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Still Life (Annie Haslam Album)
''Still Life'' is the second solo album by Renaissance vocalist Annie Haslam, recorded with Louis Clark and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 1985. The album consisted of popular classical tunes set to the lyrics of poet and Renaissance lyricist Betty Thatcher. A remastered two-disc edition was released on April 25, 2011, with the second disc offering an instrumental version of each song. Reception ''The Bolton News'' described ''Still Life'' as the marriage of classical and popular music at its very best. Allmusic's Tomas Mureika retrospectively called it "one of Haslam's career highlights: a gorgeous, lyrical, and endlessly listenable collection of classical pop nuggets, topped off with brilliant—often profound—lyrics." Track listing # "Forever Bound" (Adagio cantabile from Symphony No. 5, Tchaikovsky) # "Still Life" (Air from Suite No. 3 in D major, J. S. Bach) # "One Day" (Berceuse from Dolly, Fauré) # "Ave Verum" (Mozart) # "Shine" ( Gymnopédie No. 2, Satie) # ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Annie Haslam
Annie Haslam (born 8 June 1947) is an English vocalist, songwriter and painter. She is best known as the lead singer of progressive rock band Renaissance since 1971, and for her long and diverse solo singing career. She has a five-octave vocal range. From 2002, Haslam has developed a parallel career as a visual artist, producing paintings on canvas, painted musical instruments and giclées. Early history At the age of ten, Haslam's parents enrolled her in elocution lessons, which Haslam cites as being the foundation of her singing career despite the fact that her parents did not know that she would become a singer. After studying fashion at Redruth Art School in Cornwall, Haslam began working as an assistant at fashion company Jaeger and then became an apprentice at David Coombs, a Savile Row tailor in London. While there, she overheard the Beatles' 1969 rooftop concert while on the street during her lunch break. Haslam then briefly worked for fashion company Windsmoor, whi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gymnopédies (Satie)
The ''Gymnopédies'' (), or ''Trois Gymnopédies'' ('Three Nude Dances"), are three piano compositions written by French composer and pianist Erik Satie. He completed the whole set by 2 April 1898, but they were at first published individually: the first and the third in 1888, the second in 1895. History The work's unusual title comes from the French form of gymnopaedia, the ancient Greek word for an annual festival where young men danced either naked or, perhaps figuratively, simply unarmed. The source of the title has been a subject of debate. Satie and his friend Alexis Roland-Manuel maintained that he adopted it after having read Gustave Flaubert's novel ''Salammbô'', while others see a poem by J. P. Contamine de Latour as the source of Satie's inspiration, since the first ''Gymnopédie'' was published in the magazine ''La Musique des familles'' in the summer of 1888 together with an excerpt of Latour's poem ''Les Antiques'', where the term appears. It remains un ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tannhäuser (opera)
''Tannhäuser'' (; full title , "Tannhäuser and the Minnesängers' Contest at Wartburg") is an 1845 opera in three acts, with music and text by Richard Wagner ( WWV 70 in the catalogue of the composer's works). It is based on two German legends: Tannhäuser, the mythologized medieval German Minnesänger and poet, and the tale of the Wartburg Song Contest. The story centres on the struggle between sacred and profane love, as well as redemption through love, a theme running through most of Wagner's work. The opera remains a staple of major opera house repertoire in the 21st century. Composition history Sources The libretto of ''Tannhäuser'' combines mythological elements characteristic of German ''Romantische Oper'' (Romantic opera) and the medieval setting typical of many French Grand Operas. Wagner brings these two together by constructing a plot involving the 14th-century '' Minnesänger'' and the myth of Venus and her subterranean realm of Venusberg. Both the histori ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carnival Of The Animals
''The Carnival of the Animals'' () is a humorous musical suite of 14 movements, including " The Swan", by the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns. About 25 minutes in duration, it was written for private performance by two pianos and chamber ensemble; Saint-Saëns prohibited public performance of the work during his lifetime, feeling that its frivolity would damage his standing as a serious composer. The suite was published in 1922, the year after his death. A public performance in the same year was greeted with enthusiasm, and it has remained among his most popular. It is less frequently performed with a full orchestral complement of strings. History Following a disastrous concert tour of Germany in 1885–86, Saint-Saëns withdrew to a small Austrian village, where he composed ''The Carnival of the Animals'' in February 1886. From the beginning he regarded the work as a piece of fun. On 9 February 1886 he wrote to his publishers Durand in Paris that he was composing a w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Le Cygne
"Le cygne", , or "The Swan", is the 13th and penultimate movement of ''The Carnival of the Animals'' by Camille Saint-Saëns. Originally scored for solo cello accompanied by two pianos, it has been arranged and transcribed for many instruments but remains best known as a cello solo. Music The piece is in 6/4 (time signature), with a key signature of G major and a tempo marking ''andantino grazioso''. The slow cello melody is accompanied by almost constant broken chord figurations on the pianos. When performed as a separate movement, not in the context of ''The Carnival'', "The Swan" is frequently played with accompaniment on only one piano. This is the only movement from ''The Carnival of the Animals'' that the composer allowed to be played in public during his lifetime. He thought the remaining movements were too frivolous and would damage his reputation as a serious composer. "Le cygne" illustrates the fleeting nature of beauty with its interpretation of the legend of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frederick Delius
file:Fritz Delius (1907).jpg, Delius, photographed in 1907 Frederick Theodore Albert Delius (born Fritz Theodor Albert Delius; ; 29 January 1862 – 10 June 1934) was an English composer. Born in Bradford in the north of England to a prosperous mercantile family, he resisted attempts to recruit him to commerce. He was sent to Florida in the United States in 1884 to manage an orange plantation. He soon neglected his managerial duties, and in 1886 returned to Europe. Having been influenced by African-American music during his short stay in Florida, he began composing. After a brief period of formal musical study in Germany beginning in 1886, he embarked on a full-time career as a composer in Paris and then in nearby Grez-sur-Loing, where he and his wife Jelka Rosen, Jelka lived for the rest of their lives, except during the First World War. Delius's first successes came in Germany, where Hans Haym and other conductors promoted his music from the late 1890s. In Delius's native B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Koanga
''Koanga'' is an opera written between 1896 and 1897, with music by Frederick Delius and a libretto by Charles Francis Keary, inspired partly by the book '' The Grandissimes: A Story of Creole Life'' by George Washington Cable (1880). Inspiration also came from Delius's own experiences as a young man, when his family sent him to work in Florida. It was Delius's third opera, and he thought better of it than of its predecessors, '' Irmelin'' and ''The Magic Fountain'', because of the incorporation of dance scenes and his treatment of the choruses. ''Koanga'' is reputed to be the first opera in the European tradition to base much of its melodic material on African-American music. Performance history ''Koanga'' was the first of Delius's operas to be performed. It was also the most labour-intensive with regard to the libretto, which was continually revised. The opera was posthumously published in 1935. It was performed privately in March 1899 at the residence of Adela Maddison in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Remo Giazotto
Remo Giazotto (4 September 1910, Rome – 26 August 1998, Pisa) was an Italian musicologist, music critic, and composer, mostly known through his systematic catalogue of the works of Tomaso Albinoni. He wrote biographies of Albinoni and other composers, including Antonio Vivaldi. Giazotto served as a music critic (from 1932) and editor (1945–1949) of the ''Rivista musicale italiana'' and was appointed co-editor of the ''Nuova rivista musicale italiana'' in 1967. He was a professor of the history of music at the University of Florence (1957–69) and in 1962 was nominated to the Accademia Nazionale di S. Cecilia. In 1949, Giazotto became the director of the chamber music programs for Italian state broadcaster RAI and in 1966 was appointed director of its international programs organized through the European Broadcasting Union. He was also the president of RAI's auditioning committee and editor of its series of biographies on composers. Giazotto was the father of physicist A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adagio In G Minor
Adagio in G minor for strings and organ, also known as Adagio in Sol minore per archi e organo su due spunti tematici e su un basso numerato di Tomaso Albinoni (Mi 26), is a neo-Baroque composition often misattributed to the 18th-century Venetian composer Tomaso Albinoni. In fact the work was composed by a 20th-century musicologist and Albinoni biographer named Remo Giazotto. The piece was purportedly based on the discovery of a bass line by Albinoni in a manuscript fragment. Scholarly debate over the existence of the fragment persists, with most seeing the affair as a musical hoax perpetrated by Giazotto. There is no room for doubt when it comes to the source of everything in the ''Adagio'' other than the bassline, and Giazotto's authorship of these parts is not disputed. Provenance The composition is often referred to as "Albinoni's Adagio" or "Adagio in G minor by Albinoni, arranged by Giazotto". The ascription to Albinoni rests upon Giazotto's purported discovery of a ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pavane (Fauré)
The Pavane in F-sharp minor, Op. 50, is a short work by the French composer Gabriel Fauré written in 1887. It was originally a piano piece, but is better known in Fauré's version for orchestra and optional chorus. It was first performed in Paris in 1888, becoming one of the composer's most popular works. History The work is titled after the slow processional Spanish court dance of the same name. Fauré's original version of the piece was written for piano and chorus in the late 1880s.Howat, p. 155 He described it as "elegant, assuredly, but not particularly important." Fauré composed the orchestral version at Le Vésinet in the summer of 1887.Orledge, Robert (1993). Notes to EMI CD CDM 7-64715-2 He envisaged a purely orchestral composition, using modest forces, to be played at a series of light summer concerts conducted by Jules Danbé. After Fauré opted to dedicate the work to his patron, Elisabeth, comtesse Greffulhe, he felt compelled to stage a grander affair an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Swan Lake
''Swan Lake'' ( rus, Лебеди́ное о́зеро, r=Lebedínoje ózero, p=lʲɪbʲɪˈdʲinəjə ˈozʲɪrə, links=no ), Op. 20, is a ballet composed by Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1875–76. Despite its initial failure, it is now one of the most popular ballets of all time. The scenario, initially in two acts, was fashioned from Russian and German folk tales and tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse. The choreographer of the original production was Julius Reisinger (Václav Reisinger). The ballet was premiered by the Bolshoi Ballet on at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. Although it is presented in many different versions, most ballet companies base their stagings both choreographically and musically on the 1895 revival of Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, first staged for the Imperial Ballet on 15 January 1895, at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. For this revival, Tchaikovsky's score was revise ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
