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Arthur Leavins
Arthur Leavins (b. 14 July 1917, Leicester, England — d. 7 January 1995) was a British violinist. He was concertmaster of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for most of the 1950s under conductor Sir Thomas Beecham; after which he played with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and served as concertmaster of the BBC Concert Orchestra for 17 years. A child prodigy, he began his performance career as the age of 4 in New Zealand and by the age of 14 was a violinist with the Leicester Symphony Orchestra. He studied with Arthur Catterall at the Royal Academy of Music, and became a member of Catterall's string quartet after earning his diploma. He was married to pianist Mary Baddeley whom he met while playing with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra during the 1940s. They had two sons. As a soloist, he was particularly admired for his performances of Edward Elgar's ''Violin Concerto A violin concerto is a concerto for solo violin (occasionally, two or more violins) and instrumental ense ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Concertmaster
The concertmaster (from the German ''Konzertmeister''), first chair (U.S.) or leader (U.K.) is the principal first violin player in an orchestra (or clarinet in a concert band). After the conductor, the concertmaster is the second-most significant leader in an orchestra, symphonic band or other musical ensemble. Orchestra In an orchestra, the concertmaster is the leader of the first violin section. There is another violin section, the second violins, led by the principal second violin. Any violin solo in an orchestral work is played by the concertmaster (except in the case of a concerto, in which case a guest soloist usually plays). It is usually required that the concertmaster be the most skilled musician in the section, experienced at learning music quickly, counting rests accurately and leading the rest of the string section by their playing and bow gestures. The concertmaster sits to the conductor's left, closest to the audience, in what is called the "first chair," " ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) is a British symphony orchestra based in London, that performs and produces primarily classic works. The RPO was established by Thomas Beecham in 1946. In its early days, the orchestra secured profitable recording contracts and important engagements including the Glyndebourne Festival Opera and the concerts of the Royal Philharmonic Society. After Beecham's death in 1961, the RPO's fortunes declined steeply. The RPO battled for survival until the mid-1960s, when its future was secured after a report by the Arts Council of Great Britain recommended that it should receive public subsidy. A further crisis arose in the same era when it seemed that the orchestra's right to call itself "Royal" could be withdrawn. In 2004, the RPO acquired its first permanent London base, at Cadogan Hall in Chelsea. The RPO also gives concerts at the Royal Festival Hall, the Royal Albert Hall and venues around the UK and other countries. The current music dir ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sir Thomas Beecham
Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet, Order of the Companions of Honour, CH (29 April 18798 March 1961) was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic orchestras. He was also closely associated with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Liverpool Philharmonic and The Hallé, Hallé orchestras. From the early 20th century until his death, Beecham was a major influence on the musical life of United Kingdom, Britain and, according to the BBC, was Britain's first international conductor. Born to a rich industrial family, Beecham began his career as a conductor in 1899. He used his access to the family fortune to finance opera from the 1910s until the start of the Second World War, staging seasons at Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, Drury Lane and Her Majesty's Theatre, His Majesty's Theatre with international stars, his own ... [...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] |
BBC Concert Orchestra
The BBC Concert Orchestra is a British concert orchestra based in London, one of the British Broadcasting Corporation's five radio orchestras. With around fifty players, it is the only one of the five BBC orchestras which is not a full-scale symphony orchestra. The BBC Concert Orchestra is the BBC's most populist ensemble, playing a mixture of classical music, light music and popular numbers. Its primary role is to produce music for radio broadcast, and it is the resident orchestra of the world's longest running live music programme, '' Friday Night is Music Night'' on BBC Radio 2. History The parent ensemble of the orchestra was the BBC Theatre Orchestra, which was formed in 1931 and based in Bedford. The orchestra also did opera work and was occasionally billed as the BBC Opera Orchestra. Stanford Robinson was the principal conductor from 1931 until 1946, but others included Walter Goehr, Spike Hughes, Harold Lowe, Mark Lubbock and Lionel Salter. In August 1949, the ensemble w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leicester Symphony Orchestra
Leicester Symphony Orchestra is based in Leicester, England. The orchestra was founded by Malcolm Sargent in 1922 along with Grace Burrows as orchestra leader. Sargent continued to conduct the orchestra until 1939. In these early years, the orchestra's prestige grew until it was able to obtain such top-flight soloists as Alfred Cortot, Artur Schnabel, Solomon, Guilhermina Suggia and Benno Moiseiwitsch. The orchestra normally features about 80 musicians. Other conductors of the orchestra have included Arthur Thornley, Alfred de Reyghere, Harry Shaw, Simeon Iliffe, Keith Smith, Roland Melia, Nicholas Daniel, Pavel Kotla and John Andrews. The annual orchestra season includes three performances at De Montfort Hall De Montfort Hall is the largest music and performance venue in Leicester, England. It is situated adjacent to Victoria Park and is named after the "Father of Parliament", Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester. History The hall was built by the ... in Leicester, and t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Catterall
Arthur Catterall (25 May 1883 – 28 November 1943) was an English concert violinist, orchestral leader and conductor, one of the best-known English classical violinists of the first half of the twentieth century. photo of Wills's cigarette card showing BBC Symphony Orchestra leader Arthur Catterall. Early training Arthur Catterall was born in Preston, Lancashire, the son of John Catterall, a painter and his wife Elizabeth, a cotton weaver. He was an extremely gifted musician in childhood. He first played the violin in public at a concert in Preston when he was 6 years old. He played the Mendelssohn violin concerto in Manchester at the age of 9. Catterall received his elementary education under the Jesuits at St Ignatius Roman Catholic School, Preston until 1893 when he was accepted as a Boarder at St Bede's College, Manchester, during this time he also studied at the Royal Manchester College of Music under Willy Hess in 1894 and under Adolph Brodsky in 1895. Catterall gradu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Academy Of Music
The Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London, England, is the oldest conservatoire in the UK, founded in 1822 by John Fane and Nicolas-Charles Bochsa. It received its royal charter in 1830 from King George IV with the support of the first Duke of Wellington. Famous academy alumni include Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Sir Elton John and Annie Lennox. The academy provides undergraduate and postgraduate training across instrumental performance, composition, jazz, musical theatre and opera, and recruits musicians from around the world, with a student community representing more than 50 nationalities. It is committed to lifelong learning, from Junior Academy, which trains musicians up to the age of 18, through Open Academy community music projects, to performances and educational events for all ages. The academy's museum houses one of the world's most significant collections of musical instruments and artefacts, including stringed instruments by Stradivari, Guarneri, an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) is a British orchestra based in Birmingham, England. It is the resident orchestra at Symphony Hall: a B:Music Venue in Birmingham, which has been its principal performance venue since 1991. Its administrative and rehearsal base is at the nearby CBSO Centre, where it also presents chamber concerts by members of the orchestra and guest performers. Each year the orchestra performs more than 150 concerts in Birmingham, the UK and around the world, playing music that ranges from classics to contemporary, film scores and even symphonic disco. With a far-reaching community programme and a family of choruses and youth ensembles, it is involved in every aspect of music-making in the Midlands. At its centre is a team of 90 superb professional musicians, and over a 100-year tradition of making the world's greatest music, in the heart of Birmingham. The CBSO has four choirs – the CBSO ChorusYouth Chorus [...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] |
Violin Concerto (Elgar)
Edward Elgar's Violin Concerto in B minor, Op. 61, is one of his longest orchestral compositions, and the last of his works to gain immediate popular success. The concerto was composed for the violinist Fritz Kreisler, who gave the premiere in London in 1910, with the composer conducting. Plans by the recording company His Master's Voice to record the work with Kreisler and Elgar fell through, and the composer made a recording with the teenaged Yehudi Menuhin that has remained in the catalogues since its first release in 1932. Even though Elgar's music fell out of fashion in the middle of the twentieth century, and the concerto's reputation as one of the most difficult in the violin repertoire grew (because of its use of constant multiple-stopping, fast and unorthodox string crossings, and massive, rapid shifting around the instrument), it nevertheless continued to be programmed and played by acclaimed violinists. By the end of the 20th century, when Elgar's music was restored to ... [...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] |
