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Sergei Stadler
Sergei Stadler (Russian: Сергей Стадлер) is a Russian violinist and conductor. He is currently Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Saint Petersburg Symphony Orchestra. Biography Laureate of the international music competitions: 1976 — Concertino Praga (1st prize); 1979 — Marguerite Long–Jacques Thibaud Competition (Paris) (II Grand Prix and Special Prize for the best performance of French music); 1980 — International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition (Helsinki) (2nd Prize and Special Public Award); 1982 — The International Tchaikovsky Competition (Moscow) (I Prize and Gold Medal). Childhood and the beginning of the career Sergei Stadler was born on May 20, 1962 in Leningrad. He began to study music at the age of 5. His mother, a pianist and accompanist of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, taught him how to play the piano. He started to play the violin under the guidance of his father, the violist of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra. S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Violin
The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular use. The violin typically has four strings (music), strings (some can have five-string violin, five), usually tuned in perfect fifths with notes G3, D4, A4, E5, and is most commonly played by drawing a bow (music), bow across its strings. It can also be played by plucking the strings with the fingers (pizzicato) and, in specialized cases, by striking the strings with the wooden side of the bow (col legno). Violins are important instruments in a wide variety of musical genres. They are most prominent in the Western classical music, Western classical tradition, both in ensembles (from chamber music to orchestras) and as solo instruments. Violins are also important in many varieties of folk music, including country music, bluegrass music, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hermitage Theatre
The Hermitage Theatre ( rus, Эрмитажный Театр, Èrmitážnyj Teátr, ɪrʲmʲɪˈtaʐnɨj tʲɪˈatər) in Saint Petersburg, Russia is one of five Hermitage Museum, Hermitage buildings lining the Palace Embankment of the Neva River. The Hermitage Theatre was the second theatre of the Winter Palace. It replaced the Russian Imperial Theater, which operated from 1764 until 1783. The Hermitage Theatre was built between 1783 and 1787 at the behest of Catherine the Great to a Palladian architecture, Palladian design by Giacomo Quarenghi. The crumbling Third Winter Palace of Peter I of Russia, Peter the Great was demolished to make room for the new structure, although its old foundations are still visible in the ground floor. Quarenghi's designs for the theatre were engraved and published in 1787, earning him a European reputation. The semicircular auditorium is decorated with color marble and surrounded with ten niches for statues of Apollo and the muses. As the interi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Xi Jinping
Xi Jinping ( ; ; ; born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese politician who has served as the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), and thus as the paramount leader of China, since 2012. Xi has also served as the president of the People's Republic of China (PRC) since 2013. The son of Chinese Communist veteran Xi Zhongxun, Xi was exiled to rural Yanchuan County as a teenager following his father's purge during the Cultural Revolution. He lived in a yaodong in the village of Liangjiahe, Shaanxi province, where he joined the CCP after several failed attempts and worked as the local party secretary. After studying chemical engineering at Tsinghua University as a worker-peasant-soldier student, Xi rose through the ranks politically in China's coastal provinces. Xi was governor of Fujian from 1999 to 2002, before becoming governor and party secretary of neighboring Zhejiang from 2002 to 2007. Following dismissal of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who holds the office of president of Russia. Putin has served continuously as president or prime minister since 1999: as prime minister from 1999 to 2000 and from 2008 to 2012, and as president from 2000 to 2008 and since 2012. Putin worked as a KGB foreign intelligence officer for 16 years, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel before resigning in 1991 to begin a political career in Saint Petersburg. He moved to Moscow in 1996 to join the administration of president Boris Yeltsin. He briefly served as director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and secretary of the Security Council of Russia, before being appointed as prime minister in August 1999. After the resignation of Yeltsin, Putin became Acting President of Russia and, less than four months later, was elected outright to his first term as president. He was reelected in 2004. As he was constitutionall ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
André Grétry
André Ernest Modeste Grétry (; baptised 11 February 1741; died 24 September 1813) was a composer from the Prince-Bishopric of Liège (present-day Belgium), who worked from 1767 onwards in France and took French nationality. He is most famous for his '' opéras comiques''. Biography He was born at Liège, his father being a poor musician. He was a choirboy at the church of St. Denis (Liège). In 1753 he became a pupil of Jean-Pantaléon Leclerc and later of the organist at St-Pierre de Liège, Nicolas Rennekin, for keyboard and composition and of Henri Moreau, music master at the collegiate church of St. Paul. But of greater importance was the practical tuition he received by attending the performance of an Italian opera company. Here he heard the operas of Baldassarre Galuppi, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, and other masters; and the desire of completing his own studies in Italy was the immediate result. To find the necessary means he composed in 1759 a mass which he dedicat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pierre Le Grand
''Pierre le Grand'' (''Peter the Great'') is an ''opéra comique'' by André Grétry. The libretto, by Jean-Nicolas Bouilly, is based on the early life of the Russian tsar Peter the Great. It was first performed in Paris on January 13, 1790, with Louise-Rosalie Lefebvre, known as Madame Dugazon, as Catherine. Roles Synopsis The plot tells how the young Tsar Peter disguised himself as a carpenter to work in a Russian shipyard where he fell in love with and married a peasant girl, Catherine (later the Empress Catherine I). Bouilly was working on his play at the time the French Revolution was breaking out in 1789 and the work reflects the political events of the day. Tsar Peter is intended to symbolise King Louis XVI, Catherine is Marie Antoinette and the Swiss Le Fort alludes to the Genevan financier Jacques Necker, who had attempted to reform the French economy. Peter and Catherine are depicted as ideal figures, deeply concerned for the welfare of the common people, and the lib ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet (; 25 October 18383 June 1875) was a French composer of the Romantic music, Romantic era. Best known for his operas in a career cut short by his early death, Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, ''Carmen'', which has become one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertoire. During a brilliant student career at the Conservatoire de Paris, Bizet won many prizes, including the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1857. He was recognised as an outstanding pianist, though he chose not to capitalise on this skill and rarely performed in public. Returning to Paris after almost three years in Italy, he found that the main Parisian opera theatres preferred the established classical repertoire to the works of newcomers. His keyboard and orchestral compositions were likewise largely ignored; as a result, his career stalled, and he earned his living mainly by arranging and transcribing the music of others. Restless for success, he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ivan IV (opera)
''Ivan IV'' is an opera in five acts by Georges Bizet, with a libretto by Francois-Hippolyte Leroy and Henri Trianon. Composition history A libretto on the subject of Tsar Ivan IV "The Terrible" of Russia was offered to Charles Gounod in January 1856 by the general administrator of the Paris Opera, François Louis Crosnier. Gounod worked with enthusiasm and press announcements anticipated that rehearsals would begin that November. Although Gounod completed the work in 1857 or 1858, failure to have it performed at the Paris Opera led Gounod to use parts of the score in later works; the Soldiers’ Chorus in ''Faust'' came from ''Ivan the Terrible''. Gounod's score was auctioned in 1963 and destroyed shortly after. Around 1862, with Gounod's encouragement, Bizet began work on the same libretto. In June 1865 the journal ''La France Musicale'' announced that the piece would appear at the Théâtre Lyrique that winter. Delays in getting the piece accepted prompted Bizet to offer the sc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hector Berlioz
In Greek mythology, Hector (; grc, Ἕκτωρ, Hektōr, label=none, ) is a character in Homer's Iliad. He was a Trojan prince and the greatest warrior for Troy during the Trojan War. Hector led the Trojans and their allies in the defense of Troy, killing countless Greek warriors. He was ultimately killed in single combat by Achilles, who later dragged his dead body around the city of Troy behind his chariot. Etymology In Greek, is a derivative of the verb ἔχειν ''ékhein'', archaic form * grc, ἕχειν, hékhein, label=none ('to have' or 'to hold'), from Proto-Indo-European *'' seɡ́ʰ-'' ('to hold'). , or as found in Aeolic poetry, is also an epithet of Zeus in his capacity as 'he who holds verything together. Hector's name could thus be taken to mean 'holding fast'. Description Hector was described by the chronicler Malalas in his account of the ''Chronography'' as "dark-skinned, tall, very stoutly built, strong, good nose, wooly-haired, good beard, sq ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Turangalîla-Symphonie
The ''Turangalîla-Symphonie'' is the only symphony by Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992). It was written for an orchestra of large forces from 1946 to 1948 on a commission by Serge Koussevitzky in his wife's memory for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Along with the ''Quatuor pour la fin du temps'', the symphony is one of the composer's most notable works. The premiere was in Boston on 2 December 1949, conducted by Leonard Bernstein. The commission did not specify the duration, orchestral requirements or style of the piece, leaving the decisions to the composer. Koussevitzky was billed to conduct the premiere, but fell ill, and the task fell to the young Bernstein. Bernstein has been described as "the ideal conductor for it, and it made Messiaen's name more widely known". Yvonne Loriod, who later became Messiaen's second wife, was the piano soloist, and Ginette Martenot played the ondes Martenot for the first and several subsequent performances. From 1953, Yvonne's sister Jeanne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen (, ; ; 10 December 1908 – 27 April 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist who was one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex; harmonically and melodically he employs a system he called ''modes of limited transposition'', which he abstracted from the systems of material generated by his early compositions and improvisations. He wrote music for chamber ensembles and orchestra, vocal music, as well as for solo organ and piano, and also experimented with the use of novel electronic instruments developed in Europe during his lifetime. Messiaen entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 11 and studied with Paul Dukas, Maurice Emmanuel, Charles-Marie Widor and Marcel Dupré, among others. He was appointed organist at the Église de la Sainte-Trinité, Paris, in 1931, a post held for 61 years until his death. He taught at the Schola Cantorum de Paris during the 1930s. After the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein ( ; August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian. Considered to be one of the most important conductors of his time, he was the first American conductor to receive international acclaim. According to music critic Donal Henahan, he was "one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history". Bernstein was the recipient of many honors, including seven Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards, sixteen Grammy Awards including the Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Kennedy Center Honors, Kennedy Center Honor. As a composer he wrote in many genres, including symphonic and orchestral music, ballet, film and theatre music, choral works, opera, chamber music and works for the piano. His best-known work is the Broadway theatre, Broadway musical ''West Side Story'', which continues to be regularly performed worldwide, and has been adapted into two (West Side Story (1961 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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