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Symphony No. 4 (Simpson)
The Symphony No. 4 by Robert Simpson was written between 1970 and 1972 and commissioned by The Hallé who gave the premiere, conducted by James Loughran, at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, on 6 April 1973. The work was begun 3 October 1970, and composition was concluded 13 February 1972, with some revision of the cello part in 1988. The symphony was Simpson's largest work to date and uses a reasonably large orchestra. This was Simpson's first 'orthodox' four movement symphony and is the only one consciously 'classical' in layout. The overall tonality is E flat, and the work contains many musical references to Ludwig van Beethoven and Joseph Haydn. Movements The four movements are: *Allegro moderato *Presto (Scherzo and Trio) *Andante *Allegro vivace In this work Simpson began to make use of a characteristic harmonic device that resounds through his later music: he sometimes places chords that are identical in structure a fifth apart, usually in widely spaced registers, so ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Simpson (composer)
Robert Wilfred Levick Simpson (2 March 1921 – 21 November 1997) was an English composer, as well as a long-serving BBC producer and broadcaster. He is best known for his orchestral and chamber music (particularly those in the key classical forms: 11 symphonies and 15 string quartets), and for his writings on the music of Beethoven, Bruckner, Nielsen and Sibelius. He studied composition under Herbert Howells. Remarkably for a living contemporary composer, a Robert Simpson Society was formed in 1980 by individuals concerned that Simpson's music had been unfairly neglected. The society aims to bring Simpson's music to a wider public by sponsoring recordings and live performances of his work, by issuing a journal and other publications, and by maintaining an archive of material relating to the composer. In 2021, he was featured as '' Composer of the Week'' on BBC Radio 3. Biography Simpson was born in Leamington, Warwickshire. His father, Robert Warren Simpson, was a descen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vernon Handley
Vernon George "Tod" Handley (11 November 1930 – 10 September 2008) was a British conductor, known in particular for his support of British composers. He was born of a Welsh father and an Irish mother into a musical family in Enfield, Middlesex. He acquired the nickname "Tod" because his feet were turned in at his birth, which his father simply summarised: "They toddle". Handley preferred the use of the name "Tod" throughout his life over his given names. Education and studies Handley attended Enfield Grammar School. While in school, he watched the BBC Symphony Orchestra in its studio in Maida Vale, where by his own account he learned some of his conducting technique by observing Sir Adrian Boult. Later the two corresponded in the early 1950s and met around 1958. He spent a period in the Armed Forces and then attended Balliol College, Oxford, where he read English philology and became musical director of the University Dramatic Society. He also studied at the Guildhall Sc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Symphonies By Robert Simpson
A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, most often for orchestra. Although the term has had many meanings from its origins in the ancient Greek era, by the late 18th century the word had taken on the meaning common today: a work usually consisting of multiple distinct sections or movements, often four, with the first movement in sonata form. Symphonies are almost always scored for an orchestra consisting of a string section (violin, viola, cello, and double bass), brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments which altogether number about 30 to 100 musicians. Symphonies are notated in a musical score, which contains all the instrument parts. Orchestral musicians play from parts which contain just the notated music for their own instrument. Some symphonies also contain vocal parts (e.g., Beethoven's Ninth Symphony). Etymology and origins The word ''symphony'' is derived from the Greek word (), meaning "agreement or concord of sound", "concert of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BBC Symphony Orchestra
The BBC Symphony Orchestra (BBC SO) is a British orchestra based in London. Founded in 1930, it was the first permanent salaried orchestra in London, and is the only one of the city's five major symphony orchestras not to be self-governing. The BBC SO is the principal broadcast orchestra of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The orchestra was originally conceived in 1928 as a joint enterprise by the BBC and the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, but the latter withdrew the next year and the task of assembling and training the orchestra fell to the BBC's director of music, Adrian Boult. Among its guest conductors in its first years was Arturo Toscanini, who judged it the finest orchestra he had ever conducted. During and after the Second World War, Boult strove to maintain standards, but the senior management of the post-war BBC did not allocate the orchestra the resources to meet competition from new and well-funded rivals. After Boult's retirement from the BBC in 1950, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bryden Thomson
Bryden Thomson (16 July 1928 – 14 November 1991) was a Scottish conductor remembered especially for his championship of British and Scandinavian composers. His recordings include influential surveys of the orchestral music of Hamilton Harty and Arnold Bax. He was principal conductor of several British orchestras, including the Ulster Orchestra, which flourished under his tenure. Biography Early life and studies Bryden ("Jack") Thomson was born in Ayr and grew up playing the violin and cello. Soon after entering the Royal Scottish Academy of Music in Glasgow on a scholarship at the age of 15, he was called up to serve in the Highland Light Infantry, where he played the piano in the regimental band and taught himself the clarinet. After the war, he returned to his studies at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music. In 1954, he moved to Germany to study conducting, first with Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt at the newly founded Hochschule für Musik in Hamburg, and then with Igor Markevitch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, , group=n (9 August 1975) was a Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist who became internationally known after the premiere of his Symphony No. 1 (Shostakovich), First Symphony in 1926 and was regarded throughout his life as a major composer. Shostakovich achieved early fame in the Soviet Union, but had a complex relationship with its government. His 1934 opera ''Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (opera), Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk'' was initially a success, but eventually was Muddle Instead of Music, condemned by the Soviet government, putting his career at risk. In 1948 his work was #Second denunciation, denounced under the Zhdanov Doctrine, with professional consequences lasting several years. Even after his censure was On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences, rescinded in 1956, performances of his music were occasionally subject to state interventions, as with his Symphony No. 13 (Shostakovich), Thirteenth Symphony (1962). Shostakovich was a m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Walton
Sir William Turner Walton (29 March 19028 March 1983) was an English composer. During a sixty-year career, he wrote music in several classical genres and styles, from film scores to opera. His best-known works include ''Façade'', the cantata ''Belshazzar's Feast'', the Viola Concerto, the First Symphony, and the British coronation marches ''Crown Imperial'' and '' Orb and Sceptre''. Born in Oldham, Lancashire, the son of a musician, Walton was a chorister and then an undergraduate at Christ Church, Oxford. On leaving the university, he was taken up by the literary Sitwell siblings, who provided him with a home and a cultural education. His earliest work of note was a collaboration with Edith Sitwell, ''Façade'', which at first brought him notoriety as a modernist, but later became a popular ballet score. In middle age, Walton left Britain and set up home with his young wife Susana on the Italian island of Ischia. By this time, he had ceased to be regarded as a moderni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Russell Keable
Russell Keable is a British educator, composer and conductor. Keable studied conducting at the Royal College of Music with Norman Del Mar and later with George Hurst (conductor), George Hurst. Since 1983, he has been the principal conductor of London’s Kensington Symphony Orchestra, and since 2006, the principal conductor of the University of Surrey’s University Symphony Orchestra and Choir. Since 2006, Keable has taught conducting at the University of Surrey. Keable is a champion of rarely heard 20th Century works. A supporter of music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Erich Korngold, he gave the British premiere of ''Die tote Stadt'' in a concert performance. His research in LA led to the first live performance of Korngold's film score ''The Sea Hawk (1940 film), The Sea Hawk''. He is a noted advocate for British composers. With the Kensington Symphony Orchestra, he has led first performances of works by many British composers, including Peter Maxwell Davies, John Woolrich, Robin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kensington Symphony Orchestra
Founded in 1956, London's Kensington Symphony Orchestra is a non-professional orchestra in Britain. It attracts top non-professional players from around London for its concerts at St John's, Smith Square, Cadogan Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall and other venues in London. It finances its concerts through ticket sales, charitable donations and corporate support, and through its playing members who pay subscription fees. History KSO has only had two principal conductors — its founder, Leslie Head, and the current conductor, Russell Keable who has been with the orchestra since 1983. Under Leslie Head Head was a 33-year-old freelance horn player and part-time conductor when he first assembled Kensington Symphony Orchestra at Queen Alexandra House, next door to the Royal Albert Hall and across the road from the Royal College of Music in Kensington. Head’s original concept was that this would be a repertoire orchestra, one that provided conservatoire students with the opportunity to re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (BSO) is an English orchestra, founded in 1893 and originally based in Bournemouth. With a remit to serve the South and South West of England, the BSO is administratively based in the adjacent town of Poole, since 1979.Street, Sean, and Carpenter, R., ''The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, A Centenary Celebration''. Wimborne, The Dovecote Press Ltd, 1993 (). Principal conductors of the orchestra have included Sir Dan Godfrey, Rudolf Schwarz, Constantin Silvestri, Paavo Berglund, Andrew Litton and Marin Alsop. The current principal conductor is Kirill Karabits, since 2009. The orchestra is resident at Lighthouse in Poole, with other major concert series given at Portsmouth Guildhall, the Great Hall of Exeter University and Bristol Beacon. Shorter series are also given in Bournemouth (Pavilion Theatre) and Basingstoke. History Origins to 1934: The Godfrey era The Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra was founded in 1893 by Dan Godfrey as a grou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Hallé
The Hallé is an English symphony orchestra based in Manchester, England. It supports a choir, youth choir, youth training choir, children's choir and a youth orchestra, and releases its recordings on its own record label, though it has occasionally released recordings on Angel Records and EMI. Since 1996 the orchestra has been resident at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. History In May 1857 the pianist and conductor Charles Hallé set up an orchestra to perform at the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition, which it did until October. Hallé decided to continue working with the orchestra as a formal organisation, and it gave its first concert under those auspices on 30 January 1858. The orchestra's first home was the Free Trade Hall. By 1861 the orchestra was in financial trouble, and it performed only two concerts that year. In 1888 German violinist Willy Hess become leader of The Hallé, a role he held until 1895. From its opening in 1893 he was also the principal pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hyperion Records
Hyperion Records is an independent British classical record label. History Hyperion is an independent British classical label that was established in 1980 with the goal of showcasing recordings of music in all genres and from all time periods, from the twelfth century to the twenty-first. The company was named after Hyperion, one of the Titans of Greek mythology. It was founded by George Edward Perry, widely known as "Ted". Early LP releases included rarely recorded 20th century British music by composers such as Robin Milford, Alan Bush and Michael Berkeley. The success of the venture was sealed with a critically acclaimed and popular disc of music by Hildegard of Bingen, ''A Feather on the Breath of God'' (1985), directed by the medievalist Christopher Page and his group Gothic Voices. The current director of Hyperion Records is Simon Perry, son of Ted Perry. Recognition Hyperion became renowned for recording lesser-known works, particularly reviving Romantic piano con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
