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Symphony For Solo Piano (Alkan)
The Symphony for Solo Piano is a large-scale romantic work for piano composed by Charles-Valentin Alkan and published in 1857. Although it is generally performed as a self-contained work, it comprises études Nos. 4–7 from the '' Douze études dans tous les tons mineurs (Twelve Studies in All the Minor Keys)'', Op. 39, each title containing the word ''Symphonie'' ( French: ''Symphony''). The four movements are titled ''Allegro moderato'', '' Marche funèbre'', ''Menuet'', and ''Finale''. Much like the Concerto for Solo Piano (Nos. 8–10), the Symphony is written so as to evoke the broad palette of timbres and harmonic textures available to an orchestra. It is an early example of a piano symphony. In the opinion of François Luguenot, it "does not contain the excesses of lkan'sConcerto or the Grande Sonate (Op. 33). But, rather like lkan'sSonatine Op. 61, it proves that Alkan was also capable of writing perfectly balanced and almost ‘Classical’ works."Luguenot (2001) Unli ...
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Charles-Valentin Alkan
Charles-Valentin Alkan (; 30 November 1813 – 29 March 1888) was a French composer and virtuoso pianist. At the height of his fame in the 1830s and 1840s he was, alongside his friends and colleagues Frédéric Chopin and Franz Liszt, among the leading pianists in Paris, a city in which he spent virtually his entire life. Alkan earned many awards at the Conservatoire de Paris, which he entered before he was six. His career in the salons and concert halls of Paris was marked by his occasional long withdrawals from public performance, for personal reasons. Although he had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances in the Parisian artistic world, including Eugène Delacroix and George Sand, from 1848 he began to adopt a reclusive life style, while continuing with his compositions – virtually all of which are for the keyboard. During this period he published, among other works, his collections of large-scale studies in all the major keys (Op. 35) and all the minor keys ...
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Legato
In music performance and notation, legato (; Italian for "tied together"; French ''lié''; German ''gebunden'') indicates that musical notes are played or sung smoothly, such that the transition from note to note is made with no intervening silence. Legato technique is required for slurred performance, but unlike slurring (as that term is interpreted for some instruments), legato does not forbid articulating the notes with a very slight interruption. Standard notation indicates legato either with the word ''legato'', or by a slur (a curved line) under notes that form one legato group. The latter notation is differentiated from a tie in that the notes have different pitches. Legato, like staccato, is a kind of articulation. There is an intermediate articulation called either ''mezzo staccato'' or ''non-legato'' (sometimes referred to as '' portato''). Classical string instruments In music for Classical string instruments, legato is an articulation that often refers to notes ...
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Raymond Lewenthal
Raymond Lewenthal (August 29, 1923November 21, 1988) was an American virtuoso pianist. Among his teachers were Olga Samaroff, who was a pupil of Charles-Valentin Alkan's son, Élie-Miriam Delaborde. Biography Lewenthal was born in San Antonio, Texas to Russian- French parents of Jewish origin. His birth date is often given as 1926, but he was actually born three years earlier in 1923 (an examination of his birth certificate has confirmed this). The false birth year was probably an attempt to assist his career as a child actor. After spending several years as a child movie actor in Hollywood, he studied the piano there with Lydia Cherkassky, mother and teacher of the renowned pianist Shura Cherkassky. In 1945 he won all three of the major competitions then being held in California: The Young Artist Competition at UCLA (judged by Bruno Walter), the Young Artist Contest of Occidental College, and the Gainsborough Award in San Francisco. He continued his studies at the Juilliard S ...
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String Quartets, Op
String or strings may refer to: *String (structure), a long flexible structure made from threads twisted together, which is used to tie, bind, or hang other objects Arts, entertainment, and media Films * Strings (1991 film), ''Strings'' (1991 film), a Canadian animated short * Strings (2004 film), ''Strings'' (2004 film), a film directed by Anders Rønnow Klarlund * Strings (2011 film), ''Strings'' (2011 film), an American dramatic thriller film * Strings (2012 film), ''Strings'' (2012 film), a British film by Rob Savage * ''Bravetown'' (2015 film), an American drama film originally titled ''Strings'' * ''The String'' (2009), a French film Music Instruments * String (music), the flexible element that produces vibrations and sound in string instruments * String instrument, a musical instrument that produces sound through vibrating strings ** List of string instruments * String piano, a pianistic extended technique in which sound is produced by direct manipulation of the strings, r ...
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Symphonie Fantastique
' (''Fantastic Symphony: Episode in the Life of an Artist … in Five Sections'') Opus number, Op. 14, is a program music, programmatic symphony written by Hector Berlioz in 1830. The first performance was at the Paris Conservatoire on 5 December 1830. Berlioz wrote semi-autobiographical programme notes for the piece that allude to the Romanticism, romantic sufferings of a gifted artist who has poisoned himself with opium because of his unrequited love for a beautiful and fascinating woman (in real life, the Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson, who in 1833 became the composer's wife). The composer, who revered Beethoven, followed the latter's unusual addition in the Symphony No. 6 (Beethoven), ''Pastoral'' Symphony of a fifth movement to the normal four of a classical symphony. The artist's reveries take him to a ball and to a pastoral scene in a field, which is interrupted by a hallucinatory march to the Scaffold (execution site), scaffold, leading to a grotesque satanic dan ...
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Joseph Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn ( ; ; 31 March 173231 May 1809) was an Austrian composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. He was instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the string quartet and piano trio. His contributions to musical form have led him to be called "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String quartet". Haydn arose from humble origins, the child of working people in a rural village. He established his career first by serving as a chorister at St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna, then through an arduous period as a freelance musician. Eventually he found career success, spending much of his working life as Kapellmeister, music director for the wealthy Esterházy family at their palace of Eszterháza in rural Hungary. Though he had his own orchestra there, it isolated him from other composers and trends in music so that he was, as he put it, "forced to become original". During this period his music circulated widely in publication, eventuall ...
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Hector Berlioz
Louis-Hector Berlioz (11 December 1803 – 8 March 1869) was a French Romantic music, Romantic composer and conductor. His output includes orchestral works such as the ''Symphonie fantastique'' and ''Harold en Italie, Harold in Italy'', choral pieces including the Requiem (Berlioz), Requiem and ''L'Enfance du Christ'', his three operas ''Benvenuto Cellini (opera), Benvenuto Cellini'', ''Les Troyens'' and ''Béatrice et Bénédict'', and works of hybrid genres such as the "dramatic symphony" ''Roméo et Juliette (Berlioz), Roméo et Juliette'' and the "dramatic legend" ''La Damnation de Faust''. The elder son of a provincial physician, Berlioz was expected to follow his father into medicine, and he attended a Parisian medical college before defying his family by taking up music as a profession. His independence of mind and refusal to follow traditional rules and formulas put him at odds with the conservative musical establishment of Paris. He briefly moderated his style ...
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Anton Bruckner
Joseph Anton Bruckner (; ; 4 September 182411 October 1896) was an Austrian composer and organist best known for his Symphonies by Anton Bruckner, symphonies and sacred music, which includes List of masses by Anton Bruckner, Masses, Te Deum (Bruckner), Te Deum and List of motets by Anton Bruckner, motets. The symphonies are considered emblematic of the final stage of Austrian German, Austro-German Romanticism because of their rich harmonic language, strongly polyphony, polyphonic character, and considerable length. Bruckner's compositions helped to define contemporary musical radicalism, owing to their Consonance and dissonance, dissonances, unprepared modulation (music), modulations, and roving harmony, harmonies. Unlike other musical radicals such as Richard Wagner and Hugo Wolf, Bruckner showed respect, even humility, before other famous musicians, Wagner in particular. This apparent dichotomy between Bruckner the man and Bruckner the composer hampers efforts to describe his ...
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Scherzo
A scherzo (, , ; plural scherzos or scherzi), in western classical music, is a short composition – sometimes a movement from a larger work such as a symphony or a sonata. The precise definition has varied over the years, but scherzo often refers to a movement that replaces the minuet as the third movement in a four-movement work, such as a symphony, sonata, or string quartet. The term can also refer to a fast-moving humorous composition that may or may not be part of a larger work. Origins The Italian word ''scherzo'' means " joke" or "jest." More rarely, the similar-meaning word ''badinerie'' (also spelled ''battinerie''; from French, "jesting") has been used. Sometimes the word ''scherzando'' ("joking") is used in musical notation to indicate that a passage should be executed in a playful manner. An early use of the word ''scherzo'' in music is in light-hearted madrigals of the early baroque period, which were often called ''scherzi musicali'', for example: * Claud ...
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Jack Gibbons
Jack Gibbons (born 2 March 1962) is an English-born American classical composer and virtuoso pianist. Biography Gibbons was born in England. His father was a scientist and his mother a visual artist. He began his piano studies in Stockton-on-Tees, later continuing in Oxford. He began performing in public at the age of 10. He made his London debut in 1979, at the age of 17, with an all- Alkan concert that included Alkan's Concerto for Solo Piano and Ouverture from Op. 39. At the age of 20 he won First Prize in the Newport International Pianoforte Competition, with a performance with the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4. In 1984 he made his Queen Elizabeth Hall debut performing J.S. Bach's ''Goldberg Variations'', Chopin's "Funeral March" Sonata and Ravel's ''Gaspard de la nuit'', after which recital ''The Times'' wrote that Gibbons "could be Britain's answer to Ivo Pogorelić". Since then Gibbons has played in many prestigious venues and fe ...
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Symphony No
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, or Mahler's Second Symphony). Etymology and origins The word ''symphony'' is derived from the Greek word (), meaning ...
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Ludwig Van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. He is one of the most revered figures in the history of Western music; his works rank among the most performed of the classical music repertoire and span the Transition from Classical to Romantic music, transition from the Classical period (music), Classical period to the Romantic music, Romantic era. His early period, during which he forged his craft, is typically considered to have lasted until 1802. From 1802 to around 1812, his middle period showed an individual development from the styles of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and is sometimes characterised as heroic. During this time, Beethoven began to grow increasingly Hearing loss, deaf. In his late period, from 1812 to 1827, he extended his innovations in musical form and expression. Born in Bonn, Beethoven displayed his musical talent at a young age. He was initially taught intensively by his father, Johann van Bee ...
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