Hollywood String Quartet
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Hollywood String Quartet
The Hollywood String Quartet (HSQ) was an American string quartet founded by violinist/conductor Felix Slatkin and his wife cellist Eleanor Aller. The Hollywood String Quartet is considered to be the first American-born and trained classical music chamber group to make an international impact, mainly through its landmark recordings. These recordings have long been regarded as among the most outstanding recorded performances of the string quartet repertoire. History The musicians of the Hollywood String Quartet were the leading players in the major movie studio orchestras producing the vibrant, lush film soundtracks during the "Golden Age of Hollywood". In 1939, the same year as their marriage, Felix Slatkin and Eleanor Aller formed the HSQ. In its original formation, Slatkin and Aller were joined by violist Paul Robyn and second violinist Joachim Chassman. However, the group disbanded soon thereafter when the three male members enlisted in WWII service. The HSQ resumed its activit ...
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String Quartet
The term string quartet can refer to either a type of musical composition or a group of four people who play them. Many composers from the mid-18th century onwards wrote string quartets. The associated musical ensemble consists of two violinists, a violist, and a cellist. The string quartet was developed into its present form by composers such as Franz Xaver Richter, and Joseph Haydn, whose works in the 1750s established the ensemble as a group of four more-or-less equal partners. Since Haydn the string quartet has been considered a prestigious form; writing for four instruments with broadly similar characteristics both constrains and tests a composer. String quartet composition flourished in the Classical era, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert each wrote a number of them. Many Romantic and early-twentieth-century composers composed string quartets, including Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Antonín Dvořák, Leoš Jan ...
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Joseph Achron
Joseph Yulyevich Achron, also seen as Akhron (Russian: Иосиф Юльевич Ахрон, Hebrew: יוסף אחרון) (May 1, 1886April 29, 1943) was a Russian-born Jewish composer and violinist, who settled in the United States. His preoccupation with Jewish elements and his desire to develop a "Jewish" harmonic and contrapuntal idiom, underscored and informed much of his work. His friend, the composer Arnold Schoenberg, described Achron in his obituary as "one of the most underrated modern composers". Biography Achron was born in Lozdzieje, Russian Empire (now Lazdijai, Lithuania) to Julian and Bertha and began the study of the violin under his father, an amateur violinist, at the age of five. His first public performance followed three years later at age seven in Warsaw. This was followed by a prodigious childhood career including performances throughout Russia. Between 1899 and 1904 he studied violin under Leopold Auer and composition under Anatoly Lyadov, at the Sain ...
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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, operas, incidental music, and a large body of piano and chamber music. His major works include "Erlkönig" (D. 328), the Piano Quintet in A major, D. 667 (''Trout Quintet''), the Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D. 759 (''Unfinished Symphony''), the "Great" Symphony No. 9 in C major, D. 944, the String Quintet (D. 956), the three last piano sonatas (D. 958–960), the opera ''Fierrabras'' (D. 796), the incidental music to the play ''Rosamunde'' (D. 797), and the song cycles ''Die schöne Müllerin'' (D. 795) and ''Winterreise'' (D. 911). Born in the Himmelpfortgrund suburb of Vienna, Schubert showed uncommon gifts for music from an early age. His father gave him his first violin l ...
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New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid digital media, digital subscribers. It also is a producer of popular podcasts such as ''The Daily (podcast), The Daily''. Founded in 1851 by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones (publisher), George Jones, it was initially published by Raymond, Jones & Company. The ''Times'' has won List of Pulitzer Prizes awarded to The New York Times, 132 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any newspaper, and has long been regarded as a national "newspaper of record". For print it is ranked List of newspapers by circulation, 18th in the world by circulation and List of newspapers in the United States, 3rd in the U.S. The paper is owned by the New York Times Company, which is Public company, publicly traded. It has been governed by the Sulzberger family since 189 ...
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Alfred Frankenstein
Alfred Victor Frankenstein (October 5, 1906 – June 22, 1981) was an art and music critic, author, and professional musician. He was the long-time art and music critic for the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' from 1934 to 1965. He was noted for championing American art and coining the term Actual Art. His most famous book is '' After The Hunt'', a volume that examined the trompe-l'œil movement in late 19th-century and early 20th-century American art, focussing especially on the painters William Harnett and John Frederick Peto. Among his colleagues, he was noted for his wit and his lack of tolerance for pretension. Prior to becoming a journalist and critic, he played clarinet in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He was married to the concert violinist Sylvia Lent. He also was professor of Art History at the University of California at Berkeley in the 1970s and a professor of Art History at Mills College in Oakland in the 1960s and 1970s. Frankenstein was a cousin of Abraham F. Franken ...
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Leonard Slatkin
Leonard Edward Slatkin (born September 1, 1944) is an American conductor, author and composer. Early life and education Slatkin was born in Los Angeles to a Jewish musical family that came from areas of the Russian Empire now in Ukraine. His father, Felix Slatkin, was the violinist, conductor and founder of the Hollywood String Quartet, and his mother, Eleanor Aller, was the cellist with the quartet. His brother, Frederick, now a cellist, traced the family's original name as Zlotkin, and adopted that form of the family surname for himself professionally. Frederick Zlotkin has spoken of the family lineage as follows: :: "The Zlotkin/Slatkin lineage is Russian-Jewish. The first Zlotkin arrival to the US was Felix's father, grandpa Chaim Peretz Zlotkin, who came to settle with relatives in St. Louis in 1904; he (or the clerk at Ellis Island) changed the name. He probably came from the town of Mogilev ow Mohyliv-Podilskyi">Mohyliv-Podilskyi.html" ;"title="ow Mohyliv-Podilskyi">ow M ...
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Josef Lhévinne
Josef Lhévinne (13 December 18742 December 1944) was a Russian pianist and piano teacher. Lhévinne wrote a short book in 1924 that is considered a classic: ''Basic Principles in Pianoforte Playing''. Asked how to say his name, he told ''The Literary Digest'' it was ''lay-VEEN''. Biography Joseph Arkadievich Levin (the name was altered in western Europe by a manager who thought "Lhévinne" more distinctive and less Jewish) was born into a Jewish family of musicians in Oryol south of Moscow. He studied at the Imperial Conservatory in Moscow under Vasily Safonov. He made his public debut at the age of 14 with Ludwig van Beethoven's ''Emperor Concerto'' in a performance conducted by his musical hero Anton Rubinstein. He graduated at the top of a class that included both Sergei Rachmaninoff and Alexander Scriabin, winning the gold medal for piano in 1892. In 1895 Levin won the Second International Anton Rubinstein Competition held in Berlin, emerging as the favoured pianist in a ...
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Brahms
Johannes Brahms (; 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, pianist, and conductor of the mid-Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, he spent much of his professional life in Vienna. He is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the "Three Bs" of music, a comment originally made by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow. Brahms composed for symphony orchestra, chamber ensembles, piano, organ, violin, voice, and chorus. A virtuoso pianist, he premiered many of his own works. He worked with leading performers of his time, including the pianist Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim (the three were close friends). Many of his works have become staples of the modern concert repertoire. Brahms has been considered both a traditionalist and an innovator, by his contemporaries and by later writers. His music is rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of the Classical masters. Embe ...
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Victor Aller
Victor Aller (March 26, 1905, New York City – May 1977, in the area of Los Angeles, California) was an American pianist. He had a successful career behind the scenes in the film industry, and he taught piano in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, Hollywood, where his students sometimes included actors preparing to depict musicians on screen, such as Dirk Bogarde and Cornel Wilde. His present fame, however, rests primarily on his performances in acclaimed 1950s-vintage Capitol Records recordings with the Hollywood String Quartet, including accounts of piano quintets by Johannes Brahms, César Franck, and Dmitri Shostakovich, and the Brahms piano quartets. Aller had family and professional ties to the quartet. His sister, Eleanor Aller, was its cellist, and her husband, Felix Slatkin, was its first violinist. They and the other quartet members were all musicians with the Hollywood studios of the era, and Victor Aller was the orchestra manager at Warner Bros. during the 1940s ...
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Samuel Gardner
Samuel Gardner (August 25, 1891, Kropyvnytskyi, Elizavetgrad – January 23, 1984) was an American composer and violinist of Russian Jewish origin. He won a Pulitzer prize with a string quartet in 1918. He was a student of Franz Kneisel and Percy Goetschius, and began his career as a concert violinist; among his compositions is a violin concerto. He wrote a number of other chamber music, chamber works, and a handful of things for orchestra, including ''Broadway'', which was performed by the Boston Symphony in the 1929-30 season. Biography Samuel Gardner was born August 25, 1891, in Kropyvnytskyi, Elizavethgrad, Russian Empire, and was brought to the United States at the age of one. His family settled in Providence, Rhode Island, where Gardner attended elementary and high school. From the age of seven, he studied violin with Felix Wendelschaefer. He continued his studies in Boston with Charles Martin Loeffler and Felix Winternitz from 1902 to 1908. At the Juilliard School, New Yo ...
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Joseph Fuchs
Joseph Philip Fuchs (April 26, 1899 or 1900 – March 14, 1997) was one of the most important American violinists and teachers of the 20th century, and the brother of Lillian Fuchs. Born in New York, he graduated in 1918 from the Institute of Musical Art in New York where he studied with Franz Kneisel. In 1926 he was appointed concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra, but resigned in 1940 to pursue a solo career. After a successful New York début in 1943, he became co-founder of the Musicians’ Guild, a chamber music organization which he directed there until 1956. He toured extensively in Europe, appearing at the 1953 and 1954 Prades festivals, and in South America, the USSR, Israel and Japan; he also played as a soloist with every important orchestra in the USA. Joseph Fuchs performed a series of recitals with pianist Artur Balsam in 1956 for the Peabody Mason Concert series in Boston.''Boston Globe'', 24-Feb-1956, John Wm. Riley, "Fuchs and Balsam in Beethoven sonatas" ...
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Variety (magazine)
''Variety'' is an American media company owned by Penske Media Corporation. The company was founded by Sime Silverman in New York City in 1905 as a weekly newspaper reporting on theater and vaudeville. In 1933 it added ''Daily Variety'', based in Los Angeles, to cover the motion-picture industry. ''Variety.com'' features entertainment news, reviews, box office results, cover stories, videos, photo galleries and features, plus a credits database, production charts and calendar, with archive content dating back to 1905. History Foundation ''Variety'' has been published since December 16, 1905, when it was launched by Sime Silverman as a weekly periodical covering theater and vaudeville with its headquarters in New York City. Silverman had been fired by ''The Morning Telegraph'' in 1905 for panning an act which had taken out an advert for $50. As a result, he decided to start his own publication "that ouldnot be influenced by advertising." With a loan of $1,500 from his father- ...
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