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Adrian Brown (musician)
Adrian Brown (born 1949) is a British conductor. He is a proponent of contemporary music and has several first performances to his credit. He was educated at Northgate Grammar School for Boys in Ipswich, Suffolk, and was a pupil of the conductor Sir Adrian Boult. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Music in London, he studied intensively with Sir Adrian for some years. He remains the only British conductor to have reached the finals of the Herbert von Karajan International Conducting Competition in Berlin,: in fact, the Berlin Philharmonic was the first professional orchestra he conducted. Sir Adrian wrote: 'He has always impressed me as a musician of exceptional attainments who has all the right gifts and ideas to make him a first-class conductor.' In 1992 Adrian Brown was engaged to conduct the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1998 Sir Roger Norrington recommended him to conduct the Camerata Salzburg, one of Europe's foremost chamber orchestras. In addition, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ipswich
Ipswich () is a port town and borough in Suffolk, England, of which it is the county town. The town is located in East Anglia about away from the mouth of the River Orwell and the North Sea. Ipswich is both on the Great Eastern Main Line railway and the A12 road; it is north-east of London, east-southeast of Cambridge and south of Norwich. Ipswich is surrounded by two Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB): Suffolk Coast and Heaths and Dedham Vale. Ipswich's modern name is derived from the medieval name ''Gippeswic'', probably taken either from an Anglo-Saxon personal name or from an earlier name given to the Orwell Estuary (although possibly unrelated to the name of the River Gipping). It has also been known as ''Gyppewicus'' and ''Yppswyche''. The town has been continuously occupied since the Saxon period, and is contested to be one of the oldest towns in the United Kingdom.Hills, Catherine"England's Oldest Town" Retrieved 2 August 2015. Ipswich was a settleme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Tippett
Sir Michael Kemp Tippett (2 January 1905 – 8 January 1998) was an English composer who rose to prominence during and immediately after the Second World War. In his lifetime he was sometimes ranked with his contemporary Benjamin Britten as one of the leading British composers of the 20th century. Among his best-known works are the oratorio ''A Child of Our Time'', the orchestral '' Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli'', and the opera ''The Midsummer Marriage''. Tippett's talent developed slowly. He withdrew or destroyed his earliest compositions, and was 30 before any of his works were published. Until the mid-to-late 1950s his music was broadly lyrical in character, before changing to a more astringent and experimental style. New influences, including those of jazz and blues after his first visit to America in 1965, became increasingly evident in his compositions. While Tippett's stature with the public continued to grow, not all critics approved of these changes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Music For Youth
Music for Youth (MFY) is a British charity which provides free access to educational and performance opportunities for groups of young musicians and audiences through a series of festivals and concerts throughout the UK. Two million children have taken part in Music for Youth events since 1971. Sixty thousand 4- to 21-year-olds took part in 76 Music for Youth festivals and concerts in 2006, with 85% of these coming from state schools. Each year MFY aims to work with 100,000 young musicians. History Music for Youth (MFY) was founded in 1970, the first event staged was the National Festival on 10 and 11 July 1971 at the Lyceum on the Strand, London. Following this a nationwide series of Regional Festivals were introduced and there was an increase in entries for the second National Festival in Fairfield Halls, Croydon, in 1972. The National Festival moved to London's South Bank Centre in 1981 and to Birmingham in 2005. The first Schools Prom (now called the MFY Prom) was held at the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
St John's, Smith Square
St John's Smith Square is a redundant church in the centre of Smith Square, Westminster, London. Sold to a charitable trust as a ruin following firebombing in the Second World War, it was restored as a concert hall. This Grade I listed church was designed by Thomas Archer and was completed in 1728 as one of the so-called Fifty New Churches. It is regarded as one of the finest works of English Baroque architecture, and features four corner towers and monumental broken pediments. It is often referred to as ' Queen Anne's Footstool' because as legend has it, when Archer was designing the church he asked the Queen what she wanted it to look like. She kicked over her footstool and said 'Like that!', giving rise to the building's four corner towers. History In 1710, the long period of Whig domination of British politics ended as the Tories swept to power under the rallying cry of "The Church in Danger". Under the Tories' plan to strengthen the position of the Anglican Church an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ein Heldenleben
''Ein Heldenleben'' (''A Hero's Life''), Op. 40, is a tone poem by Richard Strauss. The work was completed in 1898. It was his eighth work in the genre, and exceeded any of its predecessors in its orchestral demands. Generally agreed to be autobiographical in nature despite contradictory statements on the matter by the composer, the work contains more than thirty quotations from Strauss's earlier works, including ''Also sprach Zarathustra'', ''Till Eulenspiegel'', ''Don Quixote'', ''Don Juan'', and ''Death and Transfiguration''. Background Strauss began work on the piece while staying in a Bavarian mountain resort in July 1898. He proposed to write a heroic work in the mould of Beethoven's ''Eroica'' Symphony: "It is entitled 'A Hero's Life', and while it has no funeral march, it does have lots of horns, horns being quite the thing to express heroism. Thanks to the healthy country air, my sketch has progressed well and I hope to finish by New Year's Day."Glass, Herbert''Ein ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chelsea Opera Group
Chelsea Opera Group is an organisation based in London which arranges concert productions of operas and other works. It was founded in 1950 when David Cairns and Stephen Gray invited Colin Davis, who was at the time a 22-year-old clarinetist, to conduct a concert performance of Mozart's ''Don Giovanni'' in the Holywell Music Room, Oxford. The Group has continued this practice since, mainly with the purpose of reviving neglected operas and lesser known versions of more familiar operas. Colin Davis was the president until his death in April 2013. The Group continues to perform operas and other works in London and in Salisbury. Company history and performances Since ''Falstaff'' in 1956, a considerable number of operas by Giuseppe Verdi have appeared on the roster, including many of the lesser-known earlier works such as the 1847 version of ''Macbeth'' (in 2008); the original French version of ''I Vespri Sicilianni'', the 1855 ''Les vêpres siciliennes'' (1977 and 1999); and se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Feuersnot
' (''Need for (or lack of) fire)'', Op. 50, is a ''Singgedicht'' (sung poem) or opera in one act by Richard Strauss. The German libretto was written by Ernst von Wolzogen, based on J. Ketel's report "Das erloschene Feuer zu Audenaerde". It was Strauss' second opera. Thematically, the opera has been interpreted as a parody of Richard Wagner's idea of "redemption through love", with the character of Kunrad representing Strauss himself. The conceptual framework for the opera stems from the Nietzschean perspective that had inspired Strauss in his tone poems ''Till Eulenspiegel'' and ''Also sprach Zarathustra''. Strauss and von Wolzogen shared the view that the source of inspiration was material not transcendental: in ''Feuersnot'' it is "redemption through sex" which relights the creative fire. Performance history The librettist for the opera was Ernst von Wolzogen, who in 1901 founded the Überbrettl venue (German for "over cabaret, super-cabaret"), the start of the German Ka ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss (; 11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a German composer, conductor, pianist, and violinist. Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic and early 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 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. While his output of works encompasses nearly every type of classical compositional form, Strauss achieved his greatest success with tone poems and operas. His first tone poem to achieve wide acclaim was ''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'', ''Ein Heldenleben' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of ''The Guardian'' in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of ''The Guardian'' free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for ''The Guardian'' the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK. The editor-in-chief Katharine Viner succeeded Alan Rusbridger in 2015. Since 2018, the paper's main news ... [...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] |
Edward Elgar
Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, (; 2 June 1857 – 23 February 1934) was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the ''Enigma Variations'', the ''Pomp and Circumstance Marches'', concertos for Violin Concerto (Elgar), violin and Cello Concerto (Elgar), cello, and two symphony, symphonies. He also composed choral works, including ''The Dream of Gerontius'', chamber music and songs. He was appointed Master of the King's Musick in 1924. Although Elgar is often regarded as a typically English composer, most of his musical influences were not from England but from continental Europe. He felt himself to be an outsider, not only musically, but socially. In musical circles dominated by academics, he was a self-taught composer; in Protestant Britain, his Roman Catholicism was regarded with suspicion in some quarters; and in the class-consci ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hector Berlioz
In Greek mythology, Hector (; grc, Ἕκτωρ, Hektōr, label=none, ) is a character in Homer's Iliad. He was a Trojan prince and the greatest warrior for Troy during the Trojan War. Hector led the Trojans and their allies in the defense of Troy, killing countless Greek warriors. He was ultimately killed in single combat by Achilles, who later dragged his dead body around the city of Troy behind his chariot. Etymology In Greek, is a derivative of the verb ἔχειν ''ékhein'', archaic form * grc, ἕχειν, hékhein, label=none ('to have' or 'to hold'), from Proto-Indo-European *'' seɡ́ʰ-'' ('to hold'). , or as found in Aeolic poetry, is also an epithet of Zeus in his capacity as 'he who holds verything together. Hector's name could thus be taken to mean 'holding fast'. Description Hector was described by the chronicler Malalas in his account of the ''Chronography'' as "dark-skinned, tall, very stoutly built, strong, good nose, wooly-haired, good beard, sq ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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