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The Seasons (Tchaikovsky)
''The Seasons'', Op. 37a (also seen as Op. 37b; russian: Времена года; published with the French title ''Les Saisons''), is a set of twelve short character pieces for solo piano by the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Each piece is the characteristic of a different month of the year in Russia. The work is also sometimes heard in orchestral and other arrangements by other hands. Individual excerpts have always been popular – ''Troika'' (November) was a favourite encore of Sergei Rachmaninoff, and ''Barcarolle'' (June) was enormously popular and appeared in numerous arrangements (including for orchestra, violin, cello, clarinet, harmonium, guitar and mandolin). Background ''The Seasons'' was commenced shortly after the premiere of Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto, and continued while he was completing his first ballet, '' Swan Lake''. In 1875, Nikolay Matveyevich Bernard, the editor of the St. Petersburg music magazine ''Nouvellist'', commissioned Tch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky , group=n ( ; 7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) was a Russian composer of the Romantic period. He was the first Russian composer whose music would make a lasting impression internationally. He wrote some of the most popular concert and theatrical music in the current classical repertoire, including the ballets '' Swan Lake'' and '' The Nutcracker'', the ''1812 Overture'', his First Piano Concerto, Violin Concerto, the '' Romeo and Juliet'' Overture-Fantasy, several symphonies, and the opera '' Eugene Onegin''. Although musically precocious, Tchaikovsky was educated for a career as a civil servant as there was little opportunity for a musical career in Russia at the time and no system of public music education. When an opportunity for such an education arose, he entered the nascent Saint Petersburg Conservatory, from which he graduated in 1865. The formal Western-oriented teaching that he received there set him apart from composers of the contemporary ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
D Minor
D minor is a minor scale based on D, consisting of the pitches D, E, F, G, A, B, and C. Its key signature has one flat. Its relative major is F major and its parallel major is D major. The D natural minor scale is: Changes needed for the melodic and harmonic versions of the scale are written in with accidentals as necessary. The D harmonic minor and melodic minor scales are: Music in D minor Of Domenico Scarlatti's 555 keyboard sonatas, 151 are in minor keys, and with 32 sonatas, D minor is the most often chosen minor key. '' The Art of Fugue'' by Johann Sebastian Bach is in D minor. Michael Haydn's only minor-key symphony, No. 29, is in D minor. According to Alfred Einstein, the history of tuning has led D minor to be associated with counterpoint and chromaticism (for example, the chromatic fourth), and cites Bach's ''Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue'' in D minor. Mozart's Requiem is written primarily in D minor, as are the famous Queen of the Night Aria, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philippe Sarde
Philippe Sarde (born 21 June 1948) is a French film composer. Considered among the most versatile and talented French film composers of his generation, Sarde has scored over two hundred films, film shorts, and television mini-series. He received an Academy Award nomination for '' Tess'' (1979), and twelve César Award nominations, winning for ''Barocco'' (1976) and '' The Judge and the Assassin'' (1976). In 1993, Sarde received the Joseph Plateau Music Award. Life and career Philippe Sarde was born 21 June 1948 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, Île-de-France, France. His mother, Andrée Gabriel, was a singer in the Paris Opera. Through his mother's encouragement, he became interested in music from the early age of three. When he was four years old, he conducted a brief section of ''Carmen'' at the Paris Opera. At the age of five, he began experimenting with sound recording and made his first short films. Sarde loved both music and film, and had trouble deciding on his career ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georgii Cherkin
Georgii Cherkin (born 2 July 1977) is a Bulgarian pianist. Biography Cherkin was born in Sofia, Bulgaria in a family with a great music tradition (his grandfather Georgi Zlatev-Cherkin was a famous Bulgarian composer and vocal pedagogue). He started playing the piano and composing at the age of six, and the following year he enrolled in the Liubomir Pipkov National Music School in Sofia, where he was a student of Antonina Boneva. In 1996, he was admitted to the Pancho Vladiguerov State Music Academy in Sofia in Prof. Atanas Kurtev's class. A year later, he was also admitted at the prestigious Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, where he was trained by one of the most renowned music professors in Italy, Sergio Perticaroli, graduating cum laude. He has performed as a soloist with symphony orchestras more than 100 times, and played in many prestigious concert halls, such as the Auditorio Hall in Rome, Musikhalle in Hamburg, Convention Center in Okinawa, Seoul Arts Center, Pal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Breiner
Peter Breiner (born July 3, 1957, in Humenné, in former Czechoslovakia, present day Slovakia) is a Slovak pianist, conductor, and composer. Breiner began to play and study the piano at age four. At age nine, he started to study at the Conservatory in Košice, Slovakia (where he studied piano, percussion, composition, and conducting). He subsequently moved to Bratislava, Slovakia where he attended the Academy of Performing Arts continuing his composition studies under the tuition of Alexander Moyzes; he was graduated from the Academy in 1982. Breiner has recorded over 150 albums as conductor or pianist. He is well known for his arrangements, such as Baroque versions of the Beatles and a similar adaptation of Elvis Presley, as well as arrangements of popular Christmas music. His 2004 release of all the national anthems of the world was used by the Athens Olympic Committee as the music for medal ceremonies at the Games. His triple CD "Janacek Operatic Suites", released ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Matthews (composer)
David Matthews (born 9 March 1943) is an English composer of mainly orchestral, chamber, vocal and piano works. Life Matthews was born in London into a family that was musical, though not formally trained; the desire to compose did not manifest itself until he was sixteen, and for a time he and his younger brother Colin Matthews, also a composer, were each other's only teachers. The start of the 'Mahler boom' in the early 1960s, when the works of Gustav Mahler began to enter the regular British repertoire for the first time, provided a tremendous creative impetus for both of them; but although they have sometimes since collaborated as arrangers (in orchestrating seven early Mahler songs, for instance) and as editors (in the published version of Deryck Cooke's 'performing version' of the draft of Mahler's Tenth Symphony), as composers they have very much gone their separate ways. David Matthews read Classics at Nottingham University and afterwards, feeling himself still to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Onegin (Cranko)
''Onegin'' is a ballet created by John Cranko for the Stuttgart Ballet, premiered on 13 April 1965 at Staatstheater Stuttgart. The ballet was based on Alexander Pushkin's 1825-1832 novel ''Eugene Onegin'', to music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and arrangements by Kurt-Heinz Stolze. The ballet had since been in the repertoires of The Australian Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, American Ballet Theatre and The Royal Ballet. Background and production Cranko first discovered Alexander Pushkin's verse-novel ''Eugene Onegin'' when he choreographed the dances for Tchaikovsky's opera of the same name in 1952. He first proposed a ballet based on Pushkin's story to the Royal Opera House board in the 1960s, but it was turned down, and he pursued the idea when he moved to Stuttgart. The Stuttgart Ballet premiered the work in 1965. The Royal Ballet did not present the work until 2001. The choreography for his ballet includes a wide range of styles, including folk, modern, ballroom and acr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ballet
Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form of dance with its own vocabulary. Ballet has been influential globally and has defined the foundational techniques which are used in many other dance genres and cultures. Various schools around the world have incorporated their own cultures. As a result, ballet has evolved in distinct ways. A ''ballet'' as a unified work comprises the choreography and music for a ballet production. Ballets are choreographed and performed by trained ballet dancers. Traditional classical ballets are usually performed with classical music accompaniment and use elaborate costumes and staging, whereas modern ballets are often performed in simple costumes and without elaborate sets or scenery. Etymology Ballet is a French word which had its origin in I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Cranko
John Cyril Cranko (15 August 1927 – 26 June 1973) was a South African ballet dancer and choreographer with the Royal Ballet and the Stuttgart Ballet. Life and career Early life Cranko was born in Rustenburg in the former province of Transvaal, Union of South Africa. As a child, he would put on puppet shows as a creative outlet. Cranko received his early ballet training in Cape Town under the leading South African ballet teacher and director, Dulcie Howes, of the University of Cape Town Ballet School. In 1945 he choreographed his first work (using Stravinsky's Suite from ''L'Histoire du soldat'') for the Cape Town Ballet Club. He then moved to London, studying with the Sadler's Wells Ballet School (later called the Royal Ballet) in 1946Dromgoole, Nicholas"John Cranko" ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', retrieved 19 March 2015, and dancing his first role with the Sadler's Wells Ballet in November 1947. London Cranko collaborated with the designer John Piper o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kurt-Heinz Stolze
Kurt-Heinz Stolze (26 January 192612 August 1970) was a German pianist, harpsichordist and composer. He was born in Hamburg. He studied piano, organ and conducting at the Hamburg Conservatory with Wilhelm Brückner-Rüggeberg. His first engagement was as repetiteur at the Royal Opera, Copenhagen. In 1957 he joined the Württemberg State Theatre in Stuttgart. That year he accompanied Fritz Wunderlich on his recording of Franz Schubert’s ''Die schöne Müllerin''. He can also be heard as one of the harpsichordists on a recording of concertos for three and four harpsichords by Johann Sebastian Bach, conducted by Gunther Kehr. Thereafter, he focussed mainly on ballet, and worked principally with John Cranko. Kurt-Heinz Stolze composed or arranged the music for Cranko’s ballets ''Wir reisen nach Jerusalem'' (1963), ''L’Estro Armonico'' (1963, after Antonio Vivaldi), ''The Taming of the Shrew'' (''Der widerspenstigen Zähmung'') (1969; to the Shakespeare story; music based on s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Morton Gould
Morton Gould (December 10, 1913February 21, 1996) was an American composer, conductor, arranger, and pianist. Biography Morton Gould was born in Richmond Hill, New York, United States. He 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 in New York. 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 1936, Gould married Shirley Uzin, but the marriage ended in divorce in 1943. In the following year, Gou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Václav Trojan
Václav Trojan (24 April 1907, Plzeň – 5 July 1983) was a Czech composer of classical music best known for his film scores. Trojan studied composition at the Prague Conservatory under Jaroslav Křička and Otakar Ostrčil from 1923 to 1927. He continued his studies in the composition masterclasses of Alois Hába, Josef Suk and Vítězslav Novák until 1929. A composer and arranger of dance and jazz music in the 1930s, he was a music director for Radio Prague from 1937 to 1945. After the end of World War II, Trojan composed most frequently for film, stage and radio, and developed a close association with director Jiří Trnka, earning international fame for his music for Trnka's popular animated puppet films. Trojan's music is mostly written in a neo-classical style, and he often drew inspiration from the traditions of Czech folk music. In 1940 he was given the Czech National Prize for his remarkable children’s opera ''Kolotoč'' (‘The Merry-Go-Round’), and in 1960 the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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