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Rhondda Gillespie
Rhondda Gillespie (4 August 194130 December 2010) was an Australian-born classical pianist who resided primarily in the United Kingdom and Barbados. She was a specialist in the music of Franz Liszt and brought to light many of his lesser-known works. She was also renowned for her focus on contemporary music, and she gave many world premieres of British music. Career Rhondda Marie Gillespie was born in Sydney in 1941, the only child of architect David Gillespie and his wife Marie (nee Saywell). At age 8 she played Manuel de Falla's '' Ritual Fire Dance''"Concert pianist brought lesser-known Liszt pieces to life" ''Sydney Morning Herald'', 2 February 2011; retrieved 1 June 2013. on |
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by area in Oceania and the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, sixth-largest country. Australia is the oldest, flattest, and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils. It is a Megadiverse countries, megadiverse country, and its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes and climates, with Deserts of Australia, deserts in the centre, tropical Forests of Australia, rainforests in the north-east, and List of mountains in Australia, mountain ranges in the south-east. The ancestors of Aboriginal Australians began arriving from south east Asia approximately Early human migrations#Nearby Oceania, 65,000 years ago, during the Last Glacial Period, last i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cheltenham Festival
The Cheltenham Festival is a horse racing-based meeting in the National Hunt racing calendar in the United Kingdom, with race prize money second only to the Grand National. The four-day festival takes place annually in March at Cheltenham Racecourse in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. It usually coincides with Saint Patrick's Day and is particularly popular with Irish visitors. The meeting features several Grade I races including the Cheltenham Gold Cup, Champion Hurdle, Queen Mother Champion Chase and Stayers' Hurdle. Large amounts of money are gambled; hundreds of millions of pounds are bet over the course of the week. Cheltenham is noted for its atmosphere, including the "Cheltenham roar", which refers to the enormous amount of noise that the crowd generates as the starter raises the tape for the first race of the festival. History Origins The Cheltenham Festival originated in 1860 when the National Hunt Chase was first held at Market Harborough. It was initially titled the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Usko Meriläinen
Usko Aatos Meriläinen (January 27, 1930 – November 12, 2004) was a Finnish composer. He was born in Tampere. Usko Meriläinen studied orchestral conducting with Leo Funtek and composition with Aarre Merikanto at the Sibelius Academy. Meriläinen conducted the Finnish Opera Choir from 1954 to1956, the Kuopio City Orchestra from 1956 to 1957, and the Tampere Workers' Theater Orchestra from 1957 to 1961. He was chairman of the Finnish Composers' Association from 1981 to 1992 and served as artistic advisor of the Tampere Biennale. In 1954 his ''Partita for Brass'' won second prize in the Thor Johnson Brass Composition competition in Cincinnati, Ohio.Hillila, Ruth-Esther; Hong, Barbara Blanchard (1997). , pages 260–1. Greenwood Publishing Group. . Meriläinen won an award for Jussi's film ''Private Area'' in 1963. He was also awarded the Pro Finlandia Prize in 1987. Meriläinen was married to choreographer Ruth Matso, who choreographed the premiere of his ballet ''Arius''. Their ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Bliss
Sir Arthur Edward Drummond Bliss (2 August 189127 March 1975) was an English composer and conductor. Bliss's musical training was cut short by the First World War, in which he served with distinction in the army. In the post-war years he quickly became known as an unconventional and Modernism (music), modernist composer, but within the decade he began to display a more traditional and romantic side in his music. In the 1920s and 1930s he composed extensively not only for the concert hall, but also for films and ballet. In the Second World War, Bliss returned to England from the US to work for the BBC and became its director of music. After the war he resumed his work as a composer, and was appointed Master of the Queen's Music. In Bliss's later years, his work was respected but was thought old-fashioned, and it was eclipsed by the music of younger colleagues such as William Walton and Benjamin Britten. Since his death, his compositions have been well represented in recordin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Constant Lambert
Leonard Constant Lambert (23 August 190521 August 1951) was a British composer, conductor, and author. He was the founder and music director of the Royal Ballet, and (alongside Ninette de Valois and Frederick Ashton) he was a major figure in the establishment of the English ballet as a significant artistic movement. His ballet commitments, including extensive conducting work throughout his life, restricted his compositional activities. However one work, '' The Rio Grande'', for chorus, orchestra and piano soloist, achieved widespread popularity in the 1920s, and is still regularly performed today. His other work includes a jazz influenced Piano Concerto (1931), major ballet scores such as '' Horoscope'' (1937) and a full-scale choral masque ''Summer's Last Will and Testament'' (1936) that some consider his masterpiece. Lambert had wide-ranging interests beyond music, as can be seen from his critical study ''Music Ho!'' (1934), which places music in the context of the other arts ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miriam Hyde
Miriam Beatrice Hyde (15 January 191311 January 2005) was an Australian composer, classical pianist, music educator, and poet. She composed over 150 works for piano, 50 songs, other instrumental and orchestral works and performed as a concert pianist with eminent conductors including Sir Malcolm Sargent, Constant Lambert, Georg Schnéevoigt, Sir Bernard Heinze and Geoffrey Simon. She also had books of poetry published, and wrote an autobiography. Life Hyde was born in Adelaide in 1913, a daughter of Mr and Mrs C. H. Hyde of Torrens Park, Adelaide. Music was an important part of her family life: her mother, Muriel, played and taught piano; her aunt, Clarice Gmeiner, played violin, viola and harp with the South Australian Symphony Orchestra; and her younger sister, Pauline, played violin and sang.Johnson (2004) Her early music lessons were provided by her mother, but in 1925 she won a scholarship to attend the Elder Conservatorium of Music in Adelaide. After graduating with h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Malcolm Arnold
Sir Malcolm Henry Arnold (21 October 1921 – 23 September 2006) was an English composer. His works feature music in many genres, including a cycle of nine symphonies, numerous concertos, concert works, chamber music, choral music and music for brass band and wind band. His style is tonal and rejoices in lively rhythms, brilliant orchestration, and an unabashed tunefulness. He wrote extensively for the theatre, with five ballets specially commissioned by the Royal Ballet, as well as two operas and a musical. He also produced scores for more than a hundred films, among these ''The Bridge on the River Kwai'' (1957), for which he won an Oscar. Early life Malcolm Arnold was born in Northampton, Northamptonshire, England, the youngest of five children from a prosperous Northampton family of shoemakers. Although shoemakers, his family was full of musicians; both of his parents were pianists, and his aunt was a violinist. His great great grandfather was the composer William Hawes, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Concerto Pathétique
The ''Concerto pathétique'' ( S.258/2), completed in 1866, is Franz Liszt's most substantial and ambitious two-piano work. At least three piano concerto arrangements of the work have been made by other composers, based on Liszt's suggestions. History and significance In 1851 Breitkopf & Härtel published the solo piano work ''Grosses Concert-Solo'' (in modern editions as ''Grosses Konzertsolo'') (S.176) by Franz Liszt. Though not as popular as the later Piano Sonata in B minor by the same composer, the work achieves significance by the fact that it anticipates the ''Sonata'' as a large-scale nonprogrammatic work. It shows structural similarities to the ''Sonata'' and obvious thematic relationship to both the ''Sonata'' and the Faust Symphony. One unpublished earlier version of the work exists, titled in French in the manuscript ''Grand Solo de concert'' (S.175a). This version differs structurally from the published ''Grosses Concert-Solo'', thus revealing the existence of i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sydney Opera House
The Sydney Opera House is a multi-venue performing arts centre in Sydney. Located on the foreshore of Sydney Harbour, it is widely regarded as one of the world's most famous and distinctive buildings and a masterpiece of 20th-century architecture. Designed by Danish architect Jørn Utzon, but completed by an Australian architectural team headed by Peter Hall, the building was formally opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 20 October 1973 after a gestation beginning with Utzon's 1957 selection as winner of an international design competition. The Government of New South Wales, led by the premier, Joseph Cahill, authorised work to begin in 1958 with Utzon directing construction. The government's decision to build Utzon's design is often overshadowed by circumstances that followed, including cost and scheduling overruns as well as the architect's ultimate resignation. The building and its surrounds occupy the whole of Bennelong Point on Sydney Harbour, between Sydney Cove and Far ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Dankworth
Sir John Phillip William Dankworth, CBE (20 September 1927 – 6 February 2010), also known as Johnny Dankworth, was an English jazz composer, saxophonist, clarinettist and writer of film scores. With his wife, jazz singer Dame Cleo Laine, he was a music educator and also her music director. Biography Early years Born in Woodford, Essex, he grew up, within a family of musicians, in Hollywood Way, Highams Park, a suburb of Chingford, and attended Selwyn Boys' (Junior) School in Highams Park and later Sir George Monoux Grammar School in Walthamstow. He had violin and piano lessons before settling eventually on the clarinet at the age of 16, after hearing a record of the Benny Goodman Quartet. Soon afterwards, inspired by Charlie Parker, he learned to play the alto saxophone. He began his career on the British jazz scene after studying at London's Royal Academy of Music (where his jazz interests were frowned upon) and then national service in the Royal Air Force, during which he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Gough
Francis Michael Gough ( ; 23 November 1916 – 17 March 2011) was a British character actor who made more than 150 film and television appearances. He is known for his roles in the Hammer Horror Films from 1958, with his first role as Sir Arthur Holmwood in ''Dracula'', and for his recurring role as Alfred Pennyworth in all four of the ''Batman'' films from 1989 to 1997. He would appear in three more Burton films: in '' Sleepy Hollow'', voicing Elder Gutknecht in ''Corpse Bride'' and the Dodo in ''Alice in Wonderland''. Gough also appeared in popular British television shows, including ''Doctor Who'' (as the titular villain in ''The Celestial Toymaker'' (1966) and as Councillor Hedin in ''Arc of Infinity'' (1983)), and in a memorable episode of '' The Avengers'' as the automation-obsessed wheelchair user Dr. Armstrong in "The Cybernauts" (1965). In 1956 he received a British Academy Television Award for Best Actor. At the National Theatre in London Gough excelled as a comedia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Symphonie Fantastique
' (''Fantastical Symphony: Episode in the Life of an Artist … in Five Sections'') Op. 14, is a program symphony written by the French composer Hector Berlioz in 1830. It is an important piece of the early Romantic period. The first performance was at the Paris Conservatoire on 5 December 1830. Franz Liszt made a piano transcription of the symphony in 1833 (S. 470). The American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein described the symphony as the first musical expedition into psychedelia because of its hallucinatory and dream-like nature, and because history suggests Berlioz composed at least a portion of it under the influence of opium. According to Bernstein, "Berlioz tells it like it is. You take a trip, you wind up screaming at your own funeral." Berlioz put a great deal of emotion into the piece, exploring the extremities of many ends of the emotional spectrum. He wanted people to understand his intentions behind it as they were the driving factor behind each movement ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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