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Edmund Kurtz
Edmund Kurtz (29 December 190819 August 2004) was a Russian-born Australian cellist and music editor. He was renowned for his "impeccable technique", "innate musicality", and his "rich tone", with a "warm, sensuous quality that seldom loses its luster". In a career spanning 60 years, he performed internationally as a soloist and chamber musician. His edition of Bach's Suites for solo cello, drawn upon facsimiles of the manuscript of Anna Magdalena Bach and showing them opposite each page, is recognized as one of his greatest achievements, and was described as "the most important edition of the greatest music ever written for the instrument". Early life and education Edmund Kurtz was born to a musical family in Saint Petersburg on 29 December 1908. In 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution, his family moved to Germany. That same year, Kurtz, aged 9, began to learn the cello. When he was 13, he began studies with Julius Klengel. Klengel later wrote about his pupil: "In spite of h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), is the second-largest city in Russia. It is situated on the Neva River, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea, with a population of roughly 5.4 million residents. Saint Petersburg is the fourth-most populous city in Europe after Istanbul, Moscow and London, the most populous city on the Baltic Sea, and the world's northernmost city of more than 1 million residents. As Russia's Imperial capital, and a historically strategic port, it is governed as a federal city. The city was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on 27 May 1703 on the site of a captured Swedish fortress, and was named after apostle Saint Peter. In Russia, Saint Petersburg is historically and culturally associated with t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NBC Symphony Orchestra
The NBC Symphony Orchestra was a radio orchestra conceived by David Sarnoff, the president of the Radio Corporation of America, especially for the conductor Arturo Toscanini. The NBC Symphony performed weekly radio concert broadcasts with Toscanini and other conductors and served as house orchestra for the NBC network. The orchestra's first broadcast was on November 13, 1937, and it continued until disbanded in 1954. A new ensemble, independent of the network, called the Symphony of the Air, followed. It was made up of former members of the NBC Symphony Orchestra and performed from 1954 to 1963, particularly under Leopold Stokowski. History Tom Lewis, in the ''Organization of American Historians Magazine of History'', described NBC's plan for cultural programming and the origin of the NBC Symphony: :David Sarnoff, who had first proposed the "radio music box" in 1916 so that listeners might enjoy "concerts, lectures, music, recitals," felt that the medium was failing to do this. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alberto Ginastera
Alberto Evaristo Ginastera (; April 11, 1916June 25, 1983) was an Argentinian composer of classical music. He is considered to be one of the most important 20th-century classical composers of the Americas. Biography Ginastera was born in Buenos Aires to a Spanish father and an Italian mother. During his later years, he preferred to use the Catalan and Italian pronunciation of his surname – , with an initial soft 'G' like that of English 'George' – rather than with a Spanish 'J' sound (). Ginastera studied at the Williams Conservatory in Buenos Aires, graduating in 1938. As a young professor, he taught at the Liceo Militar General San Martín. After a visit to the United States in 1945–47, where he studied with Aaron Copland at Tanglewood, he returned to Buenos Aires. He held a number of teaching posts. Among his notable students were Ástor Piazzolla (who studied with him in 1941), Alcides Lanza, Jorge Antunes, Waldo de los Ríos, Jacqueline Nova and Rafael Aponte-Ledé ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ernst Krenek
Ernst Heinrich Krenek (, 23 August 1900 – 22 December 1991) was an Austrian, later American, composer of Czech origin. He explored atonality and other modern styles and wrote a number of books, including ''Music Here and Now'' (1939), a study of Johannes Ockeghem (1953), and ''Horizons Circled: Reflections on my Music'' (1974). Krenek wrote two pieces using the pseudonym Thornton Winsloe. Life Born Ernst Heinrich Křenek in Vienna (then in Austria-Hungary), he was the son of a Czech soldier in the Austro-Hungarian army. He studied there and in Berlin with Franz Schreker before working in a number of German opera houses as conductor. During World War I, Krenek was drafted into the Austrian army, but he was stationed in Vienna, allowing him to go on with his musical studies. In 1922 he met Alma Mahler, widow of Gustav Mahler, and her daughter, Anna, to whom he dedicated his Symphony No. 2, and whom he married in January 1924. That marriage ended in divorce before its first anni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Joachim
Joseph Joachim (28 June 1831 – 15 August 1907) was a Hungarian violinist, conductor, composer and teacher who made an international career, based in Hanover and Berlin. A close collaborator of Johannes Brahms, he is widely regarded as one of the most significant violinists of the 19th century. Joachim studied violin early, beginning in Buda at age five, then in Vienna and Leipzig. He made his debut in London in 1844, playing Beethoven's Violin Concerto, with Mendelssohn conducting. He returned to London many times throughout life. After years of teaching at the Leipzig Conservatory and playing as principal violinist of the Gewandhausorchester, he moved to Weimar in 1848, where Franz Liszt established cultural life. From 1852, Joachim served at the court of Hanover, playing principal violin in the opera and conducting concerts, with months of free time in summer for concert tours. In 1853, he was invited by Robert Schumann to the Lower Rhine Music Festival, where he met Clara ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Hausmann
Robert Hausmann (13 August 185218 January 1909) was a notable 19th-century German cellist who premiered important works by Johannes Brahms (including the Double Concerto) and Max Bruch (including ''Kol Nidrei''). He was the cellist for the Joachim Quartet and taught at the Berlin Königliche Hochschule für Müsik. Biography Robert Hausmann was born in Rottleberode, Harz, in present-day Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. His paternal grandfather, Friedrich Ludwig Hausmann (1782-1859) was a Professor of Mineralogy at the University of Göttingen, and his father Friedrich Ludolf Hausmann (1810-1880) was also involved in mining in the mineral-rich Harz mountains. The Hausmann family had played a prominent role in civic and cultural life of the city of Hanover since the eighteenth century. Robert's great-uncle Bernhard (1784-1873) was an important art collector and amateur violinist whose memoirs''Erinnerungen aus dem 80 jährigen Leben eines hannoverschen Burgers Hannover''(1873) provide a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stradivari
Antonio Stradivari (, also , ; – 18 December 1737) was an Italian luthier and a craftsman of string instruments such as violins, cellos, guitars, violas and harps. The Latinized form of his surname, ''Stradivarius'', as well as the colloquial ''Strad'' are terms often used to refer to his instruments. It is estimated that Stradivari produced 1,116 instruments, of which 960 were violins. Around 650 instruments survive, including 450 to 512 violins. His instruments are considered some of the finest ever made, and are extremely valuable collector's items. Biography Family and early life Antonio Stradivari's birthdate, presumably between 1644 and 1649, has been debated amongst historians due to the numerous inconsistencies in the evidence of the latter. The 1668 and 1678 censuses report him actually growing younger, a fact explained by the probable loss of statistics from 1647 to 1649, when renewed belligerency between France's Modenese and Spain's Milanese proxies led to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Artur Balsam
Artur Balsam (February 8, 1906 – September 1, 1994) was a Polish-born American classical pianist and pedagogue. Biography He was born in Warsaw, Poland, and studied in Łódź, making his debut there at the age of 12 then enrolled at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik and studied with Artur Schnabel and Curt Boerner. In 1930 he won the Berlin International Piano Competition and obtained the prestigious Mendelssohn Prize in chamber music the following year with Roman Totenberg. In 1932 he made a tour of the United States with Yehudi Menuhin. With the rise of the Nazis, Balsam settled in New York City, where he became the accompanist of choice for international artists, including Henri Temianka, with whom he performed twice in 1945 at Carnegie Hall, Zino Francescatti, David Oistrakh, Leonid Kogan, Oscar Shumsky, Isaac Stern, Zara Nelsova, Joseph Fuchs, Lillian Fuchs, Michael Rabin, Ida Haendel, Mstislav Rostropovich, Nathan Milstein, Roman Totenberg, among many others. He became t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cello Sonata (Prokofiev)
The Cello Sonata in C major, Op. 119, was composed by Sergei Prokofiev in 1949. The year before, Prokofiev was accused of formalism by the Zhdanov Decree and much of his music was banned. However, he continued to compose music, though he was not sure if his new works would ever be performed in public. In 1949, Prokofiev attended a concert in which Mstislav Rostropovich performed Nikolai Miaskovsky's Cello Sonata No. 2 in A minor, Op. 81. Prokofiev was so impressed by Rostropovich's performance that he was determined to write a cello sonata for him. At the same time, Prokofiev wrote the symphonic suite ''Winter Bonfire'', Op. 122, the ballet '' The Tale of the Stone Flower'', Op. 118, and the '' Pushkin Waltzes'', Op. 120. The Cello Sonata was published in Moscow in 1951. Structure The sonata is structured in three movements: # ''Andante grave'' (C major) # ''Moderato'' (F major F major (or the key of F) is a major scale based on F, with the pitches F, G, A, B, C, D, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large national audience. Daily broadsheet editions are printed for D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. The ''Post'' was founded in 1877. In its early years, it went through several owners and struggled both financially and editorially. Financier Eugene Meyer purchased it out of bankruptcy in 1933 and revived its health and reputation, work continued by his successors Katharine and Phil Graham (Meyer's daughter and son-in-law), who bought out several rival publications. The ''Post'' 1971 printing of the Pentagon Papers helped spur opposition to the Vietnam War. Subsequently, in the best-known episode in the newspaper's history, reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein led the American press's investigation into what became known as the Watergate scandal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tim Page (music Critic)
Tim Page (born Ellis Batten Page Jr., 11 October 1954) is an American writer, music critic, editor, producer and professor who won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for his music criticism for ''The Washington Post''. Anthony Tommasini, the chief music critic for ''The New York Times'', has praised Page's criticism for its "extensive knowledge of cultural history, especially literature; the instincts and news sense of a sharp beat reporter; the skills of a good storyteller; infectious inquisitiveness; immunity to dogma; and an always-running pomposity detector." Other notable writings by Page include his biography of the novelist Dawn Powell, which is credited for helping to spark the revival of Powell's work, and a memoir that chronicles growing up with undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder. Biography Early life and education Page was born in San Diego, California to Elizabeth Latimer Thaxton Page, a homemaker and former journalist, and Ellis Batten Page, a professor of educational psyc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Kapell
William Kapell (September 20, 1922October 29, 1953) was an American pianist and recording artist, killed at the age of 31 in the crash of a commercial airliner returning from a concert tour in Australia. Biography William Kapell was born in New York City on September 20, 1922, and grew up in the eastside neighborhood of Yorkville, Manhattan, where his parents owned a Lexington Avenue bookstore. His father was of Spanish-Russian Jewish ancestry and his mother of Polish descent.Tim Page"William Kapell's Piano Benchmark" ''The Washington Post'', September 27, 1998 (at williamkapell.com). Dorothea Anderson La Follette (the wife of Chester La Follette) met Kapell at the Third Street Music School and became his teacher, giving him lessons several times a week at her studio on West 64th Street. Kapell later studied with Olga Samaroff, former wife of conductor Leopold Stokowski, at the Juilliard School. Kapell won his first competition at the age of ten and received as a prize a turkey ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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