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Hong Kong Chamber Orchestra
The Hong Kong Chamber Orchestra (Chinese: 香港 室 樂團) was founded in 1976 by a small group of musicians who felt that there was a need in Hong Kong for a chamber-sized orchestra aiming at a high standard of music making. The Orchestra consists of around 30 professional and non-professional musicians and gives around ten concerts in Hong Kong each year. Prof. Robert Lord, a professor of linguistics at University of Hong Kong, was the first music director and official founder of the orchestra. The orchestra has been closely associated with HKU right from the start. In the early years the HKCO did more work with choirs, particularly the Bach Choir. HKCO conductors over the years have included Robert Lord, Peter Stephenson, Nicholas Routley, Malcolm Butler, KK Chiu and Ken Lam. Repertoire The Hong Kong Chamber Orchestra has a wide coverage of repertoire from Bach cantatas, to Mozart overtures and Beethoven symphonies, to Elgar, Brahms, Dvořák, Johann Strauss, to Tchaikovsky ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Language
Chinese (, especially when referring to written Chinese) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China. About 1.3 billion people (or approximately 16% of the world's population) speak a variety of Chinese as their first language. Chinese languages form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages family. The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be variants of a single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered separate languages in a family. Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese, of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin (with about 800 million speakers, or 66%), followed by Min (75 million, e.g. Southern Min), Wu (74 million, e.g. Shangh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johann Strauss II
Johann Baptist Strauss II (25 October 1825 – 3 June 1899), also known as Johann Strauss Jr., the Younger or the Son (german: links=no, Sohn), was an Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas. He composed over 500 waltzes, polkas, quadrilles, and other types of dance music, as well as several operettas and a ballet. In his lifetime, he was known as "The Waltz King", and was largely responsible for the popularity of the waltz in Vienna during the 19th century. Some of Johann Strauss's most famous works include "The Blue Danube", "Kaiser-Walzer" (Emperor Waltz), "Tales from the Vienna Woods", "Frühlingsstimmen", and the "Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka". Among his operettas, ''Die Fledermaus'' and ''Der Zigeunerbaron'' are the best known. Strauss was the son of Johann Strauss I and his first wife Maria Anna Streim. Two younger brothers, Josef and Eduard Strauss, also became composers of light music, although they were never as well known as their brot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Harvey (composer)
Richard Allen Harvey (born 25 September 1953) is an English composer and musician. Originally of the mediaevalist progressive rock group Gryphon, he is best known now for his film and television soundtracks. He is also known for his guitar concerto ''Concerto Antico'', which was composed for the guitarist John Williams and the London Symphony Orchestra. In April 2012, UK radio listeners voted Richard Harvey's Concerto Antico into the Classic FM Hall of Fame for the first time. Early life and career Born in Enfield, Middlesex, Harvey became involved in music, learning the recorder when he was four years old, switching first to percussion and later playing clarinet in the British Youth Symphony Orchestra. By the time he graduated from London's Royal College of Music in 1972, he was accomplished on the recorder, flute, krumhorn, and other mediaeval and Renaissance-era instruments, as well as the mandolin and various keyboards. He could have joined the London Philharmonic Orche ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anne Boyd
Anne Elizabeth Boyd AM (born 10 April 1946) is an Australian composer and emeritus professor of music at the University of Sydney. Early life Boyd was born in Sydney to James Boyd and Annie Freda Deason Boyd (née Osborn). Her father died when she was age 3, and her mother sent her to live with relatives on a sheep station (Maneroo) near Longreach, in central Queensland. This intimate experience with the Australian landscape – its expansiveness, its dramatic changes, and its "indescribable energy" – had a profound influence on her future as a composer. She began composing while still at Maneroo, at the age of eight, for the resources she had available: recorder and voice. She moved to Canberra aged 11, and although she was pleased to be reunited with her mother, she missed the beauty of the outback terrain. In New South Wales, she received her education at Albury High School and Hornsby Girls' High School. Boyd studied music at the University of Sydney, where she was one o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn ( , ; 31 March 173231 May 1809) was an Austrian composer of the Classical period. He was instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the string quartet and piano trio. His contributions to musical form have led him to be called "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet". Haydn spent much of his career as a court musician for the wealthy Esterházy family at their Eszterháza Castle. Until the later part of his life, this isolated him from other composers and trends in music so that he was, as he put it, "forced to become original". Yet his music circulated widely, and for much of his career he was the most celebrated composer in Europe. He was a friend and mentor of Mozart, a tutor of Beethoven, and the elder brother of composer Michael Haydn. Biography Early life Joseph Haydn was born in Rohrau, Austria, a village that at that time stood on the border with Hungary. His father was Mathias Haydn, a wheelwright who also se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Loke Yew Hall
The University of Hong Kong (HKU) (Chinese: 香港大學) is a public research university in Hong Kong. Founded in 1887 as the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese, it is the oldest tertiary institution in Hong Kong. HKU was also the first university established by the British in East Asia. As of December 2022, HKU ranks 21st internationally and third in Asia by '' QS'', and 31st internationally and fourth in Asia by ''Times Higher Education''. It has been ranked as the most international university in the world as well as one of the most prestigious universities in Asia. Today, HKU has ten academic faculties with English as the main language of instruction. The University of Hong Kong was also the first team in the world to successfully isolate the coronavirus SARS-CoV, the causative agent of SARS. History Founding The origins of The University of Hong Kong can be traced back to the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese founded in 1887 by Ho Kai later known as S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rayson Huang
Rayson Lisung Huang, (; 1 September 1920 − 8 April 2015), was a Hong Kong chemist, who was an expert on radicals. He was the first Chinese Vice-Chancellor of The University of Hong Kong, a position in which he served from 1972 until 1986. Early years Huang's family came from Shantou, Guangdong. He completed his primary and secondary education at Munsang College, where his father was the founding principal. He later attended St. John's University in Shanghai in 1937, but his studies were interrupted by the Japanese invasion. After 1938 he continued his studies as a scholarship student at The University of Hong Kong. In Hong Kong Huang majored in chemistry at St. John's Hall (now called St. John's College). In addition to his academic studies, Huang was an accomplished violinist. Following the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong in 1941, Huang briefly worked with British auxiliary forces and was responsible for detecting chemical weapons. In 1942 his studies at the University were ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vice-chancellor
A chancellor is a leader of a college or university, usually either the executive or ceremonial head of the university or of a university campus within a university system. In most Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth and former Commonwealth nations, the chancellor is usually a ceremonial non-resident head of the university. In such institutions, the chief executive of a university is the vice-chancellor, who may carry an additional title such as ''president'' (e.g. "president & vice-chancellor"). The chancellor may serve as chairperson of the governing body; if not, this duty is often held by a chairperson who may be known as a pro-chancellor. In many countries, the administrative and educational head of the university is known as the president, principal (academia), principal or rector (academia), rector. In the United States, the head of a university is most commonly a university president. In U.S., university systems that have more than one affiliated university or campus, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Siegfried Idyll
The ', WWV 103, by Richard Wagner is a symphonic poem for chamber orchestra. Background Wagner composed the ''Siegfried Idyll'' as a birthday present to his second wife, Cosima, after the birth of their son Siegfried in 1869. It was first performed on Christmas morning, 25 December 1870, by a small ensemble of the Tonhalle Orchester Zürich on the stairs of their villa at Tribschen (today part of Lucerne), Switzerland. Cosima awoke to its opening melody. Conductor Hans Richter learned the trumpet in order to play the brief trumpet part, which lasts only 13 measures, in that private performance, reportedly having sailed out to the centre of Lake Lucerne to practise, so as not to be heard. The original title was ''Triebschen Idyll with Fidi's birdsong and the orange sunrise, as symphonic birthday greeting. Presented to his Cosima by her Richard.'' "Fidi" was the family's nickname for their son Siegfried. It is thought that the birdsong and the sunrise refer to incidents of per ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the ''Gesamtkunstwerk'' ("total work of art"), by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama. He described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'' (''The Ring of the Nibelung''). His compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for their complex textures, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metamorphosen
''Metamorphosen,'' study for 23 solo strings (TrV 290, AV 142) is a composition by Richard Strauss for ten violins, five violas, five cellos, and three double basses, typically lasting 25 to 30 minutes. It was composed during the closing months of the Second World War, from August 1944 to March 1945. The piece was commissioned by Paul Sacher, the founder and director of the Basler Kammerorchester and Collegium Musicum Zürich, to whom Strauss dedicated it. It was first performed on 25 January 1946 by Sacher and the Collegium Musicum Zürich, with Strauss conducting the final rehearsal. Composition history By 1944, Strauss was in poor health and needed to visit the Swiss spa at Baden near Zürich. But he was unable to get the Nazi government's permission to travel abroad. Karl Böhm, Paul Sacher and Willi Schuh came up with a plan to get the travel permit: a commission from Sacher and invitation to the premiere in Zurich. The commission was made in a letter by Böhm on August 28 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss (; 11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a German composer, conductor, pianist, and violinist. Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras, he has been described as a successor of Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt. Along with Gustav Mahler, he represents the late flowering of German Romanticism, in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined with an advanced harmonic style. Strauss's compositional output began in 1870 when he was just six years old and lasted until his death nearly eighty years later. While his output of works encompasses nearly every type of classical compositional form, Strauss achieved his greatest success with tone poems and operas. His first tone poem to achieve wide acclaim was ''Don Juan'', and this was followed by other lauded works of this kind, including ''Death and Transfiguration'', ''Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks'', ''Also sprach Zarathustra'', ''Don Quixote'', ''Ein Heldenleben' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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