered a major composer. His work, influenced by Ludwig van Beethoven and his friend Franz Schubert, is regarded as competent and craftsman-like, but is now generally little known. Among his greatest successes were his opera Caterina Cornaro (1841), his Requiem and his seventh orchestral suite (1881). In the present day it may be his organ sonatas (Opp. 175, 176, 177) as well as chamber music, in particular his music for wind instruments, that receives the most attention, though his string quartets and some of his eight symphonies have been performed and recorded. His songs, some of which are set to the same texts that Schubert used in his songs, contributed to the development of the German Lied.
wn.com/Franz_Lachner -
Franz Wüllner
Franz Wüllner (28 January 1832 – 7 September 1902) was a German composer and conductor. He led the premieres of Richard Wagner's operas Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, but was much criticized by Wagner himself, who greatly preferred the more celebrated conductors Hans von Bülow and Hermann Levi.
Wüllner was born in Münster and studied in his native place, and at Frankfurt, Berlin, Brussels, and Munich. Among his teachers was Anton Schindler, who styled himself Beethoven's amanuensis carrying on the true traditions of the master's style, a claim disputed by Beethoven's pupil Carl Czerny. In 1856 Wüllner became instructor in piano at the Munich Conservatory. He held the position of town musical director at Aix-la-Chapelle from 1858 to 1864. In 1867 he became director of the choral classes in the reorganized School of Music at Munich and wrote for them Chorübungen der Münchener Musikschule, text of score reading and singing (Solfege).
He succeeded the temperamental Bülow in 1869 as conductor of the Court Opera and the Academy Courts. Here he conducted the first performances of Rheingold and Walküre (1869, 1870) before the production of the entire Ring cycle at the first Bayreuth Festival of 1876. It is for these renditions that he is usually remembered now.
wn.com/Franz_Wüllner -
Fred Ebb
Fred Ebb (April 8, 1928 – September 11, 2004) was an American musical theatre lyricist who had many successful collaborations with composer John Kander. The Kander and Ebb team frequently wrote for such performers as Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera.
Ebb was born in Manhattan to a Jewish family, the son of Anna Evelyn (née Gritz) and Harry Ebb. He worked during the early 1950s bronzing baby shoes, as a trucker's assistant, and was also employed in a department store credit office and at a hosiery company. He graduated from New York University with a bachelor’s degree in English Literature, and also earned his Master’s Degree in English from Columbia University.
One of his early collaborators was Phil Springer, and a song they wrote together ("I Never Loved Him Anyhow") was recorded by Carmen McRae in 1956. Another song Ebb wrote with Springer was "Heartbroken" (1953), which was recorded by Judy Garland, the mother of his future protégée, Liza Minnelli. Other Springer-Ebb tunes include "Moonlight Gambler" and "Nevertheless I Never Lost the Blues". "Don't Forget", which he wrote with Norman Leyden, was recorded by singer Eddy Arnold in 1954.
wn.com/Fred_Ebb -
Frederick Stock
Frederick Stock (Friedrich August Stock) (November 11, 1872, Jülich, Rhine Province – October 20, 1942, Chicago, Illinois) was a German conductor and composer, most famous for his 37-year tenure as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Born in Jülich, Germany, Stock was given his early musical education by his army bandmaster father. At the age of 14, Frederick Stock was admitted into the Cologne Conservatory as a student of violin and composition, where he counted Engelbert Humperdinck as one of his teachers, and Willem Mengelberg among his classmates. After graduating from the conservatory in 1890, Stock was accepted to the Municipal Orchestra of Cologne as a violinist.
In 1895, Stock met with Theodore Thomas, founder and first music director of the then fledgling Chicago Orchestra and the man who was to have a decisive impact on Stock's future. Thomas, who was then visiting Germany in search of recruits for his Chicago Orchestra, auditioned Stock and gave him a position as violist in the orchestra. Thomas soon realized, however, that his new violist was also a very talented conductor and in 1899, Stock was promoted to assistant conductor.
wn.com/Frederick_Stock -
Fritz Busch
Fritz Busch (13 March 1890 - 14 September 1951) was a German conductor.
Busch was born in Siegen, Province of Westphalia. He held posts conducting opera at Aachen, Stuttgart and Dresden. In 1933 he was dismissed from his post at Dresden because of his opposition to the new Nazi government of Germany. He went on to work in South America and Scandinavia before becoming the music director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera in England in 1934. He remained at Glyndebourne until the outbreak of World War II. After this he focused on work in South America and at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. From 1934 to 1951 he was principal guest conductor of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra in Copenhagen. He resumed the Glyndebourne musical directorship in 1950.
He was a National Patron of Delta Omicron, an international professional music fraternity.
Busch was the brother of the distinguished violinist Adolf Busch and of the cellist Hermann Busch. He died in London in 1951.
Source: Fritz Busch discography (in German) [1]
wn.com/Fritz_Busch -
Fritz Reiner
Frederick Martin “Fritz” Reiner (December 19, 1888 – November 15, 1963) was a prominent conductor of opera and symphonic music in the twentieth century. Hungarian born and trained, he emigrated to the United States, in 1922, where he rose to prominence as a conductor with several orchestras. He reached the pinnacle of his career, while music director with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the 1950s and early 1960s.
Reiner was born in Budapest, Hungary into a secular Jewish family that resided in the Pest area of the city. After preliminary studies in law at his father’s urging, Reiner pursued the study of piano, piano pedagogy, and composition at the Franz Liszt Academy. During his last two years there his piano teacher was the young Béla Bartók. After early engagements at opera houses in Budapest and Dresden where he worked closely with Richard Strauss, he moved to the United States of America in 1922 to take the post of Principal Conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. He remained until 1931, having become a naturalized citizen in 1928, then began to teach at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where his pupils included Leonard Bernstein and Lukas Foss. He conducted the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra from 1938 to 1948 and made a few recordings with them for Columbia Records, then spent several years at the Metropolitan Opera, where he conducted a historic production of Strauss's Salome in 1949, with the Bulgarian soprano Ljuba Welitsch in the title role, and the American premiere of Igor Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress in 1951. He also conducted and made a recording of the famous 1952 Metropolitan Opera production of Bizet's Carmen, starring Rise Stevens. The production was telecast on closed circuit television that year. At the time of his death he was preparing the Met's new production of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung.
wn.com/Fritz_Reiner -
Georg Kulenkampff
Georg Kulenkampff (23 January 1898 - 4 October 1948) was one of the world's most prominent concert violinists, one of the best-known German virtuosi of the 1930s and 1940s. Widely considered one of the finest violinists of the 20th century, Kulenkampff was known for his interpretations of works from the Romantic period. Kulenkampff gave the premiere performance of Robert Schumann's violin concerto and made the first recording of the piece; additionally, his performances of the violin concertos of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Glazunov, and Bruch are considered among the finest on record. Only the fact that his recording career coincided with the Nazi era, coupled with his early death from encephalitis, has prevented his name from being better known to modern listeners.
Georg Kulenkampff was the son of a well-to-do merchant family in Bremen. He took an interest in the violin from a very young age, and from 1904 (aged 6) began to receive instruction from the concertmaster of the Bremen Philharmonic Orchestra, and afterwards with its conductor Ernst Wendel. He then received lessons and much encouragement from Leopold Auer (teacher of Mischa Elman, Efrem Zimbalist, Nathan Milstein and others) in Dresden, and made a concert debut in 1912 as solo violinist. On Auer's recommendation he was sent to study with Willy Heß at the Berlin Music Hochschule and became director of the Hochschule Orchestra.
wn.com/Georg_Kulenkampff -
Georg Solti
Sir Georg Solti, KBE, /ˈdʒɔrdʒ ˈʃɒlti/ (21 October 1912 – 5 September 1997) was an orchestral and operatic conductor, best known for his appearances with opera companies in Munich, Frankfurt and London, and as a long-serving music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Born in Hungary, he studied in Budapest with Béla Bartók, Leo Weiner and Ernő Dohnányi. In the 1930s, he was a répétiteur at the Hungarian State Opera and worked at the Salzburg Festival for Arturo Toscanini. His career was interrupted by the rise of the Nazis, and because he was a Jew he fled the increasingly restrictive anti-semitic laws in 1938. After conducting a season of Russian ballet in London at the Royal Opera House he found refuge in Switzerland, where he remained during the Second World War. Not permitted to conduct there, he earned a living as a pianist.
After the war Solti was appointed musical director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich from 1946. In 1952 he moved to the Frankfurt Opera, where he remained in charge for nine years. He took German citizenship in 1953. In 1961 he became musical director of the Covent Garden Opera Company in London. During his ten-year tenure, he introduced changes that saw standards raised to the highest international levels. Under his musical directorship the status of the company was recognised with the grant of the title "the Royal Opera". He became a British subject in 1972.
wn.com/Georg_Solti -
George Szell
George Szell ( /ˈsɛl/; June 7, 1897 – July 30, 1970), originally György Széll, György Endre Szél, or Georg Szell, was a Hungarian-born American conductor and composer. He is remembered today for his long and successful tenure as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra, and for the recordings of the standard classical repertoire he made in Cleveland and with other orchestras.
Szell came to Cleveland in 1946 to take over a respected if undersized orchestra, which was struggling to recover from the disruptions of World War II. By the time of his death he was credited, to quote the critic Donal Henahan, with having built it into "what many critics regarded as the world's keenest symphonic instrument." Through his recordings, Szell has remained a presence in the classical music world long after his death, and his name remains synonymous with that of the Cleveland Orchestra. While on tour with the Orchestra in the late 1980s, then-Music Director Christoph von Dohnányi remarked, "We give a great concert, and George Szell gets a great review."
wn.com/George_Szell -
Gidon Kremer
Gidon Kremer (Latvian: Gidons Krēmers; born February 27, 1947) is a Latvian violinist and conductor. In 1980 he left the USSR and settled in Germany.
Kremer was born in Riga to parents of German-Jewish (his father being a Holocaust survivor) and Latvian-Swedish origins. He began playing the violin at the age of four, receiving instruction from his father and his grandfather, who were both professional violinists. He went on to study at the Riga School of Music and with David Oistrakh at the Moscow Conservatory. In 1967, he won third prize at the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition in Brussels; then, in 1969, second prize at the Montreal International Violin Competition (shared with Oleh Krysa) followed by first prize at the Paganini Competition in Genoa; and finally first prize again in 1970 at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.
Kremer's first concert in the West was in Germany in 1975, followed by appearances at the Salzburg Festival in 1976 and in New York City in 1977. In 1981, Kremer founded a chamber music festival in Lockenhaus, Austria, with a focus on new and unconventional programming, serving as artistic director for 30 years. In 1996 Kremer founded the Kremerata Baltica chamber orchestra, composed of young players from the Baltic region. He was also among the artistic directors of the festival "Art Projekt 92" in Munich and is director of the Musiksommer Gstaad festival in Switzerland. In 2008, he and Kremerata Baltica toured with the classical musical comedy duo Igudesman & Joo. He also made regular appearances at the Verbier Festival until the summer of 2011, when he withdrew, issuing a public complaint of excessive hype.
wn.com/Gidon_Kremer -
Ginger Rogers
Ginger Rogers (July 16, 1911 – April 25, 1995) was an American actress, dancer, and singer who appeared in film, and on stage, radio, and television throughout much of the 20th century.
During her long career, she made a total of 73 films, and was best known as Fred Astaire's romantic interest and dancing partner in a series of ten Hollywood musical films that revolutionized the genre. She achieved great success on her own in a variety of film roles and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Kitty Foyle (1940). She ranks #14 on the AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars list of actress screen legends.
Rogers was born Virginia Katherine McMath in Independence, Missouri, the only child of William Eddins McMath, an electrical engineer, and his wife, Lela Emogene (née Owens; 1891–1977). Ginger's parents separated soon after her birth, and she and her mother went to live with her grandparents, Walter and Saphrona (née Ball) Owens, in nearby Kansas City. Rogers' parents fought over her custody. After her mother denied him visitation, her father reportedly absconded with his daughter twice. After her parents divorced, Rogers stayed with her grandparents while her mother wrote scripts for two years in Hollywood. Rogers was to remain close to her grandfather (much later, when she was a star in 1939, she bought him a home at 5115 Greenbush Avenue in Sherman Oaks, California so that he could be close to her while she was filming at the studios).[citation needed]
wn.com/Ginger_Rogers -
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (Italian pronunciation: [dʒuˈzɛppe ˈverdi]; 10 October 1813 – 27 January 1901) was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century. His works are frequently performed in opera houses throughout the world and, transcending the boundaries of the genre, some of his themes have long since taken root in popular culture – such as "La donna è mobile" from Rigoletto, "Va, pensiero" (The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves) from Nabucco, "Libiamo ne' lieti calici" (The Drinking Song) from La traviata and the "Grand March" from Aida.
Verdi’s masterworks dominate the standard opera repertoire a century and a half after their composition.
Verdi was born the son of Carlo Giuseppe Verdi and Luigia Uttini in Le Roncole, a village near Busseto, then in the Département Taro which was a part of the First French Empire after the annexation of the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza. The baptismal register, on 11 October lists him as being "born yesterday", but since days were often considered to begin at sunset, this could have meant either 9 or 10 October. The next day, he was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church in Latin as Joseph Fortuninus Franciscus. The day after that (Tuesday), Verdi's father took his newborn the three miles to Busseto, where the baby was recorded as Joseph Fortunin François; the clerk wrote in French. "So it happened that for the civil and temporal world Verdi was born a Frenchman."
wn.com/Giuseppe_Verdi -
Gottlob Frick
Gottlob Frick (born Ölbronn, Germany, 28 July 1906 - died Muhlacker, Germany, 18 August 1994) was a German bass who sang in opera. He was known for his wide repertory including Wagner and Mozart roles, as well as those of Nicolai and Lortzing.
Frick's teachers included Fritz Windgassen (father and teacher of Frick’s contemporary, the tenor Wolfgang Windgassen).
He was a member of the chorus at the state opera in Stuttgart 1927-1934. His first solo role was in Coburg in 1934-5, followed by Freiburg (1936-40) and Königsberg (1938) where he was spotted by Karl Böhm and engaged for the Dresden State Opera in 1941, which was his base for the following decade. In 1950 he moved to the Deutsche Oper Berlin and his international career took him to all the leading houses in Europe.
His voice, instantly recognisable by its dark, evil-sounding, almost reptilian timbre, was aptly described by Wilhelm Furtwängler as 'the blackest bass in Germany' (der schwärzeste Bass in Deutschland). This made up for the fact that it was somewhat smaller than others such as Josef Greindl's, Ludwig Weber's, and Kurt Boehme's.
wn.com/Gottlob_Frick -
Gregory Peck
Eldred Gregory Peck (April 5, 1916 – June 12, 2003) was an American actor.
One of the world's most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1960s, Peck continued to play important roles well into the 1980s. His notable performances include that of Atticus Finch in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird, for which he won an Academy Award. President Lyndon Johnson honored Peck with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969 for his lifetime humanitarian efforts. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Peck among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time, ranking at #12. He was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1983.
Eldred Gregory Peck was born in La Jolla, California, the son of Missouri-born Bernice Mae "Bunny" (née Ayres) and Gregory Pearl Peck, who was a chemist and pharmacist. Peck's father was of Irish (maternal) heritage and English (paternal) heritage, and his mother was of Scots (paternal) and English (maternal) ancestry. Peck's father was a Catholic and his mother converted upon marrying his father. Peck's Irish-born paternal grandmother, Catherine Ashe, was related to Thomas Ashe, who took part in the Easter Rising fewer than three weeks after Peck's birth and died while on hunger strike in 1917. Peck's parents divorced by the time he was six years old and he spent the next few years being raised by his maternal grandmother.
wn.com/Gregory_Peck -
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler (German pronunciation: [ˈɡʊstaf ˈmaːlɐ]; 7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then the Austrian Empire, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic. Then his family moved to nearby Iglau (now Jihlava) where Mahler grew up.
As a composer, he acted as a bridge between the 19th century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi era. After 1945 the music was discovered and championed by a new generation of listeners; Mahler then became one of the most frequently performed and recorded of all composers, a position he has sustained into the 21st century.
Born in humble circumstances, Mahler displayed his musical gifts at an early age. After graduating from the Vienna Conservatory in 1878, he held a succession of conducting posts of rising importance in the opera houses of Europe, culminating in his appointment in 1897 as director of the Vienna Court Opera (Hofoper). During his ten years in Vienna, Mahler—who had converted to Catholicism from Judaism to secure the post—experienced regular opposition and hostility from the anti-Semitic press. Nevertheless, his innovative productions and insistence on the highest performance standards ensured his reputation as one of the greatest of opera conductors, particularly as an interpreter of the stage works of Wagner and Mozart. Late in his life he was briefly director of New York's Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic.
wn.com/Gustav_Mahler -
György Kurtág
György Kurtág (Hungarian pronunciation: [ˌɟørɟ ˈkurtaːɡ]; born 19 February 1926 in Lugoj) is a Hungarian composer of contemporary music.
György Kurtág was born in Lugoj in the Banat region, Romania. In 1946, he began his studies at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, where he met his wife, Márta, and also György Ligeti, who became a close friend. His piano teacher at the academy was Pál Kadosa; he studied composition with Sándor Veress and Ferenc Farkas, and chamber music with Leó Weiner. He graduated in piano and chamber music in 1951 and received his degree in composition in 1955.
Following the Hungarian uprising in 1956, Kurtág’s time in Paris between 1957 and 1958 was of critical importance for him. Here, he studied with Olivier Messiaen and Darius Milhaud. During this time however, Kurtag was suffering from a severe depression: 'I realized to the point of despair that nothing I had believed to constitute the world was true...'. Kurtág received psychological therapy from Marianne Stein – an encounter that revivified the composer and strongly stimulated his artistic development. During this time he also discovered the works of Anton Webern and the plays of Samuel Beckett. The String Quartet he composed in 1959 after his return to Budapest marks this crucial turning point; he refers to this piece as his Opus 1. He dedicated it to his therapist, Stein.
wn.com/György_Kurtág -
György Ligeti
György Sándor Ligeti (Hungarian: Ligeti György Sándor, [ˈliɡɛti ˈɟørɟ ˈʃaːndor]; May 28, 1923 – June 12, 2006) was a composer of contemporary classical music. Born into a Hungarian Jewish family in Transylvania, Romania, he lived in Hungary before emigrating and becoming an Austrian citizen.
Ligeti was born in Dicsőszentmárton, which was renamed Târnăveni in 1945, in Transylvania to a Hungarian Jewish family. Ligeti recalls that his first exposure to languages other than Hungarian came one day while listening to a conversation among the Romanian-speaking town police. Before that he hadn't known that other languages existed. He moved to Kolozsvár (Cluj) with his family when he was 6, and he was not to return to the town of his birth until the 1990s.
Ligeti received his initial musical training in the conservatory at Kolozsvár (Cluj), and during the summers privately with Pál Kadosa in Budapest.
In 1940, Northern Transylvania was occupied by Hungary following the Second Vienna Award. In 1944, Ligeti's education was interrupted when he was sent to a forced labor brigade by the Horthy regime. His brother, age 16, was deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp, and both of his parents were sent to Auschwitz. His mother was the only other survivor of his immediate family.
wn.com/György_Ligeti -
Hans Hotter
Hans Hotter (19 January 1909 – 6 December 2003) was a German operatic bass-baritone, admired internationally after World War II for the power, beauty, and intelligence of his singing, especially in Wagner operas. He was extremely tall and his appearance was striking because of his high, narrow face, wide mouth, and big, aquiline nose. His voice and diction were equally recognisable.
Born in Offenbach am Main, Hesse, Hotter studied with Matthäus Roemer in Munich. He worked as an organist and choirmaster before making his operatic debut in Opava in 1930.
He performed in Germany and Austria under the Nazi regime, despite avoiding pressure on performers to join the Nazi Party, and made some appearances outside the country, including concerts under the baton of Bruno Walter in Amsterdam, who advised him that if Hotter could not leave his family members he had little alternative but remain in Germany. Hotter was unable to pursue an international career until his Covent Garden debut in 1947. After that, he sang in all the major opera houses of Europe. He made his Metropolitan Opera debut as the title role in The Flying Dutchman in 1950. In four seasons at the Met, he performed 35 times in 13 roles, almost all Wagnerian.
wn.com/Hans_Hotter -
Hans Knappertsbusch
Hans Knappertsbusch (12 March 1888 – 25 October 1965) was a German conductor, best known for his performances of the music of Richard Wagner, Anton Bruckner and Richard Strauss.
Knappertsbusch was born in Elberfeld, today's Wuppertal. He studied philosophy at Bonn University and conducting at the Cologne Conservatory with Fritz Steinbach. For a few summers, he assisted Siegfried Wagner and Hans Richter at Bayreuth. He began his career with conducting jobs in Elberfeld (1913-1918), Leipzig (1918-1919) and Dessau (1919-1922). When Bruno Walter left Munich for New York, Knappertsbusch succeeded him as General Music Director of the Bavarian State Orchestra and the Bavarian State Opera, with a lifelong contract. Knappertsbusch later refused to join the Nazi party.
He incurred the wrath of Goebbels by asking a German diplomat in the Netherlands whether he was a "Muss-Nazi" (someone who was forced to join the Nazi Party for career reasons): as a result his Munich contract was revoked. Hitler himself was involved in the decision to dismiss him. In 1936 Sir Thomas Beecham invited him to Covent Garden to conduct but his permit to leave Germany was withheld. In the late 1930s he went to Vienna to conduct at the Wiener Staatsoper, thus ignoring the Nazis' policy of not allowing German artists to work in Austria. At the same time he became one of the emerging artists of the Salzburg Festival. Knappertsbusch continued to appear in Vienna and Salzburg during the German occupation of Austria.
wn.com/Hans_Knappertsbusch -
Hans von Bülow
Hans Guido Freiherr von Bülow (January 8, 1830 – February 12, 1894) was a German conductor, virtuoso pianist, and composer of the Romantic era. He was one of the most famous conductors of the 19th century, and his activity was critical for establishing the successes of several major composers of the time, including Richard Wagner.
Bülow was born in Dresden, and from the age of nine he was a student of Friedrich Wieck (the father of Clara Schumann). However, his parents insisted that he study law instead of music, and sent him to Leipzig. There he met Franz Liszt, and on hearing some music of Richard Wagner—specifically, the premiere of Lohengrin in 1850—he decided to ignore the dictates of his parents and make himself a career in music instead. He studied the piano in Leipzig with the famous pedagogue Louis Plaidy. He obtained his first conducting job in Zurich, on Wagner's recommendation, in 1850.
Notoriously tactless, Bülow alienated many musicians with whom he worked. He was dismissed from his Zurich job for this reason, but at the same time he was beginning to win renown for his ability to conduct new and complex works without a score. In 1851 he became a student of Liszt, marrying Liszt's daughter Cosima in 1857. They had two daughters: Daniela, born in 1860 and Blandine, born in 1863. During the 1850s and early 1860s he was active as a pianist, conductor, and writer, and became well-known throughout Germany as well as Russia. In 1857 he premiered Liszt's great Piano Sonata in B minor in Berlin.
wn.com/Hans_von_Bülow -
Harold Nicholas
Harold Lloyd Nicholas (March 27, 1921 – July 3, 2000) was an American dancer specializing in tap. He was the younger half of the world famous tap dancing pair the Nicholas Brothers, known as two of the world's greatest dancers. His older brother was Fayard Nicholas. Harold was married to actress Dorothy Dandridge from 1942 to 1951.
Nicholas was born to drummer and orchestra leader Ulysses Domonick and pianist Viola Harden in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. By the age of three, his older brother Fayard enjoyed sitting in the audience of the black vaudeville theater where his parents performed, enraptured by the great performers on stage. Immersed in show business, when the Nicholases added a second son to the family, seven-year-old Fayard insisted that the child be named after his idol, Harold Lloyd, the silent screen comedian. Soon after Harold was born the two brothers began dancing. They quickly gained acclaim for their elegant acrobatic moves and mastery of tap. When Fayard turned 16 and Harold 9, they had made their first appearance at the legendary Cotton Club in New York City. They were popular immediately.
wn.com/Harold_Nicholas -
Harold Prince
Harold Smith "Hal" Prince (born January 30, 1928) is an American theatrical producer and director associated with many of the best-known Broadway musical productions of the past half-century. He has garnered twenty-one Tony Awards, more than any other individual, including eight for directing, eight for producing the year's Best Musical, two as Best Producer of a Musical, and three special awards.
Prince wasCole was her born in New York City to Milton A. Prince, a stockbroker, and Blanche Stern. He entered the University of Pennsylvania at age 16, where he followed a liberal arts curriculum and graduated three years later. He later served two years with the United States Army in post-WWII Germany.
Prince began work in the theatre as an assistant stage manager to theatrical producer and director George Abbott. Along with Abbott, he co-produced The Pajama Game, which won the 1955 Tony Award for Best Musical. He went on to direct his own productions in 1962 beginning with A Family Affair and hit a series of unsuccessful productions.
wn.com/Harold_Prince -
Harvey Sachs
Harvey Sachs, (born Cleveland, Ohio, June 8, 1946) is an American-Canadian-Swiss writer who has written many books on musical subjects.
His books include the standard biography of and a book of essays on the Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini, plus an edited collection of Toscanini's letters.
Sachs has also written books on great musical virtuosi, a history of music in Italy during the fascist period, the definitive biography of Arthur Rubinstein, and, most recently, a book on Beethoven's Ninth Symphony that is part cultural history, part musical description, and part personal memoir.
Sachs co-authored the memoirs of Plácido Domingo and Sir Georg Solti.
Harvey Sachs has written over 600 articles and other pieces for periodicals that include The New Yorker, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Times [London] Literary Supplement; record companies that include Deutsche Grammophon and RCA/BMG; and many radio and television programs. His most recent job for television has been co-authoring (with director Larry Weinstein) the Ideale-Audience production, "Toscanini in His Own Words", was shown by BBC, Arte, and other major networks worldwide in 2009. He has lectured at educational and cultural institutions all over North America and Europe.
wn.com/Harvey_Sachs -
Heinz Holliger
Heinz Holliger (born 21 May 1939) is a Swiss oboist, composer and conductor.
He was born in Langenthal, Switzerland, and began his musical education at the conservatories of Bern and Basel. He studied composition with Sándor Veress and Pierre Boulez. Holliger took first prize for oboe in the International Competition in Geneva in 1959.
He has become one of the world's most celebrated oboists, and many composers (including Olivier Messiaen, Luciano Berio, Elliott Carter, Frank Martin, Hans Werner Henze, Witold Lutosławski, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Isang Yun) have written works for him. He began teaching at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg, Germany in 1966.
In 1972 Holliger, Maurice Bourgue (oboe), Klaus Thunemann (bassoon), and Christiane Jaccottet (continuo) et al. recorded the Six Trio Sonatas for Oboe and Bassoon by Jan Dismas Zelenka. This recording is credited for the "Zelenka Renaissance".
Holliger has also composed many works in a variety of media. Many of his works have been recorded for the ECM label.
wn.com/Heinz_Holliger -
Herbert von Karajan
Herbert von Karajan (German pronunciation: [ˈhɛɐbɛɐt fɔn ˈkaʁaˌjan]; 5 April 1908 – 16 July 1989) was an Austrian orchestra and opera conductor. To the wider world he was perhaps most famously associated with the Berlin Philharmonic, of which he was principal conductor for 35 years. Although his work was not universally admired, he is generally considered to have been one of the greatest conductors of all time, and he was a dominant figure in European classical music from the 1960s until his death. Part of the reason for this was the large number of recordings he made and their prominence during his lifetime. By one estimate he was the top-selling classical music recording artist of all time, having sold an estimated 200 million records.
The Karajans were of Greek Macedonian or Aromanian ancestry. His great-great-grandfather, Geòrgios Johannes Karajànnis, was born in Kozani, an Aromanian town in the Ottoman province of Rumelia (present West Macedonia in today's Greece), leaving for Vienna in 1767, and eventually Chemnitz, Saxony. He and his brother participated in the establishment of Saxony's cloth industry, and both were ennobled for their services by Frederick Augustus III on 1 June 1792, thus the prefix "von" to the family name. The surname Karajànnis became Karajan. Although traditional biographers ascribed a Serbian or simply a Slavic origin to his mother, Karajan's family from the maternal side, through his grandfather who was born in the village of Mojstrana, Duchy of Carniola (today in Slovenia), was Slovene. By this line, Karajan was related to Austrian composer of Slovene descent Hugo Wolf. Karajan seems to have known some Slovene.
wn.com/Herbert_von_Karajan -
Hermann Levi
Hermann Levi (November 7, 1839 – May 13, 1900) was a German Jewish orchestral conductor.
Levi was born in Gießen, Germany, the son of a rabbi. He was educated at Gießen and Mannheim, and came to Vinzenz Lachner's notice. From 1855 to 1858 Levi studied at the Leipzig conservatorium, and after a series of travels which took him to Paris, he obtained his first post as music director at Saarbrücken, which post he exchanged for that at Mannheim in 1861. From 1862 to 1864 he was chief conductor of the German opera in Rotterdam, then till 1872 at Karlsruhe, when he went to Munich, a post he held until 1896, when ill-health compelled him to resign. Levi also taught at the Leipzig Conservatory where one of his pupils was conductor Emil Steinbach.
Levi's name is indissolubly connected with the increased public appreciation of Wagner's music. A longtime friend of Wagner, he conducted the first performance of Parsifal at Bayreuth in 1882, and was connected with the musical life of that place during the remainder of his career. He visited London in 1895, and died in Munich in 1900 and was interred in a Mausoleum in the grounds of his villa later that year in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
wn.com/Hermann_Levi -
Hermann Zumpe
Hermann Zumpe (9 April 1850 in Taubenheim, Saxony – 4 September 1903 in Munich) was a German conductor and composer.
Zumpe was educated at the teachers' Seminary at Bautzen, was a schoolmaster at Weigsdorf in 1870-71, from thence going to Leipzig, and playing the triangle in the Stadttheater there; he was one of those who helped Wagner in the preparation of the Ring at Bayreuth in the years 1873-70, and after this he conducted in the theatres of Salzburg, Würzburg, Magdeburg, Frankfurt, and Hamburg (in 1884-86). In 1891 he went to Stuttgart as Court Capellmeister, taking over the conductorship of the Society for Classical Church Music, in lieu of Faisst, who was ill. In 1895 he became conductor of the Kaim Concerts in Munich, and was made Court Capellmeister at Schwerinin 1897. He visited London to conduct the Wagner performances at Covent Garden in 1898. In 1900 he received the most important appointment of his career, that of Court-Capellmeister at Munich, directing what would later become the Bavarian State Opera. Here he was especially active in directing the famous Wagner performances at the Prinz Regenten Theater up to 1903, in which year, on Sept. 4, he died suddenly. Among his compositions were: a fairy opera, "Anhana" (Berlin, 1880), "Die verwunschene Prinzessin," operettas "Farinelli" (Hamburg, 1886), "Karin" (Hamburg, 1888), and "Polnische Wirtschaft" (Berlin, 1891). At his death the score of another opera, "Sawitri", was found incomplete, and was scored by Gustav von Roessler, and produced at Schwerin.
wn.com/Hermann_Zumpe -
Hildegard Behrens
Hildegard Behrens (9 February 1937 – 18 August 2009) was a German soprano with a wide repertoire including Wagner, Weber, Mozart, Richard Strauss, and Alban Berg roles.
Behrens was born in Varel, Germany in 1937 and was graduated from the University of Freiburg as a junior barrister before becoming serious about her talents as a singer, studying at first with Ines Leuwen at the Freiburg Academy Of Music. Her debut was as the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro in Freiburg in 1971 and the following year she became a member of the Deutsche Oper. On 15 October 1976 she made her American debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York as Giorgetta in Il tabarro.
She began her musical career singing small roles at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf where she stayed for six years during which she graduated into bigger roles. Then in the 1975–76 season, while rehearsing Wozzeck, she was "discovered" by Herbert von Karajan, who was then looking for his new Salome. She was summoned to Berlin to audition for the role. Karajan liked what he heard and invited her to portray the role at the 1977 Salzburg Festival.
wn.com/Hildegard_Behrens -
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (sometimes spelled Strawinsky or Stravinskii; Russian: Игорь Фёдорович Стравинский, transliterated: Igorʹ Fëdorovič Stravinskij; Russian pronunciation: [ˌiɡərʲ ˌfʲjodɐrɐvʲɪtɕ strɐˈvʲinskʲɪj]; 17 June [O.S. 5 June] 1882 – 6 April 1971) was a Russian, and later French and American composer, pianist and conductor. He is acknowledged by many as one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century.
Stravinsky's compositional career was notable for its stylistic diversity. He first achieved international fame with three ballets commissioned by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev and first performed in Paris by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes: The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913). The Rite of Spring, which provoked a riot during its premiere, transformed the way in which subsequent composers thought about rhythmic structure and was largely responsible for Stravinsky's enduring reputation as a musical revolutionary who pushed the boundaries of musical design. His so-called Russian phase was followed in the 1920s by a period in which he turned to neoclassical music. The works from this period tended to make use of traditional musical forms (concerto grosso, fugue and symphony). They frequently concealed a vein of intense emotion beneath a surface appearance of detachment or austerity and often paid tribute to the music of earlier masters, for example J.S. Bach and Tchaikovsky. In the 1950s, Stravinsky adopted serial procedures. His compositions of this period shared traits with examples of his earlier output: rhythmic energy, the construction of extended melodic ideas out of a few two- or three-note cells and clarity of form, of instrumentation and of utterance.
wn.com/Igor_Stravinsky -
Irwin Hoffman
Irwin Hoffman (born 26 November 1924) is an American conductor, born in New York. He was a protege of Serge Koussevitsky. He conducted the Vancouver Symphony from 1952 to 1964, after which he became Associate Conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He was Acting Music Director of the Chicago Symphony for one year, from 1968 to 1969. He became the first music director of the Florida Orchestra (then the Florida Gulf Coast Symphony) in 1968. He is now Music Director of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Bogotá, Colombia.
wn.com/Irwin_Hoffman -
Isaac Stern
Isaac Stern (Ukrainian: Исаак Стерн, Russian: Айзек Стерн; July 21, 1920 – September 22, 2001) was a Ukrainian-born violinist and conductor. He was renowned for his recordings and for discovering new musical talent.
Isaac Stern was born into a Jewish family in Kremenets, Ukraine. He was fourteen months old when his family moved to San Francisco. He received his first music lessons from his mother, then in 1928 enrolled at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he studied until 1931 before going on to study privately with Louis Persinger. He returned to the San Francisco Conservatory to study for five years with Naoum Blinder, to whom he said he owed the most. At his public début on February 18, 1936, aged 15, he played Saint-Saëns' Violin Concerto No. 3 in B minor with the San Francisco Symphony under the direction of Pierre Monteux. Reflecting on his background, Stern once memorably quipped that cultural exchanges between the US and Soviet Russia were simple affairs: "They send us their Jews from Odessa, and we send them our Jews from Odessa."
wn.com/Isaac_Stern -
Jack Lemmon
John Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III (February 8, 1925 – June 27, 2001) was an American actor and musician. He starred in more than 60 films including Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Mister Roberts (for which he won the 1955 Best Supporting Actor Academy Award), Days of Wine and Roses, The Great Race, Irma la Douce, The Odd Couple, Save the Tiger (for which he won the 1973 Best Actor Academy Award), The Out-of-Towners, The China Syndrome, Missing (for which he won 'Best Actor' at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival), Glengarry Glen Ross, Grumpy Old Men and Grumpier Old Men.
Lemmon was born in an elevator[citation needed] at Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Newton, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. He was the only child of Mildred Burgess LaRue (née Noel) and John Uhler Lemmon, Jr., who was the president of a doughnut company. Lemmon attended John Ward Elementary School in Newton and The Rivers School in Weston, Massachusetts. He had stated that he knew he wanted to be an actor from the age of eight. Lemmon attended Phillips Academy (Class of 1943) and Harvard University (Class of 1947), where he lived in Adams House and was an active member of several Drama Clubs - becoming president of the Hasty Pudding Club - as well as a member of the Delphic Club for Gentleman, a final club at Harvard. After Harvard, Lemmon joined the Navy, receiving V-12 training and serving as an ensign. On being discharged, he took up acting professionally, working on radio, television and Broadway. He studied acting under coach Uta Hagen. He also became enamored of the piano and learned to play it on his own. He could also play the harmonica, organ, and the double bass.
wn.com/Jack_Lemmon -
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.
She was particularly closely associated with baroque and early Italian opera and the works of Benjamin Britten. During her career, which spanned the 1950s to the 1980s, she was considered an outstanding singing actress and widely admired for her dramatic intensity, perhaps best represented in her famous portrayal as Dido, the tragic heroine of Berlioz's magnum opus Les Troyens. As a concert performer, Baker was noted for her interpretations of the music of Gustav Mahler and Edward Elgar. David Gutman, writing in the Gramophone, described her performance of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder as "intimate, almost self-communing."
Baker was born in Hatfield, South Yorkshire, northern England. Her father was an engineer who sang in a male voice choir. Members of her family worked at Bentley pit, in Doncaster, South Yorkshire.[citation needed] She attended York College for Girls and then Wintringham Girls' Grammar School in Grimsby. The death of her elder brother, Peter, when she was 10 years old, from a heart condition, was a formative moment that made her take responsibility for the rest of her life, she revealed in a BBC Radio 3 Lebrecht Interview in September 2011.
wn.com/Janet_Baker -
Jason Robards
Jason Nelson Robards, Jr. (July 26, 1922 – December 26, 2000) was an American actor on stage, and in film and television. He is a winner of the Tony Award, two Academy Awards and the Emmy Award. He was also a United States Navy combat veteran of World War II.
He became famous playing works of Eugene O'Neill, an American playwright, and regularly performed in O'Neill's works throughout his career. Robards was cast in both common-man roles and as well-known historical figures.
Robards was born in Chicago, the son of Hope Maxine (née Glanville) Robards and Jason Robards, Sr., an actor who regularly appeared on the stage and in such early films as The Gamblers (1929). Robards was of English, Welsh, Irish, and Swedish descent.
The family moved to New York City, New York, when Jason Jr. was still a toddler, and then moved to Los Angeles, California, when he was six years old. Later interviews with Robards suggested that the trauma of his parents' divorce, which occurred during his grade-school years, greatly affected his personality and worldview.
wn.com/Jason_Robards -
Jean Martinon
Jean Martinon (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ maʁtinɔ̃]) (Jean Franisque-Étienne Martinon) (10 January 1910 – 1 March 1976) was a French conductor and composer.
Martinon was born in Lyon, where he began his education, going on to the Conservatoire de Paris to study under Albert Roussel for composition, under Charles Munch and Roger Désormière for conducting, under Vincent d'Indy for harmony, and under Jules Boucherit for violin. He served in the French army during World War II, and was taken prisoner in 1940, composing works such as Chant des captifs while incarcerated. Among his other compositions are four symphonies, four concertos, additional choral works and chamber music.
After the war, Martinon was appointed conductor of the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire of Paris, and, in 1946, of the Bordeaux Philharmonic Orchestra. Other orchestras with which he was officially associated include the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as music director from 1963 to 1968; the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, the French National Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Radio Éireann Symphony Orchestra, the Concerts Lamoureux, and Het Residentie Orkest in The Hague.
wn.com/Jean_Martinon -
Jessye Norman
Jessye Norman (born September 15, 1945) is an American opera singer. Norman is a well-known contemporary opera singer and recitalist, and is among some of the most highly successful performers in classical music. A dramatic soprano, Norman is associated in particular with the Wagnerian repertoire, and with the roles of Sieglinde, Ariadne, Alceste, and Leonore.
Jessye Mae Norman was born on September 15, 1945 in Augusta, Georgia to Silas Norman, an insurance salesman, and Janie King-Norman, a school teacher. She was one of five children in a family of amateur musicians; her mother and grandmother were both pianists, her father a singer in a local choir. Norman's mother insisted that she start piano lessons at an early age. Norman attended Charles T. Walker Elementary School, A.R. Johnson Junior High School, and Lucy C. Laney Senior High School, all in downtown Augusta.
wn.com/Jessye_Norman -
Joan Sutherland
Dame Joan Alston Sutherland, OM, AC, DBE (7 November 1926 – 10 October 2010) was an Australian dramatic coloratura soprano noted for her contribution to the renaissance of the bel canto repertoire from the late 1950s through to the 1980s.
One of the most remarkable female opera singers of the 20th century, she was dubbed La Stupenda by a La Fenice audience in 1960 after a performance of the title role in Handel's Alcina. She possessed a voice of beauty and power, combining extraordinary agility, accurate intonation, "supremely" pinpoint staccatos, a splendid trill and a tremendous upper register, although music critics often complained about the imprecision of her diction. Her friend Luciano Pavarotti once called Sutherland the "Voice of the Century"; Montserrat Caballé described the Australian's voice as being like "heaven".
Joan Sutherland was born to Scottish parents in Sydney, and attended St Catherine's School in the suburb of Waverley, New South Wales. As a child, she listened to and imitated her mother's singing exercises. Her mother, a mezzo-soprano, had taken voice lessons but never considered making a career as a professional singer. Sutherland was 18 years old when she began seriously studying voice with John and Aida Dickens. She made her concert debut in Sydney, as Dido in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, in 1947. In 1951, she made her stage debut in Eugene Goossens's Judith. In 1951, after winning Australia's most important competition, the Sun Aria, now known as the Sydney Eisteddfod McDonald's Operatic Aria in 1949. She then went to London to further her studies at the Opera School of the Royal College of Music with Clive Carey. She was engaged by the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, as a utility soprano, and made her debut there on 28 October 1952, as the First Lady in The Magic Flute, followed in November by a few performances as Clotilde in Vincenzo Bellini's Norma, with Maria Callas as Norma.
wn.com/Joan_Sutherland -
Joanne Woodward
Joanne Gignilliat Trimmier Woodward (born February 27, 1930) is an American actress, television and theatrical producer, and widow of Paul Newman. She is perhaps best known for her Academy Award winning role in The Three Faces of Eve (1957).
Woodward was born in Thomasville, Georgia, daughter of Elinor Gignilliat (née Trimmier) and Wade Woodward, Jr., who at one point was vice president of publisher Charles Scribner's Sons. Her middle name, "Gignilliat", originates from distant Huguenot ancestry. She was influenced to become an actress by her mother's love of movies. Her mother named her after Joan Crawford, using the Southern pronunciation of the name "Joanne". Attending the premiere of Gone with the Wind in Atlanta, nine-year-old Woodward rushed out into the parade of stars and sat on the lap of Laurence Olivier, star Vivien Leigh's partner and future husband. She eventually worked with Olivier in 1977, in a television production of Come Back, Little Sheba. During rehearsals, she mentioned this incident to him and he told her he remembered her doing it.
wn.com/Joanne_Woodward -
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms (pronounced [joːˈhanəs ˈbʁaːms]; 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer and pianist, and one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene. In his lifetime, Brahms's popularity and influence were considerable; following a comment by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow, he is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the Three Bs.
Brahms composed for piano, chamber ensembles, symphony orchestra, and for voice and chorus. A virtuoso pianist, he premiered many of his own works; he also worked with some of the leading performers of his time, including the pianist Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim. Many of his works have become staples of the modern concert repertoire. Brahms, an uncompromising perfectionist, destroyed many of his works and left some of them unpublished.
Brahms is often considered both a traditionalist and an innovator. His music is firmly rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of the Baroque and Classical masters. He was a master of counterpoint, the complex and highly disciplined art for which Johann Sebastian Bach is famous, and also of development, a compositional ethos pioneered by Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. Brahms aimed to honour the "purity" of these venerable "German" structures and advance them into a Romantic idiom, in the process creating bold new approaches to harmony and melody. While many contemporaries found his music too academic, his contribution and craftsmanship have been admired by subsequent figures as diverse as Arnold Schoenberg and Edward Elgar. The diligent, highly constructed nature of Brahms's works was a starting point and an inspiration for a generation of composers.
wn.com/Johannes_Brahms -
John Culshaw
John Royds Culshaw OBE (28 May 1924 – 27 April 1980) was a pioneering English classical record producer for Decca Records. He recorded a wide range of music, but is best known for masterminding the first studio recording of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, begun in 1958.
Largely self-educated musically, Culshaw worked for Decca from the age of 22, first writing album liner notes and then becoming a producer. After a brief period working for Capitol Records, Culshaw returned to Decca in 1955 and began planning to record the Ring cycle, employing the new stereophonic technique to produce recordings of unprecedented realism and impact. He disliked live recordings from opera houses, and sought to put on disc specially made studio recordings that would bring the operas fully to life in the listener's mind. In addition to his Wagner recordings, he supervised a series of recordings of the works of Benjamin Britten, with the composer as conductor or pianist, and recordings of operas by Verdi, Richard Strauss and others.
wn.com/John_Culshaw -
John Eliot Gardiner
Sir John Eliot Gardiner CBE FKC (born 20 April 1943, Fontmell Magna, Dorset, England) is an English conductor. He founded the Monteverdi Choir (1964), the English Baroque Soloists (1975) and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique (1989). Gardiner has recorded over 250 albums with these and other musical ensembles, most of which have been published by Deutsche Grammophon and Philips Classics. Gardiner is most famous for his interpretations of Baroque music on period instruments with the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists, but his repertoire and discography are not limited to early music. With the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique Gardiner has performed a wide range of Classical and Romantic music, including many works of Hector Berlioz and all of Beethoven's symphonies. A recording of the third symphony of the latter was used in a dramatisation by the BBC of Beethoven's writing of that symphony. Gardiner has served as chief conductor of the North German Radio Symphony Orchestra and has appeared as guest conductor with such major orchestras as the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and Vienna Philharmonic.
wn.com/John_Eliot_Gardiner -
John Kander
John Harold Kander (born March 18, 1927) is the American composer of a number of musicals as part of the songwriting team of Kander and Ebb.
Kander was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of Bernice (née Aaron) and Harold S. Kander. Kander attended The Pembroke Country-Day School and Oberlin College before earning a Master's degree at Columbia University where he was a protégé of Douglas Moore and studied composition with Jack Beeson.
Kander began his Broadway career as substitute rehearsal pianist for West Side Story. The stage manager for West Side Story then asked Kander to play the auditions for her next show, Gypsy. During the auditions, Kander met the choreographer, Jerome Robbins, who suggested that Kander compose the dance music for the show in 1959. After that experience, he wrote dance arrangements for Irma la Douce in 1960.
His first produced musical was A Family Affair, written with James and William Goldman. He met lyricist Fred Ebb in 1962 and began a songwriting collaboration that would last for more than four decades. Later that year rising star Barbra Streisand recorded two of the duo's songs, "My Coloring Book" and "I Don't Care Much." In 1965, Kander and Ebb landed their first show on Broadway, Flora the Red Menace, produced by Hal Prince, directed by George Abbott, and with book by George Abbott and Robert Russell,[disambiguation needed
] in which Liza Minnelli made her initial Broadway appearance. Kander and Ebb have since been associated with writing material for both Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera, and have produced special material for their appearances live and on television.
wn.com/John_Kander -
Johnny Carson
John William "Johnny" Carson (October 23, 1925 – January 23, 2005) was an American television host and comedian, known for thirty years as host of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962–1992). Carson received six Emmy Awards, the Governor Award, and a 1985 Peabody Award. He was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1987. Johnny Carson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992 and received a Kennedy Center Honor in 1993.
Although his show was already successful by the end of the 1960s, during the 1970s Carson became an American icon and remained so until his retirement in 1992. He adopted a casual, conversational approach with extensive interaction with guests, an approach pioneered by Arthur Godfrey and previous Tonight Show hosts Steve Allen and Jack Paar. Late night hosts David Letterman, Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, Craig Ferguson, and Jimmy Fallon have all cited Carson's influence on their late-night talk shows, which resemble his in format and tone.
Carson was born in Corning, Iowa, in the year 1925, to Homer Lloyd "Kit" Carson, a power company manager, and Ruth Hook Carson, who was of Irish descent. He grew up in the nearby towns of Avoca, Clarinda, and Red Oak in southwest Iowa before moving to Norfolk, Nebraska, at the age of eight. At the age of twelve, Carson found a book on magic at a friend's house and immediately purchased a mail-order magician's kit. He debuted as "The Great Carsoni" at fourteen and was paid $3; many other performances at local picnics and country fairs followed.
wn.com/Johnny_Carson -
Johnny Cash
John R. "Johnny" Cash (February 26, 1932 – September 12, 2003), was an American singer-songwriter, actor, and author, who has been called one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. Although he is primarily remembered as a country music icon, his songs and sound spanned many other genres including rockabilly and rock and roll—especially early in his career—as well as blues, folk, and gospel. This crossover appeal led to Cash being inducted in the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Gospel Music Hall of Fame.
Cash was known for his deep, distinctive bass-baritone voice; for the "boom-chicka-boom" sound of his Tennessee Three backing band; for his rebelliousness, coupled with an increasingly somber and humble demeanor; for providing free concerts inside prison walls; and for his dark performance clothing, which earned him the nickname "The Man in Black". He traditionally started his concerts by saying, "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash." and usually following it up with his standard "Folsom Prison Blues".
wn.com/Johnny_Cash -
Jon Vickers
Jonathan Stewart Vickers, CC (born October 29, 1926), known professionally as Jon Vickers, is a retired Canadian heldentenor.
Born in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, he was the sixth in a family of eight children. In 1950, he was awarded a scholarship to study opera at The Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. In 1957 Vickers joined London’s Royal Opera House, Covent Garden company. In 1960 he joined the Metropolitan Opera. He became world famous for a wide range of German, French and Italian roles. Vickers' huge, powerful voice and solid technique met the demands of many French, German and Italian roles. He was also highly regarded for his powerful stage presence and thoughtful characterizations.
In 1968 he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.
Vickers studied with George Lambert at The Royal Conservatory of Music and sang professionally in Canada from the early- to mid-1950s. His international career began with his 1957 Covent Garden Riccardo in Verdi's Ballo in maschera. He continued to appear there into the 1980s, putting his personal stamp on the roles of Aeneas in Les Troyens, Radames in Aida, Don Carlos, Handel's Samson, Florestan in Fidelio, Tristan in Tristan und Isolde, Canio in Pagliacci, and the title role in Britten's Peter Grimes. Some critics praised Vickers' Tristan as the best since Lauritz Melchior's.[citation needed]
wn.com/Jon_Vickers -
Jordi Savall
Jordi Savall i Bernadet (Catalan pronunciation: [ˈʒɔrði səˈβaʎ]; born January 14, 1942, in Igualada, Catalonia) is a Catalan viol player, conductor and composer. He has been one of the major figures in the field of Western 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.
Savall's musical training started at the age of six in the school choir of his native town (1947–55). After completion of training at the Barcelona Conservatory of Music (1959–65), he specialised in early music, collaborating with Ars Musicae Barcelona of Enric Gispert and studying under August Wenzinger at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland (1968–70). In 1974 he succeeded Wenzinger as professor of viola da gamba at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis.
In 1974 he formed the ensemble Hespèrion XX (known since 2000 as Hespèrion XXI), together with the soprano Montserrat Figueras (his wife, who died in 2011), Lorenzo Alpert and Hopkinson Smith. Hespèrion XX favoured a style of interpretation characterised by great musical vitality and, at the same time, ultimate historical accuracy.
wn.com/Jordi_Savall -
Josef Krips
Josef Alois Krips (8 April 1902 – 13 October 1974) was an Austrian conductor and violinist.
Krips was born in Vienna and went on to become a pupil of Eusebius Mandyczewski and Felix Weingartner. From 1921 to 1924, he served as Weingartner's assistant at the Vienna Volksoper and as répétiteur and chorus master. Afterwards he became conductor of several orchestras, including a period as music director of the orchestra in Karlsruhe from 1926 to 1933. In 1933 he returned to Vienna as a resident conductor of the Volksoper. He also became a professor at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts in 1935. He conducted regularly at the Salzburg Festival between 1935 and 1938.
In 1938, the Nazi annexation of Austria (or Anschluss) forced Krips to leave the country. (Krips was raised a Roman Catholic, but would have been excluded from musical activity because his father was born Jewish). Krips moved to Belgrade, where he worked for a year with the Belgrade Opera and Philharmonic, until Yugoslavia also became involved in World War II. For the rest of the war he worked in a food factory.
wn.com/Josef_Krips -
Joseph Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn ( /ˈdʒoʊzəf ˈhaɪdən/; German pronunciation: [ˈjoːzɛf ˈhaɪdən] ( listen); 31 March 1732 – 31 May 1809), known as Joseph Haydn, was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms. He was also instrumental in the development of the piano trio and in the evolution of sonata form.
A lifelong resident of Austria, Haydn spent much of his career as a court musician for the wealthy Esterházy family on their remote estate. Isolated from other composers and trends in music until the later part of his long life, he was, as he put it, "forced to become original". At the time of his death, he was one of the most celebrated composers in Europe.
Joseph Haydn was the brother of Michael Haydn, himself a highly regarded composer, and Johann Evangelist Haydn, a tenor. He was also a close friend of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and a teacher of Ludwig van Beethoven.
wn.com/Joseph_Haydn -
Joseph Keilberth
Joseph Keilberth (April 19, 1908 – July 20, 1968) was a German conductor who specialized in opera.
He started his career in the State Theatre of his native city, Karlsruhe. In 1940 he became director of the German Philharmonic Orchestra of Prague. Near the end of World War II he became principal conductor of the Dresden Staatskapelle. In 1949 he became chief conductor of the Bamberg Symphony, formed mainly of Germans expelled from post-war Czechoslovakia under the Beneš decrees. He died in Munich in 1968 after collapsing while conducting Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde in exactly the same place as Felix Mottl had done in 1911.
Keilberth made the first stereo recording of Wagner's Ring Cycle in 1955. Among his other recordings, his interpretations of Weber's Der Freischütz made in 1958 for EMI, and a 'live' set of Richard Strauss's Arabella (featuring Lisa Della Casa and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau) made in 1963 for DG are still considered among the best versions. He conducted the TV-broadcast German-translation performance of The Barber of Seville, featuring Fritz Wunderlich, Hermann Prey, and Hans Hotter.
wn.com/Joseph_Keilberth -
José van Dam
Joseph, Baron van Damme (born 25 August 1940 in Brussels), known as José van Dam, is a Belgian bass-baritone.
At the age of 17, he entered the Brussels Royal Conservatory and studied with Frederic Anspach. A year later, he graduated with diplomas and first prizes in voice and opera performance. He made his opera début as the music teacher Don Basilio in Gioacchino Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia at the Paris Opera in 1961, and remained in the company until 1965, when he sang his first major role, Escamillo from Bizet's Carmen. He then sang for two seasons at Geneva, La Scala, Covent Garden, and in Paris. At Geneva, Van Dam sang in the première of Milhaud's La mère coupable in 1966. Lorin Maazel heard van Dam and invited him to record Ravel’s L’heure espagnole with him for Deutsche Grammophon. In 1967, Maazel asked him to join the Deutsche Oper in Berlin.
Van Dam has performed at L’Opéra de Paris, Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera, Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Vienna State Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, the Salzburg Festival, and festivals in Aix-en-Provence and Orange, France.
wn.com/José_van_Dam -
Judith Jamison
Judith Ann Jamison (born May 10, 1943, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American dancer and choreographer, best known as the Artistic Director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
wn.com/Judith_Jamison -
Jule Styne
Jule Styne (December 31, 1905 – September 20, 1994) was a British-born American songwriter especially famous for a series of Broadway musicals, which included several very well known and frequently revived shows.
Styne was born in London, England as Julius Kerwin Stein of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. At the age of eight he moved with his family to Chicago, where at an early age he began taking piano lessons. He proved to be a prodigy and performed with the Chicago, St. Louis, and Detroit Symphonies before he was ten years old.
Styne attended Chicago Musical College, but before then he had already attracted attention of another teenager, Mike Todd, later a successful film producer, who commissioned him to write a song for a musical act that he was creating. It would be the first of over 1,500 published songs Styne would compose in his career.
Styne established his own dance band, which brought him to the notice of Hollywood, where he was championed by Frank Sinatra and where he began a collaboration with lyricist Sammy Cahn, with whom he wrote many songs for the movies, including "It's Been a Long, Long Time" (#1 for 3 weeks for Harry James and His Orchestra in 1945), "Five Minutes More," and the Oscar-winning "Three Coins in the Fountain". He collaborated on the score for the 1955 musical film My Sister Eileen with Leo Robin. Ten of his songs were nominated for the Oscar, many written with Cahn, including "I've Heard That Song Before" (#1 for 13 weeks for Harry James and His Orchestra in 1943), "I'll Walk Alone", "It's Magic" (a #2 hit for Doris Day in 1948) and "I Fall in Love Too Easily".
wn.com/Jule_Styne -
Julius Katchen
Julius Katchen (August 15, 1926 – April 29, 1969) was an American concert pianist, possibly best known for his recordings of Johannes Brahms's solo piano compositions.
Katchen was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and debuted at age 10, playing Mozart's D minor Concerto. Eugene Ormandy heard of his debut, and invited him to perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra in New York. He studied music with his maternal grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Svet, immigrants from Europe who had taught at the Moscow and Warsaw conservatories, until he was 14. He attended Haverford College, completing a four-year degree in philosophy in three years, graduating first in his class in 1946.He went to Paris and was invited to represent the United States at the first International UNESCO Festival, where he played Beethoven's Emperor Concerto with the Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion Française. He then toured Europe in the spring of 1947, playing recitals in Rome, Venice, Naples, Paris, London and Salzburg. After this, he decided to live in Paris permanently, saying "In France piano students come together constructively, and they can even become friends. They attend one another's concerts and applaud. In the US they go to hear a colleague play, but only in the hope of seeing him break his neck."[citation needed]
wn.com/Julius_Katchen -
Kaija Saariaho
Kaija Saariaho (Finnish pronunciation: [ˈkɑi̯jɑ ˈsɑːriɑho]) (née Laakkonen, born 14 October 1952) is a Finnish composer.
Kaija Saariaho studied composition in Helsinki, Freiburg and Paris, where she has lived since 1982. Her studies and research at IRCAM have had a major influence on her music and her characteristically luxuriant and mysterious textures are often created by combining live music and electronics. Although much of her catalogue comprises chamber works, from the mid-nineties she has turned increasingly to larger forces and broader structures, such as the opera L’amour de loin, premiered at the 2000 Salzburg Festival (with a US premiere at the Santa Fe Opera in 2002), and Oltra mar for chorus and orchestra, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic. Her second opera, Adriana Mater, was commissioned for the Opéra National de Paris’ 2006 season. Her second string quartet, Terra Memoria, was commissioned for the Emerson Quartet by Carnegie Hall for a June 2007 premiere. The third opera, Émilie, has the life and death of Émilie du Châtelet as its topic. The librettist of all of the three operas is Amin Maalouf.
wn.com/Kaija_Saariaho -
Karl Böhm
Karl August Leopold Böhm (August 28, 1894, Graz – August 14, 1981, Salzburg) was an Austrian conductor. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century.
The son of a lawyer, Karl Böhm studied law and earned a doctorate on this subject before entering the music conservatory in his home town of Graz, Austria. (His father was originally German-speaking Bohemian from Egerland, while his mother was from Alsace.) He later enrolled at the Vienna Conservatory, where he studied under Eusebius Mandyczewski, a friend of Johannes Brahms.
In 1917 Karl Böhm became a rehearsal assistant in his home town, in 1919 the assistant director of music, and in 1920 the senior director of music. On the recommendation of Karl Muck, Bruno Walter engaged him at Munich's Bavarian State Opera in 1921. In 1927 he was appointed as chief musical director in Darmstadt. From 1931 to 1934 he fulfilled the same function at the Hamburg opera company and was appointed professor.
wn.com/Karl_Böhm -
Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Houghton Hepburn (May 12, 1907 – June 29, 2003) was an American actress of film, stage, and television. Known for her headstrong independence and spirited personality, Hepburn's career as a Hollywood leading lady spanned more than 60 years. Her work came in a range of genres, from screwball comedy to literary drama, and she received four Academy Awards for Best Actress—a record for any performer. Hepburn's characters were often strong, sophisticated women with a hidden vulnerability.
Raised in Connecticut by wealthy, progressive parents, Hepburn began to act while studying at Bryn Mawr College. After four years in the theatre, favorable reviews of her work on Broadway brought her to the attention of Hollywood. Her early years in the film industry were marked with success, including an Academy Award for her third picture, Morning Glory (1933), but this was followed by a series of commercial failures. In 1938 she was labeled "box office poison". Hepburn masterminded her own comeback, buying out her contract with RKO Radio Pictures and acquiring the film rights to The Philadelphia Story, which she sold on the condition that she be the star. In the 1940s she was contracted to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where her career focused on an alliance with Spencer Tracy. The screen-partnership spanned 25 years, and produced nine movies.
wn.com/Katharine_Hepburn -
Keith Jarrett
Keith Jarrett (born May 8, 1945, in Allentown, Pennsylvania) is an American pianist and composer who performs both jazz and classical music.
Jarrett started his career with Art Blakey, moving on to play with Charles Lloyd and Miles Davis. Since the early 1970s he has enjoyed a great deal of success in jazz, jazz fusion, and classical music; as a group leader and a solo performer. His improvisations draw not only from the traditions of jazz, but from other genres as well, especially Western classical music, gospel, blues, and ethnic folk music.
In 2003, Jarrett received the Polar Music Prize, the first (and to this day only) recipient not to share the prize with a co-recipient, and in 2004 he received the Léonie Sonning Music Prize.
In 2008, he was inducted into the Down Beat Hall of Fame in the magazine's 73rd Annual Readers' Poll.
Jarrett grew up in suburban Allentown, Pennsylvania, with significant early exposure to music. He possessed absolute pitch, and he displayed prodigious musical talents as a young child. He began piano lessons just before his third birthday, and at age five he appeared on a TV talent program hosted by the swing bandleader Paul Whiteman. The young Jarrett gave his first formal piano recital at the age of seven, playing works by composers including Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and Saint-Saëns, and ending with two of his own compositions. Encouraged especially by his mother, Jarrett took intensive classical piano lessons with a series of teachers, including Eleanor Sokoloff of the Curtis Institute.
wn.com/Keith_Jarrett -
Kent Nagano
Kent George Nagano (born November 22, 1951) is an American conductor and opera administrator. He is currently the music director of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal and the Bavarian State Opera.
Nagano was born in Berkeley, California, while his parents were in graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. He grew up in Morro Bay, a city located on the Central Coast of California. He is Japanese American. He studied sociology and music at the University of California, Santa Cruz[citation needed]. After graduation he moved to San Francisco State University to study music. While there, he took composition courses from Grosvenor Cooper and Roger Nixon. He also studied at the École Normale de Musique in Paris.
His first conducting job was with the Opera Company of Boston, where he was assistant conductor to Sarah Caldwell. In 1978, he became the conductor of the Berkeley Symphony, his first music directorship. He stepped down from this position in 2009. During his tenure in Berkeley, Nagano became a champion of the music of Olivier Messiaen and initiated a correspondence with him.
wn.com/Kent_Nagano -
Kiri Te Kanawa
Dame Kiri Jeanette Te Kanawa, ONZ, DBE, AC (pronounced /ˌkɪri tɨ ˈkɑːnəwə/; born 6 March 1944, Gisborne, New Zealand) is a New Zealand / Māori soprano who has had a highly successful international opera career since 1968. Acclaimed as one of the most beloved sopranos in both the United States and Britain she possesses a warm full lyric soprano voice, singing a wide array of works in multiple languages from the 17th to the 20th centuries. She is particularly associated with the works of Mozart, Strauss, Verdi, Handel and Puccini.
Te Kanawa's voice has been described as having "a vibrant but mellow quality that is ample in size without being overly heavy or forced"[citation needed]. Music critics have consistently praised the freshness and warmth of her voice[citation needed]. The sheer beauty of Te Kanawa's voice made her one of the leading operatic sopranos internationally of the 1970s and 1980s. She found particular success in portraying princesses, noble countesses and other similar characters on stage, as her naturally dignified stage presence and physical beauty complemented these roles well.
wn.com/Kiri_Te_Kanawa -
Kirk Douglas
Kirk Douglas (born Issur Danielovitch, Russian: И́сер Даниело́вич; December 9, 1916) is an American stage and film actor, film producer and author. His popular films include Out of the Past (1947), Champion (1949), Ace in the Hole (1951), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), Lust for Life (1956), Paths of Glory (1957), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), Spartacus (1960), and Lonely Are the Brave (1962).
He is No.17 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male American screen legends of all time, making him the highest-ranked living person on the list. In 1996, he received the Academy Honorary Award "for 50 years as a creative and moral force in the motion picture community."
Douglas was born Issur Danielovitch in Amsterdam, New York, the son of Bryna "Bertha" (née Sanglel) and Herschel "Harry" Danielovitch, a businessman. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Gomel, Belarus. His father's brother, who emigrated earlier, used the surname Demsky, which Douglas's family adopted in the United States. In addition to their surname, his parents also changed their given names to Harry and Bertha. Douglas grew up as Izzy Demsky and legally changed his name to Kirk Douglas before entering the Navy during World War II.
wn.com/Kirk_Douglas -
Kirsten Flagstad
Kirsten Målfrid Flagstad (12 July 1895 – 7 December 1962) was a Norwegian opera singer and a highly regarded Wagnerian (dramatic) soprano. She ranks among the greatest singers of the 20th century; indeed, many opera critics called hers "the voice of the century." To quote Desmond Shawe-Taylor in New Grove Dictionary of Opera: "No one within living memory surpassed her in sheer beauty and consistency of line and tone."
Flagstad was born in Hamar in her grandparents' home. Though she never actually lived in Hamar, she always considered it her home town. She was raised in Oslo within a musical family; her father was a conductor and her mother a pianist. She received her early musical training in Oslo and made her stage debut at the National Theatre in Oslo as Nuri in Eugen d'Albert's Tiefland in 1913. Her first recordings were made between 1913 and 1915.
After further study in Stockholm with Dr. Gillis Bratt, she pursued a career in opera and operetta in Norway. In 1919, she married her first husband Sigurd Hall and a year later gave birth to her only child, a daughter, Else Marie Hall. Later that year she signed up with the newly created Opera Comique in Oslo, under the direction of Alexander Varnay and Benno Singer. Varnay was the father of the famous soprano Astrid Varnay. Her ability to learn roles quickly was noted, as it often took her only a few days to do so. She sang Desdemona opposite Leo Slezak, Minnie, Amelia and other lesser roles at the Opera Comique.
wn.com/Kirsten_Flagstad -
Klaus Tennstedt
Klaus Tennstedt (June 6, 1926 – January 11, 1998) was a German conductor from Merseburg; he conducted such orchestras as the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra; Kiel Opera in Northern Germany; North German Radio Orchestra, in Hamburg; the Minnesota Orchestra; and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.
He studied violin and piano at the Leipzig Conservatory. He became concertmaster of the orchestra at the Halle Municipal Theatre in 1948. However, a finger injury stopped his career as a violinist, and afterwards he worked as a coach to singers at the same theatre. Tennstedt then directed his talents toward conducting. In 1958, he became music director of the Dresden Opera, and in 1962, music director of the Schwerin State Orchestra and Theatre.
Tennstedt emigrated from East Germany in 1971 and obtained asylum in Sweden. He conducted in Gothenburg with the Göteborg Theatre and in Stockholm with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. In 1972, he became General Music Director of the Kiel Opera in Northern Germany. From 1979 to 1982, he served as Chief Conductor of the North German Radio Orchestra in Hamburg, and during the same period (1979-1982) he was Chief Guest Conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra.
wn.com/Klaus_Tennstedt -
Krystian Zimerman
Krystian Zimerman (born December 5, 1956) is a Polish classical pianist who has been hailed as one of the finest living pianists.
Zimerman was born in Zabrze, Poland, and studied at the University of Music in Katowice under Andrzej Jasiński. His career was launched when he won the 1975 Warsaw International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition. He performed with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karajan in 1976 and he made his debut in the United States with the New York Philharmonic in 1979. He has toured widely and made a number of recordings. Since 1996 he has taught piano at the Academy of Music in Basel, Switzerland.
Zimerman is best known for his interpretations of Romantic music, but has performed a wide variety of classical pieces as well. He has also been a supporter of contemporary music. For example, Witold Lutosławski wrote his piano concerto for Zimerman, who later recorded it. Amongst his best-known recordings are the piano concerti of Edvard Grieg and Robert Schumann with conductor Herbert von Karajan; the Brahms concerti with Leonard Bernstein, the piano concerti of Frédéric Chopin, one recording conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini and a later one conducted by himself at the keyboard; the Third, Fourth and Fifth Piano Concertos of Beethoven under Bernstein (Zimerman himself led the accompaniment of the Vienna Philharmonic from the keyboard in Beethoven's First and Second Concertos); the first and second piano concerti of Rachmaninoff; the piano concerti of Franz Liszt with Seiji Ozawa, the piano concerti of Maurice Ravel with Pierre Boulez, and solo piano works by Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, Claude Debussy and Franz Schubert. In 2006, Zimerman recorded Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 1 with Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Simon Rattle (DG 477 5413; Limited Edition DG 477 6021).
wn.com/Krystian_Zimerman -
Kurt Masur
Kurt Masur (born 18 July 1927) is a German conductor, particularly noted for his interpretation of German Romantic music.
Masur was born in Brieg, Lower Silesia, Germany (now Brzeg in Poland) and studied piano, composition and conducting in Leipzig, Saxony. Masur has been married three times. His second wife, with whom he had a daughter, died in 1972 in a car accident in which Masur was severely injured. He and his third wife, Tomoko Sakurai, have a son, Ken-David, a classical singer and conductor.
Masur conducted the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra for three years ending in 1958 and again from 1967 to 1972. He also worked with the Komische Oper of East Berlin. In 1970, he became Kapellmeister of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, serving in that post until 1996.
In 1991, Masur succeeded Zubin Mehta as music director of the New York Philharmonic (NYP). During his tenure, there were reports of tension between Masur and the NYP's Executive Director at the time, Deborah Borda, which eventually contributed to his contract not being renewed beyond 2002. In a television interview with Charlie Rose, Masur stated that regarding his leaving the NYP, "it was not my wish". The root of the problem was a fundamental discordance in status between the Americas and Germany regarding employed personalities of standing. In the former case, the hired beneficiary is expected "to report" to the benefactor, in the latter, he expects a free hand to execute his tasks as he feels best on account of his (to be) recognized experience. Masur stepped down as the NYP's Music Director in 2002, and was named its Music Director Emeritus, a new title created for him. The critical consensus is that Masur improved the playing of the orchestra compared to his more pliable and forbearing predecessor.
wn.com/Kurt_Masur -
Lars Ulrik Mortensen
Lars Ulrik Mortensen is a Danish harpsichordist and conductor.
He studied with Karen Englund (harpsichord) and Jesper Bøje Christensen (figured bass) at The Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen and with Trevor Pinnock in London.
He has a career as a soloist and chamber musician in Europe, North and South America and Japan. From 1988 to 1990 he was harpsichordist in London Baroque, and from 1990 to 1993 he was a member of Collegium Musicum 90. He appears regularly with singer Emma Kirkby, violinist John Holloway and cellist and gambist Jaap ter Linden. He has recorded for Archiv Produktion (3rd harpsichord in Bach's 3- and 4-harpsichord concerti with The English Concert), harmonia mundi, Kontrapunkt and da capo and his recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations won him a Diapason d'Or. He is the artistic director of Concerto Copenhagen, and appears regularly directing opera at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen. He is also the artistic director of the European Union Baroque Orchestra since 2004.
wn.com/Lars_Ulrik_Mortensen -
Lauren Bacall
Lauren Bacall ( /ˌlɔrən bəˈkɔːl/; born Betty Joan Perske, September 16, 1924) is an American film and stage actress and model, known for her distinctive husky voice and sultry looks.
She first emerged as leading lady in the Humphrey Bogart film To Have And Have Not (1944) and continued on in the film noir genre, with appearances in Bogart movies The Big Sleep (1946) and Dark Passage (1947), as well as a comedienne in How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) with Marilyn Monroe and Designing Woman (1957) with Gregory Peck. Bacall has also worked on Broadway in musicals, gaining Tony Awards for Applause in 1970 and Woman of the Year in 1981. Her performance in the movie The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996) earned her a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award nomination.
In 1999, Bacall was ranked #20 of the 25 actresses on the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Stars list by the American Film Institute. In 2009, she was selected by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to receive an Academy Honorary Award "in recognition of her central place in the Golden Age of motion pictures."
wn.com/Lauren_Bacall -
Leo Weiner
Leo Weiner (Hungarian: 'Weiner Leó'; 16 April 1885 – 13 September 1960), was one of the leading Hungarian music educators of the first half of the twentieth century and a composer.
Weiner was born in Budapest. He had his first music and piano lessons from his brother, and later studied at the Academy of Music in Budapest, studying with János (Hans) Koessler. While there, he won numerous prizes, including: the Franz Liszt Stipend, the Volkmann Prize, and the Erkel Prize, all for one composition: his Serenade, Op. 3.
In 1908, he became a theory teacher at the Budapest Academy of Music. He was appointed Professor of Composition in 1912 and Professor of Chamber Music in 1920. In 1949 he became Emeritus Professor, but he continued to teach until the end of his life. He died in Budapest.
As a composer, the Romantics from Beethoven through Mendelssohn most strongly affected Weiner's musical approach. His sense of orchestral color seems to relate to those French composers who were not notably affected by Wagner, especially to that of Bizet. This solid and conservative Romantic approach served the basis for his style which later was influenced by elements of Hungarian folk music. However, he did not conduct research in the area of folk music, as his contemporaries Bartók and Kodály did, but simply shared an interest in the subject and employed some elements of folk music without affecting his established harmonic language.
wn.com/Leo_Weiner -
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein ( /ˈbɜrnstaɪn/ US dict: bûrn′·stīn; 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."
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, 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.
wn.com/Leonard_Bernstein -
Lionel Hampton
Lionel Leo Hampton (April 20, 1908 – August 31, 2002) was an American jazz vibraphonist, pianist, percussionist, bandleader and actor. Like Red Norvo, he was one of the first jazz vibraphone players. Hampton ranks among the great names in jazz history, having worked with a who's who of jazz musicians, from Benny Goodman and Buddy Rich to Charlie Parker and Quincy Jones. In 1992, he was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame.
Lionel Hampton was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1908, and was raised by his grandmother. Shortly after he was born, he and his mother moved to her hometown Birmingham, Alabama. He spent his early childhood in Kenosha, Wisconsin before he and his family moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1916. As a youth, Hampton was a member of the Bud Billiken Club, an alternative to the Boy Scouts of America, which was off limits because of racial segregation. During the 1920s—while still a teenager—Hampton took xylophone lessons from Jimmy Bertrand and started playing drums. Hampton was raised Roman Catholic, and started out playing fife and drum at the Holy Rosary Academy near Chicago.
wn.com/Lionel_Hampton -
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven (
i/ˈlʊdvɪɡ væn ˈbeɪt.hoʊvən/; German pronunciation: [ˈluːtvɪç fan ˈbeːt.hoːfən] ( listen); baptized 17 December 1770 – 26 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential of all composers.
Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of the Holy Roman Empire, Beethoven moved to Vienna in his early 20s, studying with Joseph Haydn and quickly gaining a reputation as a virtuoso pianist. His hearing began to deteriorate in his late twenties, yet he continued to compose, conduct, and perform, even after becoming completely deaf.
Beethoven was the grandson of a musician of Flemish origin named Lodewijk van Beethoven (1712–73) who moved at the age of twenty to Bonn. Lodewijk (Ludwig is the German cognate of Dutch Lodewijk) was employed as a bass singer at the court of the Elector of Cologne, eventually rising to become Kapellmeister (music director). Lodewijk had one son, Johann (1740–1792), who worked as a tenor in the same musical establishment, and gave lessons on piano and violin to supplement his income. Johann married Maria Magdalena Keverich in 1767; she was the daughter of Johann Heinrich Keverich, who had been the head chef at the court of the Archbishopric of Trier.
wn.com/Ludwig_van_Beethoven -
Maria Tallchief
Elizabeth Maria Tallchief (born January 24, 1925) was the first Native American to become prima ballerina. From 1942 to 1947 she danced with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, but she is even better known for her time with the New York City Ballet, from its founding in 1947 through 1965. Known professionally as Maria Tallchief, her family called her Betty Marie.
She was born in Fairfax, Oklahoma to a father who was a chief in the Osage Nation and a Scots-Irish mother.
Of her childhood she wrote, "I was a good student and fit in at Sacred Heart (Catholic school). But in many ways, I was a typical Indian girl — shy, docile, introverted. I loved being outdoors and spent most of my time wandering around my big front yard, where there was an old swing and a garden. I'd also ramble around the grounds of our summer cottage hunting for arrowheads in the grass. Finding one made me shiver with excitement. Mostly, I longed to be in the pasture, running around where the horses were...".
She enjoyed music, dancing and ballet. Her desire to pursue a career in the arts was a challenging dream for a Native American child in those days. The family moved to Beverly Hills, California in 1933, where Maria studied ballet with Bronislava Nijinska for five years. Madame Nijinska's philosophy of discipline made sense to Tallchief. "When you sleep, sleep like a ballerina. Even on the street waiting for the bus, stand like ballerina".
wn.com/Maria_Tallchief -
Marilyn Horne
Marilyn Horne (born January 16, 1934, Bradford, Pennsylvania) is an American mezzo-soprano opera singer. She specialized in roles requiring a large sound, beauty of tone, excellent breath support, and the ability to execute difficult coloratura passages.
Horne was born in Bradford, Pennsylvania, but moved with her parents to Long Beach, California, when she was 11. At the age of 13, she became part of the newly formed Los Angeles Concert Youth Chorus. She attended the University of Southern California where she was a member of Pi Beta Phi sorority. She is an alumna of Long Beach Polytechnic High School and returned in 1989 in a performance to benefit its music program. As a high school student, Marilyn was part of the St. Luke's Choir of Long Beach under the direction of William Ripley Dorr. This prestigious choir often worked for the movie studios and recorded on Capitol Records. Marilyn and her sister Gloria were part of St. Luke's Quartet along with tenor, Bob James and baritone, Philip D. Haynes.
wn.com/Marilyn_Horne -
Marion Williams
Marion Williams (August 29, 1927 – July 2, 1994) was an American gospel singer.
Marion Williams was born in Miami, Florida, to a religiously devout mother and musically inclined father. She left school when she was nine years old to help support the family, and worked as a maid, a nurse, and in factories and laundries. She began singing in front of auiences while young. As was common in the area, Williams learned African-American blues and jazz, alongside Caribbean calypso. Poverty caused Williams to leave school at fourteen, working with her mother at a laundry. She was singing at church and on street corners, inspired by a wide range of musicians, including Sister Rosetta Tharpe and the Smith Jubilee Singers. She stuck with gospel in spite of pressure to switch to popular blues tunes or the opera.
In 1946, while visiting a friend in Philadelphia, Williams happened to sing before an audience that included Clara and Gertrude Ward. They recognized her talent and offered her a job. A year later, she became part of the famous Ward Singers. Her growling, hands-on-the-hips vocal style made her the group's undisputed star.
wn.com/Marion_Williams -
Michael Tippett
Sir Michael Kemp Tippett OM CH CBE (2 January 1905 – 8 January 1998) was an English composer.
In his long career he produced a large body of work, including five operas, three large-scale choral works, four symphonies, five string quartets, four piano sonatas, concertos and concertante works, song cycles and incidental music. The works for which he is best known are the Concerto for Double String Orchestra, the oratorio A Child of Our Time and the Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli.
His deeply held humanitarian and pacifist beliefs shaped both his life and his music: he served a prison sentence as a conscientious objector in the Second World War. An interest in many aspects of contemporary culture is reflected in his music and writings. Tippett was one of the first openly gay composers to explore issues of sexuality in his work. The libretti of his operas, which he wrote himself, attracted criticism for their apparent naivety and sometimes awkward and not quite idiomatic use of contemporary slang, as well as for their sometimes obscure extra-musical references. He had a keen interest in musical education and in later life was active as a broadcaster and lecturer. As a conductor he recorded many of his own works. He is generally acknowledged to be one of the most important British composers of the 20th century.
wn.com/Michael_Tippett -
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.
Petri, who began playing the recorder at the age of three, is noted for her virtuosity and versatility across a wide range of styles, from the baroque repertoire of the height of the instrument's popularity to contemporary works written particularly for her. She has premiered dozens of works, by composers Malcolm Arnold, Gordon Jacob and Richard Harvey, as well as Daniel Börtz, Erik Haumann, Hans Kunstovny, Erling Bjerno, Thomas Koppel, Ove Benzen, Vagn Holmboe, Piers Hellawell, Gary Kulesha, Asger Lund Christiansen, Egil Harder, Michael Berkeley, Butch Lacy, Miklos Maros, Ezra Laderman, Jens Bjerre, Henning Christiansen, Niels Viggo Bentzon, Axel Borup Jørgensen, and Gunnar Berg.
wn.com/Michala_Petri -
Miklós Horthy
Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya (Hungarian: Vitéz nagybányai Horthy Miklós, Hungarian pronunciation: [viteːz nɒɟbaːɲɒi horti mikloːʃ], German: Nikolaus von Horthy und Nagybánya; 18 June 1868 – 9 February 1957) was the Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary during the interwar years and throughout most of World War II, serving from 1 March 1920 to 15 October 1944. Horthy was styled "His Serene Highness the Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary" (Hungarian: Ő Főméltósága a Magyar Királyság Kormányzója).
Admiral Horthy was an officer of the Austro-Hungarian Navy. He served in the Otranto Raid and at the Battle of the Strait of Otranto (1917), and was its commander-in-chief in the last year of the First World War.
After Hungarian communists under Béla Kun seized power in Hungary in 1919, proclaimed the Hungarian Soviet Republic and commenced Hungary's Red Terror, a counterrevolutionary government was formed and asked Horthy to take command of its forces. In late 1919, Romanian forces invaded Hungary and later overthrew Kun's government.
wn.com/Miklós_Horthy -
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991) was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, modal jazz, and jazz fusion.
Miles Dewey Davis was born on May 26, 1926, to an affluent African American family in Alton, Illinois. His father, Dr. Miles Henry Davis, was a dentist. In 1927 the family moved to East St. Louis, Illinois. They also owned a substantial ranch in northern Arkansas, where Davis learned to ride horses as a boy.
Davis' mother, Cleota Mae (Henry) Davis, wanted her son to learn the piano; she was a capable blues pianist but kept this fact hidden from her son. His musical studies began at 13, when his father gave him a trumpet and arranged lessons with local musician Elwood Buchanan. Davis later suggested that his father's instrument choice was made largely to irk his wife, who disliked the trumpet's sound. Against the fashion of the time, Buchanan stressed the importance of playing without vibrato; he was reported to have slapped Davis' knuckles every time he started using heavy vibrato. Davis would carry his clear signature tone throughout his career. He once remarked on its importance to him, saying, "I prefer a round sound with no attitude in it, like a round voice with not too much tremolo and not too much bass. Just right in the middle. If I can’t get that sound I can’t play anything."Clark Terry was another important early influence.[citation needed]
wn.com/Miles_Davis -
Mogens Wöldike
Mogens Wöldike (5 July 1897, Copenhagen – 20 October 1988, Copenhagen) was a Danish conductor, choirmaster, organist, and scholar known for his interpretation of music from the Baroque and Classical periods. His son-in-law was the Haydn scholar Jens Peter Larsen.
He studied under Carl Nielsen and Thomas Laub and graduated from Copenhagen University in 1920. He was organist at the Marine church in 1924 and the Christiansborg Palace Church from 1931; from 1959 to 1972 he was organist at Copenhagen Cathedral.
After the war he conducted the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and from 1950-67 worked regularly with the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra.
He composed sets of organ chorales published in 1943, 1960 and 1972.
He was the founder of the Copenhagen Royal Chapel Choir.
He is the 1976 laureate of the Léonie Sonning Music Prize, the most prestigious musical award in Denmark.
He left many recordings. After a series of mainly baroque records in the 1930s, he recorded Saul, the St Matthew Passion, Mass in time of War, a number of Haydn symphonies, Nielsen concertos and choral works.
wn.com/Mogens_Wöldike -
Morton Gould
Morton Gould (December 10, 1913 – February 21, 1996) was an American composer, conductor, arranger, and pianist.
Born in Richmond Hill, New York, Gould was recognized early as a child prodigy with abilities in improvisation and composition. His first composition was published at age six. Gould studied at the Institute of Musical Art, although his most important teachers were Abby Whiteside and Vincent Jones.
During the Depression, Gould, while a teenager, worked in New York City playing piano in movie theaters, as well as with vaudeville acts. When Radio City Music Hall opened, Gould was hired as the staff pianist. By 1935, he was conducting and arranging orchestral programs for New York's WOR radio station, where he reached a national audience via the Mutual Broadcasting System, combining popular programming with classical music.
In the 1940s, Gould appeared on the Cresta Blanca Carnival program as well as The Chrysler Hour on CBS where he reached an audience of millions.
Gould composed Broadway scores such as Billion Dollar Baby and Arms and the Girl; film music such as Delightfully Dangerous, Cinerama Holiday, and Windjammer; music for television series such as World War One; and ballet scores including Interplay, Fall River Legend, and I'm Old Fashioned.
wn.com/Morton_Gould -
Neil Simon
Neil Simon (born July 4, 1927) is an American playwright and screenwriter. He has written numerous Broadway plays, including Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues, and The Odd Couple. He won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Lost In Yonkers. He has written the screenplays for several of his plays that were made into movies. He also has written the books for several musicals, including Sweet Charity.
Neil Simon was born on July 4, 1927 in The Bronx, New York City to Irving Simon, a garment salesman, and his wife Mamie. He was their second son and grew up in Washington Heights, Manhattan during the Great Depression. His father often abandoned the family, causing financial and emotional difficulties. He attended DeWitt Clinton High School and graduated at the age of sixteen.
He attended New York Universitybriefly from 1944 to 1945, where he was enlisted in the Army Air Force Reserve training program. He was assigned to Lowry Air Force Base during 1945 and attended the University of Denver from 1945 to 1946. He was a sports editor for the military magazine Rev-Meter.
wn.com/Neil_Simon -
Nikita Magaloff
Nikita Magaloff (Russian: Никита Магалов) (21 February [O.S. 8 February] 1912 – 26 December 1995) was a Georgian-Russian pianist.
He was born in Saint Petersburg to a Georgian noble family named Maghalashvili. Magaloff and his family left Russia in 1918 for Finland. His musical interest first stimulated by family friend Serge Prokofiev, he studied with Alexander Siloti before going to Paris, where he studied with Isidor Philipp, chair of the piano department at the Paris Conservatory. He numbered Ravel among his friends there, who, when he graduated in 1929, said 'In Magaloff a great, a truly extraordinary musician is born.'
He was best known for his espousal of the music of Chopin, and was accustomed to perform the complete piano works in series of six recitals. He recorded the complete works - the first time anyone had done so. While these recordings have been criticised for their failure to plumb the depths of Chopin's works, they were innovative for their textual fidelity and unsentimentality. Magaloff, for example, preferred and recorded Chopin's own manuscript versions of the waltzes rather than the familiar versions published posthumously by Julian Fontana.
wn.com/Nikita_Magaloff -
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. Starting out as a classical cellist, he founded his own period instrument ensemble in the 1950s, and became a pioneer of the Early Music movement. Around 1970, Harnoncourt started to conduct opera and concert performances, soon leading renowned international symphony orchestras, and appearing at leading concert halls, operatic venues and festivals. His repertoire has since widened to include composers of the 19th and 20th century. In 2001 and 2003, he conducted the Vienna New Year's Concert. Harnoncourt is also the author of several books, mostly on questions of performance history and musical aesthetics.
Harnoncourt was born in Berlin, Germany. He was raised in Graz, Austria and studied music in Vienna. His mother, Ladislaja Gräfin von Meran, Freiin von Brandhoven, was the granddaughter of the Habsburg Archduke Johann, the 13th child of the Emperor Leopold II. He is thus descended from various Holy Roman Emperors and other European royalty. His father, Eberhard de la Fontaine Graf d'Harnoncourt-Unverzagt, was an engineer working in Berlin who had two children from a previous marriage. Two years after Nikolaus's birth, his brother Philipp was born. The family eventually moved to Graz, where Eberhard had obtained a post in the state-government (Landesregierung) of Styria.
wn.com/Nikolaus_Harnoncourt -
Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen (French pronunciation: [ɔlivje mɛsjɑ̃]; December 10, 1908 – April 27, 1992) was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex (he was interested in rhythms from ancient Greek and from Hindu sources); harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations. Many of his compositions depict what he termed "the marvellous aspects of the faith", and drew on his deeply held Roman Catholicism.
He travelled widely and wrote works inspired by diverse influences such as Japanese music, the landscape of Bryce Canyon in Utah and the life of St. Francis of Assisi. He said he perceived colours when he heard certain musical chords, particularly those built from his modes (a phenomenon known as synaesthesia); combinations of these colours, he said, were important in his compositional process. For a short period Messiaen experimented with the parametrisation associated with "total serialism", in which field he is often cited as an innovator. His style absorbed many exotic musical influences such as Indonesian gamelan (tuned percussion often features prominently in his orchestral works). He was one of the first composers to use an electronic keyboard—in this case, the ondes Martenot—in an orchestral work.
wn.com/Olivier_Messiaen -
Otto Klemperer
Otto Klemperer (14 May 1885 – 6 July 1973) was a German conductor and composer. He is widely regarded as one of the leading conductors of the 20th century. His son, Werner Klemperer, became famous for his role as Colonel Klink on the CBS television sitcom, Hogan's Heroes.
Otto Klemperer was born in Breslau, Silesia Province, then in Germany (now Wrocław, Poland), as a son of Nathan Klemperer, a native of Prague, Bohemia (today's Czech Republic). Klemperer studied music first at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, and later at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin under James Kwast and Hans Pfitzner. He followed Kwast to three institutions and credited him with the whole basis of his musical development. In 1905 he met Gustav Mahler while conducting the off-stage brass at a performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 2, 'Resurrection'. He also made a piano reduction of the second symphony. The two men became friends, and Klemperer became conductor at the German Opera in Prague in 1907 on Mahler's recommendation. Mahler wrote a short testimonial, recommending Klemperer, on a small card which Klemperer kept for the rest of his life. Later, in 1910, Klemperer assisted Mahler in the premiere of his Symphony No. 8, Symphony of a Thousand.
wn.com/Otto_Klemperer -
Paavo Järvi
Paavo Järvi (Estonian pronunciation: [ˈpɑːʋo ˈjærʋi]) (born December 30, 1962) is an Estonian-Americanconductor, and current Music Director of the Orchestre de Paris.
Järvi was born in Tallinn, Estonia, to conductor Neeme Järvi and Liilia Järvi. His siblings, Kristjan Järvi and Maarika Järvi, are also musicians. He studied at the Curtis Institute of Music with Max Rudolf and Otto-Werner Mueller, and at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute with Leonard Bernstein.
From 1994-97 Järvi was principal conductor of the Malmö Symphony Orchestra. He was named music director of the Cincinnati Symphony in January 2000, and assumed the post with the 2001-2002 season. In April 2007, the orchestra announced Järvi's contract with the CSO would be extended through 2011, at which point the contract would become an "evergreen" agreement. In addition to his American position, since 2004, he has been the artistic director of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, Bremen and an Artistic Advisor to Estonian National Symphony Orchestra. In January 2010, however, it was announced that Järvi, who will by then hold three directorships on top of his Cincinnati position, would terminate his tenure with the expiration of his current contract in 2011. In May 2011 he was named Music Director Laureate of the Cincinnati Symphony.
wn.com/Paavo_Järvi -
Pat Boone
Charles Eugene "Pat" Boone (born June 1, 1934) is an American singer, actor and writer. He was a successful pop singer in the United States during the 1950s and early 1960s. Among his hit songs were cover versions of black R&B artists' songs (when parts of the country were segregated). He sold over 45 million albums, had 38 Top 40 hits and appeared in more than 12 Hollywood movies. Boone's talent as a singer and actor, combined with his old-fashioned values, contributed to his popularity in the early rock and roll era.
According to Billboard, Boone was the second biggest charting artist of the late 1950s, behind only Elvis Presley but ahead of Ricky Nelson and The Platters, and was ranked at No. 9—behind The Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney but ahead of artists such as Aretha Franklin and The Beach Boys—in its listing of the Top 100 Top 40 Artists 1955–1995. Boone still holds the Billboard record for spending 220 consecutive weeks on the charts with one or more songs each week.
At the age of twenty-three, he began hosting a half-hour ABC variety television series, The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom, which aired for 115 episodes (1957–1960). Many musical performers, including Edie Adams, Andy Williams, Pearl Bailey and Johnny Mathis made appearances on the show. His cover versions of rhythm and blues hits had a noticeable effect on the development of the broad popularity of rock and roll. During his tours in the 1950s, Elvis Presley was one of his opening acts.
wn.com/Pat_Boone -
Patrice Chéreau
Patrice Chéreau (pronounced: [pa.tʁis ʃe.ʁo]; born 2 November 1944) is a French opera and theatre director, filmmaker, actor, and producer.
Patrice Chéreau was born in Lézigné, Maine-et-Loire, and went to school in Paris. At a young age he became well-known to Parisian critics as director, actor, and stage manager of his high-school theatre (lycée Louis-le-Grand). At 15, he was enthusiastically celebrated as a theatre prodigy. In 1964, at the age of 19, he began directing for the professional theatre. In 1966 he created a very busy Public-Theatre at the Parisian suburb of Sartrouville. In 1969, he staged his first opera. The following year he established a close relationship with the leadership of the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, Paolo Grassi and Giorgio Strehler. In 1975 he worked in Germany for the first time directing Edward Bond's Lear. He often collaborated with Claude Stratz. He began his relationship with his lover and favorite actor Pascal Greggory in 1987.
Chereau's most discussed production was his 1976 centennial staging of Richard Wagner's tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Bayreuth Festival, conducted by Pierre Boulez. Polarizing fans and critics, Chereau chose to set the operas during the 19th-century Industrial Revolution, and was thought to have emphasized the dramatic rather than the musical elements of the works.
wn.com/Patrice_Chéreau -
Paul Kletzki
Paul Kletzki (21 March 1900 – 5 March 1973) was a Polish conductor and composer.
Born Paweł Klecki in Łódź, Poland, he later adopted the German spelling Paul Kletzki. He joined its Philharmonic Orchestra at the age of fifteen. After serving in the First World War, he studied philosophy at the University of Warsaw before moving to Berlin in 1921 to continue his studies. During the 1920s his compositions were championed by Arturo Toscanini; and Wilhelm Furtwängler, who permitted Kletzki to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in 1925. Because he was Jewish, he left Nazi Germany in 1933 and moved to Italy, however due to the anti-semitism of the Italian Fascist regime he moved to the Soviet Union in 1936. He later went to live in Switzerland.
Kletzki's most notable work is his Third Symphony, completed in October 1939, with the subtitle 'In memoriam'. It is an elegiac work interpreted as a moving monument to the victims of Nazism. Other works include two string quartets, a Sinfonietta for strings, a Fantasy for piano, and a sonata for violin and piano. From 1942 onwards Kletzki wrote no more compositions; he argued that Nazism had destroyed his spirit and his will to compose. During the Holocaust a number of Kletzki's family were murdered by the Nazis including his parents and his sister.
wn.com/Paul_Kletzki -
Paul Newman
Paul Leonard Newman (January 26, 1925 – September 26, 2008) was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, professional racing driver, auto racing team owner, and auto racing enthusiast. He won numerous awards, including an Academy Award for best actor for his performance in the 1986 Martin Scorsese film The Color of Money and eight other nominations, three Golden Globe Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Cannes Film Festival Award, an Emmy award, and many honorary awards. He also won several national championships as a driver in Sports Car Club of America road racing, and his race teams won several championships in open wheel IndyCar racing.
Newman was a co-founder of Newman's Own, a food company from which Newman donated all post-tax profits and royalties to charity. As of July 2011, these donations exceeded $300 million.
Newman was born in Shaker Heights (a suburb of Cleveland). He was the son of Theresa (née Fetzer or Fetsko; Slovak: Terézia Fecková) and Arthur Sigmund Newman, who ran a profitable sporting goods store. His father was Jewish (Paul's paternal grandparents, Simon Newman and Hannah Cohn, were immigrants from Hungary and Poland). His mother, who practiced Christian Science, was born to a Slovak Roman Catholic family at Humenné, Ptičie (formerly Pticsie) in the former Kingdom of Hungary, Austria–Hungary (now Humenné in Slovakia). Newman had no religion as an adult, but described himself as a Jew, stating that "it's more of a challenge". Newman's mother worked in his father's store, while raising Paul and his brother, Arthur, who later became a producer and production manager.
wn.com/Paul_Newman -
Per Nørgård
Per Nørgård (pronounced [ˈpʰeɐ̯ ˈnɶɐ̯ɡ̊ɒːˀ]) (born July 13, 1932) is a Danish composer.
Nørgård was born in Gentofte, Denmark. He studied with Vagn Holmboe at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, and subsequently with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. To begin with, he was strongly influenced by the Nordic styles of Jean Sibelius, Carl Nielsen and Vagn Holmboe. In the 1960s, Nørgård began exploring the modernist techniques of central Europe, eventually developing a serial compositional system based on the "infinity series" (Nørgård 1975), which he used in his Voyage into the Golden Screen, the Second and Third Symphonies, I Ching, and other works of the late 1960s and 70s (Mortensen [n.d.]). Later he became interested in the Swiss artist Adolf Wölfli, who inspired many of Nørgård's works (Anon [n.d.]), including the 4th symphony, the opera Det Guddommelige Tivoli and Papalagi for solo guitar.
Nørgård has composed works in all major genres: six operas, two ballets, seven symphonies and other pieces for orchestra, several concertos, choral and vocal works, an enormous number of chamber works (among them ten string quartets) and several solo instrumental works. These include a number of works for the guitar, mostly written for the Danish guitarist Erling Møldrup: In Memory Of... (1978), Papalagi (1981), a series of suites called Tales from a Hand (1985–2001), Early Morn (1997–98) and Rondino Amorino (1999). One of his most important works for percussion solo is I Ching (1982) for the Danish percussionist Gert Mortensen. He has also composed music for several films, including The Red Cloak (1966), Babette's Feast (1987), and Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (1993).
wn.com/Per_Nørgård -
Pete Seeger
Peter "Pete" Seeger (born May 3, 1919) is an American folk singer and an iconic figure in the mid-20th-century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead Belly's "Goodnight, Irene", which topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950. Members of The Weavers were blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. In the 1960s, he re-emerged on the public scene as a prominent singer of protest music in support of international disarmament, civil rights, and environmental causes.
As a song writer, he is best known as the author or co-author of "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?", "If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)", (composed with Lee Hays of The Weavers), and "Turn, Turn, Turn!", which have been recorded by many artists both in and outside the folk revival movement and are still sung throughout the world. "Flowers" was a hit recording for The Kingston Trio (1962); Marlene Dietrich, who recorded it in English, German and French (1962); and Johnny Rivers (1965). "If I Had a Hammer" was a hit for Peter, Paul & Mary (1962) and Trini Lopez (1963), while The Byrds popularized "Turn, Turn, Turn!" in the mid-1960s, as did Judy Collins in 1964, and The Seekers in 1966. Seeger was one of the folksingers most responsible for popularizing the spiritual "We Shall Overcome" (also recorded by Joan Baez and many other singer-activists) that became the acknowledged anthem of the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement, soon after folk singer and activist Guy Carawan introduced it at the founding meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960. In the PBS "American Masters" episode Pete Seeger: The Power of Song, Seeger states it was he who changed the lyric from the traditional "We will overcome" to the more singable "We shall overcome".
wn.com/Pete_Seeger -
Peter Glossop
Peter Glossop (6 July 1928 – 7 September 2008) was an English baritone who was the only Englishman to have sung Verdi's great tragic baritone roles at La Scala, Milan. He rose from humble beginnings in Yorkshire to become a leading performer in London and in the major opera houses of Europe and America.
Peter Glossop was born in the Wadsley suburb of Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, the son of Cyril Glossop, a manager at a cutlery factory. He was educated at High Storrs Grammar School and was introduced to opera by his sister Violet, who smuggled him into the Lyceum Theatre where she was working as a secretary. After National Service, he joined the National Provincial Bank as a clerk, and in his spare time sang with the Sheffield Operatic Society. His début in 1949 was in the dual role of Coppélius and Dr Miracle in Les Contes d'Hoffmann. He studied locally with Joseph Hislop and Eva Rich and was a finalist in the 1952 Great Caruso Contest. He joined the chorus of Sadler's Wells Opera the same year and continued his studies with Leonard Mosley. He was soon singing minor roles for the company, and his first professional role was Morales in Carmen in 1953. This was followed by Schaunard in La bohème and Silvio in Pagliacci. In 1955 Glossop was appointed as a company principal. During the next five years he sang most of the leading Verdi baritone roles, and was especially known for the title role in Rigoletto and for Di Luna in Il trovatore.
wn.com/Peter_Glossop -
Peter Schreier
Peter Schreier (born 29 July 1935) is a German tenor and conductor.
Schreier was born in Meissen, Saxony, and spent his first years in the small village of Gauernitz, near Meissen, where his father was a teacher, cantor and organist. In June 1945, when Schreier was almost ten years old, and just a few months after the destruction of Dresden, he entered the boarding school of the famous Dresden boys' choir, the Dresdner Kreuzchor (Choir of the Kreuzkirche or Church of the Cross). The choir had just been re-established. The young Peter and the few other choir members and teachers lived in a cellar in the outskirts of Dresden.
The conductor of the Kreuzchor, Rudolf Mauersberger, soon recognized Peter Schreier's great talent. He let him sing many solo alto parts and also created compositions that perfectly fitted Peter's boy voice. Solo recordings of Peter Schreier were made at the time (1948-1951) and are obtainable on compact disc even today.
Schreier was 16 years old when his voice broke, and he became a tenor, as he had passionately wished, because of the several Evangelists - all tenors - in J.S. Bach's Passions and in his Christmas Oratorio. After he had decided to become a professional singer he took lessons, at first privately, then later on at the Dresden Academy of Music. He had enough time to also study choral and orchestral conducting.
wn.com/Peter_Schreier -
Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez (French pronunciation: [pjɛʁ bu.lɛːz]) (born 26 March 1925) is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.
Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics. He pursued the latter at Lyon before pursuing music at the Paris Conservatoire under Olivier Messiaen and the wife of Arthur Honegger, Andrée Vaurabourg.
Through Messiaen, Boulez discovered twelve-tone technique — which he would later study privately with René Leibowitz — and went on to write atonal music in a post-Webernian serial style. Boulez was initially part of a cadre of early supporters of Leibowitz, but due to an altercation with Leibowitz, their relations turned divisive, as Boulez spent much of his career promoting the music of Messiaen instead.
The first fruits of this were his cantatas Le visage nuptial and Le soleil des eaux for female voices and orchestra, both composed in the late 1940s and revised several times since, as well as the Second Piano Sonata of 1948, a well-received 32-minute work that Boulez composed at the age of 23. Thereafter, Boulez was influenced by Messiaen's research to extend twelve-tone technique beyond the realm of pitch organization, serialising durations, dynamics, mode of attack, and so on. This technique became known as integral serialism.
wn.com/Pierre_Boulez -
Plácido Domingo
Plácido Domingo (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈplaθiðo ðoˈmiŋɡo]; born 21 January 1941), born José Plácido Domingo Embil, is a Spanish tenor and conductor known for his versatile and strong voice, possessing a ringing and dramatic tone throughout its range. In March 2008, he debuted in his 128th opera role, and as of July 2011, his 136 roles give Domingo more roles than any other tenor.
One of The Three Tenors, he has also taken on conducting opera and concert performances, and he is the General Director of the Los Angeles Opera in California.
Plácido Domingo was born on January 21, 1941, in the distrito de Retiro section of Madrid, Spain, and in 1949 moved to Mexico with his family, who ran a zarzuela company. He studied piano at first privately and later at the National Conservatory of Music in Mexico City.
In 1957, Domingo made his first professional appearance, performing with his mother in a concert at Mérida, Yucatán. He made his opera debut performing in Manuel Fernández Caballero's zarzuela, Gigantes y cabezudos, singing a baritone role. At that time, he was working with his parents' zarzuela company, taking baritone roles and as an accompanist for other singers. Among his first performances was a minor role in the first Mexican production of My Fair Lady where he was also the assistant conductor and assistant coach. The company gave 185 performances, which included a production of Lehár's The Merry Widow in which he performed alternately as either Camille or Danilo.
wn.com/Plácido_Domingo -
Rafael Kubelík
Rafael Jeroným Kubelík (29 June 1914 – 11 August 1996) was a Czech conductor and composer.
Kubelík was born in Býchory, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary, today's Czech Republic. He was the sixth child of the Bohemian violinist Jan Kubelík, whom the younger Kubelík described as "a kind of god to me". His mother was a Hungarian countess, Anna Julie Marie Széll von Bessenyö. Kubelík studied violin with his father, and later violin, composition, and conducting at the Prague Conservatory. He graduated from the conservatory in 1933, at the age of 19; at his graduation concert he played a Paganini concerto and a composition of his own for violin and orchestra. Kubelík was also an accomplished pianist, and served as his father's piano accompanist on a tour of the United States in 1935.
In 1939, Kubelík became music director of the Brno Opera, a position he held until the Nazis shut the company down on 12 November 1941. The Nazis allowed the Czech Philharmonic to continue operating, and Kubelík became its principal conductor. (He had first conducted the Czech Philharmonic in 1934 when he was 20 years old.) In 1944, after various incidents, including one in which he declined to greet the Nazi Reichsprotektor Karl Hermann Frank with a Hitler salute — along with his refusal to conduct Wagner during the War — Kubelík "deemed it advisable to disappear from Prague and to spend a few months undercover in the countryside so as not to fall into the clutches of the SS or Gestapo".
wn.com/Rafael_Kubelík -
Riccardo Muti
Riccardo Muti, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (Italian pronunciation: [rikˈkardo ˈmuːti]; born 28 July 1941) is an Italian conductor and music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Muti was born in Naples but spent his early childhood in Molfetta, near Bari, in the long region of Apulia on Italy's southern Adriatic coast. His father was a doctor in Molfetta and an amateur singer; his mother, a Neapolitan, was a professional singer. As wryly explained in the conductor's 2010 autobiography, it was a family pattern for the children to be born in Naples.
Muti graduated from Liceo classico (Classical Lyceum) Vittorio Emanuele II in Naples, then studied piano at the Conservatory of San Pietro a Majella under Vincenzo Vitale; here Muti was awarded a diploma cum laude. He was subsequently awarded a diploma in Composition and Conducting by the Conservatory "Giuseppe Verdi", Milan, where he studied with the composer Bruno Bettinelli and the conductor Antonino Votto. He has also studied composition with Nino Rota, whom he considers a mentor. He was unanimously awarded first place by the jury of the "Guido Cantelli" competition for conductors in Milan in 1967 and became, the next year, principal conductor and music director of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, a post he held for eleven years.
wn.com/Riccardo_Muti -
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 for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and other orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, Also sprach Zarathustra, An Alpine Symphony, and Metamorphosen. Strauss was also a prominent conductor throughout Germany and Austria.
Strauss, along with Gustav Mahler, represents the late flowering of German Romanticism after Richard Wagner, in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined with an advanced harmonic style.
Strauss was born on 11 June 1864, in Munich, the son of Franz Strauss, who was the principal horn player at the Court Opera in Munich. In his youth, he received a thorough musical education from his father. He wrote his first composition at the age of six, and continued to write music almost until his death.
wn.com/Richard_Strauss -
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( /ˈvɑːɡnər/; German pronunciation: [ˈʁiçaʁt ˈvaːɡnɐ]; 22 May 1813 – 13 February 1883) was a German composer, conductor, theatre director and polemicist primarily known for his operas (or "music dramas", as he later called them). Wagner's compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for their complex texture, rich harmonies and orchestration, and the elaborate use of leitmotifs: musical themes associated with individual characters, places, ideas or plot elements. Unlike most other opera composers, Wagner wrote both the music and libretto for every one of his stage works. Perhaps the two best-known extracts from his works are the Ride of the Valkyries from the opera Die Walküre, and the Wedding March (Bridal Chorus) from the opera Lohengrin.
Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works such as The Flying Dutchman and Tannhäuser which were broadly in the romantic vein of Weber and Meyerbeer, Wagner transformed operatic thought through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk ("total work of art"). This would achieve the synthesis of all the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts and was announced in a series of essays between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realized this concept most fully in the first half of the monumental four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. However, his thoughts on the relative importance of music and drama were to change again, and he reintroduced some traditional operatic forms into his last few stage works, including Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
wn.com/Richard_Wagner -
Risë Stevens
Risë Stevens ( /ˈriːsə/; born June 11, 1913, New York City) is a retired American operatic mezzo-soprano.
Born Risë Steenberg to Christian and Sarah (née Mechanic) Steenberg, known as "Sadie". Her father was of Norwegian Lutheran descent and her mother was Jewish, of Polish and Russian descent. She had a younger brother, Lewis "Bud" Steenberg. She studied at New York's Juilliard School for three years. She went to Vienna, where she was trained by Marie Gutheil-Schoder and Herbert Graf. She made her début as Mignon in Prague in 1936 and stayed there until 1938, also appearing in guest appearances at the Vienna State Opera.
She was engaged at the Teatro Colón in 1938 (as Octavian) and was invited to the Glyndebourne Festival in 1939 where she was heard as Dorabella and Cherubino. In 1938 she made her début at the Metropolitan Opera as Mignon. Three days later, she sang Octavian opposite Lotte Lehmann. The film industry in Hollywood produced several films for her, including The Chocolate Soldier (1941) with Nelson Eddy and Going My Way (1944) with Bing Crosby, the latter film crediting Stevens as a contralto.
wn.com/Risë_Stevens -
Roy Acuff
Roy Claxton Acuff (September 15, 1903 – November 23, 1992) was an American country music singer, fiddler, and promoter. Known as the "King of Country Music," Acuff is often credited with moving the genre from its early string band and "hoedown" format to the star singer-based format that helped make it internationally successful.
Acuff began his music career in the 1930s, and gained regional fame as the singer and fiddler for his group, the Smoky Mountain Boys. He joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1938, and although his popularity as a musician waned in the late 1940s, he remained one of the Opry's key figures and promoters for nearly four decades. In 1942, Acuff co-founded the first major Nashville-based country music publishing company—Acuff-Rose Music—which signed acts such as Hank Williams, Roy Orbison, and The Everly Brothers. In 1962, Acuff became the first living inductee into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Roy Acuff was born in Maynardville, Tennessee to Ida (née Carr) and Simon E. Neill Acuff, the third of five children. The Acuffs were a fairly prominent Union County family. Roy's paternal grandfather, Coram Acuff, had been a Tennessee state senator, and Roy's maternal grandfather was a local physician. Roy's father was an accomplished fiddler and a Baptist preacher, his mother was proficient on the piano, and during Roy's early years the Acuff house was a popular place for local gatherings. At such gatherings, Roy would often amuse people by balancing farm tools on his chin. He also learned to play harmonica and jaw harp at a young age.
wn.com/Roy_Acuff -
Rudolf Kempe
Rudolf Kempe (born 14 June 1910 in Dresden, died 12 May 1976 in Zürich) was a German conductor.
Kempe was born in Dresden, where from the age of fourteen he studied at the Dresden State Opera School. He played oboe in the opera orchestra of Dortmund and then in the Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestra, from 1929. In addition to oboe, he played the piano regularly, as a soloist, in chamber music or accompanying, as a result of which, in 1933, the new Director of the Leipzig Opera invited Kempe to become a répétiteur, and later a conductor, for the opera.
During the Second World War Kempe was conscripted into the army, but instead of active service was directed into musical activities, playing for the troops and later taking over the chief conductorship of the Chemnitz opera house.
Kempe directed the Dresden Opera and the Dresden Staatskapelle from 1949 to 1952, making his first records, including Der Rosenkavalier, Die Meistersinger and Der Freischütz. ‘He obtains some superlative playing from the Dresden orchestra,’ commented The Record Guide. He maintained a relationship with the Dresden orchestra for the rest of his life, making some of his best-known records with them during the stereo era.
wn.com/Rudolf_Kempe -
Régine Crespin
Régine Crespin (23 February 1927 – 5 July 2007) was a French singer who had a major international career in opera and on the concert stage between 1950 and 1989. She started her career singing roles in the dramatic soprano and spinto soprano repertoire, drawing particular acclaim singing Wagner and Strauss heroines. She went on to sing a wider repertoire that embraced Italian, French, German, Russian, and English opera from a variety of musical periods. In the early 1970s Crespin began experiencing vocal difficulties for the first time and ultimately began performing roles from the mezzo-soprano repertoire. Throughout her career she was widely admired for the elegance, warmth and subtlety of her singing, especially in the French and German operatic repertories.
Crespin began her career in France, earning her first critical successes in the French provinces during the early 1950s and then becoming a fixture at the Opéra National de Paris in the mid 1950s. Her international career was launched in 1958 with a critically acclaimed performance of Kundry in Richard Wagner's Parsifal at the Bayreuth Festival. She soon appeared at most of the major opera houses in the United States and Europe and made a number of appearances in South America as well. She had a long and fruitful association with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, making over 125 appearances at that house between 1962 and 1987. Crespin retired from the stage in 1989, after which she taught singing for many years at her alma mater, the Conservatoire de Paris, and gave numerous acclaimed master classes at conservatories and universities internationally.
wn.com/Régine_Crespin -
Sean Connery
Sir Thomas Sean Connery (born 25 August 1930) is a Scottish actor and producer who has won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards (one of them being a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award) and three Golden Globes (including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award).
Connery is best known for portraying the character James Bond, starring in seven Bond films between 1962 and 1983 (six Eon Productions films and the non-canonical Thunderball remake, Never Say Never Again). In 1988, Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Untouchables. His film career also includes such films as Marnie, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Hunt for Red October, Highlander, Murder on the Orient Express, Dragonheart, and The Rock. He was knighted in July 2000. Connery has been polled as "The Greatest Living Scot" and "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". In 1989, he was proclaimed "Sexiest Man Alive" by People magazine and in 1999, at age 69, he was voted "Sexiest Man of the Century".
wn.com/Sean_Connery -
Sergiu Celibidache
Sergiu Celibidache (Romanian pronunciation: [ˈserd͡ʒju t͡ʃelibiˈdake]; 28 June 1912 – 14 August 1996) was a Romanian conductor.
Celibidache was born in Roman, Romania, and began his studies in music with the piano, after which he studied music, philosophy and mathematics in Bucharest, Romania and then in Paris. One of the most important influences in his life was his introduction to Martin Steinke, who, being knowledgeable about Buddhism, heavily affected Celibidache's outlook for the rest of his life.
Sergiu Celibidache studied in Berlin and, from 1945 to 1952, he was principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. He later worked with radio orchestras in Stockholm, Stuttgart and Paris. He also worked in Britain in the late 1940s and 1950s, due partly to the promotional efforts of the pianist Eileen Joyce and her partner, an artists' agent. Joyce said that Celibidache was the greatest conductor she had ever worked with - "he was the only one who got inside my soul". In 1970 he was awarded Denmark's Sonning Award. From 1979 until his death he was music director of the Munich Philharmonic. He regularly taught at Mainz University in Germany and in 1984 taught at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Teaching was a major focus throughout his life and his courses were frequently open to all without fee. Among his notable students are Françoys Bernier, Jordi Mora, Peter Perret, and Markand Thakar.
wn.com/Sergiu_Celibidache -
Shirley Temple
Shirley Jane Temple (born April 23, 1928), later Shirley Temple Black, is an American film and television actress, singer, dancer, autobiographer, and former U.S. Ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia. She began her film career in 1932 at the age of three, and in 1934, found international fame in Bright Eyes, a feature film designed specifically for her talents. She received a special Juvenile Academy Award in February 1935, and film hits such as Curly Top and Heidi followed year after year during the mid-to-late 1930s. Licensed merchandise that capitalized on her wholesome image included dolls, dishes, and clothing. Her box office popularity waned as she reached adolescence, and she left the film industry at the age of 12 to attend high school[clarification needed]. She appeared in a few films of varying quality in her mid-to-late teens, and retired completely from films in 1950 at the age of 22. She was the top box-office draw four years in a row (1935–38) in a Motion Picture Herald poll.
wn.com/Shirley_Temple -
Sidney Poitier
Sir Sidney Poitier, KBE ( /ˈpwɑːtjeɪ/ or /ˈpwɑːti.eɪ/; born February 20, 1927) is a Bahamian American actor, film director, author, and diplomat.
In 1963, Poitier became the first black person to win an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Lilies of the Field. The significance of this achievement was later bolstered in 1967 when he starred in three well-received films To Sir, with Love; In the Heat of the Night; and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, making him the top box office star of that year. In all three films, issues revolve around the race of the characters Poitier portrays. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Poitier among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time, ranking 22nd on the list of 25.
Poitier has directed a number of popular movies such as A Piece of the Action; Uptown Saturday Night, and Let's Do It Again (with friend Bill Cosby), and Stir Crazy (starring Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder). In 2002, 38 years after receiving the Best Actor Award, Poitier was chosen by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to receive an Honorary Award, designated "To Sidney Poitier in recognition of his remarkable accomplishments as an artist and as a human being." Since 1997 he has been the Bahamian ambassador to Japan. On August 12, 2009, Sidney Poitier was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States of America's highest civilian honor, by President Barack Obama.
wn.com/Sidney_Poitier -
Sofia Gubaidulina
Sofia Asgatovna Gubaidulina, (Russian: Софи́я Асгатовна Губайду́лина, Tatar Cyrillic: София Әсгать кызы Гобәйдуллина, Latin: Sofia Äsğät qızı Ğöbäydullina) (born October 24, 1931) is a Russian composer of half Russian, half Tatar ethnicity.
Gubaidulina's music is marked by the use of unusual instrumental combinations. In Erwartung combines percussion (bongos, güiros, temple blocks, cymbals and tam-tams among others), bayan and saxophone quartet.
Gubaidulina was born in Chistopol, in the Tatar ASSR. She studied composition and piano at the Kazan Conservatory, graduating in 1954. In Moscow she undertook further studies at the Conservatory with Nikolay Peyko until 1959, and then with Shebalin until 1963. She was awarded with Stalin-fellowship. Her music was deemed "irresponsible" during her studies in Soviet Russia, due to its exploration of alternative tunings. She was supported, however, by Dmitri Shostakovich, who in evaluating her final examination encouraged her to continue down her "mistaken path". However, she was allowed to express her modernism in various scores she composed for documentary films, including the 1968 production, On Submarine Scooters, a 70mm film shot in the unique Kinopanorama widescreen format.
wn.com/Sofia_Gubaidulina -
Stanley Sadie
Stanley Sadie CBE (30 October 1930 – 21 March 2005) was a leading British musicologist, music critic, and editor. He was editor of the sixth edition of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1980), which was published as the first edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.
Sadie was educated at St Paul's School, London, and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he read music under Thurston Dart (BA, MusB 1953, MA 1957, PhD 1958). His doctoral dissertation was on mid-eighteenth-century British chamber music. After Cambridge, he taught at Trinity College of Music, London (1957-1965).
Sadie then turned to music journalism, becoming music critic for The Times (1964-1981), and contributing reviews to the Financial Times after 1981, when he had to leave his position and The Times because of his commitments to the Grove and other scholarly work. He was editor of The Musical Times 1967-1987.
From 1970 Sadie was editor of what was planned to be the sixth edition of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1980). Sadie oversaw major changes to the Dictionary, which grew from nine volumes to 20, and was published as the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (New Grove), and is now referred to as the first edition under that name. He was also an important force behind the second edition of New Grove (2001), which grew further to 29 volumes. Sadie also oversaw a major expansion of the Grove franchise, editing the one-volume Grove Concise Dictionary of Music (1988), and several spinoff dictionaries, such as the New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments (three volumes, 1984), the New Grove Dictionary of American Music, (with H. Wiley Hitchcock, four volumes, 1986), and the New Grove Dictionary of Opera (four volumes, 1992). He also edited composer biographies based on the entries in Grove.
wn.com/Stanley_Sadie -
Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Joshua Sondheim ( /ˈsɒnd.haɪm/) (born March 22, 1930) is an American composer and lyricist known for his contributions to musical theatre. He is the winner of an Academy Award, eight Tony Awards (more than any other composer) including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award. Described by Frank Rich of the New York Times as "the greatest, and perhaps best-known artist working in musical theatre", his most famous works include (as composer/lyricist) A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods. He also wrote the lyrics for West Side Story and Gypsy.
Sondheim has also written material for movies, including the 1981 Warren Beatty film Reds, contributing the song "Goodbye For Now". He also wrote five songs for the 1990 movie Dick Tracy, including "Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)", which won the Academy Award for Best Song.
wn.com/Stephen_Sondheim -
Stevie Wonder
Stevland Hardaway Morris (born May 13, 1950 as Stevland Hardaway Judkins), known by his stage name Stevie Wonder, is an American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, a child prodigy who developed into one of the most creative musical figures of the late 20th century. Blind since shortly after birth, Wonder signed with Motown's Tamla label at the age of eleven, and continues to perform and record for Motown to this day.
Among Wonder's best known works are singles such as "Superstition", "Sir Duke", "I Wish" and "I Just Called to Say I Love You". Well known albums also include Talking Book, Innervisions and Songs in the Key of Life. He has recorded more than thirty U.S. top ten hits and received twenty-two Grammy Awards, the most ever awarded to a male solo artist. Wonder is also noted for his work as an activist for political causes, including his 1980 campaign to make Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday a holiday in the United States. In 2009, Wonder was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace. In 2008, Billboard magazine released a list of the Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists to celebrate the US singles chart's fiftieth anniversary, with Wonder at number five.
wn.com/Stevie_Wonder -
Sviatoslav Richter
Sviatoslav Teofilovich Richter (Russian: Святослав Теофилович Рихтер Sviatosláv Teofílovich Ríkhter, Russian pronunciation: [svʲjətəsˈlaf tʲɪəˈfʲiləvʲɪtɕ ˈrʲixtər], Ukrainian: Святослав Теофілович Ріхтер; March 20 [O.S. March 7] 1915 – August 1, 1997) was a Soviet pianist well known for the depth of his interpretations, virtuoso technique, and vast repertoire. He is widely considered one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century.
Richter was born in Zhytomyr, Ukraine. His father, Teofil Danilovich Richter (1872–1941), was a German expatriate pianist, organist, and composer who had studied in Vienna. His mother, Anna Pavlovna (née Moskaleva; 1892–1963), was from a landowning Russian family, and at one point had been a pupil of her future husband. In 1918, when Richter's parents were in Odessa, the Civil War separated them from their son, and Richter moved in with his aunt Tamara. He lived with her from 1918 to 1921, and it was then that his interest in art first manifested itself, although he first became interested in painting, which his aunt taught him.
wn.com/Sviatoslav_Richter -
Sylvia Stahlman
Sylvia Stahlman (March 5, 1929 - August 19, 1998) was an American soprano, particularly associated with light, coloratura roles.
Stahlman was born in Nashville, Tennessee, and studied at The Juilliard School in New York City. She began her career on Broadway, in 1948-49, in Kurt Weill's Love Life, opposite Nanette Fabray, directed by Elia Kazan.
She left for Europe to begin a career in opera, performing first under the name Giulia Bardi. She made her debut at La Monnaie in Brussels, as Elvira in I puritani, in 1951, and remained with that theatre until 1954. She also sang in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and Vienna, and appeared at the Glyndebourne Festival in 1959, as Ilia in Idomeneo.
In America, she appeared at the New York City Opera in the Fall Season of 1956, as Eurydice in Orphée aux enfers, conducted by Erich Leinsdorf, and Gilda in Rigoletto, with Julius Rudel conducting. The soprano also appeared at the San Francisco Opera and the Lyric Opera of Chicago. In San Francisco, she sang Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier, Sister Constance of St Dénis in Dialogues des Carmélites (the United States premiere), Oscar in Un ballo in maschera (to the Amelia of Herva Nelli), Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi, and Dircé in Médée (the Italian version), from 1957 to 1960. She took part, in 1964, in the American premiere of Daphne, at the Santa Fe Opera.
wn.com/Sylvia_Stahlman -
Thomas Beecham
Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet, CH (29 April 1879 – 8 March 1961) was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic orchestras. He was also closely associated with the Liverpool Philharmonic and Hallé orchestras. From the early 20th century until his death, Beecham was a major influence on the musical life of Britain and, according to the BBC, was Britain's first international conductor.
Born to a rich industrial family, Beecham began his career as a conductor in 1899. He used his access to the family fortune to finance opera from the 1910s until the start of the Second World War, staging seasons at Covent Garden, Drury Lane and His Majesty's Theatre with international stars, his own orchestra and a wide repertoire. Among the works he introduced to England were Richard Strauss's Elektra, Salome and Der Rosenkavalier and three operas by Frederick Delius.
Together with his younger colleague Malcolm Sargent, Beecham founded the London Philharmonic, and he conducted its first performance at the Queen's Hall in 1932. In the 1940s, he worked for three years in the United States, where he was music director of the Seattle Symphony and conducted at the Metropolitan Opera. After his return to Britain, he founded the Royal Philharmonic in 1946 and conducted it until his death in 1961.
wn.com/Thomas_Beecham -
Valerie Pitts
Valerie Pitts, Lady Solti, is the widow of Sir Georg Solti. She was one of the BBC's original team of television presenters during the 1950s. She left the programme in 1960 to marry James Sargent who was stage manager of the Sadler's Wells Opera Company. She also worked at Granada Television.
She had met Solti in September 1964 when she was sent to interview him. Solti pursued her romantically and finally persuaded her to leave her husband. They married in 1967, and had two daughters, Gabrielle and Claudia. She appeared on children's television, as a presenter of Play School and then at Granada a series for older children, ExtraOrdinary, which involved strange-but-true stories from science and the arts. She gave up her career as a presenter, though she continued to appear occasionally on television (notably on the quiz show, Face The Music) and worked with Solti for various charities.
Lady Solti is the patroness of the World Orchestra for Peace, which her husband founded and whose first concert at the United Nations he conducted. In addition, she has devoted time to other cultural organizations, including the Sadler’s Wells Theatre Trust, the Mariinsky Theatre Trust, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Musica Nel Chiostro, Battignano Italy, the Hungarian Cultural Centre (London), Liszt Academy (Budapest), and the W11 Opera children's opera company in London.
wn.com/Valerie_Pitts -
Valery Gergiev
Valery Abisalovich Gergiev PAR (Russian: Валерий Абисалович Гергиев, Ossetic: Гергиты Абисалы фырт Валери/Gergity Abisaly Fyrt Valeri; born 2 May 1953) is a Russian conductor and opera company director. He is general director and artistic director of the Mariinsky Theatre, principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, and artistic director of the White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg.
Gergiev, born in Moscow, is the son of Tamara Tatarkanovna and Abisal Zaurbekovich. He and his siblings were raised in Vladikavkaz in their native North Ossetia in the Caucasus. He began piano at secondary school, before going on to study at the St. Petersburg Conservatory in Leningrad from 1972 to 1977. His principal conducting teacher was Prof. Ilya Musin (Илья Мусин), one of the greatest conductor-makers in Russian musical history. His sister, Larissa Gergieva, is a pianist and director of the Mariinsky's singers' academy.
In 1978, he became assistant conductor at the Kirov Opera, now the Mariinsky Opera, under Yuri Temirkanov, where he made his debut conducting Sergei Prokofiev's War and Peace. He was chief conductor of the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra from 1981 until 1985 – the year he made his debut in the United Kingdom, along with pianist Evgeny Kissin, and violinists Maxim Vengerov and Vadim Repin, at The Lichfield Festival.
wn.com/Valery_Gergiev -
Victor Borge
Victor Borge ( /ˈbɔrɡə/ BOR-gə; 3 January 1909 – 23 December 2000), born Børge Rosenbaum, was a Danish and American comedian, conductor and pianist, affectionately known as The Clown Prince of Denmark,The Unmelancholy Dane, and The Great Dane.
Borge was born Børge Rosenbaum in Copenhagen, Denmark, into a Jewish family. His parents, Bernhard and Frederikke Rosenbaum, were both musicians—his father a violist in the Royal Danish Orchestra and his mother a pianist. Like his mother, Borge began piano lessons at the age of two, and it was soon apparent that he was a prodigy. He gave his first piano recital when he was eight years old, and in 1918 was awarded a full scholarship at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, studying under Olivo Krause. Later on, he was taught by Victor Schiøler, Liszt's student Frederic Lamond, and Busoni's pupil Egon Petri.
Borge played his first major concert in 1926 at the Danish concert-hall Odd Fellow Palæet (The Odd Fellow's Lodge building). After a few years as a classical concert pianist, he started his now famous "stand up" act, with the signature blend of piano music and jokes. He married American Elsie Chilton in 1933, the same year he debuted with his revue acts. Borge started touring extensively in Europe, where he began telling anti-Nazi jokes.
wn.com/Victor_Borge -
Victor Olof
Victor Olof (12 July 1898 – 3 November 1974) was an English musician, known first as a violinist and conductor and later as a record producer for Decca Records and subsequently for HMV Records.
Among the artists whose recordings Olof supervised were Karl Böhm, Erich Kleiber, Sir Thomas Beecham, Lisa della Casa, Cesare Siepi, Victoria de los Ángeles, Clifford Curzon, Wilhelm Backhaus and Yehudi Menuhin.
Victor Olof Ahlquist was of Swedish descent. He was born in St Pancras, London, the youngest of five children of Michael Ahlqist, a tailor who retained his Swedish nationality, and his wife Elizabeth. He attended the Guildhall School of Music in London, where he won the Melba Scholarship in 1916. His violin professor was Kalman Ronay. Among his fellow students were the singers Dora Labbette and Lilian Stiles-Allen. On the advice of the principal of the school, Sir Landon Ronald, he dropped his original surname.
In the 1920s Olof founded and led the Victor Olof Sextet, with whom he gave concerts and broadcasts for more than 20 years. In 1928 he married Phyllis Robey; there were two sons of the marriage. In the 1940s he was an orchestral manager and conductor, working with the London Symphony Orchestra and especially the National Symphony Orchestra, an ad hoc ensemble of top orchestral players assembled for the wealthy musical amateur Sidney Beer.
wn.com/Victor_Olof -
Vladimir Ashkenazy
Vladimir Davidovich Ashkenazy (Russian: Владимир Давидович Ашкенази, Vladimir Davidovič Aškenazi; born July 6, 1937) is a Russian-Icelandic conductor and pianist. Since 1972 he has been a citizen of Iceland, his wife Þórunn's country of birth. Since 1978, because of his many obligations in Europe, he and his family have resided in Meggen, near Lucerne in Switzerland. He is currently Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.
Ashkenazy was born in Gorky, Soviet Union (now Nizhny Novgorod, Russia), to the pianist and composer David Ashkenazi and to the actress Yevstolia Grigorievna, born Plotnova. His father was Jewish and his mother was the daughter of a family of Russian Orthodox peasants. He began playing piano at the age of six and, showing prodigious talent, was accepted to the Central Music School at age eight studying with Anaida Sumbatyan. Ashkenazy went on to graduate from the Moscow Conservatory where he studied with Lev Oborin and Boris Zemliansky, winning second prize in the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in 1955 and the first prize in the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition in Brussels in 1956. He shared the first prize in the 1962 International Tchaikovsky Competition with British pianist John Ogdon. As a student, like many in that period, he was harassed by the KGB to become an "informer." He did not really cooperate, and despite pressures from the authorities, in 1961 married the Iceland-born Þórunn Jóhannsdóttir, who studied piano at the Moscow Conservatory. To marry Ashkenazy, Þórunn was forced to give up her Icelandic citizenship and declare that she wanted to live in the USSR.
wn.com/Vladimir_Ashkenazy -
Vladimir Jurowski
Vladimir Mikhailovich Jurowski (Russian: Владимир Михайлович Юровский; born 4 April 1972, Moscow, Russia) is a Russian conductor. He is the son of conductor Mikhail Jurowski.
Jurowski began his musical studies at the Moscow Conservatory. In 1990, he moved with his family, including his brother Dmitri, to Germany, where he completed his education at the music schools at the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber Dresden and the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler. He studied conducting with Rolf Reuter and vocal coaching with Semion Skigin. He participated in a conducting master class with Sir Colin Davis on Sibelius' Symphony No. 7 in 1991.
Jurowski first appeared on the international scene in 1995 at the Wexford Festival, where he conducted Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's opera May Night, and he returned the following year for Giacomo Meyerbeer's L'étoile du nord, which was recorded by Naxos Records. In April 1996, he made his debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, conducting Nabucco.
wn.com/Vladimir_Jurowski -
Walter Legge
Harry Walter Legge (1 June 1906 – 22 March 1979) was an influential English classical record producer, most notably for EMI. His recordings include many sets later regarded as classics and reissued by EMI as "Great Recordings of the Century". He worked in the recording industry from 1927, combining this with the post of junior music critic of The Manchester Guardian. He was assistant to Sir Thomas Beecham at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and in World War II played a role in bringing music to the armed forces and civilians.
After the war, Legge founded the Philharmonia Orchestra and worked for EMI as a recording producer. In the 1960s he quarrelled with EMI and resigned. He attempted to disband the Philharmonia in 1964, but it continued as an independent body without him. After this he had no permanent job, and confined himself to giving masterclasses with, and supervising the recordings of, his second wife, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.
Legge was born in Shepherds Bush, London, where his father was a tailor. He was educated at the Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith. He excelled in Latin and French, but received no musical training. He left school at 16 and had no further formal education. Encouraged by his father he developed a taste for music, and Richard Wagner in particular, in pursuit of which he taught himself to read music and to speak German.
wn.com/Walter_Legge -
Wikipedia Persondata
wn.com/Wikipedia_Persondata -
Wilhelm Furtwängler
Wilhelm Furtwängler (January 25, 1886 – November 30, 1954) was a German conductor and composer. He is widely considered to have been one of the greatest symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century. By the 1930s he had built a reputation as one of the leading conductors in Europe, and he was the leading conductor who remained in Germany during the Second World War. Although he was never a member of the Nazi party, the morality of his decision to remain working in Germany during this period has been continually debated since his death. However even today, many musicians, critics and record collectors still revere him for his very subjective conducting style, which is often compared and contrasted to the more objective style of Arturo Toscanini, who was probably the most famous conductor at the time. Like Toscanini, Furtwängler was a major influence on many later conductors, and his name is often mentioned when discussing their interpretive style.
Furtwängler was born in Berlin into a prominent family. His father Adolf was an archaeologist, his mother a painter. Most of his childhood was spent in Munich, where his father taught at the city's Ludwig Maximilian University. He was given a musical education from an early age, and developed an early love of Ludwig van Beethoven, a composer with whom he remained closely associated throughout his life. Though his chief posthumous fame rests on his work as a conductor, he was also a composer and regarded himself first and foremost as such, having in fact first taken up the baton in order to perform his own works.
wn.com/Wilhelm_Furtwängler -
William Steinberg
William Steinberg (August 1, 1899 – May 16, 1978) was a German-American conductor.
Steinberg was born Hans Wilhelm Steinberg in Cologne, Germany. He displayed early talent as a violinist, pianist, and composer, conducting his own choral/ orchestral composition (based on texts from Ovid's Metamorphoses) at age 13. In 1914, he began studies at the Cologne Conservatory, where his piano teacher was the Clara Schumann pupil Lazzaro Uzielli and his conducting mentor was Hermann Abendroth. He graduated with distinction, winning the Wüllner Prize for conducting, in 1919. He immediately became a second violinist in the Cologne Opera orchestra, but was dismissed from the position by Otto Klemperer for using his own bowings. He was soon hired by Klemperer as an assistant, and in 1922 conducted Fromental Halévy's La Juive as a substitute. When Klemperer left in 1924, Steinberg served as Principal Conductor. He left a year later, in 1925, for Prague, where he was conductor of the German Theater. He next took the position of music director of the Frankfurt Opera. In 1930, in Frankfurt, he conducted the world premiere of Arnold Schoenberg's Von heute auf morgen.
wn.com/William_Steinberg -
Willie Nelson
Willie Hugh Nelson (pronounced /wɪli nɛlsən /; born April 30, 1933) is an American country music singer-songwriter, as well as an author, poet, actor, and activist. The critical success of the album Shotgun Willie (1973), combined with the critical and commercial success of Red Headed Stranger (1975) and Stardust (1978), made Nelson one of the most recognized artists in country music. He was one of the main figures of outlaw country, a subgenre of country music that developed at the end of the 1960s as a reaction to the conservative restrictions of the Nashville sound. Nelson has acted in over 30 films, co-authored several books, and has been involved in activism for the use of biofuels and the legalization of marijuana.
wn.com/Willie_Nelson -
Witold Lutosławski
Witold Lutosławski (Polish pronunciation: [ˈvitɔld lutɔsˈwafski]; January 25, 1913 – February 7, 1994) was one of the major European composers of the 20th century, and one of the preeminent Polish musicians during his last three decades. He earned many international awards and prizes, including the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest honour.
During his youth, Lutosławski studied piano and composition in Warsaw. His early works were influenced by Polish folk music. His style demonstrates a wide range of rich atmospheric textures. He began to develop his own characteristic composition techniques in the late 1950s. His music from this period onwards incorporates his own methods of building harmonies from small groups of musical intervals. It also uses aleatoric processes, in which the rhythmic coordination of parts is subject to an element of chance. His compositions (of which he was a notable conductor) include four symphonies, a Concerto for Orchestra, a string quartet, several instrumental concertos and orchestral song cycles.
wn.com/Witold_Lutosławski -
Wolfgang Sawallisch
Wolfgang Sawallisch (German: [ˈvɔlfɡaŋ zaˈvalɪʃ]; born 26 August 1923) is a retired German conductor and pianist.
Sawallisch was born in Munich, and studied composition and pianoforte there privately: at the conclusion of the war, in 1946 he continued his studies at the Munich High School for Music and passed his final examination for conducting. He began his career at the opera house in Augsburg in 1947. There he became first coach and later principal conductor: in 1952–53 he was personal assistant to Igor Markevitch at the International Summer Academy Mozarteum, Salzburg.
When he debuted at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus conducting Tristan und Isolde in 1957, he was the youngest conductor ever to appear there.
From 1960 to 1970 he was Principal Conductor of the Vienna Symphony. From 1971 to 1992, Sawallisch was Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera, and for several years from 1983, concurrently was the general manager of the company.
From 1993 to 2003 he was Music Director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and is currently its Conductor Laureate. He is also Honorary Conductor Laureate of the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo. He was the recipient of a Suntory Music Award in 1993.
wn.com/Wolfgang_Sawallisch -
Wolfgang Windgassen
Wolfgang Windgassen (June 26, 1914 – September 8, 1974) was a tenor internationally known for his performances in Wagner operas.
Born in Annemasse, France, he was the son (and pupil) of a well known German Heldentenor, Fritz Windgassen (who was also the teacher of Gottlob Frick). His mother was the German coloratura soprano Vali von der Osten, sister of the much more famous soprano Eva von der Osten, who created the part of Octavian in Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier. Both Windgassen's parents were longtime mainstays of the Staatsoper Stuttgart.
Wolfgang made his début at Pforzheim as Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly. After army service he became a member of the Stuttgart opera company, and succeeded his father as principal tenor. Stuttgart opera remained his home base throughout his career, and for the last two years of his life he was its artistic director.
Windgassen sang at all the important opera houses all over the world. He was invited to perform at the reopening of the Bayreuth Festival in 1951 and continued to appear there till 1970, singing all the great Wagner tenor roles: Erik, Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Tristan, Walter, Loge, Siegmund, both Siegfrieds and Parsifal, his debut role in 1951.
wn.com/Wolfgang_Windgassen -
Yehudi Menuhin
Yehudi Menuhin, Baron Menuhin, OM, KBE (22 April 1916 – 12 March 1999) was an American violinist and conductor who spent most of his performing career in the United Kingdom. He was born to Russian Jewish parents in the United States, but became a citizen of Switzerland in 1970, and of the United Kingdom in 1985. He is often considered to be one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century.
Yehudi Menuhin was born in New York City, United States, to Bielorussian Jewish parents from what is now Belarus. His sisters were the concert pianist and human rights worker Hephzibah Menuhin and the pianist, painter, and poet Yaltah Menuhin. Through his father Moshe Menuhin, a former rabbinical student and anti-Zionist writer, Menuhin was descended from a distinguished rabbinical dynasty.
Menuhin began violin instruction at age four under violinist Sigmund Anker; his parents had wanted Louis Persinger to be his teacher, but Persinger refused. Menuhin displayed extraordinary talents at an early age. His first solo violin performance was at the age of seven with the San Francisco Symphony in 1923. Persinger then agreed to take Menuhin as a student. When the Menuhins went to Paris, Persinger suggested Yehudi go to his own teacher, Eugène Ysaÿe. He did have one lesson with Ysaÿe, but did not like his method or the fact that he was very old. Instead, he went to the Romanian composer and violinist George Enescu, after which he made several recordings with his sister Hephzibah. He was also a student of Adolf Busch. In 1929 he played in Berlin, under Bruno Walter's baton, three concerti by Bach, Brahms and Beethoven. In 1932 he recorded Edward Elgar's Violin Concerto in B minor for HMV in London, with the composer himself conducting, and between 1934 and 1936 he made the first integral recording of Johann Sebastian Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin.
wn.com/Yehudi_Menuhin -
Yuri Bashmet
Yuri Abramovich Bashmet (Russian: Юрий Абрамович Башмет, Ukrainian: Юрій Башмет; born 24 January 1953) is a Russian conductor, violinist and violist.
He is a direct patrilineal descendant of Besht.
Yuri Bashmet was born on 24 January 1953 in Rostov-on-Don in the family of Abram Borisovich Bashmet and Maya Zinovyeva Bashmet (née Krichever). "Father's mother, Tsilya Efimovna, studied singing at the conservatory for two years in her youth. Mother's mother, Darya Axentyevna, interpreted wonderfully her native Huzul songs" (http://yanko.lib.ru/books/music/bashmet_vokzal_mechtu.htm#_Toc34416664).
In 1971, he graduated from the Lviv secondary special music school. From 1971 till 1976, he studied at the Moscow Conservatory. His first viola teacher was Professor Vadim Borisovsky; after whose death in 1972 was succeeded by Professor Fyodor Druzhinin. Druzhinin was also the tutor of Yuri Bashmet for the probation period and for his postgraduate study at the Moscow Conservatory (1976–1978).
In 1972, Bashmet purchased a 1758 viola made by Milanese luthier Paolo Testore, which he uses for his performances to date. When he was a student, he was granted the Second Award at the International Contest of Violists in Budapest (1975) and Grand Prix at the ARD International Music Competition in Munich (1976), attaining worldwide recognition.
wn.com/Yuri_Bashmet -
Zoltán Kodály
Zoltán Kodály (Hungarian: Kodály Zoltán, [ˈkodaːj ˈzoltaːn]; 16 December 1882 – 6 March 1967) was a Hungarian composer, ethnomusicologist, pedagogue, linguist, and philosopher. He is best known internationally as the creator of the Kodály Method.
Born in Kecskemét, Kodály learned to play the violin as a child.
In 1905 he visited remote villages to collect songs, recording them on phonograph cylinders. In 1906 he wrote the thesis on Hungarian folk song ("Strophic Construction in Hungarian Folksong"). Around this time Kodály met fellow composer Béla Bartók, whom he took under his wing and introduced to some of the methods involved in folk song collecting. The two became lifelong friends and champions of each other's music.
All these works show a great originality of form and content, a very interesting blend of highly sophisticated mastery in the Western-European style of music, including classical, late-romantic, impressionistic and modernist tradition and at the other hand profound knowledge and respect for the folk music on Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Albania and other Eastern-European countries. Due to the outbreak of the First World War and subsequent major geopolitical changes in the region and partly because of the personal shyness Kodály had no major public success until 1923 when his Psalmus Hungaricus premiered at a concert to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the union of Buda and Pest (Bartók's Dance Suite premiered on the same occasion.)
wn.com/Zoltán_Kodály -
Zubin Mehta
Zubin Mehta (ज़ुबिन मेहता); pronounced [ˈzuːbɪn ˈmeːɦt̪aː] (born 29 April 1936) is an Indian conductor of western classical music. He is the Music Director for Life of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
Zubin Mehta was born into a Parsi family in Bombay, British India, the son of Mehli and Tehmina Mehta. His father Mehli Mehta was a violinist and founding conductor of the Bombay Symphony Orchestra. Mehta is an alumnus of St. Mary's School, Mumbai, and St. Xavier's College, Mumbai. Mehta initially intended to study medicine, but eventually became a music student in Vienna at the age of 18, under Hans Swarowsky. Also at the same academy along with Mehta were conductor Claudio Abbado and conductor–pianist Daniel Barenboim.
Mehta's first marriage was to Canadian soprano Carmen Lasky in 1958. They have a son, Mervon and a daughter, Zarina. In 1964, they divorced. Two years after the divorce, Carmen married Zubin's brother, Zarin Mehta, now the Executive Director of the New York Philharmonic. In July 1969, Mehta married Nancy Kovack, a former American film and television actress. Mehta is a permanent resident of the United States, but retains his Indian citizenship.
wn.com/Zubin_Mehta
Solti, Georg Filmography
- Harmoniques: Richard Wagner (1999)
- Solti: The Making of a Maestro (1998)
- Wie es ihr gefällt - Cheryl Studer, eine amerikanische Sopranistin (1996)
- The Kennedy Center Honors: A Celebration of the Performing Arts (1993)
- Die Frau ohne Schatten (1992)
- Mozart: Requiem (1991)
- Kiri Te Kanawa (1991)
- Orchestra! (1991)
- The Maestro and the Diva (1990)
- Solti's Bartók in Budapest (1990)
- Un ballo in maschera (1989)
- Eugene Onegin (1988)
- Musik zum Ansehen (1972)
- Don Carlo (1965)
Send this Playlist by SMS
Email this Page
Sir Georg Solti - Elgar: Enigma Variation IX 'Nimrod'
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:45
- Updated: 29 Dec 2012
More info: www.icaclassics.com This performance of Elgar's Enigma Variations forms an historic account of the first concert Sir Georg Solti conducted as Chief conductor of the LPO in 1975. It is also the first DVD release with Solti performing Elgar's Symphony No.2. Solti, who prepared new works by listening to Elgar's own recordings, identified closely with his music. The virtuoso playing of the orchestra combined with his fresh, energetic approach make for an exciting, uplifting experience. The ICA Classics Legacy series presents a collection of historic performances by some of the world's greatest artists. These performances are released on DVD for the first time, incorporating rare archive footage that has been expertly and lovingly restored. Catalogue Number ICAD 5011 Elgar: Symphony No.2 in E flat London Philharmonic Orchestra (16 March 1975, Royal Festival Hall) - Elgar: Variations on an Original Theme for orchestra, Op. 36 ("Enigma") London Philharmonic Orchestra (20 October 1979, Royal Festival Hall) icartists.co.uk FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com TWITTER: www.twitter.com
http://wn.com/Sir_Georg_Solti_Elgar_Enigma_Variation_IX_'Nimrod'
More info: www.icaclassics.com This performance of Elgar's Enigma Variations forms an historic account of the first concert Sir Georg Solti conducted as Chief conductor of the LPO in 1975. It is also the first DVD release with Solti performing Elgar's Symphony No.2. Solti, who prepared new works by listening to Elgar's own recordings, identified closely with his music. The virtuoso playing of the orchestra combined with his fresh, energetic approach make for an exciting, uplifting experience. The ICA Classics Legacy series presents a collection of historic performances by some of the world's greatest artists. These performances are released on DVD for the first time, incorporating rare archive footage that has been expertly and lovingly restored. Catalogue Number ICAD 5011 Elgar: Symphony No.2 in E flat London Philharmonic Orchestra (16 March 1975, Royal Festival Hall) - Elgar: Variations on an Original Theme for orchestra, Op. 36 ("Enigma") London Philharmonic Orchestra (20 October 1979, Royal Festival Hall) icartists.co.uk FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com TWITTER: www.twitter.com
[Arthaus 101068] SOLTI, Georg: In Rehearsal
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:53
- Updated: 02 Jan 2013
SOLTI, Georg: In Rehearsal (PAL) GEORG SOLTI - IN REHEARSAL Richard WAGNER: Tannhauser Overture - Rehearsal and Performance; Hector BERLIOZ: Hungarian March from "La Damnation de Faust" - Rehearsal and Performance Suddeutsches Rundfunk Sinfonie Orchester, Georg Solti PAL 101 068 Running Time: 87 mins Picture Format: 4:3 Sound: PCM Stereo Region Code: 0 Menu Languages: GB, D, F, SP Subtitles: GB, F, SP Conducted by Sir Georg Solti, widely regarded as the world's finest conductor, with more Grammy awards to his name than any other artist, these performances demonstrate his conducting skill and great interpretative vision. These rare black and white recordings produced in 1966 and 1968, during his time as music director at Covent Garden, show how Solti's amiable but insistent leadership in rehearsal with the Suddeutsche Rundfunk Sinfonie Orchester Stuttgart turns Wagner's Tannhäuse Overture and Berlioz's Hungarian March into a sharpened and haunting performance. www.naxos.com
http://wn.com/_Arthaus_101068_SOLTI,_Georg_In_Rehearsal
SOLTI, Georg: In Rehearsal (PAL) GEORG SOLTI - IN REHEARSAL Richard WAGNER: Tannhauser Overture - Rehearsal and Performance; Hector BERLIOZ: Hungarian March from "La Damnation de Faust" - Rehearsal and Performance Suddeutsches Rundfunk Sinfonie Orchester, Georg Solti PAL 101 068 Running Time: 87 mins Picture Format: 4:3 Sound: PCM Stereo Region Code: 0 Menu Languages: GB, D, F, SP Subtitles: GB, F, SP Conducted by Sir Georg Solti, widely regarded as the world's finest conductor, with more Grammy awards to his name than any other artist, these performances demonstrate his conducting skill and great interpretative vision. These rare black and white recordings produced in 1966 and 1968, during his time as music director at Covent Garden, show how Solti's amiable but insistent leadership in rehearsal with the Suddeutsche Rundfunk Sinfonie Orchester Stuttgart turns Wagner's Tannhäuse Overture and Berlioz's Hungarian March into a sharpened and haunting performance. www.naxos.com
- published: 15 Jun 2010
- views: 6905
- author: naxosvideos
Mozart - Requiem - Cecilia Bartoli - George Solti 1991
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 85:06
- Updated: 03 Nov 2012
06:13 Requiem 16:18 Dies irae 18:24 Tuba mirum 21:31 Rex tremendae 23:36 Recordare 28:41 Confutatis 31:02 Lacrymosa 45:00 Domine Jesu 48:52 Hostias 54:38 Sanctus 56:10 Benedictus 1:09:36 Agnus Dei
http://wn.com/Mozart_Requiem_Cecilia_Bartoli_George_Solti_1991
06:13 Requiem 16:18 Dies irae 18:24 Tuba mirum 21:31 Rex tremendae 23:36 Recordare 28:41 Confutatis 31:02 Lacrymosa 45:00 Domine Jesu 48:52 Hostias 54:38 Sanctus 56:10 Benedictus 1:09:36 Agnus Dei
- published: 11 Nov 2011
- views: 196247
- author: fodipali
World Orchestra For Peace, Sir Georg Solti - Overture
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 11:14
- Updated: 02 Jan 2013
Music video by World Orchestra For Peace, Sir Georg Solti performing Overture. (C) 1995
http://wn.com/World_Orchestra_For_Peace,_Sir_Georg_Solti_Overture
Music video by World Orchestra For Peace, Sir Georg Solti performing Overture. (C) 1995
- published: 01 Dec 2009
- views: 18454
- author: WorldOrchPeaceVEVO
Mozart. Requiem. K626. Introitus. Sir Georg Solti.
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:55
- Updated: 30 Dec 2012
WA Mozart. Requiem. K626. Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra/Wiener Philharmoniker, Sir Georg Solti conducting. Konzertvereinigung Wiener Staatsopernchor. Arleen Auger, Soprano. Recorded: 1991, St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. Te decet hymnus Deus, in Sion, et tibi reddetur votum in Ierusalem. Exaudi orationem meam; ad te omnis caro veniet. Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. Grant them eternal rest, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. A hymn becomes you, O God, in Zion, and to you shall a vow be repaid in Jerusalem. Hear my prayer; to you shall all flesh come. Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.
http://wn.com/Mozart_Requiem_K626_Introitus_Sir_Georg_Solti
WA Mozart. Requiem. K626. Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra/Wiener Philharmoniker, Sir Georg Solti conducting. Konzertvereinigung Wiener Staatsopernchor. Arleen Auger, Soprano. Recorded: 1991, St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. Te decet hymnus Deus, in Sion, et tibi reddetur votum in Ierusalem. Exaudi orationem meam; ad te omnis caro veniet. Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. Grant them eternal rest, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. A hymn becomes you, O God, in Zion, and to you shall a vow be repaid in Jerusalem. Hear my prayer; to you shall all flesh come. Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.
- published: 31 Oct 2009
- views: 52475
- author: lllmozartlll
Wagner - 'Parsifal' - Act I Prelude (Georg Solti)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 12:28
- Updated: 02 Jan 2013
Richard Wagner's beautiful 'Parsifal' prelude. As performed by the Wiener Philharmoniker, conducted by Georg Solti.
http://wn.com/Wagner_'Parsifal'_Act_I_Prelude_Georg_Solti
Richard Wagner's beautiful 'Parsifal' prelude. As performed by the Wiener Philharmoniker, conducted by Georg Solti.
- published: 13 May 2011
- views: 225087
- author: DjangoMan1963
Siegfried Funeral March - Götterdämmerung - Solti - VPO
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:24
- Updated: 31 Dec 2012
Video showing Vienna Horns in F and Wagner Tuben, they are correctly called Wagner TUBEN (TUBE singular) (as in TUBES) and not TUBAS actually. Time and the need for a translation has changed that to tubas, just so you know (doubting Thomas's please look in the score). This is here to lament the passing of a style of playing that is so rare to encounter these days - sheer uninhibited passionate unbridled and raw playing which has today been replaced by something more sterile and exact. I will blame conductors any day for wanting everything to sound the way a modern recording does. This is from the DECCA DVD "The Golden Ring" which is a Humphrey Burton documentary made during the recording of Götterdämmerung for the Solti Ring Cycle. Buy it from Amazon as well as the CDs with the definitive Siegfriedruf played by Roland Berger aged 21.
http://wn.com/Siegfried_Funeral_March_Götterdämmerung_Solti_VPO
Video showing Vienna Horns in F and Wagner Tuben, they are correctly called Wagner TUBEN (TUBE singular) (as in TUBES) and not TUBAS actually. Time and the need for a translation has changed that to tubas, just so you know (doubting Thomas's please look in the score). This is here to lament the passing of a style of playing that is so rare to encounter these days - sheer uninhibited passionate unbridled and raw playing which has today been replaced by something more sterile and exact. I will blame conductors any day for wanting everything to sound the way a modern recording does. This is from the DECCA DVD "The Golden Ring" which is a Humphrey Burton documentary made during the recording of Götterdämmerung for the Solti Ring Cycle. Buy it from Amazon as well as the CDs with the definitive Siegfriedruf played by Roland Berger aged 21.
- published: 17 Oct 2009
- views: 67482
- author: hornchannel
SIR GEORG SOLTI - Overture - Le Nozze Di Figaro - Paris 1980
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:16
- Updated: 02 Jan 2013
Play List : www.youtube.com Il Conte d'Almaviva............Gabriel Bacquier La Contesa d'Almaviva......Gundula Janowitz Figaro ................................José van Dam Susanna.............................Lucia Popp Cherubino..........................Frederica von Stade Bartolo...............................Kurt Moll Don Basilio........................Michel Sénéchal Marcelina..........................Jane Berbié SIR GEORG SOLTI conducting Orchestre de l'Opéra national de Paris サー・ゲオルグ・ショルティ 「フィガロの結婚」 『序曲』
http://wn.com/SIR_GEORG_SOLTI_Overture_Le_Nozze_Di_Figaro_Paris_1980
Play List : www.youtube.com Il Conte d'Almaviva............Gabriel Bacquier La Contesa d'Almaviva......Gundula Janowitz Figaro ................................José van Dam Susanna.............................Lucia Popp Cherubino..........................Frederica von Stade Bartolo...............................Kurt Moll Don Basilio........................Michel Sénéchal Marcelina..........................Jane Berbié SIR GEORG SOLTI conducting Orchestre de l'Opéra national de Paris サー・ゲオルグ・ショルティ 「フィガロの結婚」 『序曲』
- published: 12 Mar 2012
- views: 2962
- author: rosen10kavalier
Sir Georg Solti & Wiener Philharmoniker - "Hungarian Connection" Concert (April 1995)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 93:22
- Updated: 02 Jan 2013
The "Hungarian Connection" concert at Großer Musikvereinssaal in Vienna in April 1995. Zoltán Kodály (1882 - 1967): Háry János Suite 1. Prelude; the fairy tale begins 2. Viennese musical clock 3. Song 4. The battle and defeat of Napoleon 5. Intermezzo 6. Entrance of the emperor and his court Béla Bartók (1881 - 1945): Roumanian Folk Dances for Orchestra, Sz. 68 1. Stick Dance (from Mezöszabad) 2. Sash Dance (from Egres) 3. In One Spot (from Egres) 4. Horn Dance (from Bisztra) 5. Roumanian Polka (from Belényes) 6. Fast Dance (from Belényes) 7. Fast Dance (from Nyágra) Leó Weiner (1885 - 1960): Prinz Csongor und die Kobolde (Introduction & Scherzo), Op.10 Hector Berlioz (1803 - 1869): La Damnation de Faust, Op.24 Part 1: Marche hongroise Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 - 1827): Symphony No.7 in A, Op.92 1. Poco sostenuto - Vivace 2. Allegretto 3. Presto - Assai meno presto 4. Allegro con brio Wiener Philharmoniker Sir Georg Solti
http://wn.com/Sir_Georg_Solti_Wiener_Philharmoniker_Hungarian_Connection_Concert_April_1995
The "Hungarian Connection" concert at Großer Musikvereinssaal in Vienna in April 1995. Zoltán Kodály (1882 - 1967): Háry János Suite 1. Prelude; the fairy tale begins 2. Viennese musical clock 3. Song 4. The battle and defeat of Napoleon 5. Intermezzo 6. Entrance of the emperor and his court Béla Bartók (1881 - 1945): Roumanian Folk Dances for Orchestra, Sz. 68 1. Stick Dance (from Mezöszabad) 2. Sash Dance (from Egres) 3. In One Spot (from Egres) 4. Horn Dance (from Bisztra) 5. Roumanian Polka (from Belényes) 6. Fast Dance (from Belényes) 7. Fast Dance (from Nyágra) Leó Weiner (1885 - 1960): Prinz Csongor und die Kobolde (Introduction & Scherzo), Op.10 Hector Berlioz (1803 - 1869): La Damnation de Faust, Op.24 Part 1: Marche hongroise Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 - 1827): Symphony No.7 in A, Op.92 1. Poco sostenuto - Vivace 2. Allegretto 3. Presto - Assai meno presto 4. Allegro con brio Wiener Philharmoniker Sir Georg Solti
- published: 06 Aug 2012
- views: 8851
- author: bravo09102
Bruckner Symphony No 3 D minor George Solti
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 57:59
- Updated: 31 Dec 2012
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
http://wn.com/Bruckner_Symphony_No_3_D_minor_George_Solti
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
- published: 20 May 2012
- views: 7207
- author: HaydnHouse
Handel Messiah - Great Choruses, Sir Georg Solti
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 54:07
- Updated: 02 Jan 2013
Handel Messiah - Great Choruses Kiri Te Kanawa Soprano Anna Gjevang Alto Keith Levis Tenor Chicago Symphony Orchestra & Chorus Sir Georg Solti Conductor Rec.: 1984
http://wn.com/Handel_Messiah_Great_Choruses,_Sir_Georg_Solti
Handel Messiah - Great Choruses Kiri Te Kanawa Soprano Anna Gjevang Alto Keith Levis Tenor Chicago Symphony Orchestra & Chorus Sir Georg Solti Conductor Rec.: 1984
- published: 07 Dec 2011
- views: 16289
- author: harpsichordRB
Mozart Requiem (Sir Georg Solti) - III. Sequentia - f) Lacrimosa 1991
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:17
- Updated: 19 Dec 2012
Mozart Requiem (Sir Georg Solti) - III. Sequentia - f) Lacrimosa 1991
http://wn.com/Mozart_Requiem_Sir_Georg_Solti_III_Sequentia_f_Lacrimosa_1991
Mozart Requiem (Sir Georg Solti) - III. Sequentia - f) Lacrimosa 1991
- published: 22 Jun 2011
- views: 2824
- author: VayperSki001
'Orchestra' with George Solti & Dudley Moore 1/3
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:59
- Updated: 21 Dec 2012
The first part of the first episode of a 1991 series about the history and workings of the orchestra. Parts two and three of this episode have already been uploaded and are on this channel. (Part One was uploaded at the same time but was removed because it played with wound only, not visuals). This is the only episode I have of the series, so I won't be uploading any more.
http://wn.com/'Orchestra'_with_George_Solti_Dudley_Moore_1_3
The first part of the first episode of a 1991 series about the history and workings of the orchestra. Parts two and three of this episode have already been uploaded and are on this channel. (Part One was uploaded at the same time but was removed because it played with wound only, not visuals). This is the only episode I have of the series, so I won't be uploading any more.
- published: 22 Apr 2009
- views: 9024
- author: Toddysfins
Georg Solti conducts Shostakovich's 10th Symphony - 2nd Mvt.
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:23
- Updated: 14 Dec 2012
Playlist: www.youtube.com Georg Solti conducts the BR Sinfonieorchester in the Shostakovich's 10th Symphony 2nd movement: Allegro München, 1992
http://wn.com/Georg_Solti_conducts_Shostakovich's_10th_Symphony_2nd_Mvt
Playlist: www.youtube.com Georg Solti conducts the BR Sinfonieorchester in the Shostakovich's 10th Symphony 2nd movement: Allegro München, 1992
- published: 15 Jun 2010
- views: 16279
- author: orso1149
Bruckner - Symphony No. 4
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 63:27
- Updated: 21 Dec 2012
Chicago Symphony Orchestra- George Solti conductor Visit Musical Musings at : muswrite.blogspot.com
http://wn.com/Bruckner_Symphony_No_4
Chicago Symphony Orchestra- George Solti conductor Visit Musical Musings at : muswrite.blogspot.com
- published: 16 Jan 2012
- views: 14006
- author: winkle522000
Kiri Te Kanawa - Sir Georg Solti - Strauss
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 43:31
- Updated: 21 Dec 2012
Kiri Te Kanawa - Sir Georg Solti - Strauss Here is Dame Kiri Te Kanawa with Sir Georg Solti going through Strauss's Four Last Songs, working through each song. You then see Kiri in jumpsuit singing through them with Orchestra. Finally the whole concert.
http://wn.com/Kiri_Te_Kanawa_Sir_Georg_Solti_Strauss
Kiri Te Kanawa - Sir Georg Solti - Strauss Here is Dame Kiri Te Kanawa with Sir Georg Solti going through Strauss's Four Last Songs, working through each song. You then see Kiri in jumpsuit singing through them with Orchestra. Finally the whole concert.
- published: 05 Aug 2012
- views: 3071
- author: Nico35
WAGNER - Tristan und Isolde - Prelude and Liebestod (Georg Solti - Chicago Symphony Orchestra)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 18:46
- Updated: 02 Jan 2013
Richard Wagner - Prelude and Liebestod from "Tristan und Isolde" - Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Georg Solti.
http://wn.com/WAGNER_Tristan_und_Isolde_Prelude_and_Liebestod_Georg_Solti_Chicago_Symphony_Orchestra
Richard Wagner - Prelude and Liebestod from "Tristan und Isolde" - Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Georg Solti.
- published: 01 Jul 2011
- views: 34738
- author: DjangoMan1963
Mahler Symphony No 5 - Chicago Symphony Orchestra, George Solti, Adolf Herseth
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:39
- Updated: 02 Jan 2013
Gustav Mahler, Symphony No. 5, part 1. Chicago Symphony Orchestra with Sir George Solti. Recorded live at Bunkakaikan, Tokyo on March 26, 1986
http://wn.com/Mahler_Symphony_No_5_Chicago_Symphony_Orchestra,_George_Solti,_Adolf_Herseth
Gustav Mahler, Symphony No. 5, part 1. Chicago Symphony Orchestra with Sir George Solti. Recorded live at Bunkakaikan, Tokyo on March 26, 1986
- published: 08 Feb 2010
- views: 113715
- author: seilogramp
1812 Overture, Op. 49 - Sir Georg Solti/Chicago Symphony Orchestra
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 15:00
- Updated: 31 Dec 2012
Released on Decca Records back in 1998, this is Sir Georg Solti conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the 1812 Overture, recorded in the early 90's. Any comments are appreciated and encouraged!
http://wn.com/1812_Overture,_Op_49_Sir_Georg_Solti_Chicago_Symphony_Orchestra
Released on Decca Records back in 1998, this is Sir Georg Solti conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the 1812 Overture, recorded in the early 90's. Any comments are appreciated and encouraged!
- published: 18 Jul 2011
- views: 6178
- author: rldcad1
Sir Georg Solti's monologue on Mahler's 8th
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:27
- Updated: 20 Dec 2012
http://wn.com/Sir_Georg_Solti's_monologue_on_Mahler's_8th
Solti's Gotterdammerung recording
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:09
- Updated: 30 Sep 2012
Documentary of the Solti's Gotterdammerung recording for DECCA. It was the first complete recording of the ring cycle. Birgit Nilsson, Wolfgang Windgassen, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Claire Watson, Gottlob Frick, Wiener Philharmoniker.
http://wn.com/Solti's_Gotterdammerung_recording
Documentary of the Solti's Gotterdammerung recording for DECCA. It was the first complete recording of the ring cycle. Birgit Nilsson, Wolfgang Windgassen, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Claire Watson, Gottlob Frick, Wiener Philharmoniker.
- published: 04 May 2009
- views: 12494
- author: heildirgunther
Anton Bruckner Sinfonia No. 2 dir. Georg Solti
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 53:18
- Updated: 24 Dec 2012
Joseph Anton Bruckner (Ansfelden, 4 settembre 1824 -- Vienna, 11 ottobre 1896) Sinfonia No. 2 in C Minor Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra dir. Georg Solti la pubblicazione di questo video derivante da una registrazione televisiva non intende violare nessun copyright, ne di essere sfruttato a scopo di lucro. in caso contrario il sottoscritto è a disposizione per l'eventuale rimozione the publication of this video, arising from a television recording does not intend to violate any copyrights, nor to be exploited for profit. otherwise the undersigned is available for the eventual removal
http://wn.com/Anton_Bruckner_Sinfonia_No_2_dir_Georg_Solti
Joseph Anton Bruckner (Ansfelden, 4 settembre 1824 -- Vienna, 11 ottobre 1896) Sinfonia No. 2 in C Minor Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra dir. Georg Solti la pubblicazione di questo video derivante da una registrazione televisiva non intende violare nessun copyright, ne di essere sfruttato a scopo di lucro. in caso contrario il sottoscritto è a disposizione per l'eventuale rimozione the publication of this video, arising from a television recording does not intend to violate any copyrights, nor to be exploited for profit. otherwise the undersigned is available for the eventual removal
- published: 10 Sep 2011
- views: 8952
- author: giannibodoar
Beethoven / Georg Solti, 1972: Solti Comments, Conducts Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (1)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 10:37
- Updated: 09 Dec 2012
In this 1972 recording (made available only to members of the Chicago Symphony Society), Sir Georg Solti comments on, and conducts, Beethoven's 9th Symphony. From the LP shown above, issued in 1973 on the London label. This is part one of four parts. Part 2: www.youtube.com
http://wn.com/Beethoven_Georg_Solti,_1972_Solti_Comments,_Conducts_Beethoven's_Ninth_Symphony_1
In this 1972 recording (made available only to members of the Chicago Symphony Society), Sir Georg Solti comments on, and conducts, Beethoven's 9th Symphony. From the LP shown above, issued in 1973 on the London label. This is part one of four parts. Part 2: www.youtube.com
- published: 22 Feb 2011
- views: 1726
- author: davidhertzberg
photo: AP / Ng Han Guan
02 Jan 2013
SEOUL -- In a domestically televised New Year's Day speech, North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un said he wanted to "remove confrontation" on this divided peninsula and called on "anti-reunification forces" in South Korea to cease their hostility toward the North. The lengthy address, which laid out the national goals for 2013, marked Mr ... Mr. Kim on Tuesday asked for a detente -- but with prerequisites that the conservative Ms ... ....(size: 3.2Kb)
photo: AP / Felicia Fonseca
01 Jan 2013
Article by WN.com Correspondent Dallas Darling. For good reason Mark Charles, a member of the Navajo Nation, is deeply offended that buried on page 45 of the 2010 Defense Appropriation Act (after pages on the maintenance and operation of the United States Military) is an "official" apology to Native American People ... political leaders and officials find it extremely difficult in expressing remorse for past mistakes ... Escorted by the U.S....(size: 5.6Kb)
photo: AP / John MacDougall
31 Dec 2012
Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned that the German economic climate in 2013 will be "even more difficult". In her new year message, she also cautioned that the eurozone debt crisis was far from over. However, she did say that reforms designed to address the roots of the problem were beginning to bear fruit ... In a taped interview to be broadcast later on Monday, Mrs Merkel urged Germans to be more patient ... Voters 'wary' ... ....(size: 2.3Kb)
photo: AP / Emanuel Ekra
01 Jan 2013
INZA BAKAYOKO. Associated Press= ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) — A crowd stampeded after leaving a New Year's fireworks show early Tuesday in Ivory Coast's commercial center, killing 61 people — many of them youths — and injuring more than 200, rescue workers said. The death toll was expected to rise, the officials said ... Issa Sako of the fire department rescue team.....(size: 8.1Kb)
photo: AP / Mohammad Sajjad
02 Jan 2013
ISLAMABAD -- Continuing a militant campaign of violence against aid workers in Pakistan, gunmen Tuesday shot dead seven Pakistani teachers and health workers, six of them women, police officials said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility ... The victims worked for the private Pakistani aid group Support With Working Solution, which works in the health and education sectors ... "One child, aged 7 to 8 years, miraculously survived." ... ....(size: 3.4Kb)
Sydney Morning Herald
21 Dec 2012
LISA DELLA CASA, 1919-2012. Lisa Della Casa was one of the great generation of singers of the German repertory that dominated the operatic stage during the 1940s and 1950s. Like Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, she was strikingly beautiful, a point much remarked upon by the critics ... Lisa Della Casa’s voice is preserved in many recordings, including a notable Decca recording of Arabella under Georg Solti ... “Why, nothing ... Tweet ....(size: 5.9Kb)
MSNBC
14 Dec 2012
Before there was Gustavo Dudamel, there was another, even younger wunderkind. In 1962, after an angry Georg Solti resigned the podium before even taking it, the autocratic Dorothy Chandler crowned a dashingly handsome Bombay-born conductor music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He didn't have a huge reputation. He didn't have much experience. His name was Zubin Mehta. He was 26 years old ... A nice touch ... Dec ... In the event, it was ... ....(size: 5.4Kb)
IMDb
11 Dec 2012
This role became her trademark, and when the Royal Opera decided to stage its own production of the work in 1965, Della Casa was, of course, the Arabella, with Georg Solti in the pit ... ....(size: 0.9Kb)
noodls
11 Dec 2012
(Source. Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra). Sinfonia Antartica - A Valiant Story of Man and Nature Retold by. the HK Phil and Polar Explorer, Dr Rebecca Lee, in an Exciting. Multimedia Experience (18&19 Jan 2013). Download ... Holiday, Pops & More ... Tickets priced ... In 1967 Sir Georg Solti invited him to join the music staff of the Royal Opera House and the following year, at the age of 24, he became the youngest conductor ever to appear there....(size: 10.3Kb)
The Los Angeles Times
08 Dec 2012
On Nov ... In six more years he would make the cover of Time magazine, an extraordinary feat for a conductor of any age ... But he remains an Angeleno ... The orchestra had already named the dynamic Hungarian conductor Georg Solti to be its music director. But Dorothy Chandler had failed to consult Solti over her Mehta appointment, and Solti, feeling slighted, resigned in a huff ... George Kuyper, the orchestra's manager, told Mehta that would be OK....(size: 34.9Kb)
Chicago Sun-Times
07 Dec 2012
Vasily Petrenko, St. Petersburg-born and trained, now holds top spots with British youth and regional orchestras and will take over the Oslo Philharmonic next season. He also already has extensive recording and opera experience ... Edward Elgar is much beloved for too small a handful of his pieces, and under both Georg Solti and Daniel Barenboim, each with London connections, the CSO has been a fairly serious Elgar orchestra ... ....(size: 3.4Kb)
Richmond Times Dispatch
06 Dec 2012
Richmond’s Top 10. Shows and sounds of note for your listening pleasure this week.. 1. Chief Keef ... Broad St.) on Friday ... Doors open at 8 p.m ... 2 ... 3 ... “Static” ... It mines from the catalogs of Decca, Deutsche Grammophon and Philips as well as presents performances by Leonard Bernstein, Bernard Haitink, Herbert von Karajan and Sir Georg Solti, and a rare 1935 recording of Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto conducted by the revolutionary composer himself....(size: 5.2Kb)
The Examiner
04 Dec 2012
There's nothing classical music fans love more than watching their favorite artists in concert ... 1. Solti Conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The perfect gift for any Chicago Symphony Orchestra fan, this 3-disc set of renowned CSO conductor Sir Georg Solti conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra includes recordings of Mozart's Symphony No. 35, Mahler Symphony No ... 5. 2. Dudamel. Mahler Symphony No.8 live from Caracas ... 3. Dances & Dreams....(size: 3.8Kb)
Houston Chronicle
04 Dec 2012
Designed by American sculptor Julio Kilenyi in 1933, the Bruckner Medal of Honor has been awarded to such distinguished recipients as Arturo Toscanini, Bruno Walter, Bernard Haitink, Eugene Ormandy and Georg Solti ... George and Laura Bush portraits ... sought Beware of this gasoline, AAA says Judge removed in Fort Hood shooting rampage case George W....(size: 15.3Kb)
Beatles, Elvis, Michael Jackson among big-name, big boxed sets - Wire Lifestyle - The Sacramento ...
Sacramento Bee30 Nov 2012
During gift-giving season in the digital age, boxed sets are absurdly anachronistic - and more essential than ever ... B.B. King." ... Pop. ... The mixes are in stereo ... (14 LPs, $399) ... Vienna Philharmonic, Sir Georg Solti conducting ... It caught old-guard singers while they were still good, captured the new generation, and had cameo appearances from superstars such as Kirsten Flagstad and Joan Sutherland - all under Solti's excitingly nervous baton....(size: 12.2Kb)
The Tribune San Luis Obispo
30 Nov 2012
Search Events. Restaurants Movies Music Add an Event Performing Arts Venues. Photos & Videos. White House Christmas decorations. Christmas cookies ... Women's Basketball ... B.B ... Vienna Philharmonic, Sir Georg Solti conducting ... It caught old-guard singers while they were still good, captured the new generation, and had cameo appearances from superstars such as Kirsten Flagstad and Joan Sutherland - all under Solti's excitingly nervous baton ... ....(size: 25.4Kb)
The Examiner
24 Nov 2012
October 21 marked the centenary of the birth of Sir Georg Solti, who, for the last 50 years of his life, recorded exclusively for Decca ... For those interested in a broader overview of Solti’s work, on December 4 Decca will release Solti ... On this occasion Solti provided the glockenspiel accompaniment for Willi Domgraf-Fassbaender’s Papageno in a production conducted by Arturo Toscanini....(size: 9.7Kb)
Belfast Telegraph
21 Nov 2012
Broadcaster Danny Baker, who quit his radio show live on air earlier this month, has landed a new BBC TV show celebrating great albums ... Station controller Richard Klein said. "We're going to celebrate the album ... "I'm really pleased with the way audiences have responded to a film about Chas and Dave as much as a film about George Solti ... ....(size: 1.5Kb)
Sir Georg Solti, KBE, /ˈdʒɔrdʒ ˈʃɒlti/ (21 October 1912 – 5 September 1997) was an orchestral and operatic conductor, best known for his appearances with opera companies in Munich, Frankfurt and London, and as a long-serving music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Born in Hungary, he studied in Budapest with Béla Bartók, Leo Weiner and Ernő Dohnányi. In the 1930s, he was a répétiteur at the Hungarian State Opera and worked at the Salzburg Festival for Arturo Toscanini. His career was interrupted by the rise of the Nazis, and because he was a Jew he fled the increasingly restrictive anti-semitic laws in 1938. After conducting a season of Russian ballet in London at the Royal Opera House he found refuge in Switzerland, where he remained during the Second World War. Not permitted to conduct there, he earned a living as a pianist.
After the war Solti was appointed musical director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich from 1946. In 1952 he moved to the Frankfurt Opera, where he remained in charge for nine years. He took German citizenship in 1953. In 1961 he became musical director of the Covent Garden Opera Company in London. During his ten-year tenure, he introduced changes that saw standards raised to the highest international levels. Under his musical directorship the status of the company was recognised with the grant of the title "the Royal Opera". He became a British subject in 1972.
In 1969 Solti was appointed music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, a post he held for 22 years. He restored the orchestra's reputation after it had been in decline for most of the previous decade. He became the orchestra's music director laureate on his retirement in 1991. During his time with the Chicago orchestra, he also had shorter spells in charge of the Orchestre de Paris and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Known in his early years for the intensity of his music making, Solti was widely considered to have mellowed as a conductor in later years. He recorded many works two or three times at various stages of his career, and was a prolific recording artist, making more than 250 recordings, including 45 complete opera sets. The most famous of his recordings is probably Decca's complete set of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, made between 1958 and 1965. It has twice been voted the greatest recording ever made, in polls for Gramophone magazine in 1999 and the BBC's Music Magazine in 2012.
Contents |
Life and career[link]
Early years[link]
Solti was born György Stern (Hungarian: Stern György) in Vérmező utca, in the Buda district of Budapest, the younger of the two children of Móricz ("Mor") Stern and his wife Teréz, née Rosenbaum.[1] In the aftermath of the First World War it became the accepted practice in Hungary for citizens with Germanic surnames to adopt Hungarian ones. The right wing regime of Admiral Horthy enacted a series of "Hungarianisation" laws, including a requirement that state employees with foreign-sounding names must change them.[2] Mor Stern, a self-employed merchant, felt no need to change his surname, but thought it prudent to change that of his children.[2] He renamed them after Solt, a small town in central Hungary.[n 1] His son's given name, György, was acceptably Hungarian and was not changed.[2]
Solti described his father as "a kind, sweet man who trusted everyone. He shouldn't have, but he did. Jews in Hungary were tremendously patriotic. In 1914, when war broke out, my father invested most of his money in a war loan to help the country. By the time the bonds matured, they were worthless."[2] Mor Stern was a religious man, but his son was less so. Late in life Solti recalled, "I often upset him because I never stayed in the synagogue for longer than ten minutes."[2] Teréz Stern was from a musical family, and encouraged her daughter Lilly, eight years the elder of the children, to sing, and György to accompany her at the piano. Solti remembered, "I made so many mistakes, but it was invaluable experience for an opera conductor. I learnt to swim with her."[2] He was not a diligent student of the piano: "My mother kept telling me to practise, but what ten-year-old wants to play the piano when he could be out playing football?"[2]
Solti enrolled at the Ernö Fodor School of Music in Budapest at the age of ten, transferring to the more prestigious Franz Liszt Academy two years later.[1] When he was 12 he heard a performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony conducted by Erich Kleiber, which gave him the ambition to become a conductor.[3] His parents could not afford to pay for years of musical education, and his rich uncles did not consider music a suitable profession; from the age of 13 Solti paid for his education by giving piano lessons.[2]
The faculty of the Franz Liszt Academy included some of the most eminent Hungarian musicians, including Béla Bartók, Leo Weiner, Ernő Dohnányi and Zoltán Kodály. Solti studied under the first three, for piano, chamber music and composition respectively. Some sources state that he also studied with Kodály,[4][5] but in his memoirs Solti recalled that Kodály, whom he would have preferred, turned him down, leaving him to study composition first with Albert Siklós and then with Dohnányi.[6] Not all the Academy's tutors were equally distinguished: Solti remembered with little pleasure the conducting classes run by Ernö Unger, "who instructed his pupils to use rigid little wrist motions. I attended the class for only two years, but I needed five years of practical conducting experience before I managed to unlearn what he had taught me".[7]
Pianist and conductor[link]
After graduating from the Academy in 1930 Solti was appointed to the staff of the Hungarian State Opera.[n 2] He found that working as a répétiteur, coaching singers in their roles and playing at rehearsals, was a more fruitful preparation than Unger's classes for his intended career as a conductor.[1] In 1932 he went to Karlsruhe in Germany as assistant to Josef Krips, but within a year, Krips, anticipating the imminent rise to power of Hitler and the Nazis, insisted that Solti should go home to Budapest, where at that time Jews were not in danger.[9] Other Jewish and anti-Nazi musicians also left Germany for Budapest. Among other musical exiles with whom Solti worked there were Otto Klemperer, Fritz Busch, and Kleiber.[1] Before Austria fell under Nazi control, Solti was assistant to Arturo Toscanini at the 1937 Salzburg Festival:
.jpg)
Toscanini was the first great musical impression in my life. Before I heard him live in 1936, I had never heard a great opera conductor, not in Budapest, and it was like a lightning flash. I heard his Falstaff in 1936 and the impact was unbelievable. It was the first time I heard an ensemble singing absolutely precisely. It was fantastic. Then I never expected to meet Toscanini. It was a chance in a million. I had a letter of recommendation from the director of the Budapest Opera to the president of the Salzburg Festival. He received me and said: "Do you know Magic Flute, because we have an influenza epidemic and two of our repetiteurs are ill? Could you play this afternoon for the stage rehearsals?"[10]
After further work as a répétiteur at the opera in Budapest, and with his standing enhanced by his association with Toscanini, Solti was given his first chance to conduct, on 11 March 1938.[n 3] The opera was The Marriage of Figaro. During that evening, news came of the German invasion of Austria.[12] Many Hungarians feared that Hitler would next invade Hungary; he did not do so, but Horthy, to strengthen his partnership with the Nazis, instituted anti-semitic laws, mirroring the Nuremberg Laws, restricting Hungary's Jews from engaging in professions.[13] Solti's family urged him to move away.[1] He went first to London, where he made his Covent Garden debut, conducting the London Philharmonic for a Russian ballet season.[14] The reviewer in The Times was not impressed with Solti's efforts, finding them "too violent, for he lashed at the orchestra and flogged the music so that he endangered the delicate, evocative atmosphere."[15] At about this time Solti dropped the name "György" in favour of "Georg".[16]
After his appearances in London Solti went to Switzerland to seek out Toscanini, who was conducting in Lucerne. Solti hoped that Toscanini would help find him a post in the US. He was unable to do so, but Solti found work and security in Switzerland as vocal coach to the tenor Max Hirzel, who was learning the role of Tristan in Wagner's opera.[1] Throughout the Second World War, Solti remained in Switzerland.[10] He did not see his father again: Mor Stern died of diabetes in a Budapest hospital in 1943.[17] Solti was reunited with his mother and sister after the war.[18] In Switzerland he could not obtain a work permit as a conductor, but earned his living as a piano teacher.[19] After he won the 1942 Geneva International Piano Competition he was permitted to give piano recitals, but was still not allowed to conduct.[20] During his exile, he met Hedwig (Hedi) Oeschli, daughter of a lecturer at Zürich University. They married in 1946.[1] In his memoirs he wrote of her, "She was very elegant and sophisticated. ... Hedi gave me a little grace and taught me good manners – although she never completely succeeded in this. She also helped me enormously in my career".[21]
Munich and Frankfurt[link]
With the end of the war Solti's luck changed dramatically. He was appointed musical director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich in 1946.[22] In normal circumstances this prestigious post would have been an unthinkable appointment for a young and inexperienced conductor,[n 4] but the leading German conductors such as Wilhelm Furtwängler, Clemens Krauss and Herbert von Karajan were prohibited from conducting pending the conclusion of denazification proceedings against them.[1] Under Solti's direction, the company rebuilt its repertoire and began to recover its pre-war eminence.[4] He benefited from the encouragement of the elderly Richard Strauss, in whose presence he conducted Der Rosenkavalier.[4] Strauss was reluctant to discuss his own music with Solti, but gave him advice about conducting.[23]
_by_Erling_Mandelmann.jpg)
In addition to the Munich appointment Solti gained a recording contract in 1946. He signed for Decca Records, not as a conductor but as a piano accompanist.[24] He made his first recording in 1947, playing Brahms's First Violin Sonata with the violinist Georg Kulenkampff.[25] He was insistent that he wanted to conduct, and Decca gave him his first recording sessions as a conductor later in the same year, with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra in Beethoven's Egmont overture.[25] Twenty years later Solti said, "I'm sure it's a terrible record, because the orchestra was not very good at that time and I was so excited. It is horrible, surely horrible – but by now it has vanished."[26] He had to wait two years for his next recording as a conductor. It was in London, Haydn's Drum Roll symphony, in sessions produced by John Culshaw, with whose career Solti's became closely linked over the next two decades.[27] Reviewing the record, The Gramophone said, "The performance of the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Georg Solti (a fine conductor who is new to me) is remarkable for rhythmic playing, richness of tone, and clarity of execution."[28] The Record Guide compared it favourably with EMI's rival recording by Sir Thomas Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic.[29]
In 1951 Solti conducted at the Salzburg Festival for the first time, partly through the influence of Furtwängler, who was impressed by him.[30] The work was Idomeneo, which had not been given there before.[30] In Munich Solti achieved critical and popular success, but for political reasons his position at the State Opera was never secure. The view persisted that a German conductor should be in charge; pressure mounted, and after five years Solti accepted an offer to move to Frankfurt in 1952 as musical director of the Frankfurt Opera.[1][n 5] The city's opera house had been destroyed in the war, and Solti undertook to build a new company and repertoire for its recently completed replacement. He also conducted the symphony concerts given by the opera orchestra.[31] Frankfurt's was a less prestigious house than Munich's and he initially regarded the move as a demotion,[31] but he found the post fulfilling and remained at Frankfurt from 1952 to 1961, presenting 33 operas, 19 of which he had not conducted before.[32] Frankfurt, unlike Munich, could not attract many of the leading German singers. Solti recruited many rising young American singers such as Claire Watson and Sylvia Stahlman,[33] to the extent that the house acquired the nickname "Amerikanische Oper am Main".[n 6] In 1953 the West German government offered Solti German citizenship, which, being effectively stateless as a Hungarian exile, he gratefully accepted. He believed he could never return to Hungary, by then under communist rule.[35] He remained a German citizen for two decades.[36]
During his Frankfurt years Solti made appearances with other opera companies and orchestras. He conducted in the Americas for the first time in 1952, giving concerts in Buenos Aires.[37] In the same year he made his debut at the Edinburgh Festival as a guest conductor with the visiting Hamburg State Opera.[38] The following year he was a guest at the San Francisco Opera with Elektra, Die Walküre and Tristan und Isolde.[39] In 1954 he conducted Don Giovanni at the Glyndebourne Festival. The reviewer in The Times said that no fault could be found in Solti's "vivacious and sensitive" conducting.[40] In the same year Solti made his first appearance with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, at the Ravinia Festival.[41]
In the recording studios Solti's career took off after 1956, when John Culshaw was put in charge of Decca's classical recording programme. Culshaw believed Solti to be "the great Wagner conductor of our time",[42] and was determined to record the four operas of Der Ring des Nibelungen with Solti and the finest Wagner singers available.[43] The cast Culshaw assembled for the cycle included Kirsten Flagstad, Hans Hotter, Birgit Nilsson and Wolfgang Windgassen.[44] Apart from Arabella in 1957, in which he substituted when Karl Böhm withdrew, Solti had made no complete recording of an opera until the sessions for Das Rheingold, the first of the Ring tetralogy, in September and October 1958.[25] In their respective memoirs Culshaw and Solti told how Walter Legge of Decca's rival EMI predicted that Das Rheingold would be a commercial disaster ("'Very nice,' he said, 'Very interesting. But of course you won't sell any.'")[45][n 7] The success of the recording took the record industry by surprise. It featured for weeks in the Billboard charts, the sole classical album alongside best sellers by Elvis Presley and Pat Boone, and brought Solti's name to international prominence.[47] He appeared with leading orchestras in New York, Vienna and Los Angeles, and at Covent Garden he conducted Der Rosenkavalier and Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream.[1]
Covent Garden[link]
In 1960 Solti signed a three-year contract to be music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1962.[48] Before he took up the post the Philharmonic's autocratic president Dorothy Chandler breached his contract by appointing a deputy music director without Solti's approval. Although he admired the chosen deputy, Zubin Mehta, Solti felt he could not have his authority undermined from the outset, and he withdrew from his appointment.[48] He accepted an offer to become musical director of the Covent Garden Opera Company in London. When first sounded out about the post he had declined it. After 14 years of experience at Munich and Frankfurt he was uncertain that he wanted a third successive operatic post.[49] Moreover, founded only 15 years earlier, the Covent Garden company was not yet the equal of the best opera houses in Europe.[50] Bruno Walter convinced Solti that it was his duty to take Covent Garden on.[51]
The biographer Montague Haltrecht suggests that Solti seized the breach of his Los Angeles contract as a convenient pretext to abandon the Philharmonic in favour of Covent Garden.[52] However, in his memoirs Solti wrote that he wanted the Los Angeles position very much indeed.[48] He originally considered holding both posts in tandem, but later acknowledged that he had had a lucky escape, as he could have done justice to neither post had he attempted to hold both simultaneously.[48]
Solti took up the musical directorship of Covent Garden in August 1961.[53] The press gave him a cautious welcome, but there was some concern that under him there might be a drift away from the company's original policy of opera in English. Solti, however, was an advocate of opera in the vernacular,[54][n 8] and he promoted the development of British and Commonwealth singers in the company, frequently casting them in his recordings and important productions in preference to overseas artists.[56] He demonstrated his belief in vernacular opera with a triple bill in English of L'heure espagnole, Erwartung and Gianni Schicchi.[57] As the decade went on, however, more and more productions had to be sung in the original language to accommodate international stars.[58]
[Solti] announced his intention of making Covent Garden "quite simply, the best opera house in the world", and in the opinion of many he succeeded.
“
”
Like his predecessor Rafael Kubelík, and his successor Colin Davis, Solti found his early days as musical director marred by vituperative hostility from a small clique in the Covent Garden audience.[59] Rotten vegetables were thrown at him,[1] and his car was vandalised outside the theatre, with the words "Solti must go!" scratched on its paintwork.[60] Some press reviews were strongly critical; Solti was so wounded by a review in The Times of his conducting of The Marriage of Figaro that he almost left Covent Garden in despair.[10][n 9] The chief executive of the Opera House, Sir David Webster, persuaded him to stay with the company, and matters improved, helped by changes on which Solti insisted.[64] The chorus and orchestra were strengthened,[1] and in the interests of musical and dramatic excellence, Solti secured the introduction of the stagione system of scheduling performances, rather than the traditional repertory system.[n 10] By 1967 The Times commented that "Patrons of Covent Garden today automatically expect any new production, and indeed any revival, to be as strongly cast as anything at the Met in New York, and as carefully presented as anything in Milan or Vienna".[66]
The company's repertory in the 1960s combined the standard operatic works with less familiar pieces. Among the most celebrated productions during Solti's time in charge was Schoenberg's Moses and Aaron in the 1965–66 and 1966–67 seasons.[67] In 1970, Solti led the company to Germany, where they gave Don Carlos, Falstaff and Victory, a new work by Richard Rodney Bennett. The public in Munich and Berlin were, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, "beside themselves with enthusiasm".[68]
Solti's bald head and demanding rehearsal style earned him the nickname "The Screaming Skull".[1] A music historian called him "the bustling, bruising Georg Solti – a man whose entire physical and mental attitude embodied the words 'I'm in charge'."[69] Singers such as Peter Glossop described him as a bully,[70] and after working with Solti, Jon Vickers refused to do so again.[71][n 11] Nevertheless, under Solti, the company was recognised as having achieved parity with the greatest opera houses in the world.[66] Queen Elizabeth II conferred the title "the Royal Opera" on the company in 1968.[73] By this point Solti was, in the words of his biographer Paul Robinson, "after Karajan, the most celebrated conductor at work".[74] By the end of his decade as music director at Covent Garden Solti had conducted the company in 33 operas by 13 composers.[n 12]
In 1964 Solti separated from his wife. He moved into the Savoy Hotel, where not long afterwards he met Valerie Pitts, a British television presenter, sent to interview him.[76] She too was married, but after pursuing her for three years, Solti persuaded her to divorce her husband. Solti and Valerie Pitts married on 11 November 1967.[77] They had two daughters.[5]
Chicago Symphony[link]
In 1967 Solti was invited to become music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. It was the second time he had been offered the post. The first had been in 1963 after the death of the orchestra's conductor, Fritz Reiner, who made its reputation in the previous decade.[78] Solti told the representatives of the orchestra that his commitments at Covent Garden made it impossible to give Chicago the eight months a year they sought.[79] He suggested giving them three and a half months a year and inviting Carlo Maria Giulini to take charge for a similar length of time. The orchestra declined to proceed on these lines.[79] When Solti accepted the orchestra's second invitation it was agreed that Giulini should be appointed to share the conducting.[n 13] Both conductors signed three-year contracts with the orchestra, effective from 1969.[81]
One of the members of the Chicago Symphony described it to Solti as "the best provincial orchestra in the world."[79] Many players remained from its celebrated decade under Reiner, but morale was low, and the orchestra was $5m in debt.[1] Solti concluded that it was essential to raise the orchestra's international profile. He ensured that it was engaged for many of his Decca sessions, and he and Giulini led it in a European tour in 1971, playing in ten countries. It was the first time in its 80-year history that the orchestra had played outside the US.[79] The orchestra received plaudits from European critics,[82][n 14] and was welcomed home at the end of the tour with a ticker-tape parade.[1]
The orchestra's principal flute player, Donald Peck, commented that the relationship between a conductor and an orchestra is difficult to explain: "some conductors get along with some orchestras and not others. We had a good match with Solti and he with us."[85] Peck's colleague, the violinist Victor Aitay said, "Usually conductors are relaxed at rehearsals and tense at the concerts. Solti is the reverse. He is very tense at rehearsals, which makes us concentrate, but relaxed during the performance, which is a great asset to the orchestra.[86] Peck recalled Solti's constant efforts to improve his own technique and interpretations, at one point experimentally dispensing with a baton, drawing a "darker and deeper, much more relaxed" tone from the players.[87]
It's a marvelous thing to be musically happily married. ... I am and I know. I'm a romantic type of musician, and this is a romantic orchestra. That is our secret...
“
”
Sir Georg Solti [88]
As well as raising the orchestra's profile and helping it return to prosperity, Solti considerably expanded its repertoire. Under him the Chicago Symphony gave its first cycles of the symphonies of Bruckner and Mahler. He introduced new works commissioned for the orchestra, such as Lutosławski's Third Symphony, and Tippett's Fourth Symphony which was dedicated to Solti.[1] Another new work was Tippett's Byzantium, an orchestral song-cycle, premiered by Solti and the orchestra with the soprano Faye Robinson. Solti frequently programmed works by American composers, including Charles Ives and Elliott Carter.[1]
Solti's recordings with the Chicago Symphony included the complete symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner and Mahler.[25] Most of his operatic recordings were with other orchestras, but his recordings of The Flying Dutchman (1976), Fidelio (1979), Moses und Aron (1984) and his second recordings of Die Meistersinger (1995) and Verdi's Otello (1991) were made with the Chicago players.[25]
After retiring as music director in 1991 Solti continued to conduct the orchestra, and was given the title of music director laureate.[5] He conducted 999 concerts with the orchestra. His 1,000th concert was scheduled for October 1997, around the time of his 85th birthday.[89]
Later years[link]
In addition to his tenure in Chicago Solti was music director of the Orchestre de Paris from 1972 to 1975.[5] From 1979 until 1983 he was also principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra.[5] He continued to expand his repertoire. With the London Philharmonic he performed many of Elgar's major works in concert and on record.[25] Before performing Elgar's two symphonies, Solti studied the composer's own recordings made more than 40 years earlier, and was influenced by their brisk tempi and impetuous manner.[90] A critic in The Guardian wrote that Solti "conveys the authentic frisson of the great Elgarian moment more vividly than ever before on record."[90] Late in his career he became enthusiastic about the music of Shostakovich, whom he admitted he failed to appreciate fully during the composer's lifetime.[91] He made commercial recordings of seven of Shostakovich's fifteen symphonies.[n 15]
His podium personality, exuberant and forceful, was clearly imprinted upon his music-making as he snarled and ferociously stabbed his baton. ... It became a cliché to say he mellowed as he got older, but his performances remained thrilling right to the end.
“
”
In 1983 Solti conducted for the only time at the Bayreuth Festival. By this stage in his career he no longer liked abstract productions of Wagner, or modernistic reinterpretations, such as Patrice Chéreau's 1976 Bayreuth Ring, which he found grew boring on repetition.[92] Together with the director Sir Peter Hall and the designer William Dudley, he presented a Ring cycle that aimed to represent Wagner's intentions. The production was not well received by German critics, who expected radical reinterpretation of the operas.[93] Solti's conducting was praised, but illnesses and last-minute replacements of leading performers affected the standard of singing.[94] He was invited to return to Bayreuth for the following season, but was unwell and withdrew on medical advice before the 1984 festival began.[95]
In 1991 Solti collaborated with the actor and composer Dudley Moore to create an eight-part television series, Orchestra!, which was designed to introduce audiences to the symphony orchestra.[96] In 1994 he directed the "Solti Orchestral Project" at Carnegie Hall, a training workshop for young American musicians.[97] The following year, to mark the 50th anniversary of the United Nations, he formed the World Orchestra for Peace, which consisted of 81 musicians from 40 nations.[98] The orchestra has continued to perform after his death, under the conductorship of Valery Gergiev.[99]
Solti regularly returned to Covent Garden as a guest conductor in the years after he relinquished the musical directorship, greeted with "an increasingly boisterous hero's welcome" (Grove).[4] From 1972 to 1997 he conducted ten operas, some of them in several seasons. Five were operas he had not conducted at the Royal Opera House before: Carmen, Parsifal, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Simon Boccanegra and a celebrated production of La traviata (1994) which propelled Angela Gheorghiu to stardom.[75][100] On 14 July 1997 he conducted the last operatic music to be heard in the old house before it closed for more than two years for rebuilding.[n 16] The previous day he had conducted what proved to be his last symphony concert. The work was Mahler's Fifth Symphony; the orchestra was the Zurich Tonhalle, with whom he had made his first orchestral recording 50 years earlier.[25]
Solti died suddenly, in his sleep, on 5 September 1997 while on holiday in Antibes in the south of France.[102] He was 84. After a state ceremony in Budapest, his ashes were interred beside the remains of Bartók in Farkasréti Cemetery.[103]
Recordings[link]
Main article: Georg Solti discography
Solti recorded throughout his career for the Decca Record Company. He made more than 250 recordings, including 45 complete opera sets.[104] During the 1950s and 1960s Decca had an alliance with RCA Records, and some of Solti's recordings were first issued on the RCA label.[25]
Solti was one of the first conductors who came to international fame as a recording artist before being widely known in the concert hall or opera house. Gordon Parry, the Decca engineer who worked with Solti and Culshaw on the Ring recordings, observed, "Many people have said 'Oh well, of course John Culshaw made Solti.' This is not true. He gave him the opportunity to show what he could do."[78]
Solti's first recordings were as a piano accompanist, playing at sessions in Zurich for the violinist Georg Kulenkampff in 1947.[25] Decca's senior producer, Victor Olof did not much admire Solti as a conductor[105] (nor did Walter Legge, Olof's opposite number at EMI's Columbia Records),[106] but Olof's younger colleague and successor, Culshaw, held Solti in high regard. As Culshaw, and later James Walker, produced his recordings, Solti's career as a recording artist flourished from the mid-1950s.[25] Among the orchestras with whom Solti recorded were the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the London Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, London Symphony and Berlin Philharmonic orchestras.[25] Soloists in his operatic recordings included Joan Sutherland, Régine Crespin, Plácido Domingo, Gottlob Frick, Carlo Bergonzi, Kiri Te Kanawa and José van Dam.[25] In concerto recordings, Solti conducted for, among others, Julius Katchen, Clifford Curzon, Vladimir Ashkenazy and Kyung-Wha Chung.[25]
Solti's most celebrated recording was Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen made in Vienna, produced by Culshaw, between 1958 and 1965. It has twice been voted the greatest recording ever made, the first poll being among readers of Gramophone magazine in 1999,[107] and the second of professional music critics in 2011, for the BBC's Music Magazine.[108]
Honours and memorials[link]
Honours awarded to Solti included the British CBE (honorary), 1968,[5] and an honorary knighthood (KBE), 1971,[109] which became a substantive knighthood when he took British citizenship in 1972, after which he was known as Sir Georg Solti.[1] He received honours from other countries, including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Portugal and the US.[n 17] He received honorary fellowships or degrees from the Royal College of Music and Baden-Württemberg, DePaul, Furman, Harvard, Leeds, London, Oxford, Surrey and Yale universities.[5]
In celebration of his 75th birthday in 1987, a bronze bust of Solti by Dame Elisabeth Frink was dedicated in Lincoln Park, Chicago, outside the Lincoln Park Conservatory.[111] It was first displayed temporarily at the Royal Opera House in London.[112] The sculpture was moved to Grant Park in 2006 in a new Solti Garden, near Orchestra Hall in Symphony Center.[113] In 1997, to commemorate the 85th anniversary of his birth, the City of Chicago renamed the block of East Adams Street adjacent to Symphony Center as "Sir Georg Solti Place" in his memory.[114]
Record industry awards to Solti included the Grand Prix Mondiale du Disque (14 times) and 32 Grammy Awards (including a special Trustees' Grammy Award for his recording of the Ring and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award).[5] He won more Grammys than any other recording artist, whether classical or popular.[104] In September 2007, as a tribute on the 10th anniversary of his death, Decca published a recording of his final concert.[25]
After Solti's death his widow and daughters set up the Solti Foundation to assist young musicians.[115] Solti's memoirs, written with the assistance of Harvey Sachs, were published the month after his death. They appeared in the UK under the title Solti on Solti,[116] and in the US as Memoirs.[117] Solti's life was also documented in a 1997 film by Peter Maniura, Sir Georg Solti: The Making of a Maestro.[118] In 2007 Valerie Solti was appointed a Cultural Ambassador of Hungary, an honorary title granted by the Hungarian state.[119]
In 2012 a series of events under the banner of "Solti @ 100" was announced, to mark the centenary of Solti's birth. Among the events announced were concerts in New York and Chicago, and commemorative exhibitions in London, Chicago, Vienna and New York.[108] In the same year Solti was voted into the inaugural Gramophone "Hall of Fame".[120]
Notes and references[link]
- Notes
- ^ The family had no connection with Solt, and Stern appears to have selected it at random.[1]
- ^ This appointment came under the scope of another of Horthy's laws, requiring that state employees must be able to prove that their families had lived in Hungary for at least 50 years. Mor Stern went to the records office in his native village of Balatonfőkajár and found documents showing that his family had lived there for more than 250 years.[8]
- ^ Solti wrote that, as far as he knew, he was the first unconverted Jew to conduct at the State Opera.[11]
- ^ Solti's predecessors included prominent conductors such as Hans von Bülow, Hermann Levi, Richard Strauss, Bruno Walter, Hans Knappertsbusch and Clemens Krauss.
- ^ Solti's successor at Munich was the German Rudolf Kempe.
- ^ "The American Opera on the Main", a play on the title of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein – the German Opera on the Rhine – at Düsseldorf.[34]
- ^ Solti and Culshaw recalled Legge's words slightly differently, though the import was the same; Solti remembered Legge's words as, "A beautiful work, but you won't sell fifty copies."[46]
- ^ At Munich and Frankfurt it had been the usual practice to give non-German operas in German translation.[55]
- ^ The anonymous Times reviewer had complained of Solti's "supercharged, chromium-plated account of the score ... many details were simply glossed over ... heartless and featureless."[61] The Observer, however, had praised the conductor's "intelligence and sensitivity".[62] and The Guardian spoke of "tremendous verve plus real security in the ensemble on stage".[63]
- ^ Under the old repertory system, a company would have a certain number of operas in its repertoire, and they would be played throughout the season in a succession of one- or two-night performances, with little or no rehearsal each time. Under the stagione system, works would be revived in blocks of perhaps ten or more performances, fully rehearsed for each revival.[65]
- ^ Solti later expressed doubt about this view of his tenure at Covent Garden. He maintained that if he had been an autocrat he was a benign one, and stories that he terrified singers were exaggerated: "There were not many scandals in my Covent Garden career; a few, but not serious – not à la Toscanini or à la Karajan. I didn't have those, not really."[72]
- ^ The operas new to the company's repertoire were: La damnation de Faust, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Iphigénie en Tauride, Orfeo ed Euridice, Gianni Schicchi, L'heure espagnole, Erwartung, Moses and Aaron, Arabella, Die Frau ohne Schatten, Eugene Onegin, Falstaff and La forza del destino. The other operas Solti conducted before stepping down in 1972 were: Fidelio, Billy Budd, Così fan tutte, Don Giovanni, Le nozze di Figaro, The Magic Flute, The Tales of Hoffmann, Der Rosenkavalier, Elektra, Salome, Don Carlos, Otello, Rigoletto, Der fliegende Holländer, Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, Götterdämmerung, Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger.[75]
- ^ The management of the orchestra had privately hoped for a triumvirate of famous conductors, with Karajan as chief and Solti and Giulini as guests, but Karajan declined.[80] Karajan's biographer Richard Osborne comments that the outcome was probably fortunate for the Chicago Symphony as it gained "a music director who in the fullness of time would devote a large part of his life to the orchestra."[80]
- ^ After the orchestra played at the Edinburgh Festival the critic William Mann wrote, "I am tempted to describe it as the United States' most completely accomplished orchestra. It has the fine attack of the New York Phil under Bernstein, the radiance of the Boston under Leinsdorf, the classic elegance of the Cleveland under Szell, and to these qualities it adds, under Solti, a warm, human musical expressiveness that one associates with European rather than modern American orchestras."[83] After one of the London concerts, Alan Blyth wrote, "nobody could doubt that this is about the most formidably-equipped orchestra in the world at present".[84]
- ^ His commercial recordings of Shostakovich symphonies were Nos. 1, 5, 8, 9, 10, 13 and 15.[25]
- ^ Solti conducted the finale of Falstaff, with the singers led by Bryn Terfel, in a joint opera and ballet farewell. His successors, Sir Colin Davis and Bernard Haitink also conducted at this gala.[101]
- ^ The international honours included the Médaille de Vermeil de la Ville de Paris, 1985; Loyola-Mellon Humanities Award, 1987; Medal of Merit, City of Chicago, 1987; Order of the Flag (Hungary), 1987; Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society, 1989; Frankfurt Music Prize, 1992; Léonie Sonning Music Prize, 1992; Kennedy Center Award, 1993; Hans Richter Medal, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, 1993; Von Bülow Medal, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, 1993; Commander, Order of Leopold (Belgium), 1993; Middle Cross, Order of Merit with Star (Hungary), 1993; Grosses Verdienstkreuz mit Stern und Schulterband (Germany), 1993; Ordem Militar de Sant'Iago da Espada (Portugal), 1994; Commandeur, Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France), 1995; and Knight Grand Cross, Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, 1996.[5][110]
- References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Follows, Stephen. "Solti, Sir Georg (1912–1997)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, January 2011, accessed 22 February 2012 (Subscription required)
- ^ a b c d e f g h Fox, Sue. "Georg Solti – A Childhood", The Times, 1 July 1995
- ^ Greenfield, Edward. "Sir Georg Solti", Gramophone, October 1982, p. 22
- ^ a b c d e f Jacobs, Arthur and José A. Bowen. "Solti, Sir Georg", Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, accessed 22 February 2012 (Subscription required)
- ^ a b c d e f g h i "Solti, Sir Georg", Who Was Who, A & C Black, 1920–2008; online edition, Oxford University Press, December 2007, accessed 22 February 2012 (Subscription required)
- ^ Solti, pp. 17 and 22
- ^ Solti. p. 20
- ^ Solti, p. 3
- ^ Solti, p. 31
- ^ a b c Canning, Hugh. "The electric conductor – Sir Georg Solti", The Sunday Times, 9 December 1990
- ^ Solti, p. 35
- ^ "Sir Georg Solti – Obituary", The Times, 8 September 1997
- ^ Levy, p. 323
- ^ "Opera and Ballet", The Times, 2 July 1938, p. 10
- ^ "Covent Garden Ballet – Carnaval", The Times, 15 July 1938, p. 14
- ^ Solti, p. 5
- ^ Solti, p. 54
- ^ Solti, p. 55
- ^ Solti, p. 59
- ^ Solti, p. 56
- ^ "Salzburg & Swiss exile", Georg Solti, accessed 23 February 2012
- ^ Robinson, p. 13
- ^ Solti, pp. 78–79
- ^ Culshaw (1967), p 30
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Stuart, Philip. Decca Classical, 1929–2009, AHRC Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music, accessed 22 February 2012
- ^ Culshaw (1967), p. 31
- ^ Culshaw (1967), p. 32
- ^ "Haydn Symphony No. 103 in E flat", The Gramophone, July 1950, p. 16
- ^ Sackville-West, p. 355
- ^ a b Solti, pp. 85–86
- ^ a b Solti, p. 94
- ^ Solti, p. 127
- ^ Solti, pp. 100 (Watson) and 101 (Stahlman)
- ^ Solti, p. 100
- ^ Solti, p. 96
- ^ Solti, p. 105
- ^ Solti, p. 92–93
- ^ Robinson, p. 16
- ^ Solti, p. 102
- ^ "Glyndebourne Opera – 'Don Giovanni'", The Times, 8 July 1954, p. 5
- ^ "Career highlights", Georg Solti, accessed 23 February 2012
- ^ Culshaw (1967), p. 52
- ^ Culshaw (1967), pp. 52–53
- ^ Culshaw (1967), pp. 273–274
- ^ Culshaw (1967), p. 91
- ^ Solti, p. 113
- ^ Culshaw (1967), p. 124
- ^ a b c d Solti, pp. 124–125
- ^ Haltrecht, p. 257
- ^ Haltrecht, p. 237
- ^ Haltrecht, p. 259
- ^ Haltrecht, p. 258
- ^ Haltrecht, p. 264
- ^ "What Sort of Opera for Covent Garden?", The Times, 9 December 1960, p. 18
- ^ Solti, p. 76
- ^ Haltrecht, p. 295
- ^ "Solti's Success with Opera in English", The Times, 18 June 1962, p. 5
- ^ "Sir David Webster's 21 Years at Covent Garden", The Times, 12 April 1965, p. 14
- ^ Haltrecht, pp. 207 (Kubelik) and 271 (Solti); and Canning, Hugh. "Forget the booing, remember the triumph", The Guardian, 19 July 1986, p. 11 (Davis)
- ^ Haltrecht, p. 271
- ^ "Mr. Solti Skates over the Score", The Times, 31 May 1963, p. 15
- ^ Tracey, Edmund. "Masterstrokes in a masterpiece", The Observer, 2 June 1963, p. 23
- ^ Hope-Wallace, Philip. "Le Nozze di Figaro", The Guardian, 31 May 1963, p. 9
- ^ Haltrecht, p. 279
- ^ "Stagione", The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, ed. Stanley Sadie, Grove Music Online Oxford Music Online, accessed 2 March 2012 (Subscription required)
- ^ a b "Twenty marvellous years at Covent Garden", The Times, 13 January 1967, p. 14
- ^ Goodman, pp. 57–59
- ^ Quoted in Lebrecht, p. 281
- ^ Morrison, p. 217
- ^ Glossop, p. 147
- ^ Haltrecht, pp. 289–290
- ^ Canning, Hugh. "A life on record", The Sunday Times, 14 September 1997
- ^ "The Royal Opera", The Times, 24 October 1968, p. 3
- ^ Robinson, p. 44
- ^ a b "Performance search results – Solti", Royal Opera House Collections Online, accessed 3 March 2012
- ^ Robinson, p. 38
- ^ Solti, p. 137
- ^ a b Patmore, David. "Sir Georg Solti and the Record Industry", ARSC Journal 41.2 (Fall 2010), pp. 200–232 (Subscription required)
- ^ a b c d Greenfield, Edward. "The great provincials", The Guardian, 4 October 1971, p. 8
- ^ a b Osborne, p. 560
- ^ "Bulletin Board", Music Educators Journal, Vol. 55, No. 8 (April 1969), p. 111 (Subscription required)
- ^ "Symphony returns", Chicago Daily Defender, 6 October 1971, p. 20
- ^ Mann, William. "Chicago SO", The Times, 6 September 1971, p. 8
- ^ Blyth, Alan. "Chicago SO/Solti", The Times 5 October 1971, p. 17
- ^ Peck, p. 7
- ^ "Into the Fray", Time, 11 April 1969 (Subscription required)
- ^ Peck, p. 8
- ^ Bender, William. "Solti and Chicago: A Musical Romance", Time, 7 May 1973, p. 56
- ^ Tommasini, Anthony. "Living an Adventure to the End", The New York Times, 21 September 1997
- ^ a b Greenfield, Edward. "Echoing Elgar", The Guardian, 11 July 1972, p. 10
- ^ Solti, p. 228
- ^ Greenfield, Edward. "Sir Georg Solti", Gramophone, August 1981, p. 25
- ^ Heyworth, Peter. "Why The Ring went wrong", The Observer, 7 August 1983
- ^ Levin, Bernard. "A sand-blast and polish by a master", The Times, 17 August 1983, p. 8
- ^ Hewson, David. "Solti quits 'Ring' production", The Times, 26 May 1984, p. 5
- ^ Jenkins, Garry. "Orchestrating a return to musical roots – Dudley Moore and Sir Georg Solti", The Sunday Times, 13 May 1990
- ^ Holland, Bernard. "Georg Solti, Teacher, Leads Carnegie's Orchestral Workshop", The New York Times, 15 June 1994; and Oestreich, James R. "Master and Pupils Mesh As Solti Project Concludes", The New York Times, 24 June 1994
- ^ History, World Orchestra for Peace, accessed 28 February 2012
- ^ "Valery Gergiev", World Orchestra for Peace, accessed 8 March 2012
- ^ Kettle, Martin. "Quickfire revival sees hit-and-miss Gheorghui reprise star role", The Guardian, 10 July 2010
- ^ Whitworth, Damian and Dalya Alberge. "Opera buffs round off gala night with a takeaway", The Times, 15 July 1997
- ^ Fay, Stephen. "Solti dies in sleep at 84", The Independent on Sunday, 7 September 1997
- ^ Pappenheim, Mark. "Classical: An honourable homecoming – at last", The Independent, 3 April 1998
- ^ a b "Solti, Georg", Decca Classics, accessed 22 February 2012
- ^ Culshaw (1982) p. 88
- ^ Schwarzkopf, p. 79
- ^ "Gramophone Classics", Gramophone, December 1999, p. 40
- ^ a b "Anniversary of Sir Georg Solti's birth to be celebrated", Royal Opera House, accessed 15 March 2012
- ^ Birthday Honours", The Times, 12 June 1971, p. 10
- ^ "Recipients of Leonie Sonning’s Music Prize, 1959–2010", Léonie Sonning Music Foundation, accessed 28 February 2012
- ^ Eckert, Thor Jr. "Milestone for Maestro Solti - Chicago style", The Christian Science Monitor, 15 October 1987, accessed 21 March 2012
- ^ "Grant Park: Sir Georg Solti Bust", Chicago Park District, accessed 21 March 2012
- ^ "Sir George [sic] Solti Bust (in Grant Park)", Explore Chicago, accessed 28 February 2012
- ^ "Solti To Be Honored With Own Street Sign", Chicago Tribune, 22 October 1997
- ^ "The Foundation", The Solti Foundation, accessed 28 February 2012
- ^ Solti, Georg; Harvey Sachs (1997). Solti on Solti. London: Chatto & Windus. ISBN 0-7011-6630-4.
- ^ Solti, Georg; Harvey Sachs (1997). Memoirs. New York: Alfred Knopf. ISBN 0-679-44596-X.
- ^ Maniura, Peter (1997). Sir Georg Solti: The Making of a Maestro. Chatsworth, CA: R M Associates. OCLC 48093380.
- ^ "First Culture Ambassador Titles Awarded ", Balassi Insitute, accessed 28 February 2012
- ^ "Sir Georg Solti" Gramophone, accessed 10 April 2012
Sources[link]
- Culshaw, John (1967). Ring Resounding. London: Secker & Warburg. ISBN 0-436-11800-9.
- Culshaw, John (1982). Putting the Record Straight. London: Secker & Warburg. ISBN 0-436-11802-5.
- Glossop, Peter (2004). Yorkshire Baritone. Oxford: Guidon. ISBN 0-9543617-3-3.
- Goodman, Lord; Lord Harewood (1969). A Report on Opera and Ballet in the United Kingdom, 1966–69. London: Arts Council of Great Britain. OCLC 81272.
- Haltrecht, Montague (1975). The Quiet Showman – Sir David Webster and the Royal Opera House. London: Collins. ISBN 0-00-211163-2.
- Lebrecht, Norman (2000). Covent Garden: The Untold Story: Dispatches from the English Culture War, 1945–2000. London: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-684-85143-1.
- Levy, Richard S. (ed) (2005). Antisemitism: a historical encyclopedia of prejudice and persecution, Volume 1. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 1-85109-439-3. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Tdn6FFZklkcC&pg=PA323&dq=Horthy&hl=en&sa=X&ei=lUVPT-WDNIHU0QXJs5DeCw&ved=0CE4Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=Horthy&f=false.
- Morrison, Richard (2004). Orchestra – The LSO. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-21584-X.
- Osborne, Richard (1998). Herbert von Karajan. London: Chatto and Windus. ISBN 1-85619-763-8.
- Peck, Donald (2007). The Right Place, the Right Time: Tales of Chicago Symphony Days. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-11688-0.
- Robinson, Paul (1979). Solti. London: Macdonald and Jane's. ISBN 0-354-04288-2.
- Sackville-West, Edward; Desmond Shawe-Taylor (1955). The Record Guide. London: Collins. OCLC 474839729.
- Schwarzkopf, Elisabeth (1982). On and Off the Record: A Memoir of Walter Legge. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-11928-X.
- Solti, Georg; Harvey Sachs (1997). Solti on Solti. London: Chatto and Windus. ISBN 0-7011-6630-4.
External links[link]
- Georg Solti official website
- The Solti Foundation official website
- Georg Solti at Allmusic
- Two interviews with Sir Georg Solti by Bruce Duffie, The Instrumentalist magazine, October 1995
- The National Portrait Gallery has six photographic portraits of Solti, including those by Anne-Katrin Purkiss and Patrick Lichfield.
| Preceded by Paul Kletzki |
Music Director, Dallas Symphony Orchestra 1961–1962 |
Succeeded by Donald Johanos |
| Preceded by Rafael Kubelík |
Music Director, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden 1961–1971 |
Succeeded by Colin Davis |
|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Solti, Georg |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | Orchestral and operatic conductor |
| Date of birth | 1912 |
| Place of birth | |
| Date of death | 1997 |
| Place of death | |
http://wn.com/Georg_Solti
Related pages:
http://it.wn.com/Georg Solti
http://es.wn.com/Georg Solti
http://ru.wn.com/Шолти, Георг
http://nl.wn.com/Georg Solti
http://pt.wn.com/Georg Solti
http://pl.wn.com/Georg Solti
http://fr.wn.com/Georg Solti
http://de.wn.com/Georg Solti
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Solti
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.
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.
| Cecilia Bartoli | |
|---|---|
 Cecilia Bartoli in 2008 at the Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels |
|
| Background information | |
| Born | (1966-06-04) 4 June 1966 (age 46) |
| Origin | Rome, Italy |
| Genres | Traditional, classical, baroque |
| Occupations | Singer and recitalist |
| Instruments | Vocals |
| Website | http://www.ceciliabartolionline.com |
Cecilia Bartoli, Cavaliere OMRI (Italian pronunciation: [tʃeˈtʃiːlja ˈbaɾtoli]; born June 4, 1966 in Rome) is an Italian coloratura 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.
Contents |
Biography[link]
Bartoli is considered a coloratura mezzo-soprano (Koloratur-Mezzosopran) with an unusual timbre. She is one of the most popular (and one of the top-selling) opera singers of recent years.[1] Bartoli is much liked by the concert-going public for her vivacious on-stage persona,[citation needed] while her lyric voice and investigations of Baroque music have given her considerable recognition even among the non-opera-going public.[citation needed]
Early career[link]
Bartoli's parents, Silvana Bazzoni and Pietro Angelo Bartoli, were both professional singers and gave her her first music lessons. Her first public performance was at age eight as the shepherd boy in Tosca.[1] Bartoli later studied at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome.[2]
In contrast to most opera singers, Bartoli came to prominence in her early twenties, unusual in a profession where vocal maturity is typically not achieved until the thirties. She made her professional opera début in 1987 at the Arena di Verona. The following year she undertook the role of Rosina in Rossini's The Barber of Seville at the Cologne Opera, the Schwetzingen Festival and the Zurich Opera earning rave reviews.[2] She was soon invited by Herbert von Karajan to sing at the Salzburg Festival, and she worked with von Karajan on Bach's Mass in B minor.[citation needed] At this time, she also came to Daniel Barenboim's attention when he saw her performing on a French television tribute to Maria Callas.[citation needed] Working with the conductors Daniel Barenboim and Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Bartoli focused on Mozart roles, such as Zerlina in Don Giovanni and Dorabella in Così fan tutte, and from then on her career has developed internationally.[2]
In 1990 she made her début at the Opéra Bastille as Cherubino in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro and her debut at the Hamburg State Opera as Idamantes in Mozart's Idomeneo. This was followed by her La Scala début as Isolier in Le comte Ory in 1991, a performance which solidified her reputation as one of the world's leading Rossini singers.[2]
Broad success[link]
In 1996, she made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera as Despina in Così fan tutte and returned the following year to sing the title role of La Cenerentola. On this occasion, there was much speculation that she had been secretly miked to boost her volume (as the Met is one of the largest opera houses in the world), but such rumours were steadfastly denied by the Met management.[citation needed] As a result of her acclaimed performance, the role of Angelina has become somewhat associated with her name.[citation needed]
In 2000 she triumphed in another Mozart soprano role, Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. In 2001 she made a long-awaited Royal Opera House début, taking the roles of Euridice and the Genio in the London stage première of Haydn's L'anima del filosofo.[2]
Work in Baroque music[link]
In addition to Mozart and Rossini, Bartoli has spent much of her time performing and recording baroque and early classical era music of such composers as Gluck, Vivaldi, Haydn and Salieri. In early 2005, she sang Cleopatra in Handel's Giulio Cesare, a role written for a soprano, but which is in mezzo-soprano range. As her voice has matured it has gained the fullness and "largeness" it was earlier criticized for lacking.[citation needed] She often performs with the baroque Ensemble Il Giardino Armonico.[citation needed]
Work in bel canto[link]
In 2007/08 Bartoli devoted her time to studying and recording the early 19th century repertoire – the era of Italian Romanticism and bel canto – and especially the legendary singer Maria Malibran, the 200th anniversary of whose birth was celebrated in March 2008. The album Maria was released in September 2007 and was number one in the Classical Billboard Charts in the U.S as well as achieving Gold status in Belgium and the Netherlands.[citation needed] In May 2008, Bartoli played the title role written for Malibran in a revival of Fromental Halévy's 1828 opera Clari at the Zurich Opera.[3] In June 2010 she sang the title role of Bellini's Norma for the first time with conductor Thomas Hengelbrock in a concert in the Konzerthaus Dortmund.[4] In March 2011, Bartoli toured five Australian cities with two programs, drawn from Sacrificium and Maria.[5]
Awards[link]
Bartoli was honored as a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1995 and received the Léonie Sonning Music Prize in 2010.[citation needed] In 2011, she won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Vocal Performance for Sacrificium.[citation needed] In 2012 she was voted into Gramophone Magazine's Hall of Fame.[6]
Discography[link]
Opera[link]
- Rossini: La scala di seta (1988)
- Rossini: Il Barbiere di Siviglia (1989)
- Mozart: Lucio Silla (1991)
- Rossini: La Cenerentola (1993)
- Puccini: Manon Lescaut (1993)
- Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro (1994)
- Mozart: La Clemenza di Tito (1995)
- Haydn: Orfeo ed Euridice (1997)
- Rossini: Il Turco in Italia (1998)
- Mozart: Mitridate (1999)
- Haydn:Armida (2000)
- Handel: Rinaldo (2000)
- Mozart: Don Giovanni (2001)
- Bellini: La Sonnambula (2008)
- Halevy:Clari (2008)
Recitals with orchestra[link]
- Rossini Arias (1989)
- Mozart Arias (1991)
- Rossini Heroines (1992)
- Mozart Portraits (1994)
- The Vivaldi Album (1999)
- Cecilia and Bryn (1999)
- Gluck Italian Arias (2001)
- The Salieri Album (2003)
- Opera Proibita (2005)
- Maria (A Tribute to Maria Malibran) (2007)
- Sacrificium (Arias written for castrati) (2009)
Recitals with piano[link]
- Rossini Recital (1990)
- If You Love Me – "Se tu m'ami": Eighteenth-century Italian Songs (1992)
- Arie Antiche (1992)
- Italian Songs (1993)
- Chant D'Amour (1996)
- An Italian Songbook (1997)
- Live in Italy (1998)
Sacred[link]
- Mozart: Requiem (1992)
- Scarlatti: Salve Regina
- Pergolesi: Stabat Mater, Salve Regina (2000)
Cantatas[link]
- Rossini Cantatas Volume 2
Collections[link]
- Cecilia Bartoli Rossini Heroines (1992)
- A Portrait (1995)
- The Art of Cecilia Bartoli (2002)
- Sospiri (2010)
References[link]
- ^ a b Wroe, The Guardian
- ^ a b c d e Blyth, Grove Music Online
- ^ Loomis, George (27 May 2008). "Zurich Opera and Cecilia Bartoli revive Halévy's opera Clari". International Herald Tribune. http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/28/arts/loomis.php. Retrieved 3 March 2009.
- ^ Julia Gaß (30 June 2010). ""Norma"-Debüt der Bartoli mit Jubelorkan gefeiert" (in German). Ruhr Nachrichten. http://www.ruhrnachrichten.de/nachrichten/kultur/kudo/art1541,953447. Retrieved 1 July 2010.
- ^ "Flying visit" by Hugh Canning, The Australian (12 February 2011)
- ^ "Cecilia Bartoli (mezzo-soprano)". Gramophone. http://www.gramophone.co.uk/HallofFame/ArtistPage/Bartoli. Retrieved 11 April 2012.
Sources[link]
- Blyth, Alan: "Cecilia Bartoli", Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed October 20, 2008), (subscription access)
- Wroe, Nicholas, "Classic case of success", The Guardian, 13 October 2001. Retrieved on 3 April 2009
- Swafford, Jan, Nature's Rejects, The music of the castrati., Slate, 9 November 2009
External links[link]
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Cecilia Bartoli |
|
|||||||||||
|
|||||
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Bartoli, Cecilia |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | Italian opera singer |
| Date of birth | June 4, 1966 |
| Place of birth | Rome, Italy |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
http://wn.com/Cecilia_Bartoli
Related pages:
http://it.wn.com/Cecilia Bartoli
http://cs.wn.com/Cecilia Bartoli
http://es.wn.com/Cecilia Bartoli
http://ru.wn.com/Бартоли, Чечилия
http://nl.wn.com/Cecilia Bartoli
http://pt.wn.com/Cecilia Bartoli
http://pl.wn.com/Cecilia Bartoli
http://fr.wn.com/Cecilia Bartoli
http://de.wn.com/Cecilia Bartoli
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecilia_Bartoli
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.
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.
 |
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2011) |
| Dudley Moore | |
|---|---|
 Moore at the 43rd Emmy Awards, 25 August 1991 |
|
| Born | Dudley Stuart John Moore (1935-04-19)19 April 1935 London, UK |
| Died | 27 March 2002(2002-03-27) (aged 66) Plainfield, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Cause of death | Pneumonia |
| Occupation | Actor, comedian, musician |
| Years active | 1961–2002 |
| Spouse | Suzy Kendall (1968–72) Tuesday Weld (1975–80) Brogan Lane (1988–91) Nicole Rothschild (1994–98) |
Dudley Stuart John Moore, CBE (19 April 1935 – 27 March 2002) was an English actor, comedian, composer and musician.
Moore first came to prominence as one of the four writer-performers in the ground-breaking comedy revue Beyond the Fringe in the early 1960s, and then became famous as half of the highly popular television double-act he formed with Peter Cook.
His fame as a comedy film actor was later heightened by success in hit Hollywood films such as 10 with Bo Derek and Arthur in the late 1970s and early 1980s, respectively. He received an Oscar nomination for the latter role. He was frequently referred to in the media as "Cuddly Dudley" or "The Sex Thimble", a reference to his short stature and reputation as a "ladies' man".
Contents |
Early life[link]
Moore was born in Charing Cross Hospital, London, the son of Ada Francis (née Hughes), a secretary, and John Moore, a railway electrician. He was brought up in Dagenham, Essex. He was notably short: 5 ft 2.5 in (1.588 m) and was born with club feet that required extensive hospital treatment and which, coupled with his diminutive stature, made him the butt of jokes from other children. His right foot responded well to corrective treatment and had straightened itself by the time he was six, but his left foot became permanently twisted and consequently his left leg below the knee was withered. Seeking refuge from his problems, he became a choirboy at the age of six and took up piano and violin. He rapidly developed into a highly talented pianist and organist and was playing the pipe organ at church weddings by the age of 14. He attended Dagenham County High School (now The Sydney Russell School) where he received musical tuition from a dedicated teacher, Peter Cork. Cork became a friend and confidant to Moore, corresponding with him until 1994.
Moore's musical talent won him an organ scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford. While studying music and composition there, he also performed with Alan Bennett in the Oxford Revue. Bennett then recommended him to the producer putting together Beyond the Fringe, a comedy revue, where he was to first meet Peter Cook. Beyond the Fringe was at the forefront of the 1960s satire boom and after success in Britain it transferred to the United States, where it was also a hit.
During his university years, Moore took a great interest in jazz and soon became an accomplished jazz pianist and composer. He began working with such leading musicians as John Dankworth and Cleo Laine. In 1960, he left Dankworth's band to work on Beyond the Fringe. During the 1960s he formed the Dudley Moore Trio (with drummer Chris Karan and bassists Pete McGurk and later Peter Morgan). Moore's admitted principal musical influences were Oscar Peterson and Errol Garner. In an interview he recalled the day he finally mastered Garner's unique left-hand strum and was so excited that he walked around for several days with his left hand constantly playing that cadence. His early recordings included "My Blue Heaven", "Lysie Does It", "Poova Nova", "Take Your Time", "Indiana", "Sooz Blooz", "Baubles, Bangles & Beads", "Sad One for George" and "Autumn Leaves". The trio performed regularly on British television, made numerous recordings and had a long-running residency at Peter Cook's London nightclub, The Establishment.
Moore composed the soundtracks for the films Bedazzled, Inadmissible Evidence, Staircase and Six Weeks, among others.
Career[link]
Partnership with Peter Cook[link]
After following the Establishment to New York City, Moore returned to the UK and was offered his own series on the BBC, Not Only... But Also (1965). It was commissioned specifically as a vehicle for Moore, but when he invited Peter Cook on as a guest, their comedy partnership was so notable that it became a permanent fixture of the series. Cook and Moore are most remembered for their sketches as two working-class men, Pete and Dud, in macs and cloth caps, commenting on politics and the arts, but they fashioned a series of one-off characters, usually with Moore in the role of interviewer to one of Cook's upper-class eccentrics. The pair developed an unorthodox method for scripting the material by using a tape recorder to tape an ad libbed routine that they would then have transcribed and edited. This would not leave enough time to fully rehearse the script so they often had a set of cue cards. Moore was famous for "corpsing" — the programmes often went on live, and Cook would deliberately make him laugh in order to get an even bigger reaction from the studio audience. Regrettably, many of the videotapes and film reels of these seminal TV shows were later erased by the BBC (an affliction which wiped out large portions of other British television productions as well, such as Doctor Who), although some of the soundtracks (which were issued on record) have survived. Moore and Cook co-starred in the film Bedazzled (1967) with Eleanor Bron, and also had tours called Behind the Fridge and Good Evening.
In 2009 it came to light that at the time three separate British police forces had wanted them to be prosecuted under obscenity laws for their comedy recordings made during the late 1970s under the pseudonyms Derek and Clive. Shortly following the last of these, Derek and Clive – Ad Nauseam, Moore made a break with Cook, whose alcoholism was affecting his work, to concentrate on his film career. When Moore began to manifest the symptoms of the disease that eventually killed him (progressive supranuclear palsy), it was at first suspected that he too had a drinking problem. Two of Moore's early starring roles were the titular drunken playboy Arthur and the heavy drinker George Webber in 10. Dudley Moore also plays a short role in the 1995 feature CASPER.
Later career[link]
In the late 1970s, Moore moved to Hollywood, where he appeared in Foul Play (1978) with Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase. The following year saw his break-out role in Blake Edwards's 10, which he followed up with the movie Wholly Moses! The latter was not a major success.
Moore played Watson to Cook's Holmes in 1978's Hound of the Baskervilles. Moore was noteworthy as a comic foil to Sir Henry and played three other roles: one in drag and one as a one-legged man. Moore also played the piano for the entire score and appears at the start and end of the film as a flamboyant and mischievous pianist. Moore also scored the film.
In 1981, Moore appeared as the lead in the comedy Arthur, an even bigger hit than 10, which also starred Liza Minnelli and Sir John Gielgud. It was both commercially and critically successful; Moore received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor whilst Gielgud won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as Arthur's stern but compassionate manservant. Moore lost to Henry Fonda (for On Golden Pond). He did, however, win a Golden Globe award for Best Actor in a Musical/Comedy. In 1984, Moore had another hit, starring in the Blake Edwards directed Micki + Maude, co-starring Amy Irving. This won him another Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Musical/Comedy.
His subsequent films, including Arthur 2: On the Rocks, a sequel to the original, and an animated adaptation of King Kong, were inconsistent in terms of both critical and commercial reception; Moore eventually disowned the former. In later years, Cook would wind up Moore by claiming he preferred Arthur 2: On the Rocks to Arthur.
In addition to acting, Moore continued to work as a composer and pianist, writing scores for a number of films and giving piano concerts, which were highlighted by his popular parodies of classical favourites. In addition, Moore collaborated with the conductor Sir Georg Solti to create a 1991 television series, Orchestra!, which was designed to introduce audiences to the symphony orchestra. He later worked with the American conductor Michael Tilson Thomas on a similar television series from 1993, Concerto!, likewise designed to introduce audiences to classical music concertos. He also appeared as Ko-Ko in a Jonathan Miller production of The Mikado in Los Angeles in March 1988.
In 1987, Moore was interviewed for the New York Times by the music critic Rena Fruchter, herself an accomplished pianist. They became close friends. At that time Moore's film career was already on the wane. He was having trouble remembering his lines, a problem he had never previously encountered (for this reason he was fired from Barbra Streisand's film The Mirror Has Two Faces).[1] He opted to concentrate on the piano, and enlisted Fruchter as an artistic partner. They performed as a duo in the U.S. and Australia. However, his disease soon started to make itself apparent there as well, as his fingers would not always do what he wanted them to do. Symptoms such as slurred speech and loss of balance were misinterpreted by the public and the media as a sign of drunkenness. Moore himself was at a loss to explain this. He moved into Fruchter's family home in New Jersey and stayed there for five years, but this, however, placed a great strain both on her marriage and her friendship with Moore, and she later set him up in the house next door.
Moore was deeply affected by the death of Peter Cook in 1995, and for weeks would regularly telephone Cook's home in London just to get the telephone answering machine and hear his friend's voice. Moore attended Cook's memorial service in London and at the time many people who knew him noted that Moore was behaving strangely and attributed it to grief or drinking. In November 1995, Moore teamed up with friend and humorist Martin Lewis in organising a two-day salute to Cook in Los Angeles that Moore co-hosted with Lewis.
Moore is the main subject of the play Pete and Dud: Come Again, by Chris Bartlett and Nick Awde. Set in a chat-show studio in the 1980s, it focuses on Moore's comic and personal relationship with Peter Cook and how their careers took off after the split of the partnership.
Entrepreneur[link]
Moore co-owned a fashionable restaurant in Venice, California (1980s–2000). The restaurant was named 72 Market Street Oyster Bar and Grill. Moore played piano in the restaurant whenever he dropped by the premises.
Personal life[link]
Moore was married and divorced four times: to actresses Suzy Kendall, Tuesday Weld (by whom he had a son, Patrick, in 1976), Brogan Lane and Nicole Rothschild (one son, Nicholas, born in 1995).
He maintained good relationships with Kendall particularly, and also Weld and Lane. However, he expressly forbade Rothschild to attend his funeral. At the time his illness became apparent, he was going through a difficult divorce from Rothschild, despite sharing a house in Los Angeles with her and her previous husband.
Moore dated and was a favourite of some of Hollywood's most attractive women, including Susan Anton. In 1994, Moore was arrested after Rothschild claimed he had beaten her before that year's Oscars; she later withdrew her charges.
Illness and death[link]
In September 1997 Moore underwent quadruple heart bypass surgery in London, and subsequently suffered four minor strokes.
In June 1998, Nicole Rothschild was reported to have told an American television show that Moore was "waiting to die" due to a serious illness, but these reports were denied by Suzy Kendall.[2]
On 30 September 1999, Moore announced that he was suffering from the terminal degenerative brain disorder progressive supranuclear palsy, some of whose early symptoms were so similar to intoxication that he had been accused of being drunk, and that the illness had been diagnosed earlier in the year.[3]
He died on 27 March 2002, as a result of pneumonia, secondary to immobility caused by the palsy, in Plainfield, New Jersey. Rena Fruchter was holding his hand when he died, and she reported his final words were, "I can hear the music all around me." Moore was interred in Hillside Cemetery in Scotch Plains, New Jersey. Fruchter later wrote a memoir of their relationship (Dudley Moore, Ebury Press, 2004).
In December 2004, the Channel 4 television station in the United Kingdom broadcast Not Only But Always, a TV movie dramatising the relationship between Moore and Cook, although the principal focus of the production was on Cook. Around the same time the relationship between the two was also the subject of a stage play called Pete and Dud: Come Again.
Honours and awards[link]
In June 2001, Moore was appointed a Commander of the Order of The British Empire (CBE). Despite his deteriorating condition, he attended the ceremony, mute and wheelchair-bound, at Buckingham Palace to collect his honour.[1]
Filmography[link]
|
|
Discography[link]
UK chart singles[link]
- "Goodbye-ee" (1965), Peter Cook and Dudley Moore
- "The L.S. Bumble Bee" (1967), Peter Cook and Dudley Moore
- "Song for Suzy" (1972), Dudley Moore Trio – upbeat jazz.
Jazz discography[link]
- From Beyond The Fringe (Atlantic Standard 2 017, 1966)
- The Dudley Moore Trio (Decca Records (LK UK) / London Records (US) PS558) 1969
- Dudley Moore plays The Theme From Beyond The Fringe and All That Jazz – Atlantic 1403 (1962)
- The World of Dudley Moore – Decca SPA 106
- The Other Side Of Dudley Moore - Decca LK 4732
- Genuine Dud – Decca LK 4788
- The Music of Dudley Moore – EMI Australia (Cube Records) TOOFA.14-1/2
- Dudley Down Under – Cube ICS 13
- Dudley Moore at the Wavendon Festival – Black Lion Records BLP 12151
- Smilin' Through – Cleo Laine & Dudley Moore – Finesse Records FW 38091
- Dudley Dell – Parlophone 45R 4772
- Strictly For The Birds – Cleo Laine & Dudley Moore – CBS A 2947
- The Theme From "Beyond The Fringe" & All That Jazz – Collectibles COL 6625
- Live From an Aircraft Hangar – Martine Avenue Productions MAPI 8486
- Songs Without Words – GRP/BMG LC 6713
- The First Orchestrations – Dudley Moore & Richard Rodney Bennett – Played by John Bassett and his Band – Harkit Records HRKCD 8054
- Jazz Jubilee – Martine Avenue Productions MAPI 1521
References[link]
- Notes
- ^ a b "Tributes flood in for Moore". BBC News. 28 March 2002. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1898076.stm. Retrieved 25 August 2011.
- ^ "Health fears for Dudley Moore". BBC News. 9 June 1998. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/109902.stm. Retrieved 29 March 2010.
- ^ "Dudley Moore has rare brain disease". BBC News. 30 September 1999. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/461376.stm. Retrieved 29 March 2010.
- Further reading
- Dudley Moore (1966). Originals. Arranged as Piano Solos Transcribed from the Decca L.P. 'The Other Side of Dudley Moore'. Essex Music.
- From Fringe to Flying Circus – 'Celebrating a Unique Generation of Comedy 1960–1980' – Roger Wilmut, Eyre Methuen Ltd, 1980
- Alexander Games (1999). Pete & Dud: An Illustrated Biography. Andre Deutsch. ISBN 0-233-99642-7.
- Peter Cook and Dudley Moore (2003). Dud and Pete The Dagenham Dialogues. Methuen. ISBN 978-0-413-77347-0.
- Chris Bartlett and Nick Awde (2006). Pete and Dud: Come Again. Methuen Drama. ISBN 0-413-77602-6.
- Dudley Moore, Rena Fruchter, Ebury Press, 2004.
- Fallen Stars, Julian Upton, Headpress, 2004.
External links[link]
- "The Films of Dudley Moore", film clip compilation, 5 minutes
accessdate=2 September 2010}}
- Dudley Moore at the Internet Movie Database
- Obituary at CNN.com
- Radio 4 programme "Affectionately Dudley", 2006
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Moore, Dudley |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | was an English actor, comedian, composer and musician |
| Date of birth | 19 April 1935 |
| Place of birth | Dagenham, London, UK |
| Date of death | 27 March 2002 |
| Place of death | Plainfield, New Jersey, United States |
http://wn.com/Dudley_Moore
Related pages:
http://it.wn.com/Dudley Moore
http://id.wn.com/Dudley Moore
http://es.wn.com/Dudley Moore
http://ru.wn.com/Мур, Дадли
http://nl.wn.com/Dudley Moore
http://pt.wn.com/Dudley Moore
http://pl.wn.com/Dudley Moore
http://fr.wn.com/Dudley Moore
http://de.wn.com/Dudley Moore
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dudley_Moore
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.
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.
Dame Kiri Jeanette Te Kanawa, ONZ, DBE, AC (pronounced /ˌkɪri tɨ ˈkɑːnəwə/; born 6 March 1944, Gisborne, New Zealand) is a New Zealand / Māori soprano who has had a highly successful international opera career since 1968. Acclaimed as one of the most beloved sopranos in both the United States and Britain[1][2] she possesses a warm full lyric soprano voice, singing a wide array of works in multiple languages from the 17th to the 20th centuries. She is particularly associated with the works of Mozart, Strauss, Verdi, Handel and Puccini.[3]
Te Kanawa's voice has been described as having "a vibrant but mellow quality that is ample in size without being overly heavy or forced"[citation needed]. Music critics have consistently praised the freshness and warmth of her voice[citation needed]. The sheer beauty of Te Kanawa's voice made her one of the leading operatic sopranos internationally of the 1970s and 1980s. She found particular success in portraying princesses, noble countesses and other similar characters on stage, as her naturally dignified stage presence and physical beauty complemented these roles well.[3]
Although she now only rarely sings in operas, Te Kanawa still frequently performs in concert and recital, while giving masterclasses and supporting young opera singers in launching their careers.[4]
Contents |
Personal life[link]
Kiri Te Kanawa was born as Claire Mary Teresa Rawstron in Gisborne on New Zealand's North Island. She has Māori and European ancestry, but little is known about her birth parents, as she was adopted as an infant by Thomas Te Kanawa, a Māori, and his wife, Nell. She was educated at Saint Mary's College Auckland and formally trained in operatic singing by Sister Mary Leo, RSM. Te Kanawa began her singing career as a mezzo-soprano, but later developed into a soprano.[5] Her recording of the "Nuns' Chorus" from the Strauss operetta Casanova was New Zealand's first gold record.
Kiri met Desmond Park on a blind date in London in August 1967, and they married six weeks later in St Patrick's Cathedral, Auckland.[6] They adopted two children, Antonia (1976) and Thomas (1979) who was named after Kiri's adoptive father. The couple divorced in 1997.[7]
Career[link]
In her teens and early 20s, Te Kanawa was a pop star and popular entertainer at clubs in New Zealand,[8] and regularly appeared in newspapers and magazines (see right).In 1965 she won the Mobil Song Quest with her performance of "Vissi d'arte" from Puccini's Tosca. In 1963, she was runner-up to Malvina Major in the same competition. As the winner, she received a grant to study in London. In 1966, she then won the prestigious Australian Melbourne Sun-Aria contest, which Major had also won the previous year. Both students had been taught by Sister Mary Leo.
Early years in London[link]
In 1966, without an audition, she enrolled at the London Opera Centre to study under Vera Rózsa and James Robertson, who reputedly said Te Kanawa lacked a singing technique when she arrived at the school but did have a gift for captivating audiences.[9] She first appeared on stage as the Second Lady in Mozart's The Magic Flute, as well as in performances of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas in December 1968 at the Sadler's Wells Theatre. She also sang the title role in Donizetti's Anna Bolena. In 1969, she sang Elena in Rossini's La donna del lago at the Camden Festival; and also was offered the role of the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro after an audition of which the conductor, Colin Davis, said, "I couldn't believe my ears. I've taken thousands of auditions, but it was such a fantastically beautiful voice." Praise for her Idamante in Mozart's Idomeneo led to an offer of a three-year contract as junior principal at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden where she made her debut as Xenia in Boris Godunov and a Flower Maiden in Parsifal in 1970.[10] Under director John Copley, Te Kanawa was carefully groomed for the role of the Countess for a December 1971 opening.
International career[link]
Meanwhile, word of her success had reached John Crosby at the Santa Fe Opera, a summer opera festival in New Mexico, then about to begin its fifteenth season. He cast her in the role of the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro, which opened on 30 July 1971. The performance also featured Frederica von Stade in her debut as Cherubino. "It was two of the newcomers who left the audience dazzled: Frederica von Stade as Cherubino and Kiri te Kanawa as the Countess. Everyone knew at once that these were brilliant finds. History has confirmed that first impression." [11] They have maintained their friendship since.
On 1 December 1971 at Covent Garden, Kiri Te Kanawa repeated her Santa Fe performance and created an international sensation as the Countess: "with "Porgi amor" Kiri knocked the place flat."[12] It was followed by performances as the Countess at the Opéra National de Lyon and San Francisco Opera in autumn 1972. She sang her first Desdemona in Glasgow in 1972 while her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1974 as Desdemona in Otello took place at short notice, replacing an ill Teresa Stratas at the last minute. She sang at the Glyndebourne Festival in 1973, with further débuts in Paris and (1975), Sydney (1976), Milan (1978), Salzburg (1979) and Vienna (1980). In 1982 she gave her only stage performances as Tosca in Paris. In 1989 she added Elisabeth de Valois in Don Carlos to her repertory at Chicago, and in 1990 the Countess in Capriccio, sung first at San Francisco and with equal success at Covent Garden, Glyndebourne and the Metropolitan in 1998.
In subsequent years, she performed at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Paris Opera, Sydney Opera House, the Vienna State Opera, La Scala, San Francisco Opera, Munich and Cologne, adding the Mozart roles of Donna Elvira, Pamina, and Fiordiligi, in addition to Italian roles such as Mimi in Puccini's La bohème. She played Donna Elvira in Joseph Losey's 1979 film adaptation of Don Giovanni.
She was seen and heard around the world in 1981 by an estimated 600 million people[citation needed]. when she sang Handel's "Let the Bright Seraphim" at the wedding of Charles, Prince of Wales, and Lady Diana Spencer.[13]
In 1984, Leonard Bernstein decided to re-record the musical West Side Story, conducting his own music for the first time. Generally known as the "operatic version", it starred Te Kanawa as Maria, José Carreras as Tony, Tatiana Troyanos as Anita, Kurt Ollman as Riff, and Marilyn Horne as the offstage voice who sings "Somewhere". It won a Grammy Award for Best Cast Show Album in 1985 and the recording process was filmed as a documentary.
Te Kanawa has a particular affinity for the heroines of Richard Strauss. Her first appearance in the title role in Arabella was at the Houston Grand Opera in 1977, followed by the roles of the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier and the Countess in Capriccio. Many performances were given under the baton of Georg Solti and it was with him that she made her first recording of The Marriage of Figaro.
In recent years Te Kanawa's appearances on the opera stage have become more infrequent, although she remains busy as a concert singer. She appeared in performances in Samuel Barber's Vanessa with the Washington National Opera and the Los Angeles Opera in November/December 2004. In February 2010 she played the part of The Duchess of Krakenthorp in Donizetti's La fille du régiment at the Metropolitan Opera, and sang a tango. In April 2010 she sang the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss in two performances at the Cologne Opera in Germany. Te Kanawa has also appeared as a Pennington Great Performers series artist with the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra in 2004. It is said, this would be the end of her operatic career, but obviously this is not certain.
Honours[link]
Kiri Te Kanawa was created a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1982, invested as an Honorary Companion of the Order of Australia in 1990 and awarded the Order of New Zealand in the 1995 Queen's Birthday Honours List. She has also received honorary degrees from the following universities in the UK: Bath, Cambridge, Dundee, Durham, Nottingham, Oxford, Sunderland, Warwick as well as these universities worldwide: Chicago, Auckland and Waikato as well as being honorary fellow of Somerville College, Oxford and Wolfson College, Cambridge. She is also patron of Ringmer Community College, a school in the South-East of England situated not far from Glyndebourne.
On 12 June 2008 she received the Edison Classical Music Award during the Edison Classical Music Gala (formerly: 'Grand Gala du Disque') in the Ridderzaal in The Hague.
Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation[link]
Kiri founded the Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation with the vision "that talented young New Zealand singers and musicians with complete dedication to their art may receive judicious and thoughtful mentoring and support to assist them in realising their dreams."[14]
The foundation manages a trust fund to provide financial and career scholarships to young New Zealand singers and musicians.
The Kiri Prize[link]
In January 2010, Dame Kiri and BBC Radio 2 launched an initiative to find a gifted opera singer of the future. The initiative was the BBC Radio 2 Kiri Prize competition.[15]
Following regional auditions of over 600 aspiring opera singers, 40 were invited to attend masterclasses in London with Dame Kiri, mezzo-soprano Anne Howells and conductor Robin Stapleton. From these masterclasses fifteen singers were selected for the semi-finals which were broadcast on 5 consecutive weeks on BBC Radio 2’s Friday Night Is Music Night. The semi-finalists were accompanied by the BBC Concert Orchestra, conducted by Martin Yates, Richard Balcombe and Roderick Dunk and their performances were judged by Dame Kiri, Anne Howells, Robin Stapleton and director John Cox.
Five singers went through to the final which was broadcast on Radio 2 on Friday 3 September 2010. The winner - soprano Shuna Scott Sendall - performed with Dame Kiri and José Carreras at BBC Proms In The Park in Hyde Park, London on Saturday 11 September 2010 and was given the opportunity to attend a three-week residential course at the Solti Te Kanawa Accademia in Italy.
Controversy[link]
In a 2003 interview with the Melbourne-based Herald Sun she criticised the high rate of welfare dependence among the Māori people, angering some of her compatriots.[16] In 2007, Te Kanawa was sued for breach of contract by event management company Leading Edge, after cancelling a concert with Australian singer John Farnham. She cancelled after learning that his fans sometimes threw their underwear on stage, which he would then proudly display.[17] She won the suit, but her Mittane company which employs and manages her was ordered to pay A$102,000 in court costs.[18][19]
Career highlights[link]
- Moved to Auckland and studied under Sister Mary Leo 1959-1965 at St Mary's College.
- Had New Zealand's first gold disc, with a popular operatic aria.
- Was 2nd to Dame Malvina Major in the Mobil Song Quest in 1963, and won it in 1965.
- Won the Melbourne Sun-Aria in 1965, and was awarded an Arts Council of Great Britain bursary to study at the London Opera Centre.
- Made her US debut at Santa Fe Opera with her performance as the Countess in Le nozze di Figaro in summer 1971, and became internationally famous at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in London after singing the role on 1 December 1971.
- In 1977 she appeared at the Royal Opera House in a German/English production of Die Fledermaus. The New Year's Eve performance, conducted by Zubin Mehta, was recorded for television with the cast was virtually duplicated on the later DVD release. The performance was broadcast on TV in the US on New Year's Eve 1979.
- Sang at the San Francisco Opera, the Metropolitan Opera in New York and La Scala in Milan, Italy.
- In 1981 sang at the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in St Paul's Cathedral, London.
- She won a Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording in 1984, for Mozart's "Le nozze di Figaro". It was produced by Christopher Raeburn and the London Philharmonic Orchestra was conducted by Georg Solti. Also featuring were Thomas Allen, Kurt Moll, Lucia Popp, Samuel Ramey and Frederica von Stade.
- Created Dame Kiri Te Kanawa in 1982, and returned to New Zealand to sing several times, including the New Year millennium concert at Gisborne in January 2000.
- In 1984, made a special recording of West Side Story in the leading role of Maria with José Carreras as Tony, and conducted by Leonard Bernstein.
- In 1986, again partnered José Carreras in the recording of the musical South Pacific.
- In 1994 celebrated her 50th birthday, culminating in a spectacular Birthday Concert at the Royal Albert Hall, London. Long awaited return to the Metropolitan Opera as Arabella.
- November 1999, released a new album, Maori Songs.
- Sang in her last opera, Vanessa, in 2004, but continues with recitals and concerts and organising the Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation, to help young music students.
- On 15 March 2006, Te Kanawa played a role in the 2006 Commonwealth Games. She sang a medley of "Happy Birthday" to Queen Elizabeth II, in recognition of her upcoming birthday, and "God Save the Queen".
- 2 December 2007, sang to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh at the Royal Variety Performance. Her performance included leading the National Anthem, God Save the Queen
- 28 June 2008, she sang Summertime in duet with Portuguese fado singer star Mariza, at Casino Estoril.
- 19 July 2008, sang her last American concert with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Ravinia Park.
- 19 June 2009, inducted into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame, performing solo works, and duets with Frederica von Stade and Josh Groban to a crowd of 18,000
- 6 February 2010, returned to the Metropolitan Opera as the Duchess of Krakenthorp in La Fille du Régiment - typically a non-singing character part, but an art song by Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera was interpolated into the production for her to sing.
- April 2010, returned to the Cologne Opera House in Germany for two final performances of the Marschallin in Rosenkavalier.
Discography[link]
- 1972 - Mozart - Exsultate Jubilate - (Exsultate Jubilate, Vesperae Solennes De Confessore, Kyrie In D Minor, Ave Verum Corpus ), Te Kanawa, London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Sir Colin Davis [Philips] (also re-issued 1986)
- 1972 - Mozart - Don Giovanni - as Donna Elvira in a studio recording with Covent Garden Royal Opera House Chorus and Orchestra, Colin Davis
- 1973 - My Favourite Things [Hallmark, SHM 3218]
- 1975 - Bizet - Carmen - as Micaëlla in a studio recording with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Georg Solti
- 1976 - Mozart - Le nozze di Figaro - Te Kanawa (Contessa Almaviva), Freni (Susanna), Prey (Figaro), Fischer-Dieskau (Conte Almaviva), Ewing (Cherubino), Begg (Marcellina), Montarsolo (Don Bartolo), Wiener Philharmoniker, conductor Karl Böhm [DVD]
- 1977 - Duruflé - Requiem/Danse Lente - Te Kanawa, Nimsgern, Ambrosian Singers, Desborough School Choir, Andrew Davis, New Philharmonia Orchestra [CBS Schallplatten GmbH]
- 1977 - Mozart - Così fan tutte - as Fiordiligi in a studio recording under Alain Lombard
- 1978 - Mozart - Die Zauberflöte - as Pamina in a studio recording under Alain Lombard
- 1979 - Strauss - Four Last Songs - London Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Davis [CBS Masterworks]
- 1979 - Brahms - A German Requiem - Variations On A Theme By Haydn - Chicago Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, Kiri Te Kanawa, Sir Georg Solti, Bernd Weikl, Margaret Hillis [London Records]
- 1981 - Gay - The Beggar's Opera - as Polly Peachum in a studio recording with National Philharmonic Orchestra, Richard Bonynge
- 1981 - Mozart - Le nozze di Figaro - as Contessa Almaviva in a studio recording with London Philharmonic Orchestra, Georg Solti
- 1981 - Puccini - La rondine - as Magda de Civry in a studio recording with the London Symphony Orchestra, Lorin Maazel
- 1981 - Mozart Concert Arias - Kiri Te Kanawa, Wiener Kammerorchester, Gyorgy Fischer [London/Decca Jubilee 417756]
- 1983 - Canteloube - Chants D'Auvergne (Songs of The Auvergne) / Villa-Lobos - Bachianas Brasileiras [Polygram SXDL 7604]
- 1983 - Mozart Opera Arias - London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Colin Davis [Philips], [Polygram 5414319]
- 1983 - Verdi & Puccini - London Philharmonic Orchestra, John Pritchard [CBS 37298]
- 1984 - Come To The Fair - Folk Songs & Ballads - with the Medici String Quartet and members of the National Philharmonic Orchestra, Douglas Gamley [EMI EMC 222]
- 1984 - Puccini - Tosca - as Floria Tosca in a studio recording under Georg Solti
- 1984 - Ave Maria - a collection of religious favorites with the English Chamber Orchestra and the Choir of St. Paul's Cathedral, London
- 1984 - A Portrait of Kiri Te Kanawa [CBS SBR 236068]
- 1985 - Handel - Messiah - with Anne Gjevang, Keith Lewis, Gwynne Howell, Chicago Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, Sir Georg Solti [3xLP, Album + Box, London Records]
- 1985 - Leonard Bernstein West Side Story - a recording of Bernstein's music for the Broadway production West Side Story, with José Carreras singing the part of Tony and Leonard Bernstein himself conducting the orchestra and chorus [Polygram 415253]
- 1985 - A Room With A View (OST) - the Verdi and Puccini arias "O mio babbino caro" (Gianni Schicchi) and "Chi bel sogno di Doretta" (La Rondine) in the Merchant Ivory film A Room with a View [DRG CDSBL 12588]
- 1986 - Richard Strauss -Arabella - as Arabella in a studio recording with Covent Garden Royal Opera House Chorus and Orchestra, Jeffrey Tate
- 1986 - Gounod -Faust - sang the role of Marguerite in a studio recording with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Colin Davis
- 1986 - South Pacific - London Studio Cast, Kiri Te Kanawa, Mandy Patinkin, José Carreras and Sarah Vaughan
- 1986 - Kiri - Blue Skies - with Nelson Riddle And His Orchestra [Polygram/Decca 414 666-1 ]
- 1986 - Christmas with Kiri (with Philharmonia Orchestra of London and Chorus, Carl Davis) London Classic / Polygram
- 1987 - Puccini Manon Lescaut - sang the title role in a studio recording with Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Riccardo Chailly
- 1987 - Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick 'Fritz' Loewe - My Fair Lady - a studio cast recording with Te Kanawa singing the role of Eliza Doolittle and Jeremy Irons singing the role of Henry Higgins [Polygram 421200]
- 1987 - Kiri Sings Gershwin - a collection of George Gershwin songs with the New Princess Theater Orchestra, John McGlinn [EMI]
- 1987 - Portrait [Polygram 417645]
- 1987 - Beethoven - Symphonie No.9 - Te Kanawa, Hamari, Burrows, Holl, London Symphony Chorus, London Symphony Orchestra, Eugen Jochum [EMI]
- 1988 - Mozart - Così fan tutte - recorded the role of Fiordiligi again this time with Vienna State Opera, James Levine
- 1988 - Bach - Matthäus-Passion - Te Kanawa, von Otter, Rolfe Johnson, Krause, Blochwitz, Bär, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Sir Georg Solti [Box, Album + 3xCD, Decca]
- 1988 - Gabriel Fauré - Requiem · Pelléas Et Mélisande · Pavane - Te Kanawa, Milnes, Choeur De L'Orchestre Symphonique De Montreal, Orchestre Symphonique De Montréal, Charles Dutoit [Decca]
- 1989 - Verdi - Simon Boccanegra - recorded the role of Amelia Grimaldi in a studio recording with La Scala, Milan, Georg Solti
- 1989 - Songs Of Inspiration - Kiri Te Kanawa, Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Utah Symphony Orchestra, Julius Rudel [London/Decca/Polygram 425431]
- 1989 - Mozart - Die Zauberflöte - recorded the role of Pamina again this time with Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields
- 1990 - Johann Strauss II - Die Fledermaus - sang the part of Rosalinde with Vienna State Opera, André Previn
- 1990 - Mozart - Le nozze di Figaro - re-recorded the role of Contessa Almaviva in a studio recording with the Metropolitan Opera, James Levine
- 1990 - Richard Strauss - Der Rosenkavalier - sang the role of the Marschallin with the Semperoper Dresden under Bernard Haitink
- 1990 - Mozart - Der Schauspieldirector - sang the role of Mademoiselle Silberklang with the Vienna Philharmonic under John Pritchard
- 1990 - Ave Maria - Kiri Te Kanawa, English Chamber Orchestra, Choir of St Paul's Cathedral, Barry Rose [Philips 412629]
- 1990 - Kiri In Recital - Liszt, Obradors, Ravel - Kiri Te Kanawa, with Roger Vignoles (Piano) [London/Decca 425820 ]
- 1991 - Richard Strauss - 4 Letzte Lieder and other songs - with Georg Solti and the Vienna Philharmonic
- 1991 - The Kiri Selection
- 1991 - Kiri Sings Kern
- 1991 - Bernard Herrmann - Citizen Kane - The Classic Film Scores Of Bernard Herrmann - Kiri Te Kanawa, Joaquin Achucarro, National Philharmonic Orchestra, Charles Gerhardt [RCA Victor, BMG Classics]
- 1991 - World In Union (Single, 7") - (Rugby Union World Cup Theme Song) [Columbia]
- 1992 - Paul McCartney and Carl Davis - Paul McCartney's Liverpool Oratorio (Movement VII: Crises)
- 1992 - Tchaikovsky - Eugene Onegin - sang the role of Tatyana in a studio recording with Welsh National Opera under Charles Mackerras
- 1992 - Verdi La traviata - sang the role of Violetta in a studio recording with the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Zubin Mehta
- 1992 - Kiri Sidetracks: The Jazz Album
- 1992 - Mahler - Symphony No. 4, Kiri Te Kanawa, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Georg Solti [Decca]
- 1993 - Wagner -Tannhäuser - sang the role of Elisabeth in a studio recording with the London Philharmonia Orchestra and the Ambrosian Singers, Marek Janowski
- 1993 - Mozart Arias (Grand Voci) [Decca]
- 1993 - Classics - Mozart, Handel, Gounod, Schubet, Strauss [Philips 434725]
- 1994 - Mozart - Great Mass in C minor - (chorus master: Laszlo Heltay) [Philips]
- 1994 - Heart to Heart - with Malcolm McNeill
- 1994 - Puccini - La bohème - recorded the title role in a studio recording with the London Symphony Orchestra, Kent Nagano
- 1994 - The Sorceress - arias from Handel operas with Hogwood and The Academy of Ancient Music
- 1994 - Kiri! Her Greatest Hits Live [Decca 443600]
- 1995 - Christmas with Kiri Te Kanawa: Carols from Coventry Cathedral - Kiri Te Kanawa, Michael George, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Robin Stapleton [Teldec]
- 1996 - Richard Strauss Capriccio - recorded the role of the Countess in a studio recording with Wiener Philharmoniker, Ulf Schirmer, Decca/London
- 1996 - Franz Schubert - Lieder - Judith Raskin, Kiri Te Kanawa, Elly Ameling, Peter Pears, Judith Blegen [Sony Classical]
- 1997 - French Songs and Arias
- 1997 - Sole et amore - Puccini Arias - Te Kanawa, Vignoles, Orchestre de L'Opera National de Lyon, Kent Nagano [Erato]
- 1998 - Bizet - Carmen - Highlights - Troyanos, Domingo, Te Kanawa, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Georg Solti [Decca]
- 1998 - The Greatest Classical Stars On Earth - Plácido Domingo, Kiri Te Kanawa, Luciano Pavarotti, Lesley Garrett, Nigel Kennedy (2CD, Compilation) [Decca]
- 1999 - Maori Songs - Kiri Te Kanawa, (Air New Zealand) [EMI Classics 5 56828-2]
- 1999 - Greatest Hits [EMI Classics]
- 2001 - Kiri (also known as Kiri - The Best Of)
- 2003 - The Very Best Of
- 2004 - Kiri - A Portrait
- 2005 - The Best of Kiri Te Kanawa (20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection)
- 2006 - Kiri Sings Karl - Songs of Mystery & Enchantment (with Karl Jenkins) – arranged and conducted by Karl Jenkins
References[link]
- Notes
- ^ Kiri, the most beloved soprano in Britain
- ^ Kiri Te Kanawa - beloved diva
- ^ a b J.B. Steane. "Kiri Te Kanawa", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (accessed 6 January 2009), grovemusic.com (subscription access).
- ^ Matt Thomas, "Dame Kiri Te Kanawa on coaching young singers" on Walesonline.co.uk,8 Dec 2008 Retrieved 7 December 2009
- ^ Fingleton (1982), p. 21
- ^ Rubin, Stephen E. (1974-03-03). "Kiri Did It All With A Bit of Maori Pride; About Kiri Te Kanawa". New York Times: p. AL 15. "We met on a blind date in London and got married about six weeks later."
- ^ Billen, Andrew (2006-05-16). "A most undramatic exit for a prima donna". The Times. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/article718552.ece. Retrieved 5 January 2009.
- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica Online, "Te Kanawa, Dame Kiri"
- ^ Jenkins and d'Antal (1998)
- ^ Gilbert & Shir (2003)
- ^ Scott, Eleanor (1976)
- ^ Lebrech (2000)
- ^ "Famed soprano Dame Kiri Te Kanawa is coming to Manila". BusinessWorld. 2000-09-27. pp. 1. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?RQT=302&cfc=1. Retrieved 2008-07-17.
- ^ "Statement of Mission and Vision". Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation. 2007-03-13. http://www.kiritekanawa.org/.
- ^ "The BBC Radio 2 Kiri Prize". BBC Radio 2. 2010-09-03. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/events/kiri-prize/.
- ^ "Dame Kiri remarks strike sour note". BBC News. 2003-03-01. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2810875.stm.
- ^ "Singer in court for refusing to perform". Yahoo! News. 2007-01-28. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070129/ap_en_mu/australia_singers_spat.
- ^ "Kiri Te Kanawa Wins Lawsuit Filed Following Withdrawal from Concerts with Pop Star". Opera News Online. 2007-03-21. http://www.metoperafamily.org/operanews/news/pressrelease.aspx?id=1382.
- ^ "Kiri Te Kanawa Wins 'Panty-Throwing' Lawsuit". Playbill Arts News: Opera. 2007-03-21. http://www.playbillarts.com/news/article/6194.html.
- Sources
- Encyclopædia Britannica Online, "Dame Kiri Te Kanawa" Accessed 7 July 2008
- Fingleton, David (1982). Kiri Te Kanawa: A Biography. Collins. ISBN 0-00-216365-9.
- Gilbert, Susie; and Jay Shir (2003). A Tale of Four Houses: Opera at Covent Garden, La Scala, Vienna and the Met since 1945. London: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-00-255820-3.
- Jenkins, Garry; and Stephen d'Antal (1998). Kiri: Her Unsung Story. London: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-00-255942-0.
- Lebrecht, Norman (2000). Covent Garden: The Untold Story: Dispatches from the English Culture War, 1945-2000. London: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-85143-1.
- Scott, Eleanor (1976). The First Twenty Years of the Santa Fe Opera. Santa Fe, New Mexico: Sunstone Press.
External links[link]
- Kiri Te Kanawa Discogs discography
- Kiri Te Kanawa operadis opera discography recordings
- Kiri Te Kanawa Michael Storrs Music management
- "Kiri Te Kanawa: IMG Artists". http://www.imgartists.com/?page=artist&id=369.
- "Kiri Te Kanawa: Famous New Zealanders". Christchurch City library. http://library.christchurch.org.nz/Childrens/FamousNewZealanders/Kiri.asp.
- Kiri Te Kanawa at the Internet Movie Database
- Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation NZ based charitable trust
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Tekanawa, Kiri |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | Singer |
| Date of birth | 6 March 1944 |
| Place of birth | |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
http://wn.com/Kiri_Te_Kanawa
Related pages:
http://it.wn.com/Kiri Te Kanawa
http://es.wn.com/Kiri Te Kanawa
http://ru.wn.com/Кири Те Канава
http://nl.wn.com/Kiri Te Kanawa
http://pt.wn.com/Kiri Te Kanawa
http://pl.wn.com/Kiri Te Kanawa
http://fr.wn.com/Kiri Te Kanawa
http://de.wn.com/Kiri Te Kanawa
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiri_Te_Kanawa
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.
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.
- For the New Zealand opera singer, see Kiri Te Kanawa
There are at least four different people called Te Kanawa.
Contents |
Te Kanawa, ancestor of Ngāti Te Kanawa[link]
One is the ancestor of the Ngāti Te Kanawa iwi of the Tainui confederation of iwi. He was born before 1700 and lived in Hangatiki.
Te Kanawa of Ngāti Maniapoto[link]
Another was a chief of the Ngāti Maniapoto, another Tainui iwi. He was alive in the early 19th century. Te Kanawa was a warlord of Maniapoto; he settled disputes with a taiaha within Tainui or outside Tainui. Some of these disputes were boundary disputes, hence the Ngāti Hari connection. The boundary line between Tu Wharetoa and Maniapoto and the marae Hia Kaitupeka by Taumarunui. He is represented by an amo on their carved meeting house.
Te Kanawa of Ngati Katoa[link]
Another was a chief of the Ngāti Katoa. He was killed in the campaign known as Putu-karekare (or Patu-karekare, or Te Karekaernga), which was fought at Kawhia in the time when Ngāti Katoa were the tangata whenua. This was before Te Rauparaha had left Kawhia around 1820.
Sources[link]
Angela Ballara: "Taua".
Pei Te Hurunui: "King Potatau"
Te Kanawa of Ngāti Mahuta and Ngāti Naho[link]
Another was a chief of the Ngāti Mahuta and Ngāti Naho iwi, and was one of the principal chiefs of the Waikato Māori. He was a close confederate of Pōtatau Te Wherowhero, the first Māori King, and lived from c. 1770 to c. 1860. He was also known as Tuhoro Te Kanawa and was signatory to the treaty signing at Kawhia. He was one of the eight chiefs who sat with Pōtatau at Haurua Pā, which stood where the Waitomo golf links are now.
His mother was Te Rahuruake (according to Pei Te Hurunui in his book King Potatau, p. 120) and his sister was Parekohu. He also had a daughter or niece, Te Rangiata.
Tuhoro Te Kanawa is the only descendant that has blood line links to Te Kanawa of Ngāti Te Kanawa. Tuhoro Te Kanawa was one of the paramount chiefs of Ngāti Maniapoto confederation and Ngāti Kinohaku.
Sources[link]
 |
This article related to the Māori people of New Zealand is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
http://wn.com/Te_Kanawa
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Te_Kanawa
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.
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.
More Videos
Wiki Summary
Sir Georg Solti, KBE, /ˈdʒɔrdʒ ˈʃɒlti/ (21 October 1912 – 5 September 1997) was an orchestral and operatic conductor, best known for his appearances with opera companies in Munich, Frankfurt and London, and as a long-serving music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Born in Hungary, he studied in Budapest with Béla Bartók, Leo Weiner and Ernő Dohnányi. In the 1930s, he was a répétiteur at the Hungarian State Opera and worked at the Salzburg Festival for Arturo Toscanini. His career was interrupted by the rise of the Nazis, and because he was a Jew he fled the increasingly restrictive anti-semitic laws in 1938. After conducting a season of Russian ballet in London at the Royal Opera House he found refuge in Switzerland, where he remained during the Second World War. Not permitted to conduct there, he earned a living as a pianist.
After the war Solti was appointed musical director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich from 1946. In 1952 he moved to the Frankfurt Opera, where he remained in charge for nine years. He took German citizenship in 1953. In 1961 he became musical director of the Covent Garden Opera Company in London. During his ten-year tenure, he introduced changes that saw standards raised to the highest international levels. Under his musical directorship the status of the company was recognised with the grant of the title "the Royal Opera". He became a British subject in 1972.
