![[Arthaus 100160] GLUCK: Alceste](http://web.archive.org./web/20130427054441im_/http://i.ytimg.com/vi/alM1HQOv1fU/default.jpg "[Arthaus 100160] GLUCK: Alceste")
Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck (2 July 1714 in Erasbach near Berching (Upper Palatinate), Germany – 15 November 1787 in Vienna) was an opera composer of the early classical period. After many years at the Habsburg court at Vienna, Gluck brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices that many intellectuals had been campaigning for over the years. With a series of radical new works in the 1760s, among them Orfeo ed Euridice and Alceste, he broke the stranglehold that Metastasian opera seria had enjoyed for much of the century.
The strong influence of French opera in these works encouraged Gluck to move to Paris, which he did in November 1773. Fusing the traditions of Italian opera and the French national genre into a new synthesis, Gluck wrote eight operas for the Parisian stages. One of the last of these, Iphigénie en Tauride, was a great success and is generally acknowledged to be his finest work. Though he was extremely popular and widely credited with bringing about a revolution in French opera, Gluck's mastery of the Parisian operatic scene was never absolute, and after the poor reception of his Echo et Narcisse he left Paris in disgust and returned to Vienna to live out the remainder of his life.
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Gluck was born in Erasbach (now a district of Berching, Bavaria) the first of six surviving children. His father, Alexander Johannes, came from a long line of foresters, and married Gluck's mother, Maria Walburga, in about 1711. During 1717 the family moved to Bohemia, where the father became head forester in the service of Prince Philipp Hyazinth von Lobkowitz in 1727. According to J. C. von Mannlich, who shared rooms with Gluck in Paris, it was as a Bohemian schoolboy that Gluck received his first musical training, both as a singer in the church choir and by learning. Gluck later wrote:
My father was a head forester in [Eisenberg] in Bohemia and he had brought me up to follow in his footsteps. At that time music was all the rage. Unfortunately, inflamed with a passion for this art, I soon made astounding progress and was able to play several instruments. My whole being became obsessed with music and I left all thoughts of a forester's life behind."
A childhood flight from home to Vienna is included in several contemporary accounts of Gluck's life, including Mannlich's, but recent scholarship has cast doubt on Gluck's picturesque tales of earning food and shelter by his singing as he travelled. Most now claim that, if this incident happened at all, it occurred later, and the object of Gluck's journeying was not Vienna but Prague, and connected to his studies at the University of Prague, where according to early biographies he began studying logic and mathematics in 1731. At that time the University boasted a flourishing musical scene that included performances of both Italian opera and oratorio. Gluck eventually left Prague without taking a degree, and vanishes from the historical record until 1737, a possible year (likely to have been 1736) in Vienna apart.
In 1737 Gluck arrived in Milan, where he studied under G. B. Sammartini, who, according to Carpani, taught Gluck "practical knowledge of all the instruments." Apparently this relationship lasted for several years. Sammartini was not, primarily, a composer of opera, his main output being of sacred music and symphonies, but Milan boasted a vibrant opera scene, and Gluck soon formed an association with one of the city's up-and-coming opera houses, the Teatro Regio Ducal, where his first opera, Artaserse, was performed on 26 December 1741. Set to a libretto by Metastasio, the opera opened the Milanese Carnival of 1742. According to one anecdote, the public would not accept Gluck's style until he inserted an aria in the lighter Milanese manner for contrast.
Nevertheless, Gluck composed an opera for each of the next four Carnivals at Milan, with renowned castrato Giovanni Carestini appearing in many of the performances, so the reaction to Artaserse is unlikely to have been completely unfavourable. He also wrote operas for other cities of Northern Italy in between Carnival seasons, including Turin and Venice, where his Ipermestra was given during November 1744 at the Teatro San Giovanni Crisostomo. Nearly all of his operas in this period were, like Artaserse, set to Metastasio's texts, despite the poet's dislike for his style of composition.
In 1745 Gluck accepted an invitation to become house composer at London's King's Theatre, probably travelling to England via Frankfurt and in the company of Georg Christian, Fürst von Lobkowitz. The timing was poor, as the Jacobite Rebellion had caused much panic in London, and for most of the year the King's Theatre was closed. Gluck's two London operas, (La caduta de'giganti and Artamene) eventually performed in 1746, borrowed much from his earlier works, a method that was to re-occur throughout his career. Six trio sonatas were the other immediate fruits of his time in London. A more long-term benefit was exposure to the music of Handel – whom he later credited as a great influence on his style – and the naturalistic acting style of David Garrick. Either Gluck or Lobkowitz bought a copy of Handel's Messiah.[1] Handel's own experience of Gluck pleased that composer less: Charles Burney reports Handel as saying that "he [Gluck] knows no more of contrapunto, as mein cook, Waltz".
The years 1747 and 1748 brought Gluck two highly prestigious engagements. First came a commission to produce an opera for Dresden, performed by Pietro Mingotti's troupe, to celebrate a royal double wedding that would unite the ruling families of Bavaria and Saxony. Le nozze d'Ercole e d'Ebe, a festa teatrale, borrowed heavily from earlier works, and even from Gluck's teacher Sammartini. The success of this work brought Gluck to the attention of the Viennese court, and, ahead of such a figure as Johann Adolph Hasse, he was selected to set Metastasio's Semiramide riconosciuta to celebrate Maria Theresa's birthday. Vittoria Tesi took the title role. On this occasion Gluck's music was completely original, but the displeasure of the court poet, Metastasio, who called the opera "archvandalian music," probably explains why Gluck did not remain long in Vienna despite the work's enormous popular success (it was performed 27 times to great acclaim). For the remainder of 1748 and 1749 Gluck travelled with Mingotti's troupe, contracting a venereal disease from the prima donna and composing the opera La contesa de' numi for the court at Copenhagen.
In 1750 he abandoned Mingotti's group for another company established by a former member of the Mingotti troupe, Giovanni Battista Locatelli. The main effect of this was that Gluck returned to Prague on a more consistent basis. For the Prague Carnival of 1750 Gluck composed a new opera, Ezio (again set to one of Metastasio's works). His Ipermestra was also performed in the same year. The other major event of Gluck's stay in Prague was, on 15 September 1750, his marriage to Maria Anna Bergin, aged 18 years old, the daughter of a rich but long-dead Viennese merchant. The marriage brought Gluck financial security, and he seems to have spent most of 1751 commuting between Prague and Vienna.
The year 1752 brought another major commission to Gluck, when he was asked to set Metastasio's La clemenza di Tito (the specific libretto was the composer's choice) for the nameday celebrations of King Charles VII of Naples (later Charles III of Spain). The opera was performed on 4 November at the Teatro di San Carlo, and the world-famous mezzo-soprano castrato Caffarelli (Gaetano Majorano) took the role of Sextus. For Caffarelli Gluck composed the famous, but notoriously difficult, aria "Se mai senti spirarti sul volto," which provoked admiration and vituperation in equally large measures. Gluck later reworked this aria for his Iphigénie en Tauride. According to one account, the Neapolitan composer Francesco Durante claimed that his fellow composers "should have been proud to have conceived and written [the aria]." Durante simultaneously declined to comment whether or not it was within the boundaries of the accepted compositional rules of the time.
Gluck finally settled in Vienna where he became Kapellmeister. He wrote Le Cinesi for a festival in 1754 and La Danza for the birthday of the future Emperor Leopold II the following year. After his opera Antigono was performed in Rome in February, 1756, Gluck was made a Knight of the Golden Spur by Pope Benedict XIV. From that time on, Gluck used the title "Ritter von Gluck" or "Chevalier de Gluck."
Gluck turned his back on Italian opera seria and began to write opéra comiques. In 1761, Gluck produced the groundbreaking ballet Don Juan in collaboration with the choreographer Gasparo Angiolini. The climax of Gluck's opéra comique writing was La rencontre imprévue of 1764. By that time, Gluck was already engaged in his operatic reforms.
Gluck had long pondered the fundamental problem of form and content in opera. He thought both of the main Italian operatic genres – opera buffa and opera seria – had strayed too far from what opera should really be and seemed unnatural. Opera buffa had long lost its original freshness. Its jokes were threadbare and the repetition of the same characters made them seem no more than stereotypes. In opera seria the singing was devoted to superficial effects and the content was uninteresting and fossilised. As in opera buffa, the singers were effectively absolute masters of the stage and the music, decorating the vocal lines so floridly that audiences could no longer recognise the original melody. Gluck wanted to return opera to its origins, focusing on human drama and passions and making words and music of equal importance.
In Vienna, Gluck met likeminded figures in the operatic world: Count Giacomo Durazzo, the head of the court theatre, who was a passionate admirer of French stage music; the librettist Ranieri de' Calzabigi, who wanted to attack the dominance of Metastasian opera seria; the innovative choreographer Gasparo Angiolini; and the London-trained castrato Gaetano Guadagni.
The first result of the new thinking was Gluck's reformist ballet Don Juan, but a more important work was soon to follow. On 5 October 1762, Orfeo ed Euridice was given its first performance, with music by Gluck to words by Calzabigi. The dances were arranged by Angiolini and the title role was taken by Guadagni. Orfeo, which has never left the standard repertory, showed the beginnings of Gluck's reforms. His idea was to make the drama of the work more important than the star singers who performed it, and to do away with dry recitative (recitativo secco, accompanied only by continuo) that broke up the action. The more flowing and dramatic style which resulted has been seen as a precursor to the music dramas of Richard Wagner.
Gluck and Calzabigi followed Orfeo with Alceste (1767) and Paride ed Elena (1770), pushing their innovations even further. Calzabigi wrote a preface to Alceste, which Gluck signed, setting out the principles of their reforms.
Gluck then began to spread his ideas to France. Under the patronage of his former music pupil, Marie Antoinette, who had married the future French king Louis XVI in 1770, Gluck signed a contract for six stage works with the management of the Paris Opéra. He began with Iphigénie en Aulide (19 April 1774). The premiere sparked a huge controversy, almost a war, such as had not been seen in the city since the Querelle des Bouffons. Gluck's opponents brought the leading Italian composer, Niccolò Piccinni, to Paris to demonstrate the superiority of Neapolitan opera and the "whole town" engaged in an argument between "Gluckists" and "Piccinnists." The composers themselves took no part in the polemics, but when Piccinni was asked to set the libretto to Roland, on which Gluck was also known to be working, Gluck destroyed everything he had written for that opera up to that point.
On 2 August 1774 the French version of Orfeo ed Euridice was performed, with the title role transposed from the castrato to the tenor voice. This time Gluck's work was better received by the Parisian public. In the same year Gluck returned to Vienna, where he was appointed composer to the imperial court. Over the next few years the now internationally famous composer would travel back and forth between Paris and Vienna. On 23 April 1776, the French version of Alceste was given.
Gluck also wrote Armide (1777), Iphigénie en Tauride (1779) and Echo et Narcisse for Paris. During the rehearsals for Echo et Narcisse, Gluck suffered his first stroke. Since the opera itself was a complete failure, Gluck decided to return to Vienna.
His musical heir in Paris was the composer Antonio Salieri, who had been Gluck's protégé since he arrived in Vienna in 1767, and later had made friends with Gluck. Gluck brought Salieri to Paris with him and bequeathed him the libretto for Les Danaïdes by Leblanc du Roullet and Baron Tschudi. The opera was announced as a collaboration between the two composers; however, after the overwhelming success of its premiere on 26 April 1784, Gluck revealed to the prestigious Journal de Paris that the work was wholly Salieri's.
In Vienna Gluck wrote a few more minor works but he generally lived in retirement. In 1781 he brought out a German version of Iphigénie en Tauride and other operas of his enjoyed great popularity in Vienna.
On 15 November 1787, in Vienna, Gluck suffered another stroke and died a few days later. At a formal commemoration on 8 April 1788 his friend and pupil Salieri conducted Gluck's De profundis and a requiem by the Italian composer Niccolò Jommelli was given. Like many other prominent musicians and painters Gluck was buried in the Matzleinsdorfer Friedhof. When this cemetery was turned into a park in 1923, Gluck's remains were transferred to a tomb in the Vienna Zentralfriedhof.
Gluck's musical legacy includes approximately 35 complete full-length operas plus around a dozen shorter operas and operatic introductions, as well as numerous ballets and instrumental works. His reforms influenced Mozart, particularly his opera Idomeneo (1781). Gluck left behind a flourishing school of disciples in Paris, who would dominate the French stage throughout the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period. As well as Salieri, they included Sacchini, Cherubini, Méhul and Spontini. Gluck's greatest French admirer would be Hector Berlioz, whose epic Les Troyens may be seen as the culmination of the Gluckian tradition. Though Gluck wrote no operas in German, his example influenced the German school of opera, particularly Weber and Wagner, whose concept of music drama was not so far removed from Gluck's own.
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Christoph Willibald Gluck |
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Gluck, Christoph Willibald |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | German composer |
| Date of birth | 2 July 1714 |
| Place of birth | Erasbach near Berching, Germany |
| Date of death | 15 November 1787 |
| Place of death | Vienna |
| Herbert Grönemeyer | |
|---|---|
 Herbert Grönemeyer, 2004 |
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Herbert Arthur Wiglev Clamor Grönemeyer |
| Born | (1956-04-12) April 12, 1956 (age 56) |
| Origin | Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany |
| Genres | Rock, pop rock, soft rock, pop |
| Occupations | Singer, actor, composer |
| Instruments | Vocals, piano, guitar |
| Years active | 1978–present |
| Labels | EMI, Grönland |
| Website | www.groenemeyer.de |
Herbert Grönemeyer (born April 12, 1956) is a German musician and actor, popular in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. He starred as war correspondent Lieutenant Werner in Wolfgang Petersen's movie Das Boot, but later concentrated on his musical career. His fifth album 4630 Bochum (1984) and his 20th album Mensch (Human) (2002) are the best-selling German-language records of all time.[citation needed] He is the most successful artist in Germany with album sales of over 13 million albums.[1]
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Grönemeyer often refers to his personal roots as lying in the German town of Bochum where he spent most of his childhood, youth and early adulthood. Still today, the song Bochum, first released in 1984, is one of his signature songs, especially during live performances. Being born in Göttingen and not in Bochum he has his own explanation: "I was only born in Göttingen because my mother often fainted when she was pregnant with me. She did this every time she turned to her left side, and no one believed her. In Göttingen there was a professor, a specialist, and he didn't believe her either, at which point she lay down, fainted, and brought me into the world. This is why I was born in Göttingen."[2]
Grönemeyer’s interest in music was sparked at the age of eight, when he started to take piano classes. These later formed the basis for his work as a pianist and composer at the local theatre Schauspielhaus Bochum. In 1979, at the City of Cologne Theatre (Schauspielhaus Köln), using his musical talent to great effect, he gave an excellent performance as Lorenzo in the The Merchant of Venice. Although never having attended an acting school he soon appeared in several TV productions. During one of the shootings he met his later wife, the actress Anna Henkel. Additionally, Grönemeyer published an album he had recorded with the jazz formation "Ocean Orchestra" in 1978, a year in which he also composed the music for the film Uns reicht das nicht by Jürgen Flimm, together with Jens-Peter Ostendorf. His first solo album Grönemeyer, which was published in 1979, was awarded the Golden Lemon for the ugliest album cover of the year. His second album Zwo was released in 1981. Neither managed to chart. In the same year he starred in Wolfgang Petersen’s successful movie Das Boot as Lieutenant Werner. For the role of composer Robert Schumann in the German-German coproduction Frühlingssinfonie (co-starring Nastassja Kinski and Rolf Hoppe), for which he also composed the film score, Grönemeyer spent six months in the GDR. During the early 1980s Grönemeyer put his main focus on his music; the next two albums Total egal (1982) and Gemischte Gefühle (1983) flopped and most concerts of the planned tour had to be cancelled.
Grönemeyer first met success as a musician in 1984 with the release of Bochum which became the best-sold album in Germany that year, particularly supported by the singles "Männer" ( English lyrics ) and "Flugzeuge im Bauch". A year later Grönemeyer appeared in the TV-movie Väter und Söhne, co-starring Julie Christie, Burt Lancaster and Bruno Ganz. In his next albums Sprünge (1986) and Ö (1988) he increasingly expressed his political opinion, criticising the government under German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. In 1986 Grönemeyer performed at the Anti-WAAhnsinns Festival against nuclear power and he composed the film score for the TV film Sommer in Lesmona, for which he received the Adolf Grimme Award in gold. The release of his first English album What’s all this was followed by a tour through Canada, where it had success in the charts. After the Berlin Wall had fallen Grönemeyer released the album Luxus in which he addressed the feelings in East and West Germany. Having two children together, Felix and Marie, he married his companion Anna Henkel in 1993. In the same year Chaos was released and became a Top 1 hit record in Germany. More than 600,000 people saw the following tour. In 1994, Grönemeyer was the first non-English-speaking artist who was invited by MTV to do an unplugged concert. Four years later Grönemeyer moved to London and released Bleibt alles anders (Everything Remains Different). He also founded his own record label, Grönland Records. In the same year his brother Wilhelm and his wife Anna died of cancer (both dying within 3 days); it took Grönemeyer a year to resume his work. In 2000 he recorded a concert with a philharmonic orchestra and released the DVD Stand der Dinge (State of Affairs). In August 2002 he released his so far most successful album Mensch (Human) which was awarded Platinum even before release due to advance orders. The single "Mensch" became Grönemeyer’s first number one hit in Germany and 1.5 million people saw the 2-year tour. In 2004 and 2006 Grönemeyer recorded songs for the Olympic Games in Athens ("Everlasting") and the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany ("Celebrate the Day"), respectively.
In March 2007 he released his 12th studio album 12 which was followed by a stadium tour across German-speaking countries. Smaller concerts took place in September in Amsterdam, Munich, Dresden and London's Royal Albert Hall.
The three re-recorded albums What's all this, Luxus and Chaos for the English-speaking market were met with limited sales success. Grönemeyer was scheduled to make his American debut on September 17, 2007 at the Beacon Theater in New York City, but the performance has since been postponed.
In January 2010, Grönemeyer performed the anthem "Komm zur Ruhr" as part of the opening ceremony of the "RUHR.2010" - The city of Essen being the "European Capital of Culture 2010" on behalf of the entire Ruhr area.
The magazine TIME awarded him the title of "European Hero" in 2005 for his humanitarian work.
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Herbert Grönemeyer |
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Grönemeyer, Herbert |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | German musician, actor |
| Date of birth | April 12, 1956 |
| Place of birth | Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
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.[1]
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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.
By the time of Furtwängler's conducting debut at the age of twenty, he had written several pieces of music. However, they were not well received, and that - combined with the financial insecurity of a career as a composer - led him to concentrate on conducting. At his first concert, he led the Kaim Orchestra (now the Munich Philharmonic) in Anton Bruckner's Ninth Symphony. He subsequently held posts at Munich, Strasbourg, Lübeck, Mannheim, Frankfurt, and Vienna, before securing a job at the Berlin Staatskapelle in 1920, and in 1922 at the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra where he succeeded Arthur Nikisch, and concurrently at the prestigious Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
Furtwängler also made a number of appearances as a conductor abroad. He made his London debut in 1924, and continued to appear there as late as 1938 to conduct a cycle of Richard Wagner's Ring.[2] In 1925 he appeared as guest conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and made return visits in the following two years.[2]
Towards the end of the Second World War, under extreme pressure from the Nazi Party, Furtwängler fled to Switzerland. It was during this troubled period that he composed what is largely considered his most significant work, the Symphony No. 2 in E minor. Work on the symphony was begun in 1944, and carried on into 1945. It was given its premiere in 1948 by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Furtwängler's direction. Furtwängler and the Philharmonic recorded the symphony for Deutsche Grammophon; the music was much in the tradition of Bruckner and Gustav Mahler, composed on a grand scale for very large orchestra with romantic, dramatic themes. Another important work is the Symphonic Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, completed and premiered in 1937 and revised in 1954. Many themes from this work were also incorporated into Furtwängler's unfinished Symphony No. 3 in C sharp minor.
He resumed performing and recording following the war, and remained a popular conductor in Europe, although always under something of a shadow. He died in 1954 in Ebersteinburg, close to Baden-Baden. He is buried in the Heidelberg Bergfriedhof. The tenth anniversary of his death was marked by a concert in the Royal Albert Hall, London, conducted by his biographer[3] Hans-Hubert Schönzeler.[4]
Furtwängler is most famous for his performances of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, and Wagner. However, he was also a champion of modern music, notably the works of Paul Hindemith and Arnold Schoenberg,[5] and conducted the world premiere of Sergei Prokofiev's Fifth Piano Concerto (with the composer at the piano) on October 31, 1932[6] as well as performances of Béla Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra.
Furtwängler's relationship with — and attitude towards — Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party was a matter of much controversy. Because of his international renown, he was appointed as the first vice-president of the Reichsmusikkammer. In 1934 he was banned from conducting the premiere of Hindemith's opera Mathis der Maler, and subsequently resigned from the RMK and the Berlin Opera. Some sources maintain that Furtwängler resigned from his posts at the Berlin Opera and Reichsmusikkammer in protest;[2] Frederic Spotts states that he was forced to either resign all his positions or be dismissed.[7] In 1936 it seemed possible that he might follow Erich Kleiber's footsteps into exile when he was offered the principal conductor's post at the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, where he would have succeeded Arturo Toscanini. Toscanini's biographer Harvey Sachs wrote that Toscanini recommended Furtwängler for the position, one of the few times Toscanini expressed admiration for a fellow conductor.[8] There is every possibility that Furtwängler would have accepted the post,[citation needed] but a report from the Berlin branch of the Associated Press, possibly ordered by Hermann Göring, said that he was willing to take up his post at the Berlin Opera once more. This caused the mood in New York to turn against him; from their point of view, it seemed that Furtwängler was now a full supporter of the Nazi Party.[9]
However, Furtwängler never joined the Nazi Party nor did he really approve of them,[10] much like the composer Richard Strauss, who made no secret of his dislike of the Nazis. Furtwängler always refused to give the Nazi salute.[2]
Furtwängler was treated relatively well by the Nazis; he had a high profile, and was an important cultural figure, as evidenced by his inclusion in the Gottbegnadeten list ("God-gifted List") of September 1944. Furtwängler in turn conducted several concerts for the direct benefit of the Nazis: in February 1938 he conducted the Berlin Philharmonic at a concert held for the Hitler Youth, and that same year conducted a performance of Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in celebration of Hitler's birthday.[11] Further, contrary to the claims of some writers that he refused to conduct in occupied countries during the war,[12] he conducted in Prague in May and November 1940, and again in March 1944 in a concert marking the fifth anniversary of the German occupation.[11] His concerts were often broadcast to German troops to raise morale, though he was limited in what he was allowed to perform by the authorities. He later said he tried to protect German culture from the Nazis;[13] it is now known that he used his influence to help Jewish musicians and non musicians escape the Third Reich. He managed, for example, to have Max Zweig, a nephew of conductor Fritz Zweig, released from Dachau concentration camp. Others, from an extensive list of Jews he helped, included Carl Flesch, Josef Krips and the composer Arnold Schönberg.[14] In spite of this, some sources claim his motives were not as pure as those of e.g. Oskar Schindler.[13]
Albert Speer claimed that in December 1944 Furtwängler asked whether Germany had any chance of winning the war. Speer replied in the negative, and advised the conductor to flee to Switzerland from possible Nazi retribution.[15] Furtwängler did in fact escape to Switzerland shortly after a concert in Vienna with the Vienna Philharmonic on January 28, 1945. At that concert he conducted an account of Brahms's Second Symphony that was caught on tape and is considered one of his greatest recordings.[16]
At his denazification trial, Furtwängler was charged with supporting Nazism by remaining in Germany, performing at Nazi party functions and with making an anti-semitic remark against the part-Jewish conductor Victor de Sabata.[17] However, he was eventually cleared on all these counts.[18]
As part of his closing remarks at his denazification trial, Furtwängler said,
(quoted from John Ardoin's The Furtwängler Record)
The violinist Yehudi Menuhin was among the few musicians in the Jewish community and the United States who had a positive view of Furtwängler. In 1933 he had refused to play with him, but in the late 1940s after a personal investigation of Furtwängler, he became supportive of him, and performed and recorded alongside him.[19]
In 1949 Furtwängler accepted the position of principal conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. However the orchestra was forced to rescind the offer under the threat of a boycott from several prominent musicians including Vladimir Horowitz, Arthur Rubinstein, Isaac Stern and Alexander Brailowsky.[20] According to a New York Times report, Horowitz said that he "was prepared to forgive the small fry who had no alternative but to remain and work in Germany." But Furtwängler "was out of the country on several occasions and could have elected to keep out".[20] Rubinstein likewise wrote in a telegram, "Had Furtwängler been firm in his democratic convictions he would have left Germany".[20]
British playwright Ronald Harwood's play Taking Sides (1995), set in 1946 in the American zone of occupied Berlin, is about U.S. accusations against Furtwängler of having served the Nazi regime. In 2001 the play was made into a motion picture directed by István Szabó and starring Harvey Keitel and featuring Stellan Skarsgård in the role of Furtwängler.[21]
Furtwängler had a unique conducting technique. He saw symphonic music as creations of nature that could only be realised subjectively into sound. This is why composers such as Beethoven, Brahms and Bruckner were so central to Furtwängler's repertoire, because he identified them as great forces of nature. He disliked Toscanini's approach to the German repertoire. He walked out of a Toscanini concert once, calling him "a mere time-beater!".
Neville Cardus wrote in the Manchester Guardian in 1954 of Furtwängler's conducting style:
"He did not regard the printed notes of the score as a final statement, but rather as so many symbols of an imaginative conception, ever changing and always to be felt and realised subjectively...Not since Nikisch, of whom he was a disciple, has a greater personal interpreter of orchestral and opera music than Furtwängler been heard."[22]
Many commentators and critics regard him as the greatest conductor in history.[23] However, on the website Classics Today, critic David Hurwitz, a spokesman for modern literalism and precision, sharply criticizes what he terms "the Furtwangler wackos" who "will forgive him virtually any lapse, no matter how severe", and characterizes the conductor himself as "occasionally incandescent but criminally sloppy".[24]
Conductor and pianist Christoph Eschenbach has said of Furtwängler that he was a "formidable magician, a man capable of setting an entire ensemble of musicians on fire, sending them into a state of ecstasy".[25]
Furtwängler was famous for his exceptional inarticulacy. His pupil Sergiu Celibidache remembered that the best he could say was, "Well, just listen" (to the music). Carl Brinitzer from the German BBC service tried to interview him, and thought he had an imbecile before him. A live recording of a rehearsal with a Stockholm orchestra documents hardly anything intelligible, only hums and mumbling. On the other hand, a collection of his essays, On Music, reveals deep thought. Still, Furtwängler remained highly respected amongst musicians. Even Arturo Toscanini, usually regarded as Furtwängler's complete antithesis (and sharply critical of Furtwängler on political grounds), once said – when asked to name the world's greatest conductor apart from himself – "Furtwängler!"
One of Furtwängler's protegés was pianist Karlrobert Kreiten. He was also an important influence on the pianist/conductor Daniel Barenboim, of whom Furtwängler's widow, Elisabeth Furtwängler, said, "Er furtwänglert" ("He furtwänglers"). Barenboim has conducted a recording of Furtwängler's 2nd Symphony, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Other conductors known to speak of Furtwängler in reverent tones include Valery Gergiev, Claudio Abbado, Sergiu Celibidache, Christoph Eschenbach, Alexander Frey, Eugen Jochum, Zubin Mehta, Kurt Masur and Christian Thielemann. George Szell, whose precise and martinet-like musicianship was in many ways antithetical to Furtwängler's, always kept a picture of his older colleague in his dressing room. Herbert von Karajan, who in his early years was Furtwängler's most detested rival, maintained throughout his life that Furtwängler was one of the great influences on his music making, even though his cool, objective modern style had little in common with Furtwängler's white-hot Romanticism. The conductor who probably most clearly represented a continuity with Furtwängler's incandescent style was Jascha Horenstein, who had worked as an assistant to Furtwängler in Berlin during the 1920s.
Furtwängler's performances of Beethoven, Wagner, Bruckner, and Brahms remain important reference points today, as do his interpretations of other works such as Haydn's 88th Symphony, Schubert's Ninth Symphony, and Schumann's Fourth Symphony. His performances are grounded in the spontaneous flexibility that Wagner referred to as the "elastic phrase."
There are a huge number of Furtwängler recordings currently available, mostly live. Many of these were made during World War II using experimental tape technology. After the war they were confiscated by the Soviet Union for decades, and have only recently become widely available, often on multiple legitimate and illegitimate labels. In spite of their limitations, the recordings from this era are widely admired by Furtwängler devotees.
This is only a small selection of some of Furtwängler's most famed recordings. For more information, see his discography and list of currently available recordings. The French Wilhelm Furtwängler Society also has a list of recommended recordings.
Early works
Mature works
(all early works)
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Furtwängler's handling of this passage from the first movement of Brahms's Second Symphony has been widely praised for its handling of tempo and mood
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| Name | Furtwangler, Wilhelm |
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| Date of birth | 1886 |
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| Date of death | 1954 |
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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. (May 2007) |
| Born | March 23, 1900 Frankfurt am Main, Hesse-Nassau, Prussia, Germany |
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| Died | March 18, 1980(1980-03-18) (aged 79) Muralto, Locarno, Ticino, Switzerland |
| Era | 20th century |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Frankfurt School, critical theory, humanistic psychoanalysis, Humanistic Judaism |
| Main interests | Humanism, Social theory, Marxism |
| Notable ideas | Being and Having Modes of Existence, Security versus Freedom, Social character, Character orientation |
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Influenced by
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| Part of a series on the |
| Frankfurt School |
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| Major works |
| Reason and Revolution The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Eclipse of Reason The Fear of Freedom Dialectic of Enlightenment Minima Moralia Eros and Civilization One-Dimensional Man Negative Dialectics The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere |
| Notable theorists |
| Max Horkheimer · Theodor Adorno Herbert Marcuse · Walter Benjamin Erich Fromm · Friedrich Pollock Leo Löwenthal · Jürgen Habermas |
| Important concepts |
| Critical Theory · Dialectic · Praxis Psychoanalysis · Antipositivism Popular culture · Culture industry Advanced capitalism · Privatism Non-Identity · Communicative Rationality Legitimation Crisis |
Erich Seligmann[1] Fromm (March 23, 1900 – March 18, 1980) was a German social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was associated with what became known as the Frankfurt School of critical theory.
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Erich Fromm was born on March 23, 1900, at Frankfurt am Main, the only child of Orthodox Jewish parents. He started his academic studies in 1918 at the University of Frankfurt am Main with two semesters of jurisprudence. During the summer semester of 1919, Fromm studied at the University of Heidelberg, where he switched from studying jurisprudence to sociology under Alfred Weber (brother of the better known sociologist Max Weber), the psychiatrist-philosopher Karl Jaspers, and Heinrich Rickert. Fromm received his PhD in sociology from Heidelberg in 1922. During the mid 1920s, he was trained to become a psychoanalyst through Frieda Reichmann's psychoanalytic sanatorium in Heidelberg. He began his own clinical practice in 1927. In 1930, he joined the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research and completed his psychoanalytical training.
After the Nazi takeover of power in Germany, Fromm moved to Geneva and then, in 1934, to Columbia University in New York. Karen Horney's long-term relationship with Fromm is the subject of her book Self Analysis. They each had a marked influence on the other's thought, with Horney illuminating some aspects of psychoanalysis for Fromm and the latter elucidating sociology for Horney. Their relationship ended in the late 1930s.[2] After leaving Columbia, Fromm helped form the New York branch of the Washington School of Psychiatry in 1943, and in 1946 co-founded the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology. He was on the faculty of Bennington College from 1941 to 1949.
When Fromm moved to Mexico City in 1949, he became a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and established a psychoanalytic section at the medical school there. Meanwhile, he taught as a professor of psychology at Michigan State University from 1957 to 1961 and as an adjunct professor of psychology at the graduate division of Arts and Sciences at New York University after 1962. He taught at UNAM until his retirement, in 1965, and at the Mexican Society of Psychoanalysis (SMP) until 1974. In 1974 he moved from Mexico City to Muralto, Switzerland, and died at his home in 1980, five days before his eightieth birthday. All the while, Fromm maintained his own clinical practice and published a series of books.
Beginning with his first seminal work of 1941, Escape from Freedom (known in Britain as Fear of Freedom), Fromm's writings were notable as much for their social and political commentary as for their philosophical and psychological underpinnings. Indeed, Escape from Freedom is viewed as one of the founding works of political psychology. His second important work, Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics, first published in 1947, continued and enriched the ideas of Escape from Freedom. Taken together, these books outlined Fromm's theory of human character, which was a natural outgrowth of Fromm's theory of human nature. Fromm's most popular book was The Art of Loving, an international bestseller first published in 1956, which recapitulated and complemented the theoretical principles of human nature found in Escape from Freedom and Man for Himself—principles which were revisited in many of Fromm's other major works.
Central to Fromm's world view was his interpretation of the Talmud, which he began studying as a young man under Rabbi J. Horowitz and later studied under Rabbi Salman Baruch Rabinkow while working towards his doctorate in sociology at the University of Heidelberg and under Nehemia Nobel and Ludwig Krause while studying in Frankfurt. Fromm's grandfather and two great grandfathers on his father's side were rabbis, and a great uncle on his mother's side was a noted Talmudic scholar. However, Fromm turned away from orthodox Judaism in 1926, towards secular interpretations of scriptural ideals.
The cornerstone of Fromm's humanistic philosophy is his interpretation of the biblical story of Adam and Eve's exile from the Garden of Eden. Drawing on his knowledge of the Talmud, Fromm pointed out that being able to distinguish between good and evil is generally considered to be a virtue, and that biblical scholars generally consider Adam and Eve to have sinned by disobeying God and eating from the Tree of Knowledge. However, departing from traditional religious orthodoxy, Fromm extolled the virtues of humans taking independent action and using reason to establish moral values rather than adhering to authoritarian moral values.
Beyond a simple condemnation of authoritarian value systems, Fromm used the story of Adam and Eve as an allegorical explanation for human biological evolution and existential angst, asserting that when Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge, they became aware of themselves as being separate from nature while still being part of it. This is why they felt "naked" and "ashamed": they had evolved into human beings, conscious of themselves, their own mortality, and their powerlessness before the forces of nature and society, and no longer united with the universe as they were in their instinctive, pre-human existence as animals. According to Fromm, the awareness of a disunited human existence is a source of guilt and shame, and the solution to this existential dichotomy is found in the development of one's uniquely human powers of love and reason. However, Fromm distinguished his concept of love from unreflective popular notions as well as Freudian paradoxical love (see criticism by Marcuse below).
Fromm considered love to be an interpersonal creative capacity rather than an emotion, and he distinguished this creative capacity from what he considered to be various forms of narcissistic neuroses and sado-masochistic tendencies that are commonly held out as proof of "true love." Indeed, Fromm viewed the experience of "falling in love" as evidence of one's failure to understand the true nature of love, which he believed always had the common elements of care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge. Drawing from his knowledge of the Torah, Fromm pointed to the story of Jonah, who did not wish to save the residents of Nineveh from the consequences of their sin, as demonstrative of his belief that the qualities of care and responsibility are generally absent from most human relationships. Fromm also asserted that few people in modern society had respect for the autonomy of their fellow human beings, much less the objective knowledge of what other people truly wanted and needed.
Fromm believed that freedom was an aspect of human nature that we either embrace or escape. He observed that embracing our freedom of will was healthy, whereas escaping freedom through the use of escape mechanisms was the root of psychological conflicts. Fromm outlined three of the most common escape mechanisms: automaton conformity, authoritarianism, and destructiveness. Automaton conformity is changing one's ideal self to conform to a perception of society's preferred type of personality, losing one's true self in the process. Automaton conformity displaces the burden of choice from self to society. Authoritarianism is giving control of oneself to another. By submitting one's freedom to someone else, this act removes the freedom of choice almost entirely. Lastly, destructiveness is any process which attempts to eliminate others or the world as a whole, all to escape freedom. Fromm said that "the destruction of the world is the last, almost desperate attempt to save myself from being crushed by it".[3]
The word biophilia was frequently used by Fromm as a description of a productive psychological orientation and "state of being". For example, in an addendum to his book The Heart of Man: Its Genius For Good and Evil, Fromm wrote as part of his Humanist Credo:
"I believe that the man choosing progress can find a new unity through the development of all his human forces, which are produced in three orientations. These can be presented separately or together: biophilia, love for humanity and nature, and independence and freedom."[4]
Erich Fromm postulated EIGHT basic needs:
Fromm's thesis of the "escape from freedom" is epitomized in the following passage. The "individualized man" referenced by Fromm is man bereft of the "primary ties" of belonging (i.e. nature, family, etc.), also expressed as "freedom from":
"There is only one possible, productive solution for the relationship of individualized man with the world: his active solidarity with all men and his spontaneous activity, love and work, which unite him again with the world, not by primary ties but as a free and independent individual.... However, if the economic, social and political conditions... do not offer a basis for the realization of individuality in the sense just mentioned, while at the same time people have lost those ties which gave them security, this lag makes freedom an unbearable burden. It then becomes identical with doubt, with a kind of life which lacks meaning and direction. Powerful tendencies arise to escape from this kind of freedom into submission or some kind of relationship to man and the world which promises relief from uncertainty, even if it deprives the individual of his freedom." (Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom [N.Y.: Rinehart, 1941], pp. 36–7. The point is repeated on pp. 31, 256–7.)
Fromm also spoke of "orientation of character" in his book Man For Himself, which describes the ways an individual relates to the world and constitutes his general character, and develops from two specific kinds of relatedness to the world: acquiring and assimilating things ("assimilation"), and reacting to people ("socialization"). Fromm considers these character systems the human substitute for instincts in animals. These orientations describe how a man has developed in regard to how he responds to conflicts in his or her life; he also said that people were never pure in any such orientation. These two factors form five types of malignant character, which he calls Receptive, Exploitative, Hoarding, Necrophilous and Marketing. He also described a positive character, which he called Productive.
Fromm's four non-productive orientations were subject to validation through a psychometric test, The Person Relatedness Test by Elias H. Porter, PhD in collaboration with Carl Rogers, PhD at the University of Chicago's Counseling Center between 1953 and 1955. Fromm's four non-productive orientations also served as basis for the LIFO test, first published in 1967 by Stuart Atkins, Alan Katcher, PhD, and Elias Porter, PhD and the Strength Deployment Inventory, first published in 1971 by Chris H. Porter, PhD,[7][8]
Fromm examined the life and work of Sigmund Freud at length. He identified a discrepancy between early and later Freudian theory: namely that prior to World War I, Freud described human drives as a tension between desire and repression, but after the war's conclusion, he framed human drives as a struggle between biologically-universal Life and Death (Eros and Thanatos) instincts. Fromm charged Freud and his followers with never acknowledging the contradictions between the two theories.
He also criticized Freud's dualistic thinking. According to Fromm, Freudian descriptions of human consciousness as struggles between two poles was narrow and limiting. Fromm also condemned him as a misogynist unable to think outside the patriarchal milieu of early 20th century Vienna. However, Fromm expressed a great respect for Freud and his accomplishments, in spite of these criticisms. Fromm contended that Freud was one of the three most influential people of modern history, alongside Albert Einstein and Karl Marx.
Fromm's best known work, Escape from Freedom, focuses on the human urge to seek a source of authority and control upon reaching a freedom that was thought to be an individual’s true desire. Fromm’s critique of the modern political order and capitalist system led him to seek insights from medieval feudalism. In Escape from Freedom, he found favor with the lack of individual freedom, rigid structure, and obligations required on the members of medieval society:
What characterizes medieval in contrast to modern society is its lack of individual freedom…But altogether a person was not free in the modern sense, neither was he alone and isolated. In having a distinct, unchangeable, and unquestionable place in the social world from the moment of birth, man was rooted in a structuralized whole, and thus life had a meaning which left no place, and no need for doubt…There was comparatively little competition. One was born into a certain economic position which guaranteed a livelihood determined by tradition, just as it carried economic obligations to those higher in the social hierarchy.[9]
The culmination of Fromm's social and political philosophy was his book The Sane Society, published in 1955, which argued in favor of a humanistic and democratic socialism. Building primarily upon the early works of Karl Marx, Fromm sought to re-emphasise the ideal of freedom, missing from most Soviet Marxism, and more frequently found in the writings of libertarian socialists and liberal theoreticians. Fromm's brand of socialism rejected both Western capitalism and Soviet communism, which he saw as dehumanizing and that resulted in a virtually universal modern phenomenon of alienation. He became one of the founders of socialist humanism, promoting the early writings of Marx and his humanist messages to the US and Western European public.
In the early 1960s, Fromm published two books dealing with Marxist thoughts (Marx's Concept of Man and Beyond the Chains of Illusion: my Encounter with Marx and Freud). In 1965, working to stimulate the Western and Eastern cooperation between Marxist humanists, Fromm published a series of articles entitled Socialist Humanism: An International Symposium. In 1966, the American Humanist Association named him Humanist of the Year.
For a period, Fromm was also active in US politics. He joined the Socialist Party of America in the mid-1950s, and did his best to help them provide an alternative viewpoint to the prevailing McCarthyism of the time. This alternative viewpoint was best expressed in his 1961 paper May Man Prevail? An Inquiry into the Facts and Fictions of Foreign Policy. However, as a co-founder of SANE, Fromm's strongest political activism was in the international peace movement, fighting against the nuclear arms race and US involvement in the Vietnam War. After supporting Senator Eugene McCarthy's losing bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, Fromm more or less retreated from the American political scene, although he did write a paper in 1974 entitled Remarks on the Policy of Détente for a hearing held by the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
Noam Chomsky "liked Fromm's attitudes but thought his work was pretty superficial."[10] In Eros and Civilization Herbert Marcuse condemns Fromm, that in the beginning he was a radical theorist who later turned to conformity. Marcuse also argued that Fromm, as well as his close colleagues Sullivan and Karen Horney, removed Freud's libido theory and other radical concepts, which thus reduced psychoanalysis to a set of idealist ethics, which only embrace the status quo.[11] Fromm's response, in both The Sane Society[12] and in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness,[13] argues that Freud indeed deserves substantial credit for recognizing the central importance of the unconscious, but also that he tended to reify his own concepts that depicted the self as the passive outcome of instinct and social control, with minimal volition or variability. Fromm argues that later scholars such as Marcuse accepted these concepts as dogma, whereas social-psychology requires a more dynamic theoretical and empirical approach.
"For a second name he was given that of his grandfather on his father's side–Seligmann Pinchas Fromm, although the registry office in Frankfurt does not record him as Erich Pinchas Fromm, but as Erich Seligmann Fromm. Also his parents addressed his mail to 'Erich S. Fromm.'"
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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Erich Fromm |
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| Name | Fromm, Erich Pinchas |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | |
| Date of birth | March 23, 1900 |
| Place of birth | Frankfurt am Main, Germany |
| Date of death | March 18, 1980 |
| Place of death | Switzerland |
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This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page.
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| Nelson Freire | |
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| Birth name | Nelson Freire |
| Born | (1944-10-18) 18 October 1944 (age 67) |
| Origin | Brazil |
| Genres | Classical |
| Occupations | Classical pianist |
| Instruments | Piano |
| Labels | Decca Classics |
| Website | Official Website |
Nelson Freire (born October 18, 1944) is a Brazilian classical pianist.
Freire began playing the piano when he was three years old.[1] He replayed from memory pieces his older sister had just performed. His teachers in Brazil were Nise Obino and Lucia Branco, former students of a pupil of Liszt. For his first public recital, at the age of four,[1] Freire chose Mozart's Sonata in A major, K. 331.
In 1957, Freire's performed Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5, at the age of 12. He was awarded 7th place at the Rio de Janeiro International Piano Competition. The jury in this competition included Marguerite Long, Guiomar Novaes and Lili Kraus. After this he left for Vienna to study with Bruno Seidlhofer (who was also the teacher of Friedrich Gulda). By 1964, Freire had won his first prize at the Vianna da Motta International Music Competition in Lisbon, Portugal (ex-aequo with Vladimir Krainev) and he also received the Dinu Lipatti Medal and the Harriet Cohen Medal in London, England.[2]
Freire began his international career in 1959 with recitals and concerts in the major cities of Europe, the United States, Central and South America, Japan and Israel.[2]
He has worked and toured with many of today's leading conductors, including Pierre Boulez, Eugen Jochum, Lorin Maazel, Charles Dutoit, Kurt Masur, André Previn, David Zinman, Václav Neumann, Valery Gergiev, Rudolf Kempe, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Hans Graf, Hugh Wolff, Roberto Carnevale, John Nelson, Seiji Ozawa and Riccardo Chailly.[citation needed]
Freire has made guest appearances with many leading orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Orquestra Sinfônica Brasileira, the Munich Philharmonic, the Bayerische Rundfunk Orchester, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Tonhalle Orchester Zurich, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic, the São Paulo State Symphony, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris, the Orchestre National de France, the Philharmonique de Radio France, the Orchestre de Monte Carlo and the leading orchestras of Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Montreal, New York[3] and Philadelphia.[citation needed]
In Warsaw in 1999, he scored a particular triumph with his interpretation of Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2, marking the 150th anniversary of the composer's death. In December 2001, he chaired the jury for the Marguerite Long Competition in Paris.
He has recently given performances at New York's Carnegie Hall, with the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra in St. Petersburg, at the Prague Spring, with the Orchestre National de France and leading orchestras in Baltimore, Boston, Montreal, New York and Utah. He has appeared with the English Chamber Orchestra (in France and Portugal) and the Orchestre de la Radio Suisse Italienne, and given recitals in Brussels, Paris, Rome, Munich, Lisbon, Luxembourg and Zurich. In 2002/2003 he made two concert tours under the direction of Riccardo Chailly, with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam and the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi. He also appeared with the Tonhalle Orchester Zurich and the NHK Symphony Orchestra of Tokyo, and regularly fulfils engagements in his native Brazil.
Nelson Freire has recorded for Sony/CBS, Teldec, Philips, and Deutsche Grammophon. He has recorded Liszt's piano concertos with the Dresden Philharmonic under Michel Plasson for Berlin Classics. Another performance, which was put onto a DVD, was a recording of four-hand and two-piano music with Martha Argerich playing, among others, the two-piano version of Ravel's La Valse.
His recording of the 24 Chopin preludes received an Edison Award.
Freire has recently signed an exclusive contract with Decca, the first result of which are recordings devoted to the works of Chopin, which have been greeted with critical acclaim, receiving the Diapason d’Or, a "Choc" award from Monde de la Musique, as well as being rated a "10" by the Répertoire magazine and "recommended" by Classica. The recordings comprise, in two CDs, the 24 piano études and the 2nd and 3rd piano sonatas, as well as the Barcarolle op. 60. Subsequent Decca recordings include a 2-CD set of the Brahms piano concertos with the Gewandhaus Orchestra under Riccardo Chailly, which won the 2007 Classic FM and Gramophone awards in the Record of the Year and Concerto categories, and CDs devoted to Beethoven sonatas and Debussy, the latter including book one of the preludes.
He marked the 2011 bicentenary of the birth of Franz Liszt with a Decca CD entitled Harmonies du Soir.[4] That same year, he made a principled withdrawal from performing with the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra after it fired half its musicians.[5]
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| Name | Freire, Nelson |
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| Date of birth | October 18, 1944 |
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