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Willem Kes
Willem Kes (Dordrecht, 16 February 1856 – München, 22 February 1934, was a Dutch conductor, composer, violist, and violinist. He was the first principal conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, holding that position from 1888 to 1895. Life Early life and education Willem Kes was the son of the dairy trader Adrianus Stoffel Kes and Cornelia Maria Krekelenbrug. He received his initial training as a violist and composer in Dordrecht with Ferdinand Böhme (harmony), Theodorus Thijssens (violin) and Friedrich Wilhelm Nothdurft (piano). At the time, he also performed with the local orchestra. Admitted to the Leipzig conservatory, Kes studied with the composers Ferdinand David and Carl Reinecke. During his stay in Leipzig, he married Bertha Auguste Elise Koch. He completed his studies at the Brussels Conservatory with violinist-composer Henryk Wieniawski and Louis Brassin, partly financing his studies partly by taking part in performances. Additional studies in com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dordrecht
Dordrecht (), historically known in English as Dordt (still colloquially used in Dutch, ) or Dort, is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Western Netherlands, located in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of South Holland. It is the province's fifth-largest city after Rotterdam, The Hague, Leiden, and Zoetermeer, with a population of . The municipality covers the entire Dordrecht Island, also often called ''Het Eiland van Dordt'' ("the Island of Dordt"), bordered by the rivers Oude Maas, Beneden Merwede, Nieuwe Merwede, Hollands Diep, and Dordtsche Kil. Dordrecht is the largest and most important city in the Drechtsteden and is also part of the Randstad, the main conurbation in the Netherlands. Dordrecht is the oldest city in Holland and has a rich history and culture. Etymology The name Dordrecht comes from ''Thuredriht'' (circa 1120), ''Thuredrecht'' (circa 1200). The name seems to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henryk Wieniawski
Henryk Wieniawski (; 10 July 183531 March 1880) was a Polish virtuoso violinist, composer, and pedagogue, who is regarded amongst the most distinguished violinists in history. His younger brother Józef Wieniawski and nephew :pl:Adam Tadeusz Wieniawski, Adam Tadeusz Wieniawski were also accomplished musicians, as was his daughter Régine, who became a naturalised British subject upon marrying into the peerage and wrote music under the name Poldowski. Life Early life Henryk Wieniawski was born in Lublin, in present-day Poland. His father, Tobiasz Pietruszka né Wolf Helman, was the son of a History of the Jews in Poland, Jewish barber named Herschel Meyer Helman, from Lublin's Jewish neighborhood of Wieniawa. Wolf Helman later changed his name to Tadeusz Wieniawski, taking on the name of his neighborhood to blend into the Polish environment. Prior to obtaining his medical degree, he had converted to Catholicism. He married Regina Wolff, the daughter of a noted Jewish physician fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antonín Dvořák
Antonín Leopold Dvořák ( ; ; 8September 18411May 1904) was a Czech composer. He frequently employed rhythms and other aspects of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia, following the Romantic-era nationalist example of his predecessor Bedřich Smetana. Dvořák's style has been described as "the fullest recreation of a national idiom with that of the symphonic tradition, absorbing folk influences and finding effective ways of using them," and Dvořák has been described as "arguably the most versatile... composer of his time". Dvořák displayed his musical gifts at an early age, being a talented violin student. The first public performances of his works were in Prague in 1872 and, with special success, in 1873, when he was 31 years old. Seeking recognition beyond the Prague area, he submitted scores of symphonies and other works to German and Austrian competitions. He did not win a prize until 1874, with Johannes Brahms on the jury of the Austrian State Competit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ernest Chausson
Amédée-Ernest Chausson (; 20 January 1855 – 10 June 1899) was a French Romantic composer. Life Born in Paris into an affluent bourgeois family, Chausson was the sole surviving child of a building contractor who made his fortune assisting Baron Haussmann in the redevelopment of Paris in the 1850s. To please his father, Chausson studied law and was appointed a barrister for the Court of Appeals, but had little or no interest in the profession. He frequented the Paris salons, where he met celebrities such as Henri Fantin-Latour, Odilon Redon, and Vincent d'Indy. Before deciding on a musical career, he dabbled in writing and drawing. In 1879, at the age of 24, he began attending the composition classes of Jules Massenet at the Paris Conservatoire; Massenet came to regard him as "an exceptional person and a true artist". He had already composed some piano pieces and songs. Nevertheless, the earliest manuscripts that have been preserved are those corrected by Massenet. At the C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vincent D'Indy
Paul Marie Théodore Vincent d'Indy (; 27 March 18512 December 1931) was a French composer and teacher. His influence as a teacher, in particular, was considerable. He was a co-founder of the Schola Cantorum de Paris and also taught at the Paris Conservatoire. His students included Albéric Magnard, Albert Roussel, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Yvonne Rokseth, and Erik Satie, as well as Cole Porter. D'Indy studied under composer César Franck, and was strongly influenced by Franck's admiration for German music. At a time when nationalist feelings were high in both countries (circa the Franco-Prussian War of 1871), this brought Franck into conflict with other musicians who wished to separate French music from German influence. Life Paul Marie Théodore Vincent d'Indy was born in Paris into an aristocratic family of royalist and Catholic persuasion. His great-grandfather was the politician . He had piano lessons from an early age from his paternal grandmother, who passed h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Macbeth (Strauss)
''Macbeth'', Op. 23, is a symphonic poem written by Richard Strauss between 1886 and 1888. The work was his first tone poem, which Strauss described as "a completely new path" for him compositionally.MacDonald, ''New Grove (2001)'', 24:506. Written in some semblance of sonata form, the piece was revised more thoroughly than any of Strauss's other works; these revisions, focused primarily on the development and recapitulation sections, show how much the composer was struggling at this point in his career to balance narrative content with musical form. Bryan Gilliam writes in ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' that, "New path or not, ''Macbeth'' failed to find a firm place in the concert repertory, because it lacked the thematic cogency and convincing pacing of musical events so evident in the two antecedent works Don Juan'' and ''Tod und Verklärung'' (''Death and Transfiguration'')]. And despite revisions to the orchestration, in an attempt to restrain inner voice ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Don Juan (Strauss)
''Don Juan'', Op. 20, is a tone poem in E major for large orchestra written by the German composer Richard Strauss in 1888. The work is based on ''Don Juans Ende'', a play derived from an unfinished 1844 retelling of the tale by poet Nikolaus Lenau after the Don Juan legend which originated in Renaissance-era Spain. Strauss reprinted three excerpts from the play in his score. In Lenau's rendering, Don Juan's promiscuity springs from his determination to find the ideal woman. Despairing of ever finding her, he ultimately surrenders to melancholy and wills his own death. It is singled out by Carl Dahlhaus as a "musical symbol of fin-de-siècle modernism", particularly for the "breakaway mood" of its opening bars. The premiere of ''Don Juan'' took place on 11 November 1889 in Weimar, where Strauss, then twenty-five, served as Court Kapellmeister; he conducted the orchestra of the Weimar Opera. The work, composed when Strauss was only twenty-four years old, became an international ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss (; ; 11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a German composer and conductor best known for his Tone poems (Strauss), tone poems and List of operas by Richard Strauss, operas. Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic and early Modernism (music), modern eras, he has been described as a successor of Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt. Along with Gustav Mahler, he represents the late flowering of German Romanticism, in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined with an advanced harmony, harmonic style. Strauss's compositional output began in 1870 when he was just six years old and lasted until his death nearly eighty years later. His first tone poem to achieve wide acclaim was ''Don Juan (Strauss), Don Juan'', and this was followed by other lauded works of this kind, including ''Death and Transfiguration'', ''Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks'', ''Also sprach Zarathustra'', ''Don Quixote (Strauss), Don Quixote'', ''Ein Heldenleben'', ''Symph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (, ) is a Dutch symphony orchestra, established in 1888 at the Amsterdam Royal Concertgebouw (concert hall). It is considered one of the world's leading orchestras. It was known as the Concertgebouw Orchestra until Queen Beatrix conferred the "Royal" prefix upon it in celebration of its centenary in 1988; the prefix was also granted to the concert hall in 2013. History The Concertgebouw opened on 11 April 1888. The Concertgebouw Orchestra was established several months later and gave its first concert in the Concertgebouw on 3 November 1888. This performance was conducted by the orchestra's first chief conductor, Willem Kes. 1888–1945: Kes and Mengelberg Willem Kes served as the orchestra's chief conductor from its 1888 founding to 1895. In 1895, Willem Mengelberg became chief conductor and remained in this position for fifty years, an unusually long tenure for a music director. He is generally regarded as having brought the orchestra to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Concertgebouw, Amsterdam
The Royal Concertgebouw (, ) is a concert hall in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The Dutch term "concertgebouw" translates into English as "concert building". Its superb Architectural acoustics, acoustics place it among the finest concert halls in the world, along with Boston's Symphony Hall, Boston, Symphony Hall and the Musikverein in Vienna. In celebration of the building's 125th anniversary, Beatrix of the Netherlands, Queen Beatrix bestowed the royal title "Koninklijk" upon the building on 11 April 2013, as she had on the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra upon its 100th in 1988. History The architect of the building was , who was inspired by the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, built two years earlier (and destroyed in 1943). Construction began in 1883 in a pasture that was then outside the city, in Nieuwer-Amstel, a municipality that in 1964 became Amstelveen. A total of 2,186 wooden piles, 12 to 13 metres (40 to 43 ft) long, were emplaced in the soil. The Concertgebouw was completed in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plantage
Plantage is a neighbourhood of Amsterdam, Netherlands located in its Centrum borough. It is bordered by the Entrepotdok to the north, Plantage Muidergracht to the east and south and Nieuwe Herengracht to the west. In the centre of the neighbourhood lies the Natura Artis Magistra zoo. It had a population of 1,980 in 2017. History Early years The area came within Amsterdam city limits after the completion of the fourth large urban expansion of 1663. Due to an economic crisis caused by the Rampjaar events, the city government could not find enough buyers for the land. Construction in the area, which was then called ''Plantagie'' or ''Plantaadje'', stagnated as a result. Instead, pleasure gardens and orchards were built where Amsterdam's citizens could go and relax in green surroundings. The plots of land in the neighbourhood were leased by the city for a period of 20 years (with the possibility of a 10-year extension). This was because the city council intended to sell the par ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wilhelm Taubert
Carl Gottfried Wilhelm Taubert (23 March 1811 – 7 January 1891) was a German pianist, composer, and conductor, and the father of philologist and writer Emil Taubert. Life Born in Berlin, Taubert studied under Ludwig Berger (piano) and Bernhard Klein (composition). In 1831, he became assistant conductor and accompanist for Berlin court concerts. Between 1845 and 1848, he was music director of the Berlin Royal Opera and was also court conductor in Berlin from 1845 to 1869. From 1865, he taught music at the Prussian Academy of Arts; Theodor Kullak was one of his pupils. His compositions include six operas, incidental music, four symphonies, concertos for piano and cello, four string quartets, other orchestral, choral, and piano works, and more than 300 songs. His early compositions were praised by the composer Felix Mendelssohn, who had also studied piano with Berger. Taubert died in Berlin. His grave is preserved in the Protestant "Friedhof I der Jerusalems- und Neuen Kirch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
