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Hoffnung Music Festival
The Hoffnung Music Festivals were a series of three humorous classical music festivals held in Royal Festival Hall, London in 1956, 1958 and 1961 (and a reprise in 1988). They were created by cartoonist and amateur tuba player Gerard Hoffnung. They included works such as Haydn's '' Surprise Symphony'' 'with extra surprises' added by Donald Swann, an 'excerpt from ''Belshazzar's Feast, with full orchestra and chorus conducted by William Walton himself (with a fly swat), which turned out to consist of just a single chord with the word "Slain!", and humorous works specially commissioned from well-known composers of the day. 1956 concert The 1956 concert was recorded, and is available in the American market on Angel Records 35500. Music from The Hoffnung Music Festival Concert, Royal Festival Hall, London. An Extravagant Evening of Symphonic Caricature devised by Gerald Hoffnung, Producer: Sam Wanamaker, Organizer: John Amis. It was recorded at the concert, 13 November 1956, by EM ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Classical Music
Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical music, as the term "classical music" also applies to non-Western art music. Classical music is often characterized by formality and complexity in its musical form and harmonic organization, particularly with the use of polyphony. Since at least the ninth century it has been primarily a written tradition, spawning a sophisticated notational system, as well as accompanying literature in analytical, critical, historiographical, musicological and philosophical practices. A foundational component of Western Culture, classical music is frequently seen from the perspective of individual or groups of composers, whose compositions, personalities and beliefs have fundamentally shaped its history. Rooted in the patronage of churches and royal courts in Western Europe, surviving earl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet, playwright and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European and Scottish literature, notably the novels ''Ivanhoe'', ''Rob Roy (novel), Rob Roy'', ''Waverley (novel), Waverley'', ''Old Mortality'', ''The Heart of Mid-Lothian'' and ''The Bride of Lammermoor'', and the narrative poems ''The Lady of the Lake (poem), The Lady of the Lake'' and ''Marmion (poem), Marmion''. He had a major impact on European and American literature. As an advocate, judge and legal administrator by profession, he combined writing and editing with daily work as Clerk of Session and Sheriff court, Sheriff-Depute of Selkirkshire. He was prominent in Edinburgh's Tory (political faction), Tory establishment, active in the Royal Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland, Highland Society, long a president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1820–1832), and a vice president of the Society o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Malcolm Williamson
Malcolm Benjamin Graham Christopher Williamson, (21 November 19312 March 2003) was an Australian composer. He was the Master of the Queen's Music from 1975 until his death. Biography Williamson was born in Sydney in 1931; his father was an Anglican priest, Rev. George Williamson. He studied composition and horn at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. His teachers included Eugene Goossens. In 1950 he moved to London where he worked as an organist, a proofreader, and a nightclub pianist. In 1952 he converted to Roman Catholicism. From 1953 he studied with Elisabeth Lutyens and Erwin Stein. His first major success was with his Piano Concerto No. 1, premiered by Clive Lythgoe at the 1958 Cheltenham Festival to a standing ovation. Williamson was a prolific composer at this time, receiving many commissions and often performing his own works, both on organ and piano. In 1975, the death of Arthur Bliss left the title of Master of the Queen's Music vacant. The selection of Williamson ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Notting Hill Housing Trust
Notting Hill Genesis (NHG) is a housing association formed in April 2018 by the merger of Notting Hill Housing and Genesis Housing Association. Notting Hill Genesis’ primary purpose is to work in the community to provide decent and affordable homes for lower-income households. It is one of the largest housing associations in South East England. It owns around 55,000 properties in London and a further 9,000 in the home counties and East Anglia, housing about 170,000 people. History Notting Hill Housing Trust Notting Hill Housing (NHH) was a social enterprise and registered charity providing affordable housing for Londoners. In 1963, Bruce Kenrick moved to Notting Hill and was shocked at the poor quality of housing that people were forced to live in. He began a fundraising drive, with the aim to raise enough money to buy one home to house several homeless families. As Michael White has written: "Its first fundraiser was a stall on the Portobello Road market which raised £24 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lawrence Leonard
Lawrence Leonard (22 August 1923 – 4 January 2001) was a British conductor, cellist, composer, teacher, and writer. Early life and education Leonard received his musical education at the Royal Academy of Music and the École Normale de Musique de Paris. Career His musical career began at age 16, as an orchestral cellist with the London Symphony Orchestra, playing under such conductors as Sir Henry Wood, Richard Strauss, and Leopold Stokowski. In the 1950s and 1960s, Leonard, a close friend of cartoonist Gerard Hoffnung's, participated both as conductor and composer, in the celebrated Hoffnung concerts. In 1959, at Leonard Bernstein's request, Leonard conducted the London premiere of ''West Side Story''. Leonard was Associate Conductor of the BBC Northern Orchestra and Assistant Conductor to Sir John Barbirolli at the Hallé Orchestra (1963-1968). In 1964, Leonard conducted the world premiere of Gian Carlo Menotti's chamber opera '' Martin's Lie'', at the Bath Intern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francis Chagrin
Francis Chagrin (born Alexander Paucker, 15 November 1905 – 10 November 1972), was a composer of film scores and popular orchestral music, as well as a conductor. He was also the "organizer and chief moving spirit" who founded the Society for the Promotion of New Music. Career He was born in Bucharest, Romania to Jewish parents and at their insistence studied for an engineering degree in Zurich while secretly studying at that city's music conservatoire. He graduated in 1928 but when his family failed to support his musical ambitions, left home and moved to Paris where he adopted his new, French-sounding name. By playing in nightclubs and cafes and writing popular songs, he funded himself for two years, from 1933, at the Ecole Normale, where his teachers included Paul Dukas and Nadia Boulanger, and settled in England in 1936. At the outbreak of World War II, he was appointed musical adviser and composer-in-chief to the BBC French Service and the programme '. For this, he wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ludwig Van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classical music repertoire and span the transition from the Classical period to the Romantic era in classical music. His career has conventionally been divided into early, middle, and late periods. His early period, during which he forged his craft, is typically considered to have lasted until 1802. From 1802 to around 1812, his middle period showed an individual development from the styles of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and is sometimes characterized as heroic. During this time, he began to grow increasingly deaf. In his late period, from 1812 to 1827, he extended his innovations in musical form and expression. Beethoven was born in Bonn. His musical talent was obvious at an early age. He was initially harshly and intensively tau ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Racine Fricker
Peter Racine Fricker (5 September 19201 February 1990) was an English composer, among the first to establish his career entirely after the Second World War. He lived in the US for the last thirty years of his life. Fricker wrote over 160 works in all the main genres excepting opera.Conway, Paul. Notes to Lyrita CD REAM 1124 (2016) Chandos.net He was a descendant of the French playwright . Early career Fricker was born in , |
Edith Evans
Dame Edith Mary Evans, (8 February 1888 – 14 October 1976) was an English actress. She was best known for her work on the stage, but also appeared in films at the beginning and towards the end of her career. Between 1964 and 1968, she was nominated for three Academy Awards. Evans's stage career spanned sixty years, during which she played more than 100 roles, in classics by Shakespeare, Congreve, Goldsmith, Sheridan and Wilde, and plays by contemporary writers including Bernard Shaw, Enid Bagnold, Christopher Fry and Noël Coward. She created roles in two of Shaw's plays: Orinthia in ''The Apple Cart'' (1929), and Epifania in ''The Millionairess'' (1940) and was in the British premières of two others: ''Heartbreak House'' (1921) and ''Back to Methuselah'' (1923). Evans became widely known for portraying haughty aristocratic women, as in two of her most famous roles as Lady Bracknell in ''The Importance of Being Earnest'', and Miss Western in the 1963 film of '' Tom Jones. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mátyás Seiber
Mátyás György Seiber (; 4 May 190524 September 1960) was a Hungarian-born British composer who lived and worked in the United Kingdom from 1935 onwards. His work linked many diverse musical influences, from the Hungarian tradition of Bartók and Kodály, to Schoenberg and serial music, to jazz, folk song, and lighter music. Early life Seiber was born in Budapest. His mother, Berta Patay was a reputed pianist and teacher, so the young Seiber gained considerable skill with that instrument first. At the age of ten, he began to learn to play the cello. After attending grammar school, where he was regarded as "outstanding" in mathematics and Latin according to the almanacs of the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, he studied the cello and composition from 1918 to 1925, and composition with Zoltán Kodály from 1921 to 1925. For his degree, he wrote his String Quartet No. 1 (in A minor). Pieces composed at this time, such as the ''Serenade for Six Wind Instruments'' of 1925, show him ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elizabeth Poston
Elizabeth Poston (24 October 1905 – 18 March 1987) was an English composer, pianist and writer. Early life and career Poston was born in Highfield House in Pin Green, which is now the site of Hampson Park in Stevenage. In 1914, she moved with her mother, Clementine Poston, to nearby Rooks Nest House, where E. M. Forster had lived as a child. Poston and Forster subsequently became good friends. After attending Queen Margaret's School, York and studying with pianist Harold Samuel, she attended the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London, where both Peter Warlock and Ralph Vaughan Williams encouraged her talents and where she studied composition with Julius Harrison. She won a prize from the RAM for her one movement Violin Sonata, which was subsequently broadcast by the BBC on 9 July 1928, with Antonio Brosa as soloist and Victor Hely-Hutchinson piano. When she graduated from the RAM in 1925, seven of her songs were published, and in 1928 she published five more. Poston went ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Horovitz
Joseph Horovitz (26 May 1926 – 9 February 2022) was an Austrian-born British composer and conductor best known for his 1970 pop cantata '' Captain Noah and his Floating Zoo'', which achieved widespread popularity in schools. Horovitz also composed music for television, including the theme music for the Thames Television series ''Rumpole of the Bailey'', and was a prolific composer of ballet, orchestral (including nine concertos), wind band and chamber music. He considered the fifth string quartet (1969) to be his best work. Biography Horovitz was born in Vienna, Austria, into a Jewish family who emigrated to England in 1938 to escape the Nazis. His father was the publisher Béla Horovitz, the co-founder in 1923, with Ludwig Goldscheider, of Phaidon Press. His sister was the classical music promoter Hannah Horovitz (1936-2010). After completing his schooling at The City of Oxford High School Horovitz studied music and modern languages at New College, Oxford, where his teac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
