Piano Concerto No. 3 (Medtner)
The Piano Concerto No. 3 in E minor "Ballade", Op. 60, was one of Nikolai Medtner's last major compositions, completed in 1943, when he was 63. Background The Third Concerto was commissioned by the pianist Benno Moiseiwitsch, who had been an early champion of Medtner. Privately, Medtner said that the first movement was inspired by Mikhail Lermontov's ballad ''Rusalka'', about a water-nymph whose seductive advances fail to arouse a sleeping knight. He extended Lermontov's poem for the remaining movements: The knight (personifying the human spirit) awakens and sings a song that turns into a hymn, symbolizing his triumph over temptation and his achievement of redemption and eternal life.Toronto Symphony Orchestra Medtner and his wife Anna were living in [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nikolai Medtner
Nikolai Karlovich Medtner (russian: Никола́й Ка́рлович Ме́тнер, ''Nikoláj Kárlovič Métner''; 13 November 1951) was a Russian composer and virtuoso pianist. After a period of comparative obscurity in the 25 years immediately after his death, he is now becoming recognized as one of the most significant Russian composers for the piano. A younger contemporary of Sergei Rachmaninoff and Alexander Scriabin, he wrote a substantial number of compositions, all of which include the piano. His works include 14 piano sonatas, three violin sonatas, three piano concerti, a piano quintet, two works for two pianos, many shorter piano pieces, a few shorter works for violin and piano, and 108 songs including two substantial works for vocalise. His 38 ''Skazki'' (generally known as "Fairy Tales" in English but more correctly translated as "Tales") for piano solo contain some of his most original music. Biography Nikolai Medtner was born in Moscow on 24 December 1879, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Royal Albert Hall
The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington, London. One of the UK's most treasured and distinctive buildings, it is held in trust for the nation and managed by a registered charity which receives no government funding. It can seat 5,272. Since the hall's opening by Queen Victoria in 1871, the world's leading artists from many performance genres have appeared on its stage. It is the venue for the BBC Proms concerts, which have been held there every summer since 1941. It is host to more than 390 shows in the main auditorium annually, including classical, rock and pop concerts, ballet, opera, film screenings with live orchestral accompaniment, sports, awards ceremonies, school and community events, and charity performances and banquets. A further 400 events are held each year in the non-auditorium spaces. Over its 151 year history the hall has hosted people from various fields, including meetings by Suffragettes, speeches from Winston Churchi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Michael Ponti
Michael Ponti (29 October 1937 – 17 October 2022) was a German-American classical pianist. He was the first to record the complete piano works by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and Scriabin. He made more than 80 recordings, around 50 of rarely played concertos from the Romantic period, often the only recording of these works at the time. He played and recorded chamber music with his Ponti-Zimansky-Polasek Trio. Life and career Ponti was born in Freiburg im Breisgau; his father was a U.S. diplomat, and his German mother later became an American citizen. He lived in the United States for most of his childhood and youth. While still attending school in Washington, D.C., he received piano lessons for ten years, seven of them with Gilmour McDonald, who had studied with Leopold Godowsky. At age eleven, he played both parts of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier in four recitals at the YMCA in Washington from memory. The family returned to Germany in 1955. Ponti studied at the Musikhochschule ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Yevgeny Svetlanov
Yevgeny Fyodorovich Svetlanov (russian: Евгéний Фёдорович Светлáнов; 6 September 1928 – 3 May 2002) was a Russian conductor, composer and a pianist. Life and work Svetlanov was born in Moscow and studied conducting with Aleksandr Gauk at the Moscow Conservatory. From 1955 he conducted at the Bolshoi Theatre, being appointed principal conductor there in 1962. From 1965 he was principal conductor of the USSR State Symphony Orchestra (now the Russian State Symphony Orchestra). In 1979 he was appointed principal guest conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. Svetlanov was also music director of the Residentie Orchestra (The Hague) from 1992 to 2000 and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra from 1997 to 1999. In 2000 Svetlanov was fired from his post with the Russian State Symphony Orchestra by the minister of culture of Russia, Mikhail Shvydkoi. The reason given was that Svetlanov was spending too much time conducting abroad and not enough time in Mosco ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra
The Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra is a Russian classical music radio orchestra established in 1930. It was founded as the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra, and served as the official symphony for the Soviet All-Union Radio network. History Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the orchestra was renamed in 1993 by the Russian Ministry of Culture in recognition of the central role the music of Tchaikovsky plays in its repertoire. The current music director is Vladimir Fedoseyev, who has been in that position since 1974. During Soviet times, the orchestra was sometimes known as the USSR State Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra, the USSR State Radio Symphony Orchestra, or the USSR All-Union National Radio and Central Television Symphony Orchestra. Music Directors *Vladimir Fedoseyev (1974–) *Gennady Rozhdestvensky (1961–1974) *Alexander Gauk (1953–1961) *Nikolai Golovanov (1937–1953) * Alexander Orlov (1930–1937) Selected discogra ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tatiana Nikolayeva
Tatiana Petrovna Nikolayeva (russian: Татья́на Петро́вна Никола́ева, ''Tat'jana Petrovna Nikolajeva''; May 4, 1924November 22, 1993) was a pianist, composer, and teacher from the Soviet Union. Life Nikolayeva was born in Bezhitsa, in the Bryansk district, on May 4, 1924. Her mother was a professional pianist and studied at the Moscow Conservatory under the renowned pedagogue Alexander Goldenweiser, and her father was an amateur violinist and cellist. Nikolayeva won first prize in the International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition in Leipzig, which was founded to mark the bicentenary of Bach's death in 1750. Dmitri Shostakovich, who was a member of the jury, composed and dedicated the 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87, to her: it remained an important part of her piano repertoire. She sat as a jury member on international competitions such as the Paloma O'Shea Santander International Piano Competition, the International Tchaikovsky Competition and the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Issay Dobrowen
Issay Alexandrovich Dobrowen (russian: Исай Александрович Добровейн; in Nizhny Novgorod, Russian Empire9 December 1953, Oslo, Norway), born Itschok Zorachovitch Barabeitchik, was a Russian/Soviet-Norwegian pianist, composer and conductor. He left the Soviet Union in 1922 and became a Norwegian citizen in 1929. Biography He studied at the Moscow Conservatory, his teachers including Konstantin Igumnov and Sergei Taneyev, graduating with a gold medal. He taught from 1917–1921 at the Moscow Philharmonic Conservatory. He once played Beethoven's '' Sonata Appassionata'' for Vladimir Lenin, this sonata being the revolutionary's favorite piece of music. Dobrowen directed the first German performance of Mussorgsky's ''Boris Godunov'' (Dresden, 1922). Dobrowen went on to conduct the Oslo Philharmonic orchestra (1928–31), at the Sofia Opera (1927–28), and the San Francisco Symphony (1931–34) and the Gothenburg Symphony (1941–53) orchestras. Dobrowe ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Philharmonia Orchestra
The Philharmonia Orchestra is a British orchestra based in London. It was founded in 1945 by Walter Legge, a classical music record producer for EMI. Among the conductors who worked with the orchestra in its early years were Richard Strauss, Wilhelm Furtwängler and Arturo Toscanini; of the Philharmonia's younger conductors, the most important to its development was Herbert von Karajan who, though never formally chief conductor, was closely associated with the orchestra in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The Philharmonia became widely regarded as the finest of London's five symphony orchestras in its first two decades. From the late 1950s to the early 1970s the orchestra's chief conductor was Otto Klemperer, with whom the orchestra gave many concerts and made numerous recordings of the core orchestral repertoire. During Klemperer's tenure Legge, citing the difficulty of maintaining the orchestra's high standards, attempted to disband it in 1964, but the players, backed by Klemp ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sonata Form
Sonata form (also ''sonata-allegro form'' or ''first movement form'') is a musical form, musical structure generally consisting of three main sections: an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation. It has been used widely since the middle of the 18th century (the early Classical music era, Classical period). While it is typically used in the first Movement (music), movement of multi-movement pieces, it is sometimes used in subsequent movements as well—particularly the final movement. The teaching of sonata form in music theory rests on a standard definition and a series of hypotheses about the underlying reasons for the durability and variety of the form—a definition that arose in the second quarter of the 19th century. There is little disagreement that on the largest level, the form consists of three main sections: an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation; however, beneath this general structure, sonata form is difficult to pin down to a single model. The st ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Binary Form
Binary form is a musical form in 2 related sections, both of which are usually repeated. Binary is also a structure used to choreograph dance. In music this is usually performed as A-A-B-B. Binary form was popular during the Baroque period, often used to structure movements of keyboard sonatas. It was also used for short, one-movement works. Around the middle of the 18th century, the form largely fell from use as the principal design of entire movements as sonata form and organic development gained prominence. When it is found in later works, it usually takes the form of the theme in a set of variations, or the Minuet, Scherzo, or Trio sections of a "minuet and trio" or "scherzo and trio" movement in a sonata, symphony, etc. Many larger forms incorporate binary structures, and many more complicated forms (such as the 18th-century sonata form) share certain characteristics with binary form. Structure A typical example of a piece in binary form has two large sections of roughly ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ritornello
A ritornello (Italian; "little return") is a recurring passage in Baroque music for orchestra or chorus. Early history The earliest use of the term "ritornello" in music referred to the final lines of a fourteenth-century madrigal, which were usually in a rhyme scheme and meter that contrasted with the rest of the song. Scholars suggest that the word "ritornello" comes either from the Italian word ''ritorno'' (meaning return), or from ''tornando'' (meaning turnaround or flourish). Literally, in Italian it means "little return". Baroque music The ritornello as a recurring tutti passage can be traced back to the music of sixteenth-century Venetian composer Giovanni Gabrieli. According to Richard Taruskin, these repeating passages are "endemic to the ''concertato'' style" which Gabrieli is credited with developing. The idea of an orchestral ritornello played an important role in the structure of opera in the eighteenth century. The most common form for an aria during the Baroque per ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dmitry Paperno
Dmitry Paperno (1929 in Kyiv – 2020 in Northbrook, IL) was a Soviet and American concert pianist. In 1955, Paperno won 6th Prize in the V International Chopin Piano Competition, and then recorded and performed widely under the Soviet regime. He attended the Moscow Conservatory where he studied under Alexander Goldenweiser. Paperno recorded for Melodiya and prior to recording with Cedille Records. Paperno became a tenured professor at DePaul University DePaul University is a private university, private, Catholic higher education, Catholic research university in Chicago, Illinois. Founded by the Congregation of the Mission, Vincentians in 1898, the university takes its name from the 17th-centu ... after moving to the United States in 1976. He is the author of the book ''Notes of a Moscow Pianist''. References External linksArtist profile at bach-cantatas.com [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |