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Lieder Ohne Worte
''Songs Without Words'' (') is a series of short lyrical piano works by the Romantic composer Felix Mendelssohn written between 1829 and 1845. His sister, Fanny Mendelssohn, and other composers also wrote pieces in the same genre. Music The eight volumes of ''Songs Without Words'', each consisting of six songs (), were written at various points throughout Mendelssohn's life and published separately. The piano became increasingly popular in Europe during the early nineteenth century, when it became a standard item in many middle-class households. The pieces are within the grasp of pianists of various abilities and this undoubtedly contributed to their popularity. This great popularity has caused many critics to under-rate their musical value. The first volume was published by Novello in London (1832) as ''Original Melodies for the Pianoforte'', but the later volumes used the title ''Songs Without Words''. The works were part of the Romantic tradition of writing short lyrical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboard, which is a row of keys (small levers) that the performer presses down or strikes with the fingers and thumbs of both hands to cause the hammers to strike the strings. It was invented in Italy by Bartolomeo Cristofori around the year 1700. Description The word "piano" is a shortened form of ''pianoforte'', the Italian term for the early 1700s versions of the instrument, which in turn derives from ''clavicembalo col piano e forte'' (key cimbalom with quiet and loud)Pollens (1995, 238) and ''fortepiano''. The Italian musical terms ''piano'' and ''forte'' indicate "soft" and "loud" respectively, in this context referring to the variations in volume (i.e., loudness) produced in response to a pianist's touch or pressure on the keys: the grea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lisa Cristiani
Lisa Barbier Cristiani (December 24, 1827 – October 24, 1853), also known as Lise Cristiani or Elise Cristiani, was a French cellist and performer known for being one of the earliest recorded instances of a woman becoming a professional in the field. Childhood Born in Paris, it is believed that Cristiani was of Italian descent, though little more is known of her early years. She did eventually become a cello apprentice to Edouard Benazet and had her concert debut on February 14, 1845 at the Salle des Concerts Herz. Professional life Cristiani was one of the earliest professional female musical performers of her era and began playing numerous concerts in her late teenage years. The early tours she conducted included stops at Vienna, Linz, Ratisbon, Baden-Baden, and Hamburg. The last in Hamburg resulted in such a popular fervor for her that her portrait (''shown above'') became a highly sought after item. Her level of play caught the attention of and the support of composer Felix ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barcarolle
A barcarolle (; from French, also barcarole; originally, Italian barcarola or barcaruola, from ''barca'' 'boat') is a traditional folk song sung by Venetian gondoliers, or a piece of music composed in that style. In classical music, two of the most famous barcarolles are Jacques Offenbach's "Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour", from his opera ''The Tales of Hoffmann''; and Frédéric Chopin's Barcarolle in F-sharp major for solo piano. Description A barcarolle is characterized by a rhythm reminiscent of the gondolier's stroke, almost invariably in 6/8 meter at a moderate tempo. While the most-famous barcarolles are from the Romantic period, the genre was known well enough in the 18th century for Burney to mention, in ''The Present State of Music in France and Italy'' (1771), that it was a celebrated form cherished by "collectors of good taste". Notable examples The barcarolle was a popular form in opera, where the apparently artless sentimental style of the folklike song could b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles-Valentin Alkan
Charles-Valentin Alkan (; 30 November 1813 – 29 March 1888) was a French Jewish composer and virtuoso pianist. At the height of his fame in the 1830s and 1840s he was, alongside his friends and colleagues Frédéric Chopin and Franz Liszt, among the leading pianists in Paris, a city in which he spent virtually his entire life. Alkan earned many awards at the Conservatoire de Paris, which he entered before he was six. His career in the salons and concert halls of Paris was marked by his occasional long withdrawals from public performance, for personal reasons. Although he had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances in the Parisian artistic world, including Eugène Delacroix and George Sand, from 1848 he began to adopt a reclusive life style, while continuing with his compositions – virtually all of which are for the keyboard. During this period he published, among other works, his collections of large-scale studies in all the major keys (Op. 35) and all the mino ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mischa Maisky
Mischa Maisky ( lv, Miša Maiskis, he, מישה מייסקי, russian: Миша Майский; born 10 January 1948) is a Soviet-born Israeli cellist. Biography Mischa Maisky was born in 1948 in Riga and is the younger brother of organist, harpsichordist and musicologist Valery Maisky (1942–1981). He was taught by Mstislav Rostropovich at the Moscow Conservatory from 1966 to 1970. In 1966, he won sixth prize at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. In 1970, he was arrested and spent 18 months in jail and a work camp and later 2 months in mental hospital. He emigrated to Israel in 1972, where he holds citizenship. In 1974 he studied with Gregor Piatigorsky in Los Angeles. Maisky currently lives in Belgium. Maisky has worked with artists including the pianists Martha Argerich, Khatia Buniatishvili, Radu Lupu, Nelson Freire, Peter Serkin, Evgeny Kissin, Lang Lang and Sergio Tiempo, the violinists Gidon Kremer, Itzhak Perlman, Vadim Repin, Maxim Vengerov, Joshua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Utrecht
Utrecht ( , , ) is the List of cities in the Netherlands by province, fourth-largest city and a List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality of the Netherlands, capital and most populous city of the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of Utrecht (province), Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, in the very centre of mainland Netherlands, about 35 km south east of the capital Amsterdam and 45 km north east of Rotterdam. It has a population of 361,966 as of 1 December 2021. Utrecht's ancient city centre features many buildings and structures, several dating as far back as the High Middle Ages. It has been the religious centre of the Netherlands since the 8th century. It was the most important city in the Netherlands until the Dutch Golden Age, when it was surpassed by Amsterdam as the country's cultural centre and most populous city. Utrecht is home to Utrecht University, the largest university in the Netherlands, as well as seve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard And John Contiguglia
Richard and John Contiguglia (born April 13, 1937 in Auburn, New York) are American identical twin duo-pianists. Born to Italian immigrant parents, they were the second set of twins and the youngest of seven children. Biography At the age of five they started piano lessons, and at six gave their first public performance together. At the age of twelve they performed a group of two-piano pieces on a recital in their hometown by the composer-pianist Percy Grainger. Grainger was so impressed with the twins' talent that a few months later he sent them much of his four-hand music, which they championed throughout their career. Their first important teacher was Jean Wilder, a pupil of Tobias Matthay, then on the faculty of Wells College in Aurora, New York. After graduating first and second in their class from public high school in Auburn, the twins attended Yale College. They were elected to Phi Beta Kappa in their junior year, an honor extended to the top 1% of their class of 1000, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Egon Petri
Egon Petri (23 March 188127 May 1962) was a Dutch pianist. Life and career Petri's family was Dutch. He was born a Dutch citizen but in Hanover, Germany, and grew up in Dresden, where he attended the Kreuzschule. His father, a professional violinist, taught him to play the violin. While still a teenager, Petri played with the Dresden Court Orchestra and with his father's string quartet. He studied composition and theory with Hermann Kretzschmar and Felix Draeseke at the Dresden Conservatory. From an early age Petri had also taken piano lessons and eventually, with strong encouragement from Ignacy Jan Paderewski and Ferruccio Busoni, he concentrated on piano. He studied with Busoni, who greatly influenced him, and Petri considered himself more a disciple than a student of his. Following his example, Petri focused on the works of Johann Sebastian Bach and Franz Liszt, who, along with Busoni himself, were at the centre of his repertoire. During World War I, Petri moved wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni (1 April 1866 – 27 July 1924) was an Italian composer, pianist, conductor, editor, writer, and teacher. His international career and reputation led him to work closely with many of the leading musicians, artists and literary figures of his time, and he was a sought-after keyboard instructor and a teacher of composition. From an early age, Busoni was an outstanding, if sometimes controversial, pianist. He studied at the Vienna Conservatory and then with Wilhelm Mayer and Carl Reinecke. After brief periods teaching in Helsinki, Boston, and Moscow, he devoted himself to composing, teaching, and touring as a virtuoso pianist in Europe and the United States. His writings on music were influential, and covered not only aesthetics but considerations of microtones and other innovative topics. He was based in Berlin from 1894 but spent much of World War I in Switzerland. He began composing in his early years in a late romantic style, but after 1907, when he publis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt, in modern usage ''Liszt Ferenc'' . Liszt's Hungarian passport spelled his given name as "Ferencz". An orthographic reform of the Hungarian language in 1922 (which was 36 years after Liszt's death) changed the letter "cz" to simply "c" in all words except surnames; this has led to Liszt's given name being rendered in modern Hungarian usage as "Ferenc". From 1859 to 1867 he was officially Franz Ritter von Liszt; he was created a ''Ritter'' (knight) by Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria, Francis Joseph I in 1859, but never used this title of nobility in public. The title was necessary to marry the Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein without her losing her privileges, but after the marriage fell through, Liszt transferred the title to his uncle Eduard in 1867. Eduard's son was Franz von Liszt., group=n (22 October 1811 – 31 July 1886) was a Hungarian composer, pianist and teacher of the Romantic music, Romantic period. With a diverse List of compositions by Franz L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chamber Ensemble
Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers, with one performer to a part (in contrast to orchestral music, in which each string part is played by a number of performers). However, by convention, it usually does not include solo instrument performances. Because of its intimate nature, chamber music has been described as "the music of friends". For more than 100 years, chamber music was played primarily by amateur musicians in their homes, and even today, when chamber music performance has migrated from the home to the concert hall, many musicians, amateur and professional, still play chamber music for their own pleasure. Playing chamber music requires special skills, both musical and social, that differ from the skills required for playing solo or symphonic works. J ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carl Czerny
Carl Czerny (; 21 February 1791 – 15 July 1857) was an Austrian composer, teacher, and pianist of Czech origin whose music spanned the late Classical and early Romantic eras. His vast musical production amounted to over a thousand works and his books of studies for the piano are still widely used in piano teaching. He was one of Ludwig van Beethoven's best-known pupils. Early life Infancy Carl Czerny was born in Vienna (Leopoldstadt) and was baptized in St. Leopold parish. His parents were of Czech origin; his mother was Moravian. His parents spoke Czech with him. Czerny came from a musical family: his grandfather was a violinist at Nymburk, near Prague, and his father, Wenzel, was an oboist, organist and pianist. When Czerny was six months old, his father took a job as a piano teacher at a Polish manor and the family moved to Poland, where they lived until the third partition of Poland prompted the family to return to Vienna in 1795. As a child prodigy, Czerny began playin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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