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Pedro De Freitas Branco
Pedro de Freitas Branco (1896 – 1963) was a Portuguese conductor and composer. Life and career Branco was born in Lisbon, and studied music with Tomás Vaz de Borba and Luís de Freitas Branco (his elder brother). He founded the Portuguese Opera Company in 1926, and conducted the state symphony orchestra from 1934. Branco made his Paris debut in 1932 in a concert of Maurice Ravel's music at the Salle Pleyel conducting ''Daphnis et Chloé'', ''Pavane pour une infante defunte'', ''Rapsodie espagnole'', '' La valse'' and '' Boléro''. At the same concert Ravel conducted the premiere of his G major Piano Concerto. He was not a good conductor, and when the concerto was recorded soon after the premiere, his name appeared as conductor on the label of the disc and in advertisements, but in fact Branco conducted the orchestra under Ravel's supervision at the recording sessions. By the 1940s Branco was regarded as the leading conductor in Lisbon."Music in the Peninsula", ''The Times ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classical music repertoire and span the transition from the Classical period to the Romantic era in classical music. His career has conventionally been divided into early, middle, and late periods. His early period, during which he forged his craft, is typically considered to have lasted until 1802. From 1802 to around 1812, his middle period showed an individual development from the styles of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and is sometimes characterized as heroic. During this time, he began to grow increasingly deaf. In his late period, from 1812 to 1827, he extended his innovations in musical form and expression. Beethoven was born in Bonn. His musical talent was obvious at an early age. He was initially harshly and intensively t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann (; 8 June 181029 July 1856) was a German composer, pianist, and influential music critic. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career as a virtuoso pianist. His teacher, Friedrich Wieck, a German pianist, had assured him that he could become the finest pianist in Europe, but a hand injury ended this dream. Schumann then focused his musical energies on composing. In 1840, Schumann married Friedrich Wieck's daughter Clara Wieck, after a long and acrimonious legal battle with Friedrich, who opposed the marriage. A lifelong partnership in music began, as Clara herself was an established pianist and music prodigy. Clara and Robert also maintained a close relationship with German composer Johannes Brahms. Until 1840, Schumann wrote exclusively for the piano. Later, he composed piano and orchestral works, and many Lieder (songs for voice and piano). He composed four symphoni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Albert Roussel
Albert Charles Paul Marie Roussel (; 5 April 1869 – 23 August 1937) was a French composer. He spent seven years as a midshipman, turned to music as an adult, and became one of the most prominent French composers of the interwar period. His early works were strongly influenced by the impressionism of Debussy and Ravel, while he later turned toward neoclassicism. Biography Born in Tourcoing (Nord), Roussel's earliest interest was not in music but mathematics. He spent time in the French Navy, and in 1889 and 1890, he served on the crew of the frigate ''Iphigénie'' and spent several years in southern Vietnam. These travels affected him artistically, as many of his musical works would reflect his interest in far-off, exotic places. After resigning from the Navy in 1894, he began to study harmony in Roubaix, first with Julien Koszul (grandfather of composer Henri Dutilleux), who encouraged him to pursue his formation in Paris with Eugène Gigout; Roussel then continued ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Valses Nobles Et Sentimentales
The ''Valses nobles et sentimentales'' is a suite of waltzes composed by Maurice Ravel. The piano version was published in 1911, and an orchestral version was published in 1912. The title was chosen in homage to Franz Schubert, who had released collections of waltzes in 1823 entitled ''Valses nobles'' and ''Valses sentimentales''. The piano edition is published with a quotation of Henri de Régnier: "…le plaisir délicieux et toujours nouveau d'une occupation inutile" (the delicious and forever-new pleasure of a useless occupation). The suite contains an eclectic blend of Impressionist and Modernist music, which is especially evident in the orchestrated version. Composition and background Ravel was intrigued by the waltz genre. By 1906, he had started composing what later would become '' La valse'', in which he tried to epitomise everything this popular genre encompassed. In 1911, prior to the 1920 publication of ''La valse'', he published the piano version of his suite o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marguerite Long
Marguerite Marie-Charlotte Long (13 November 1874 – 13 February 1966) was a French pianist, pedagogue, lecturer, and an ambassador of French music. Life Early life: 1874–1900 Marguerite Long was born to Pierre Long and Anne Marie Antoinettte on November 13, 1874, in Nîmes, an old Roman town in the south of France. Long's parents were not musicians but her mother highly valued the importance of music and "little Marguerite was not allowed to play wrong notes." Her sister, Claire Long, eight years older, was actually the person who influenced her in the pursuit of music. In 1883, At age seventeen, Claire was appointed Professor of Piano at the Nîmes conservatory and Marguerite entered her sister's class for academic and musical studies. In 1886, shortly after receiving a Prix d’Honneur at the Nîmes Conservatory, Marguerite gave her first public performance at the age of eleven, performing Mozart's D minor Concerto with orchestra. After her debut, composer Théodore Du ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alborada Del Gracioso
''Alborada del gracioso'' ("The Jester's Aubade", or other translations: see below) is a short orchestral piece by Maurice Ravel first performed in 1919. It is an orchestrated version of one of the five movements of his piano suite ''Miroirs'', written in 1904–05. Originally created for a ballet, the work has entered the concert repertoire, and has been recorded frequently. Title The title, in Spanish, has no exact English translation. It has been various rendered as "Morning Song of the Clown", "The Jester's Aubade",Orenstein, p. 159 and "Morning Song of the Buffoon". ''Alborada'', literally "dawn", has a variety of musical meanings: it can be a lively folk-dance,Bromberger, EricProgramme note, San Diego Symphony Orchestra, 15–17 May 2015, pp. 4–6 a Galician folk tune, a type of rhythmically free instrumental music played on bagpipes and small drum, a song for a wedding day, or, as it is usually construed in the context of Ravel's piece, a musical announcement of dawn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neues Vom Tage
''Neues vom Tage'' (English: ''News of the Day'') is a comic opera (''Lustige Oper'') in three parts by Paul Hindemith, with a German libretto by Marcellus Schiffer. The opera is a satire of modern life, celebrity and marriage, involving parodies of both Puccini's music and Berlin Kabarett. The opera became notorious for a scene with a naked soprano (Laura) singing in the bath about the wonders of modern plumbing, though Hindemith replaced her with the tenor (Hermann) in the revised version. The on-stage nudity particularly aroused the ire of Ernst "Putzi" Hanfstängel, Hitler’s musical advisor, and was later indirectly cited by Joseph Goebbels as evidence that the "degenerate art" of " cultural bolshevist" composers should be excluded from Germany. Performance history ''Neues vom Tage'' was first performed on 8 June 1929, at the Kroll Opera House, Berlin, under the musical direction of Otto Klemperer. Hindemith revised the opera, changing the text and adding a little new mu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith (; 16 November 189528 December 1963) was a German composer, music theorist, teacher, violist and conductor. He founded the Amar Quartet in 1921, touring extensively in Europe. As a composer, he became a major advocate of the '' Neue Sachlichkeit'' (new objectivity) style of music in the 1920s, with compositions such as '' Kammermusik'', including works with viola and viola d'amore as solo instruments in a neo-Bachian spirit. Other notable compositions include his song cycle '' Das Marienleben'' (1923), '' Der Schwanendreher'' for viola and orchestra (1935), the opera '' Mathis der Maler'' (1938), the '' Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber'' (1943), and the oratorio ''When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd'', a requiem based on Walt Whitman's poem (1946). Life and career Hindemith was born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, the eldest child of the painter and decorator Robert Hindemith from Lower Silesia and his wife Marie Hindemith, née War ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
El Sombrero De Tres Picos
''El sombrero de tres picos'' (''The Three-Cornered Hat'' or ''Le tricorne'') is a ballet choreographed by Léonide Massine to music by Manuel de Falla. It was commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev and premiered in 1919. It is not only a ballet with Spanish setting but one that also employs the techniques of Spanish dance (adapted and somewhat simplified) instead of classical ballet. Composition history In 1916-17, Manuel de Falla composed the music for Gregorio Martínez Sierra's two-scene pantomime ''El corregidor y la molinera'' (''The Magistrate and the Miller's Wife''), built on Pedro Antonio de Alarcón's 1874 novel of the same title. The work premiered at Madrid's Teatro Eslava on April 6, 1917. Sergei Diaghilev of the Ballets Russes had been introduced to de Falla by Igor Stravinsky during the company's first visit to Spain in 1916. He requested permission to use de Falla's already-completed ''Noches en los jardines de España'' ('' Nights in the Gardens of Spain'') and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
El Retablo De Maese Pedro
' (''Master Peter's Puppet Show'') is a puppet-opera in one act with a prologue and epilogue, composed by Manuel de Falla to a Spanish libretto based on an episode from ''Don Quixote'' by Miguel de Cervantes. The libretto is an abbreviation of chapter 26 of the second part of ''Don Quixote'', with some lines added from other parts of the work. Falla composed this opera "in devoted homage to the glory of Miguel de Cervantes" and dedicated it to the Princess de Polignac, who commissioned the work. Because of its brief length by operatic standards (about 27 minutes), its very challenging part for a boy opera performer (who has by far the most lines), and its use of puppets, it is not part of the standard operatic repertoire. Otto Mayer-Serra has described this opera as a work where Falla reached beyond "Andalusianism" for his immediate musical influence and colour and began the transition into the "Hispanic neo-classicism" of his later works. Performance history In 1919 Winnaretta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
El Amor Brujo
''El amor brujo'' (, "The sorcerer love") is a ballet by Manuel de Falla to a libretto by María de la O Lejárraga García, although for years it was attributed to her husband Gregorio Martínez Sierra. It exists in three versions as well as a piano suite drawn from four of its movements. Andalusian in character, its music includes the celebrated ''Danza ritual del fuego (Ritual Fire Dance)'', the ''Canción del fuego fatuo (Song of the Will-o'-the-Wisp)'' and the ''Danza del terror''. Its songs use the Andalusian Spanish dialectal modality. The plot: a gypsy in a love unreturned goes to her arts of magic to soften the ingrate's heart, and succeeds, after a night of enchantments, recitations and ritual dances, so that at dawn he awakens to love; bells proclaim her triumph. Versions and performance history Gitanería (1915) ''El amor brujo'' was commissioned in 1914 as a ''gitanería'', or danced gypsy entertainment, dedicated to the flamenco dancer and cantaora Pastora Imperio. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
