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Pianists From Austria-Hungary
A pianist ( , ) is a musician who plays the piano. A pianist's repertoire may include music from a diverse variety of styles, such as traditional classical music, jazz, blues, and popular music, including rock and roll. Most pianists can, to an extent, easily play other keyboard instruments such as the synthesizer, harpsichord, celesta, and the organ. Pianists past and present Contemporary classical pianists focus on dedicating their careers to performing, recording, teaching, researching, and continually adding new compositions to their repertoire. In contrast to their 19th-century counterparts, they typically do not engage in the composition or transcription of music. While some classical pianists may specialize in accompaniment and chamber music, a smaller number opt for full-time solo careers. Classical Mozart could be considered the first concert pianist, as he performed widely on the piano. Composers Beethoven and Clementi from the Classical era were also famed for t ...
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Rachmaninoff Playing Steinway Grand Piano
Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff; in Russian pre-revolutionary script. (28 March 1943) was a Russian composer, virtuoso pianist, and Conducting, conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romantic music, Romanticism in Russian classical music. Early influences of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Tchaikovsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Rimsky-Korsakov, and other Russian composers gave way to a thoroughly personal idiom notable for its song-like melody, melodicism, Music#Expression, expressiveness, dense Counterpoint, contrapuntal textures, and rich Orchestration, orchestral colours. The piano is featured prominently in Rachmaninoff's compositional output and he used his skills as a performer to fully explore the expressive and technical possibilities of the instrument. Born into a musical family, Rachmaninoff began learning the piano at the age of four. He studied piano and composition at ...
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Chamber Music
Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of Musical instrument, instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a Great chamber, palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers, with one performer to a part (in contrast to orchestral music, in which each string part is played by a number of performers). However, by convention, it usually does not include solo instrument performances. Because of its intimate nature, chamber music has been described as "the music of friends". For more than 100 years, chamber music was played primarily by amateur musicians in their homes, and even today, when chamber music performance has migrated from the home to the concert hall, many musicians, amateur and professional, still play chamber music for their own pleasure. Playing chamber music requires special skills, both musical and social, that differ from the skills required for ...
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Clara Schumann
Clara Josephine Schumann (; ; née Wieck; 13 September 1819 – 20 May 1896) was a German pianist, composer, and piano teacher. Regarded as one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic music, Romantic era, she exerted her influence over the course of a 61-year concert career, changing the format and repertoire of the piano recital by lessening the importance of purely virtuoso, virtuosic works. She also composed solo piano pieces, a Piano Concerto (Clara Schumann), Piano Concerto, chamber music, choral pieces, and songs. She grew up in Leipzig, where both her father Friedrich Wieck and her mother Mariane Bargiel, Mariane were pianists and piano teachers. In addition, her mother was a singer. Clara was a child prodigy, and was trained by her father. She began touring at age eleven, and was successful in Paris and Vienna, among other cities. She married the composer Robert Schumann, on 12 September 1840, and the couple had eight children. Together, they encouraged Johan ...
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Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann (; ; 8 June 181029 July 1856) was a German composer, pianist, and music critic of the early Romantic music, Romantic era. He composed in all the main musical genres of the time, writing for solo piano, voice and piano, chamber music, chamber groups, orchestra, choir and the opera. His works typify the spirit of the Romantic era in German music. Schumann was born in Zwickau, Saxony, to an affluent middle-class family with no musical connections, and was initially unsure whether to pursue a career as a lawyer or to make a living as a pianist-composer. He studied law at the universities of Leipzig University, Leipzig and Heidelberg University, Heidelberg but his main interests were music and Romantic literature. From 1829 he was a student of the piano teacher Friedrich Wieck, but his hopes for a career as a virtuoso pianist were frustrated by a worsening problem with his right hand, and he concentrated on composition. His early works were mainly piano pieces, inclu ...
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Sergei Rachmaninov
Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff; in Russian pre-revolutionary script. (28 March 1943) was a Russian composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music. Early influences of Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and other Russian composers gave way to a thoroughly personal idiom notable for its song-like melodicism, expressiveness, dense contrapuntal textures, and rich orchestral colours. The piano is featured prominently in Rachmaninoff's compositional output and he used his skills as a performer to fully explore the expressive and technical possibilities of the instrument. Born into a musical family, Rachmaninoff began learning the piano at the age of four. He studied piano and composition at the Moscow Conservatory, from which he graduated in 1892, having already written several compositions. In 1897, following the d ...
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Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (3 February 18094 November 1847), widely known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic music, Romantic period. Mendelssohn's compositions include symphony, symphonies, concertos, piano music, organ music and chamber music. His best-known works include the Overture#Concert overture, overture and incidental music for ''A Midsummer Night's Dream (Mendelssohn), A Midsummer Night's Dream'' (which includes his "Wedding March (Mendelssohn), Wedding March"), the ''Symphony No. 4 (Mendelssohn), Italian'' and ''Symphony No. 3 (Mendelssohn), Scottish'' Symphonies, the oratorios ''St. Paul (oratorio), St. Paul'' and ''Elijah (oratorio), Elijah'', the ''The Hebrides (overture), Hebrides'' Overture, the mature Violin Concerto (Mendelssohn), Violin Concerto, the Octet (Mendelssohn), String Octet, and the melody used in the Christmas carol "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing". Mendelssohn's ''Songs W ...
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Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin (born Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin; 1 March 181017 October 1849) was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic period who wrote primarily for Piano solo, solo piano. He has maintained worldwide renown as a leading composer of his era whose "poetic genius was based on a professional technique that was without equal in his generation". Chopin was born in Żelazowa Wola and grew up in Warsaw, which in 1815 became part of Congress Poland. A child prodigy, he completed his musical education and composed his early works in Warsaw before leaving Poland at age 20, less than a month before the outbreak of the November Uprising, November 1830 Uprising; at 21, he settled in Paris. Thereafter he gave only 30 public performances, preferring the more intimate atmosphere of the Salon (gathering), salon. He supported himself, selling his compositions and giving piano lessons, for which he was in high demand. Chopin formed a friendship with Franz Liszt ...
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Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms (; ; 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor of the mid-Romantic period (music), Romantic period. His music is noted for its rhythmic vitality and freer treatment of dissonance, often set within studied yet expressive contrapuntal textures. He adapted the traditional structures and techniques of a wide historical range of earlier composers. His includes four symphony, symphonies, four concertos, a Requiem, much chamber music, and hundreds of folk-song arrangements and , among other works for symphony orchestra, piano, organ, and choir. Born to a musical family in Hamburg, Brahms began composing and concertizing locally in his youth. He toured Central Europe as a pianist in his adulthood, premiering many of his own works and meeting Franz Liszt in Weimar. Brahms worked with Ede Reményi and Joseph Joachim, seeking Robert Schumann's approval through the latter. He gained both Robert and Clara Schumann's strong support ...
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Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt (22 October 1811 – 31 July 1886) was a Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor and teacher of the Romantic music, Romantic period. With a diverse List of compositions by Franz Liszt, body of work spanning more than six decades, he is considered to be one of the most prolific and influential composers of his era, and his piano works continue to be widely performed and recorded. Liszt achieved success as a concert pianist from an early age, and received lessons from the esteemed musicians Carl Czerny and Antonio Salieri. He gained further renown for his performances during tours of Europe in the 1830s and 1840s, developing a reputation for technical brilliance as well as physical attractiveness. In a phenomenon dubbed "Lisztomania", he rose to a degree of stardom and popularity among the public not experienced by the virtuosos who preceded him. During this period and into his later life, Liszt was a friend, musical promoter and benefactor to many composer ...
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Romantic Era Music
Romantic music is a stylistic movement in Western Classical music associated with the period of the 19th century commonly referred to as the Romantic era (or Romantic period). It is closely related to the broader concept of Romanticism—the intellectual, artistic, and literary movement that became prominent in Western culture from about 1798 until 1837. Romantic composers sought to create music that was individualistic, emotional, dramatic, and often programmatic; reflecting broader trends within the movements of Romantic literature, poetry, art, and philosophy. Romantic music was often ostensibly inspired by (or else sought to evoke) non-musical stimuli, such as nature, literature, poetry, super-natural elements, or the fine arts. It included features such as increased chromaticism and moved away from traditional forms. Background The Romantic movement was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe a ...
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Classical Era (Music)
The Classical period was an era of classical music between roughly 1750 and 1820. The classical period falls between the Baroque music, Baroque and Romantic music, Romantic periods. It is mainly Homophony, homophonic, using a clear melody line over a subordinate chordal accompaniment,Friedrich Blume, Blume, Friedrich. ''Classic and Romantic Music: A Comprehensive Survey''. New York: W. W. Norton, 1970 but counterpoint was by no means forgotten, especially in liturgical vocal music and, later in the period, secular instrumental music. It also makes use of ''Galant music, style galant'' which emphasizes light elegance in place of the Baroque's dignified seriousness and impressive grandeur. Variety and contrast within a piece became more pronounced than before, and the orchestra increased in size, range, and power. The harpsichord declined as the main keyboard instrument and superseded by the piano (or fortepiano). Unlike the harpsichord, which plucks strings with quills, pianos s ...
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Muzio Clementi
Muzio Filippo Vincenzo Francesco Saverio Clementi (23 January 1752 – 10 March 1832) was an Italian-British composer, virtuoso pianist, pedagogue, conductor (music), conductor, music publisher, editor, and piano manufacturer, who was mostly active in England. Encouraged to study music by his father, he was sponsored as a young composer by Sir Peter Beckford (hunter), Peter Beckford who took him to England to advance his studies. Later, he toured Europe numerous times from his long-standing base in London. It was on one of these occasions, in 1781, that he engaged in a piano competition with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Influenced by Domenico Scarlatti's harpsichord school and Joseph Haydn's classical period (music), classical school and by the Galant music, ''stile Galante'' of Johann Christian Bach and Ignazio Cirri, Clementi developed a fluent and technical legato style, which he passed on to a generation of pianists, including John Field (composer), John Field, Johann Baptist C ...
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