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Cyril Smith (pianist)
Cyril James Smith OBE (11 August 1909 – 2 August 1974) was a virtuoso concert pianist of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, and a piano teacher. Personal life Smith was born at Costa Street, Middlesbrough, England, the son of Charles Smith, a foundry bricklayer, and Eva Harrison, and had an older brother and sister. He married Andrée Antoinette Marie Paty in 1931, but the couple divorced. In 1937 he married Phyllis Sellick. They had a son, Graham, and a daughter, Clare and remained married until his death. Smith died in 1974 at his home in East Sheen, London, as a result of a stroke. Performing From 1926 to 1930, Cyril Smith studied with Herbert Fryer (a student of Tobias Matthay and Ferruccio Busoni) at the Royal College of Music, winning medals and prizes including the Daily Express piano contest in 1928 and made his concert début in Birmingham in 1929. He performed as an off-screen piano accompanist in several of the 30-line Baird system television broadcasts of 1935 and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Middlesbrough
Middlesbrough ( ) is a town on the southern bank of the River Tees in North Yorkshire, England. It is near the North York Moors national park. It is the namesake and main town of its local borough council area. Until the early 1800s, the area was rural farming land. By 1830, a new industrial town and port started to be developed, driven by the coal and later ironworks. Steel production and ship building began in the late 1800s, remaining associated with the town until post-industrial decline occurred in the late twentieth century. Trade (notably through ports) and digital enterprise sectors contemporarily contribute to the local economy, Teesside University and Middlesbrough College to local education. In 1853, it became a town. The motto ("We shall be" in Latin) was adopted, it reflects ("We have been") of the Bruce clan which were Cleveland's mediaeval lords. The town's coat of arms is three ships representing shipbuilding and maritime trade and an azure (blue) lion, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Entertainments National Service Association
The Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA) was an organisation established in 1939 by Basil Dean and Leslie Henson to provide entertainment for British armed forces personnel during World War II. ENSA operated as part of the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes. It was superseded by Combined Services Entertainment (CSE) which now operates as part of the Services Sound and Vision Corporation (SSVC). The first big wartime variety concert organised by ENSA was broadcast by the BBC to the Empire and local networks from RAF Hendon in north London on 17 October 1939. Among the entertainers appearing on the bill were Adelaide Hall, The Western Brothers and Mantovani. A newsreel of this concert showing Hall singing "We're Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line" accompanied by Mantovani and His Orchestra exists. Many members of ENSA later had careers in the entertainment industry after the war, including actors Terry-Thomas, Peter Sellers and Kenneth Connor. Ta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kharkiv
Kharkiv ( uk, wikt:Харків, Ха́рків, ), also known as Kharkov (russian: Харькoв, ), is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city and List of hromadas of Ukraine, municipality in Ukraine.Kharkiv "never had eastern-western conflicts" ''Euronews'' (23 October 2014) Located in the northeast of the country, it is the largest city of the historic Sloboda Ukraine, Slobozhanshchyna region. Kharkiv is the administrative centre of Kharkiv Oblast and of the surrounding Kharkiv Raion. The latest population is Kharkiv was founded in 1654 as Kharkiv fortress, and after these humble beginnings, it grew to be a major centre of industry, trade and Ukrainian culture in the Russian Empire. At the beginning of the 20th century, ... [...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] |
Gordon Jacob
Gordon Percival Septimus Jacob CBE (5 July 18958 June 1984) was an English composer and teacher. He was a professor at the Royal College of Music in London from 1924 until his retirement in 1966, and published four books and many articles about music. As a composer he was prolific: the list of his works totals more than 700, mostly compositions of his own, but a substantial minority of orchestrations and arrangements of other composers' works. Those whose music he orchestrated range from William Byrd to Edward Elgar to Noël Coward. Life and career Jacob was born in Upper Norwood, London, the seventh son and youngest of ten children of Stephen Jacob, and his wife, Clara Laura, ''née'' Forlong. Stephen Jacob, an official of the Indian Civil Service based in Calcutta, died when Gordon was three.Wetherell, Eric"Jacob, Gordon Percival Septimus (1895–1984), composer" ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004. Retrieved 30 October 2018 Jacob was e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Bliss
Sir Arthur Edward Drummond Bliss (2 August 189127 March 1975) was an English composer and conductor. Bliss's musical training was cut short by the First World War, in which he served with distinction in the army. In the post-war years he quickly became known as an unconventional and Modernism (music), modernist composer, but within the decade he began to display a more traditional and romantic side in his music. In the 1920s and 1930s he composed extensively not only for the concert hall, but also for films and ballet. In the Second World War, Bliss returned to England from the US to work for the BBC and became its director of music. After the war he resumed his work as a composer, and was appointed Master of the Queen's Music. In Bliss's later years, his work was respected but was thought old-fashioned, and it was eclipsed by the music of younger colleagues such as William Walton and Benjamin Britten. Since his death, his compositions have been well represented in recordin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Malcolm Arnold
Sir Malcolm Henry Arnold (21 October 1921 – 23 September 2006) was an English composer. His works feature music in many genres, including a cycle of nine symphonies, numerous concertos, concert works, chamber music, choral music and music for brass band and wind band. His style is tonal and rejoices in lively rhythms, brilliant orchestration, and an unabashed tunefulness. He wrote extensively for the theatre, with five ballets specially commissioned by the Royal Ballet, as well as two operas and a musical. He also produced scores for more than a hundred films, among these ''The Bridge on the River Kwai'' (1957), for which he won an Oscar. Early life Malcolm Arnold was born in Northampton, Northamptonshire, England, the youngest of five children from a prosperous Northampton family of shoemakers. Although shoemakers, his family was full of musicians; both of his parents were pianists, and his aunt was a violinist. His great great grandfather was the composer William Hawes, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Isaac Albéniz
Isaac Manuel Francisco Albéniz y Pascual (; 29 May 1860 – 18 May 1909) was a Spanish virtuoso pianist, composer, and conductor. He is one of the foremost composers of the Post-Romantic era who also had a significant influence on his contemporaries and younger composers. He is best known for his piano works based on Spanish folk music idioms. Isaac Albéniz was close to the Generation of '98. Transcriptions of many of his pieces, such as ''Asturias (Leyenda)'', ''Granada'', ''Sevilla'', '' Cadiz'', '' Córdoba'', '' Cataluña'', ''Mallorca'', and Tango in D, are important pieces for classical guitar, though he never composed for the guitar. The personal papers of Albéniz are preserved in, among other institutions, the Library of Catalonia. Life Born in Camprodon, province of Girona, to Ángel Albéniz (a customs official) and his wife, Maria de los Dolores Pascual, Albéniz was a child prodigy who first performed at the age of four. At age seven, after apparently tak ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mily Balakirev
Mily Alexeyevich Balakirev (russian: Милий Алексеевич Балакирев,BGN/PCGN transliteration of Russian: Miliy Alekseyevich Balakirev; ALA-LC system: ''Miliĭ Alekseevich Balakirev''; ISO 9 system: ''Milij Alekseevič Balakirev''. ; – )Russia was still using old style dates in the 19th century, and information sources used in the article sometimes report dates as old style rather than new style. Dates in the article are taken verbatim from the source and therefore are in the same style as the source from which they come. was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor known today primarily for his work promoting musical nationalism and his encouragement of more famous Russian composers, notably Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. He began his career as a pivotal figure, extending the fusion of traditional folk music and experimental classical music practices begun by composer Mikhail Glinka. In the process, Balakirev developed musical patterns that could express ove ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert (; 31 January 179719 November 1828) was an Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. Despite his short lifetime, Schubert left behind a vast ''oeuvre'', including more than 600 secular vocal works (mainly lieder), seven complete symphonies, sacred music, opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libr ...s, incidental music, and a large body of piano and chamber music. His major works include "Erlkönig (Schubert), Erlkönig" (D. 328), the Trout Quintet, Piano Quintet in A major, D. 667 (''Trout Quintet''), the Symphony No. 8 (Schubert), Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D. 759 (''Unfinished Symphony''), the Symphony No. 9 (Schubert), "Great" Symphony No. 9 in C major, D. 944, the String Quintet (Schubert), String Quintet (D. 956), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin (born Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin; 1 March 181017 October 1849) was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic period, who wrote primarily for solo piano. He has maintained worldwide renown as a leading musician of his era, one whose "poetic genius was based on a professional technique that was without equal in his generation". Chopin was born in Żelazowa Wola in the Duchy of Warsaw and grew up in Warsaw, which in 1815 became part of Congress Poland. A child prodigy, he completed his musical education and composed his earlier works in Warsaw before leaving Poland at the age of 20, less than a month before the outbreak of the November 1830 Uprising. At 21, he settled in Paris. Thereafterin the last 18 years of his lifehe gave only 30 public performances, preferring the more intimate atmosphere of the salon. He supported himself by selling his compositions and by giving piano lessons, for which he was in high demand. Chopin formed a fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff; in Russian pre-revolutionary script. (28 March 1943) was a Russian composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music. Early influences of Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and other Russian composers gave way to a thoroughly personal idiom notable for its song-like melodicism, expressiveness and rich orchestral colours. The piano is featured prominently in Rachmaninoff's compositional output and he made a point of using his skills as a performer to fully explore the expressive and technical possibilities of the instrument. Born into a musical family, Rachmaninoff took up the piano at the age of four. He studied with Anton Arensky and Sergei Taneyev at the Moscow Conservatory and graduated in 1892, having already composed several piano and orchestral pieces. In 1897, following the d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
