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Alto Rhapsody
The ''Alto Rhapsody'', Op. 53, is a composition for contralto, male chorus, and orchestra by Johannes Brahms, a setting of verses from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's '' Harzreise im Winter''. It was written in 1869, as a wedding gift for Robert and Clara Schumann's daughter, Julie. Brahms scholars have long speculated that the composer may have had romantic feelings for Julie, which he may have integrated into the text and music of the ''Alto Rhapsody''. The text, with its metaphysical portrayal of a misanthropic soul who is urged to find spiritual sustenance and throw off the shackles of his suffering, has powerful parallels in Brahms's life and character. The work is in three sections: the first two, in a chromatically dense and wandering C minor, are for the soloist and orchestra and describe the pain of the misanthropic wanderer. The second section is an aria in all but name. The third section, in a nominal C major, brings in the male chorus, which joins the soloist in a pl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Choral Composition
A choir ( ; also known as a chorale or chorus) is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform. Choirs may perform music from the classical music repertoire, which spans from the medieval era to the present, or popular music repertoire. Most choirs are led by a conductor, who leads the performances with arm, hand, and facial gestures. The term ''choir'' is very often applied to groups affiliated with a church (whether or not they actually occupy the quire), whereas a ''chorus'' performs in theatres or concert halls, but this distinction is not rigid. Choirs may sing without instruments, or accompanied by a piano, pipe organ, a small ensemble, or an orchestra. A choir can be a subset of an ensemble; thus one speaks of the "woodwind choir" of an orchestra, or different "choirs" of voices or instruments in a polychoral composition. In typical 18th century to 21st century oratorios and masses, 'ch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jena
Jena () is a German city and the second largest city in Thuringia. Together with the nearby cities of Erfurt and Weimar, it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia with approximately 500,000 inhabitants, while the city itself has a population of about 110,000. Jena is a centre of education and research; the Friedrich Schiller University was founded in 1558 and had 18,000 students in 2017 and the Ernst-Abbe-Fachhochschule Jena counts another 5,000 students. Furthermore, there are many institutes of the leading German research societies. Jena was first mentioned in 1182 and stayed a small town until the 19th century, when industry developed. For most of the 20th century, Jena was a world centre of the optical industry around companies such as Carl Zeiss, Schott and Jenoptik (since 1990). As one of only a few medium-sized cities in Germany, it has some high-rise buildings in the city centre, such as the JenTower. These also have their origin in the former Carl Zeiss fa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stephanie Blythe
Stephanie Blythe (born 1970) is an American mezzo-soprano who has had an active international career in operas and concerts since the early 1990s. She is particularly associated with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, with whom she has performed annually since her debut with the company in 1995. In 2014 she starred as Gertrude Stein in the world premiere of '' 27'', an opera composed by Ricky Ian Gordon with libretto by Royce Vavrek, and commissioned for her by the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. Early life Blythe grew up in Mongaup Valley, New York and studied the flute as a child. She graduated from Monticello High School (New York) in 1987. While attending Monticello, she was first exposed to live opera when her high school music teacher took her class to the Metropolitan Opera for a matinee of '' La bohème''. She went on to study vocal performance with Patricia Misslin at the Crane School of Music at the State University of New York at Potsdam (SUNY Potsdam), from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
London Philharmonic Orchestra
The London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) is one of five permanent symphony orchestras based in London. It was founded by the conductors Sir Thomas Beecham and Malcolm Sargent in 1932 as a rival to the existing London Symphony and BBC Symphony Orchestras. The founders' ambition was to build an orchestra the equal of any European or American rival. Between 1932 and the Second World War the LPO was widely judged to have succeeded in this regard. After the outbreak of war, the orchestra's private backers withdrew and the players reconstituted the LPO as a self-governing cooperative. In the post-war years, the orchestra faced challenges from two new rivals; the Philharmonia and the Royal Philharmonic, founded respectively in 1946 and 1947, achieved a quality of playing not matched by the older orchestras, including the LPO. By the 1960s the LPO had regained its earlier standards, and in 1964 it secured a valuable engagement to play in the Glyndebourne Festival during the su ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Alldis Choir
John Alldis (10 August 192920 December 2010) was an English chorus-master and conductor. Biography Alldis was educated at King's College School, Cambridge and Felsted. He then returned to King's College, Cambridge as a choral scholar under Boris Ord from 1949 to 1952. After leaving Cambridge University, Alldis quickly became highly regarded as a choral conductor. In 1966, the London Symphony Orchestra engaged him to form and direct its first standing choral group. However, he switched to the London Philharmonic Choir in 1969, with which he remained until 1982, preparing choruses for many celebrated performances with Adrian Boult, Otto Klemperer, Leopold Stokowski, Colin Davis, Bernard Haitink, Karl Richter, Georg Solti, and Zubin Mehta. In 1962, Alldis founded the professional, 16-member John Alldis Choir, which launched itself with the world premiere of Alexander Goehr's ''A Little Cantata of Proverbs''. Contemporary music figured importantly in its repertory, with fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adrian Boult
Sir Adrian Cedric Boult, CH (; 8 April 1889 – 22 February 1983) was an English conductor. Brought up in a prosperous mercantile family, he followed musical studies in England and at Leipzig, Germany, with early conducting work in London for the Royal Opera House and Sergei Diaghilev's ballet company. His first prominent post was conductor of the City of Birmingham Orchestra in 1924. When the British Broadcasting Corporation appointed him director of music in 1930, he established the BBC Symphony Orchestra and became its chief conductor. The orchestra set standards of excellence that were rivalled in Britain only by the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO), founded two years later. Forced to leave the BBC in 1950 on reaching retirement age, Boult took on the chief conductorship of the LPO. The orchestra had declined from its peak of the 1930s, but under his guidance its fortunes were revived. He retired as its chief conductor in 1957, and later accepted the post of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BBC Symphony Orchestra
The BBC Symphony Orchestra (BBC SO) is a British orchestra based in London. Founded in 1930, it was the first permanent salaried orchestra in London, and is the only one of the city's five major symphony orchestras not to be self-governing. The BBC SO is the principal broadcast orchestra of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The orchestra was originally conceived in 1928 as a joint enterprise by the BBC and the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, but the latter withdrew the next year and the task of assembling and training the orchestra fell to the BBC's director of music, Adrian Boult. Among its guest conductors in its first years was Arturo Toscanini, who judged it the finest orchestra he had ever conducted. During and after the Second World War, Boult strove to maintain standards, but the senior management of the post-war BBC did not allocate the orchestra the resources to meet competition from new and well-funded rivals. After Boult's retirement from the BBC in 1950, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Janet Baker
Dame Janet Abbott Baker (born 21 August 1933) is an English mezzo-soprano best known as an opera, concert, and lieder singer.Blyth, Alan, "Baker, Dame Janet (Abbott)" in Sadie, Stanley, ed.; John Tyrell; exec. ed. (2001). ''New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', 2nd ed. London: Macmillan; (hardcover) (eBook). Baker was particularly closely associated with baroque and early Italian opera and the works of Benjamin Britten. During her career, which spanned the 1950s to the 1980s, she was considered an outstanding singing actress and widely admired for her dramatic intensity, perhaps best represented in her famous portrayal as Dido, the tragic heroine of Berlioz's magnum opus, ''Les Troyens''. As a concert performer, Dame Janet was noted for her interpretations of the music of Gustav Mahler and Edward Elgar. David Gutman, writing in ''Gramophone'', described her performance of Mahler's '' Kindertotenlieder'' as "intimate, almost self-communing." Biography and career E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eugene Ormandy
Eugene Ormandy (born Jenő Blau; November 18, 1899 – March 12, 1985) was a Hungarian-born American conductor and violinist, best known for his association with the Philadelphia Orchestra, as its music director. His 44-year association with the orchestra is one of the longest enjoyed by any conductor with any American orchestra. Ormandy made numerous recordings with the orchestra, and as guest conductor with European orchestras, and achieved three gold records and two Grammy Awards. His reputation was as a skilled technician and expert orchestral builder. Early life Ormandy was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, as Jenő Blau, the son of Jewish parents Benjamin Blau, a dentist and amateur violinist, and Rozália Berger.Birth Record of Jenő Blau (translated). Budapest, Kerület VII, Születtek, 1899, No. 3873: Reported November 22, 1899, born November 18, 1899, Jenő, male, Israelite, son of Benjamin Blau, Israelite, 29, occupation fogmüves (dentist), b. Pósaháza (Bereg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philadelphia Orchestra
The Philadelphia Orchestra is an American symphony orchestra, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. One of the " Big Five" American orchestras, the orchestra is based at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, where it performs its subscription concerts, numbering over 130 annually, in Verizon Hall. From its founding until 2001, the Philadelphia Orchestra gave its concerts at the Academy of Music. The orchestra continues to own the Academy, and returns there one week per year for the Academy of Music's annual gala concert and concerts for school children. The Philadelphia Orchestra's summer home is the Mann Center for the Performing Arts. It also has summer residencies at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, and since July 2007 at the Bravo! Vail Valley Festival in Vail, Colorado. The orchestra also performs an annual series of concerts at Carnegie Hall. From its earliest days the orchestra has been active in the recording studio, making extensive numbers of recordings, pri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marian Anderson
Marian Anderson (February 27, 1897April 8, 1993) was an American contralto. She performed a wide range of music, from opera to spirituals. Anderson performed with renowned orchestras in major concert and recital venues throughout the United States and Europe between 1925 and 1965. Anderson was an important figure in the struggle for African-American artists to overcome racial prejudice in the United States during the mid-twentieth century. In 1939 during the era of racial segregation, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused to allow Anderson to sing to an integrated audience in Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. The incident placed Anderson in the spotlight of the international community on a level unusual for a classical musician. With the aid of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Anderson performed a critically acclaimed open-air concert on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939, on the Lincoln Memorial steps in the ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Psaltery
A psaltery ( el, ψαλτήρι) (or sawtry, an archaic form) is a fretboard-less box zither (a simple chordophone) and is considered the archetype of the zither and dulcimer; the harp, virginal, harpsichord and clavichord were also inspired by it. Its resonance box is usually trapezoidal, rectangular or in the form of a "pig's head" and often richly decorated. Etymology The psaltery of Ancient Greece ('' epigonion'') was a harp-like stringed instrument. The word ''psaltery'' derives from the Ancient Greek ψαλτήριον (''psaltḗrion''), "stringed instrument, psaltery, harp" and that from the verb ψάλλω (''psállō''), "to touch sharply, to pluck, pull, twitch" and in the case of the strings of musical instruments, "to play a stringed instrument with the fingers, and not with the plectrum." The psaltery was originally made from wood, and relied on natural acoustics for sound production. In the King James Bible "psaltery", and its plural, "psalteries", are used to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
