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1939 In British Music
This is a summary of 1939 in music in the United Kingdom. Events *April – a left-wing ''Festival of Music for the People'' is held in London. Participants include a pageant for 500 singers and 100 dancers featuring the American singer Paul Robeson as soloist, a balalaika orchestra playing Russian tunes, music by Alan Bush, and Benjamin Britten's ''Ballad of Heroes'' with words by W.H. Auden and Randall Swingler, performed by "Twelve Co-operative and Labour Choirs". John Ireland's ''These Things Shall Be'' is performed at the festival's third concert in the Queen's Hall conducted by Constant Lambert. *29 April – Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears leave the UK for North America on board the SS ''Ausonia''. * 10 May – Heimo Haitto, 13, wins the British Council music prize *10 June – the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult, gives the first public performance of Arthur Bliss's Piano Concerto in B flat with soloist Solomon; Arnold Bax's Symphony No. 7; ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and many smaller islands within the British Isles. Northern Ireland shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland; otherwise, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea and the Irish Sea. The total area of the United Kingdom is , with an estimated 2020 population of more than 67 million people. The United Kingdom has evolved from a series of annexations, unions and separations of constituent countries over several hundred years. The Treaty of Union between the Kingdom of England (which included Wales, annexed in 1542) and the Kingdom of Scotland in 170 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Piano Concerto (Bliss)
The Piano Concerto in B-flat, Op. 58, F.108, was written by Arthur Bliss in 1938 and premiered in 1939. It is a powerful work in the nineteenth-century Romantic tradition, and at the time it was hoped it could prove to be a British "Emperor" concerto. Nicolas Slonimsky described it as "Lisztomorphic in its sonorous virtuosity, Chopinoid in its chromatic lyricism, and Rachmaninovistic in its chordal expansiveness". Background Arthur Bliss had adjudicated at the Ysaye International Competition for Pianists in Belgium in 1938 and was particularly impressed with some of the competitors' performances. He wrote to his wife at the time: I have heard twenty-two pianists play the same piece by Bach, the same piece by Scarlatti, and expect to hear them sixty-three times more. Never again! ... I am learning a lot by listening to these young players — the standard is high — and my Piano Concerto is going to benefit from the experience. ... Hearing hour after hour so much brilliant pian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Gallery
The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current Director of the National Gallery is Gabriele Finaldi. The National Gallery is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Its collection belongs to the government on behalf of the British public, and entry to the main collection is free of charge. Unlike comparable museums in continental Europe, the National Gallery was not formed by nationalising an existing royal or princely art collection. It came into being when the British government bought 38 paintings from the heirs of John Julius Angerstein in 1824. After that initial purchase, the Gallery was shaped mainly by its early directors, especially Charles Lock Eastlake, and by private donations, which now account for two-thirds ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Ritz London Hotel
The Ritz London is a Listed building, Grade II listed Hotel rating, 5-star hotel in Piccadilly, London, England. A symbol of high society and luxury, the hotel is one of the world's most prestigious and best known. The Ritz has become so associated with luxury and elegance that the word "ritzy" has entered the English language to denote something that is ostentatiously stylish, fancy, or fashionable. The hotel was opened by Switzerland, Swiss hotelier César Ritz in 1906, eight years after he established the Hôtel Ritz Paris. It began to gain popularity towards the end of World War I, with politicians, socialites, writers and actors in particular. David Lloyd George held a number of secret meetings at the Ritz in the latter half of the war, and it was at the Ritz that he made the decision to intervene on behalf of Greece against Turkey. Noël Coward was a notable diner at the Ritz in the 1920s and 1930s. Owned by the Bracewell Smith family until 1976, David and Frederick Barc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jascha Heifetz
Jascha Heifetz (; December 10, 1987) was a Russian-born American violinist. Born in Vilnius, he moved while still a teenager to the United States, where his Carnegie Hall debut was rapturously received. He was a virtuoso since childhood. Fritz Kreisler, another leading violinist of the twentieth century, said after hearing Heifetz's debut, "We might as well take our fiddles and break them across our knees." He had a long and successful performing career; however, after an injury to his right (bowing) arm, he switched his focus to teaching. Late in life, Heifetz became a dedicated teacher and a champion of socio-political causes. He publicly advocated to establish 9-1-1 as an emergency phone number, and crusaded for clean air. He and his students at the University of Southern California protested smog by wearing gas masks, and in 1967, he converted his Renault passenger car into an electric vehicle. Early life Heifetz was born into a Lithuanian-Jewish family in Vilnius (Russia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Violin Concerto (Walton)
The Violin Concerto by William Walton was written in 1938–39 and dedicated to Jascha Heifetz, who commissioned the work and performed it at its premiere on 7 December 1939 with the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Artur Rodziński. The British premiere, delayed by the Second World War, was given on 1 November 1941, with Henry Holst as soloist and the composer conducting. Walton later reorchestrated the concerto; the revised version was premiered in 1944. The work has been frequently recorded and has established itself as one of the composer's most durable compositions. Background and first performances In 1936 William Walton had established a position among the leading British composers of the day, but he was a slow and far from prolific worker and in that year he felt obliged to choose between accepting a commission from Jascha Heifetz or one from Joseph Szigeti and Benny Goodman, who wanted a work for violin and clarinet. After meeting Heifetz in London, Walton accepted a comm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Walton
Sir William Turner Walton (29 March 19028 March 1983) was an English composer. During a sixty-year career, he wrote music in several classical genres and styles, from film scores to opera. His best-known works include ''Façade'', the cantata ''Belshazzar's Feast'', the Viola Concerto, the First Symphony, and the British coronation marches ''Crown Imperial'' and '' Orb and Sceptre''. Born in Oldham, Lancashire, the son of a musician, Walton was a chorister and then an undergraduate at Christ Church, Oxford. On leaving the university, he was taken up by the literary Sitwell siblings, who provided him with a home and a cultural education. His earliest work of note was a collaboration with Edith Sitwell, ''Façade'', which at first brought him notoriety as a modernist, but later became a popular ballet score. In middle age, Walton left Britain and set up home with his young wife Susana on the Italian island of Ischia. By this time, he had ceased to be regarded as a moderni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
7 December
Events Pre-1600 *43 BC – Marcus Tullius Cicero is assassinated in Formia on orders of Marcus Antonius. * 574 – Byzantine Emperor Justin II, suffering recurring seizures of insanity, adopts his general Tiberius and proclaims him as ''Caesar''. * 927 – The Sajid emir of Adharbayjan, Yusuf ibn Abi'l-Saj is defeated and captured by the Qarmatians near Kufa. 1601–1900 *1703 – The Great Storm of 1703, the greatest windstorm ever recorded in the southern part of Great Britain, makes landfall. Winds gust up to 120 mph, and 9,000 people die. *1724 – Tumult of Thorn: Religious unrest is followed by the execution of nine Protestant citizens and the mayor of Thorn (Toruń) by Polish authorities. *1732 – The Royal Opera House opens at Covent Garden, London, England. *1776 – Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, arranges to enter the American military as a major general. *1787 – Delaware becomes the first state to ratify the Uni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall ( ) is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is at 881 Seventh Avenue (Manhattan), Seventh Avenue, occupying the east side of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street (Manhattan), 56th and 57th Street (Manhattan), 57th Streets. Designed by architect William Burnet Tuthill and built by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, it is one of the most prestigious venues in the world for both classical music and popular music. Carnegie Hall has its own artistic programming, development, and marketing departments and presents about 250 performances each season. It is also rented out to performing groups. Carnegie Hall has 3,671 seats, divided among three auditoriums. The largest one is the Stern Auditorium, a five-story auditorium with 2,804 seats. Also part of the complex are the 599-seat Zankel Hall on Seventh Avenue, as well as the 268-seat Joan and Sanford I. Weill Recital Hall on 57th Street. Besides the auditoriums, Carnegie Hall contains offices on its t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Five Variants Of Dives And Lazarus
''Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus'' is a work for harp and string orchestra by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The composition is based on the folk tune "Dives and Lazarus", one of the folk songs quoted in Vaughan Williams' '' English Folk Song Suite''. Background Vaughan Williams composed the work on commission from the British Council to be played at the 1939 World's Fair in New York City. The first performance was by the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall on 10 June 1939, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult. The other works premiered on that occasion were Arthur Bliss's Piano Concerto in B-flat, and Arnold Bax's Symphony No. 7. Boult also directed the first UK performance in November 1939 in Bristol. The folk tune had earlier been arranged by Vaughan Williams as a hymn tune "Kingsfold" appearing as "I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say" in The English Hymnal (no. 574 in the original 1906 edition). The village of Kingsfold is in West Sussex, a few miles south from Vaughan Willia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams, (; 12 October 1872– 26 August 1958) was an English composer. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over sixty years. Strongly influenced by Tudor music and English folk-song, his output marked a decisive break in British music from its German-dominated style of the 19th century. Vaughan Williams was born to a well-to-do family with strong moral views and a progressive social life. Throughout his life he sought to be of service to his fellow citizens, and believed in making music as available as possible to everybody. He wrote many works for amateur and student performance. He was musically a late developer, not finding his true voice until his late thirties; his studies in 1907–1908 with the French composer Maurice Ravel helped him clarify the textures of his music and free it from Music of Germany, Teutonic influences. Vaughan Williams i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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