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Victor Olof
Victor Olof (12 July 1898 – 3 November 1974) was an English musician, known first as a violinist and conductor and later as a record producer for Decca Records and subsequently for HMV Records. Among the artists whose recordings Olof supervised were Karl Böhm, Erich Kleiber, Carl Schuricht, Sir Thomas Beecham, Lisa della Casa, Cesare Siepi, Victoria de los Ángeles, Clifford Curzon, Wilhelm Backhaus and Yehudi Menuhin. Victor had two children, Michael Olof and Brian Olof (14 February 1934 - 11 December 2019). From Brain's marriage to Diana (née Simpson) he had Susan Catherine Gilbey and Helen Mary Johnstone, as well as his great-grandchildreJack Engels Gilbeyand Charlotte Georgina Gilbey from Susan's marriage tSimon John Gilbey Life and career Early years Victor Olof Ahlquist was of Swedish descent.Andry, Peter"Victor Olof" ''Gramophone'', January 1975, p. 50 He was born in St Pancras, London, the youngest of five children of Michael Ahlqist, a tailor who retained his S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lilian Stiles-Allen
Lilian Stiles-Allen (28 July 189015 July 1982) was a British soprano of the mid 20th century. Early life She was born Lilian Elizabeth Allen in Devonshire Street, Marylebone in 1890, and later added her mother's maiden name.''The Times'', 17 July 1982 Her musical education was at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where she won the Sheriff's Prize for contraltos in 1909, and in Vienna undertaking an extensive study of Lieder. Career Her career was primarily on the concert stage, her physique being unsuited to operatic performance, but an early theatrical appearance was in the comedy '' Eastward Ho!'' in 1919. By the 1920s she was established as a leading concert soprano. Her appearances included the Handel Festival at the Crystal Palace; a revival of Sullivan's ''The Golden Legend''; ''Messiah'' with Sir Thomas Beecham and Malcolm Sargent; Verdi's Requiem (Sargent); Beethoven's Choral Symphony ( Sir Henry J. Wood); Handel's '' Solomon'' (Beecham); Samuel Coleridge-Ta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the ''Gesamtkunstwerk'' ("total work of art"), by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama. He described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'' (''The Ring of the Nibelung''). His compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for their complex texture (mus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eric Coates
Eric Francis Harrison Coates (27 August 1886 – 21 December 1957) was an English composer of light music and, early in his career, a leading viola, violist. Coates was born into a musical family, but, despite his wishes and obvious talent, his parents only reluctantly allowed him to pursue a musical career. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music under Frederick Corder (composition) and Lionel Tertis (viola), and played in string quartets and theatre Pit orchestra, pit bands, before joining symphony orchestras conducted by Thomas Beecham and Henry Wood. Coates's experience as a player added to the rigorous training he had received at the academy and contributed to his skill as a composer. While still working as a violist, Coates composed songs and other light musical works. In 1919 he gave up the viola permanently and from then until his death he made his living as a composer and occasional conductor. His prolific output includes the ''London Suite (Coates), London Suite'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frederick Delius
Delius, photographed in 1907 Frederick Theodore Albert Delius ( 29 January 1862 – 10 June 1934), originally Fritz Delius, was an English composer. Born in Bradford in the north of England to a prosperous mercantile family, he resisted attempts to recruit him to commerce. He was sent to Florida in the United States in 1884 to manage an orange plantation. He soon neglected his managerial duties and in 1886 returned to Europe. Having been influenced by African-American music during his short stay in Florida, he began composing. After a brief period of formal musical study in Germany beginning in 1886, he embarked on a full-time career as a composer in Paris and then in nearby Grez-sur-Loing, where he and his wife Jelka lived for the rest of their lives, except during the First World War. Delius's first successes came in Germany, where Hans Haym and other conductors promoted his music from the late 1890s. In Delius's native Britain, his music did not make regular appearances ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Claude Debussy
(Achille) Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionism in music, Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born to a family of modest means and little cultural involvement, Debussy showed enough musical talent to be admitted at the age of ten to France's leading music college, the Conservatoire de Paris. He originally studied the piano, but found his vocation in innovative composition, despite the disapproval of the Conservatoire's conservative professors. He took many years to develop his mature style, and was nearly 40 when he achieved international fame in 1902 with the only opera he completed, ''Pelléas et Mélisande (opera), Pelléas et Mélisande''. Debussy's orchestral works include ''Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune'' (1894), ''Nocturnes (Debussy), Nocturnes'' (1897–18 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edvard Grieg
Edvard Hagerup Grieg ( , ; 15 June 18434 September 1907) was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is widely considered one of the foremost Romantic era composers, and his music is part of the standard classical repertoire worldwide. His use of Norwegian folk music in his own compositions brought the music of Norway to fame, as well as helping to develop a national identity, much as Jean Sibelius did in Finland and Bedřich Smetana in Bohemia. Grieg is the most celebrated person from the city of Bergen, with numerous statues which depict his image, and many cultural entities named after him: the city's largest concert building (Grieg Hall), its most advanced music school ( Grieg Academy) and its professional choir (Edvard Grieg Kor). The Edvard Grieg Museum at Grieg's former home Troldhaugen is dedicated to his legacy. Background Edvard Hagerup Grieg was born in Bergen, Norway (then part of Sweden–Norway). His parents were Alexander Grieg (1806–1875), a merchant and the B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eileen Joyce
Eileen Alannah Joyce CMG (died 25 March 1991) was an Australian pianist whose career spanned more than 30 years. She lived in England in her adult years. Her recordings made her popular in the 1930s and 1940s, particularly during World War II. At her zenith she was compared in popular esteem with Gracie Fields and Vera Lynn.Fred Blanks, review of Richard Davis ''Eileen Joyce: A Portrait'', ''The Sydney Morning Herald'', 13–15 April 2001 When she played in Berlin in 1947 with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, an eminent German critic classed her with Clara Schumann, Sophie Menter and Teresa Carreño. When she performed in the United States in 1950, Irving Kolodin called her "the world's greatest unknown pianist".Jeremy Siepmann,''The Piano'' Accessed 1 December 2022. She became even better known during the 1950s, when she played 50 recitals a year in London alone, which were always sold out. She also performed a series of "Marathon Concerts", playing as many as four conc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kenneth Wilkinson
Kenneth Ernest Wilkinson (28 July 1912 – 13 January 2004) was an audio engineer for Decca Records, known for engineering classical recordings with superb sound quality. After working for small recording companies, Wilkinson was taken onto the staff of Decca, where he engineered many recordings, working with producers such as John Culshaw and conductors including Georg Solti, Sir Georg Solti, Hans Knappertsbusch and Benjamin Britten. He trained a whole generation of celebrated Decca engineers. Wilkinson so closely identified with the Decca sound that he retired when the company was absorbed into the PolyGram group in 1980. Life and career Early life Wilkinson was born in London. He attended Trinity Grammar School, Wood Green in north London, on a scholarship.Foreman, LewisObituary ''The Independent'' He left school at the age of sixteen in 1928, and worked for the publishing house Cassell's. When one of the firm's accountants left to join the World Echo Record Company, Wilki ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Lewis (Decca)
Sir Edward Roberts Lewis (19 April 1900 – 29 January 1980) was an English businessman, best known for leading the Decca recording and technology group for five decades from 1929. He built the company up from nothing to one of the major record labels of the world. A financier by profession, Lewis was professionally engaged by the fledgling Decca company. Having failed to persuade its directors to diversify from making record-players to making records, he raised the capital to take the company over, and ran it until his death. Among the ground-breaking achievements of Decca under Lewis were the "Decca Navigation System" (the leading maritime and aviation navigation system prior to GPS), the Decca "ffrr" recording technology, and the first release on record of Wagner's '' ''Ring'' cycle. Biography Early years Lewis was born in Derby, the only son of four children of Sir Alfred Edward Lewis (1868–1940) and his wife, May ''née'' Roberts. Alfred Lewis was a senior official, and l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Haddy
Arthur Charles William Haddy (16 May 1906 – 18 December 1989) was an English recording engineer. His work as Technical Director of the Decca Record Company Ltd. caused him to be nicknamed "the father of hi-fi". After working in the recording industry in the 1930s, Haddy was employed in wartime projects during the Second World War. These required new, sophisticated sonic developments that Haddy and his colleagues later put to peacetime use in Decca's innovative postwar recording techniques. He was an early proponent of the long-playing record, stereophony, video discs and digital recording. Biography Early years Haddy was born in Newbury, Berkshire, and educated locally at St. Bartholomew's Grammar School. He became an apprentice with the radio equipment manufacturers C. F. Elwell Ltd, and moved to the Western Electric Company as a junior employee.Humphreys, Ivo"Arthur Charles Haddy (1906-1989) An Appreciation" ''Gramophone'', April 1990, p. 163 In 1929, he became engaged ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
London Symphony Orchestra
The London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) is a British symphony orchestra based in London. Founded in 1904, the LSO is the oldest of London's symphony orchestras. The LSO was created by a group of players who left Henry Wood's Queen's Hall Orchestra because of a new rule requiring players to give the orchestra their exclusive services. The LSO itself later introduced a similar rule for its members. From the outset the LSO was organised on co-operative lines, with all players sharing the profits at the end of each season. This practice continued for the orchestra's first four decades. The LSO underwent periods of eclipse in the 1930s and 1950s when it was regarded as inferior in quality to new London orchestras, to which it lost players and bookings: the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Orchestra in the 1930s and the Philharmonia and Royal Philharmonic after the Second World War. The profit-sharing principle was abandoned in the post-war era as a condition o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
