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Louis Frémaux (1975)
Louis Joseph Félix Frémaux (13 August 1921 – 20 March 2017) was a French conductor. Life and career Frémaux was born in Aire-sur-la-Lys, France and came from an artistic background; his father was a painter, and his wife was a music teacher.Harding, J. "Louis Frémaux a man for all music". ''Performance'', Summer, 1981. He studied music at the conservatoire in Valenciennes, but his studies were interrupted by the Second World War, when he joined the French Resistance; at the end of the war he was commissioned in the French Foreign Legion and was posted to Vietnam in 1945-46. He entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1947, studied under Louis Fourestier and Jacques Chailley, and graduated in 1952 with a first prize in conducting. Frémaux worked with the orchestra of the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, after having been released from the French Foreign Legion (to which he had been recalled for service in Algeria) at the request of Prince Rainier. For ten years he helped build the rep ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John McCabe (composer)
John McCabe (21 April 1939 – 13 February 2015) was a British composer and pianist. He created works in many different forms, including symphonies, ballets, and solo works for the piano. He served as director of the London College of Music from 1983 to 1990. Guy Rickards praised him as "one of Britain's finest composers in the past half-century" and "a pianist of formidable gifts and wide-ranging sympathies". Early life and education McCabe was born in Huyton, Liverpool on 21 April 1939. His father was an Irish physicist and his German/Finnish mother, Elisabeth Herlitzius, was an amateur violinist. McCabe was badly burned in an accident when he was a child and was home schooled for eight years. During this time, McCabe said that there was "a lot of music in the house", which inspired his future career. He explained "My mother was a very good amateur violinist and there were records and printed music everywhere. I thought that if all these guys – Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Concerto For The Left Hand
A concerto (; plural ''concertos'', or ''concerti'' from the Italian plural) is, from the late Baroque era, mostly understood as an instrumental composition, written for one or more soloists accompanied by an orchestra or other ensemble. The typical three-movement structure, a slow movement (e.g., lento or adagio) preceded and followed by fast movements (e.g., presto or allegro), became a standard from the early 18th century. The concerto originated as a genre of vocal music in the late 16th century: the instrumental variant appeared around a century later, when Italians such as Giuseppe Torelli and Arcangelo Corelli started to publish their concertos. A few decades later, Venetian composers, such as Antonio Vivaldi, had written hundreds of violin concertos, while also producing solo concertos for other instruments such as a cello or a woodwind instrument, and concerti grossi for a group of soloists. The first keyboard concertos, such as George Frideric Handel's organ concert ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samson François
Samson Pascal François (18 May 192422 October 1970) was a French pianist and composer. Biography François was born in Frankfurt where his father worked at the French consulate. His mother, Rose, named him Samson, for strength, and Pascal, for mind. François discovered the piano early – at the age of two – and his first studies were in Italy, with Pietro Mascagni, who encouraged him to give his first concert at the age of six. He studied in the Conservatoire in Nice from 1932 to 1935, where he again won first prize. François then came to the attention of Alfred Cortot, who encouraged him to move to Paris and study with Yvonne Lefébure at the École Normale de Musique. He also studied piano with Cortot (who reportedly found him almost impossible to teach), and harmony with Nadia Boulanger. In 1938, he moved to the Paris Conservatoire to study with Marguerite Long, the doyenne of French teachers of the age. He won the piano section of the inaugural (1943) Marguerite L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boléro
''Boléro'' is a 1928 work for large orchestra by French composer Maurice Ravel. It is one of Ravel's most famous compositions. It was also one of his last completed works before illness diminished his ability to write music. Composition The work's creation was set in motion by a commission from the dancer Ida Rubinstein, who asked Ravel for an orchestral transcription of six pieces from Isaac Albéniz's set of piano pieces, ''Iberia (Albéniz), Iberia''. While working on the transcription, Ravel was informed that Spanish conductor Enrique Fernández Arbós had already orchestrated the movements, and that copyright law prevented any other arrangement from being made. When Arbós heard of this, he said he would happily waive his rights and allow Ravel to orchestrate the pieces. But Ravel decided to orchestrate one of his own works instead, then changed his mind and decided to compose a completely new piece based on the ''Bolero (Spanish dance), bolero'', a Spanish dance music ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ma Mère L'Oye
''Ma mère l'Oye'' (English: ''Mother Goose'', literally "''My Mother the Goose''") is a suite by French composer Maurice Ravel. The piece was originally written as a five-movement piano duet in 1910. In 1911, Ravel orchestrated the work. Piano versions Ravel originally wrote ''Ma mère l'Oye'' as a piano duet for the Godebski children, Mimi and Jean, ages 6 and 7. Ravel dedicated this work for four hands to the children (just as he had dedicated an earlier work, '' Sonatine'', to their parents). Jeanne Leleu (age 11) and Geneviève Durony (age 14 (10 by another source)) premiered the work at the first concert of the Société musicale indépendante on 20 April 1910. The piece was transcribed for solo piano by Ravel's friend Jacques Charlot the same year as it was published (1910); the first movement of Ravel's ''Le tombeau de Couperin'' was dedicated to Charlot's memory after his death in World War I. Both piano versions bear the subtitle "cinq pièces enfantines" (five ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Valse
''La valse'', ''poème chorégraphique pour orchestre'' (a choreographic poem for orchestra), is a work written by Maurice Ravel between February 1919 and 1920; it was first performed on 12 December 1920 in Paris. It was conceived as a ballet but is now more often heard as a concert work. The work has been described as a tribute to the waltz; the composer George Benjamin, in his analysis of ''La valse'', summarized the ethos of the work: "Whether or not it was intended as a metaphor for the predicament of European civilization in the aftermath of the Great War, its one-movement design plots the birth, decay and destruction of a musical genre: the waltz." Ravel himself, however, denied that it is a reflection of post-World War I Europe, saying, "While some discover an attempt at parody, indeed caricature, others categorically see a tragic allusion in it – the end of the Second Empire, the situation in Vienna after the war, etc... This dance may seem tragic, like any other emoti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Daphnis Et Chloé
''Daphnis et Chloé'' is a 1912 ballet and orchestral concert work, subtitled ''symphonie chorégraphique'' (choreographic symphony), for orchestra and wordless chorus by Maurice Ravel. It is in three main sections, or ''parties'', and a dozen scenes, most of them dances, and lasts just under an hour, making it the composer's longest work. It premiered as a ballet, but it is more frequently given as a concert work, either complete or excerpted. The dance scenario was adapted by choreographer Michel Fokine from a pastoral romance by the Greek writer Longus thought to date from the 2nd century AD, recounting the love between the goatherd Daphnis and the shepherdess Chloé. Scott Goddard in 1926 published a commentary on the changes to the story Fokine had to apply in order to make the scenario workable. Composition and premiere Ravel began to write the score in 1909 after a commission from impresario Sergei Diaghilev for his Ballets Russes, completing it some months before the p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
London Symphony Orchestra
The London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) is a British symphony orchestra based in London. Founded in 1904, the LSO is the oldest of London's orchestras, symphony orchestras. The LSO was created by a group of players who left Henry Wood's Queen's Hall Orchestra because of a new rule requiring players to give the orchestra their exclusive services. The LSO itself later introduced a similar rule for its members. From the outset the LSO was organised on co-operative lines, with all players sharing the profits at the end of each season. This practice continued for the orchestra's first four decades. The LSO underwent periods of eclipse in the 1930s and 1950s when it was regarded as inferior in quality to new London orchestras, to which it lost players and bookings: the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Orchestra in the 1930s and the Philharmonia Orchestra, Philharmonia and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic after the Second World War. The profit-sharing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Wise Virgins
''The Wise Virgins'' is a one-act ballet based on the biblical Parable of the Ten Virgins.Vaughan D. ''Frederick Ashton and his Ballets.'' A & C Black Ltd, London, 1977. It was created in 1940 with choreography by Frederick Ashton, to a score of music by Johann Sebastian Bach orchestrated by William Walton. History The music of the ballet was the first to be decided. Some years before, at an evening gathering in Cambridge with Boris Ord and Constant Lambert (musical director of the Sadler's Wells Ballet), those two musicians played some Bach at the piano. One of the pieces was " Sheep may safely graze" which comes from a secular cantata about hunting, ''Was mir behagt, ist nur die muntre Jagd'', BWV 208. Ashton, wanting to use this music and believing it to be a religious subject, chose the parable of the wise and foolish virgins from Matthew 25.Kavanagh J. ''Secret Muses: The Life of Frederick Ashton.'' Faber & Faber Ltd, London, 1996, pp. 260-3. According to Michael Somes, it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Façade (ballet)
''Façade'' is a ballet by Frederick Ashton, to the music of William Walton; it is a balletic interpretation of items from '' Façade – an Entertainment'' (1923) by Walton and Edith Sitwell. The ballet was first given by the Camargo Society at the Cambridge Theatre, on 26 April 1931. It has been regularly revived and restaged all over the world. Background In 1923 '' Façade – an Entertainment'' was first given in public. It consisted of poems by Edith Sitwell recited by the author over music composed for the purpose by William Walton, performed by an ensemble of six players. The work was regarded as ''avant-garde'' and caused some controversy. In 1926 Walton arranged a suite of five of the numbers, omitting the spoken verses and expanding the orchestration. In 1929 the choreographer Günter Hess created a ''Façade'' ballet for the German Chamber Dance Theatre, using Walton's orchestral suite; Sitwell declined to allow her words to be used. Hess visited London in 193 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gloria (Poulenc)
The Gloria by Francis Poulenc, FP 177, scored for soprano solo, large orchestra, and chorus, is a setting of the Gloria text from the mass ordinary. One of Poulenc's most celebrated works, it was commissioned by the Koussevitsky Foundation in honor of Sergei Koussevitzky and his wife Natalia, the namesakes of the foundation. Background Poulenc would later claim that the idea for the Gloria began while he worked on his opera, '' Dialogues des Carmélites'', although it has been impossible to establish the dating of his initial sketches with certainty. He also said that the “Laudamus te” had been inspired by the sight of Benedictine monks playing soccer. On April 18, 1959, the composer wrote to Bernard Gavoty that he was “back at work” and had “just begun a Gloria for chorus, soloist, and orchestra in the Vivaldi style.” Despite being commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation, the composition of Poulenc's Gloria was not a direct result of their involvement. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
