Symphony For Solo Piano (Charles-Valentin Alkan)
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Symphony For Solo Piano (Charles-Valentin 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 studies Nos. 4-7 from the ''Douze études dans tous les tons mineurs (Twelve Studies in all the minor keys)'', Op. 39, each title being prefaced by the word ''Symphonie'' ( French: ''Symphony''). The four movements are titled ''Allegro'', '' Marche Funèbre'', ''Menuet'', and ''Finale''. Much like the Concerto for Solo Piano, 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) Unlike a standard classic ...
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Charles-Valentin Alkan
Charles-Valentin Alkan (; 30 November 1813 – 29 March 1888) was a French Jewish 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 mino ...
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Chorale
Chorale is the name of several related musical forms originating in the music genre of the Lutheran chorale: * Hymn tune of a Lutheran hymn (e.g. the melody of "Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme"), or a tune in a similar format (e.g. one of the themes in the Finale of Saint-Saëns's Third Symphony) * Such tune with a harmonic accompaniment (e.g. chorale monody, chorales included in ''Schemellis Gesangbuch'') * Such a tune presented in a homophonic or homorhythmic harmonisation, usually four-part harmony (e.g. Bach's four-part chorales, or the chorale included in the second movement of Mahler's Fifth Symphony) * A more complex setting of a hymn(-like) tune (e.g. chorale fantasia form in Bach's ''Schübler Chorales'', or a combination of compositional techniques in César Franck's ') The chorale originated when Martin Luther translated sacred songs into the vernacular language (German), contrary to the established practice of church music near the end of the first quarter of the ...
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Marc-André Hamelin
Marc-André Hamelin, OC, CQ (born September 5, 1961), is a Canadian virtuoso pianist and composer. Hamelin is recognized worldwide for the originality and technical proficiency of his performances of the classic repertoire. He has received 11 Grammy Award nominations. Biography Born in Montreal, Quebec, Hamelin began his piano studies at the age of five. His father, a pharmacist by trade who was also an amateur pianist, introduced him to the works of Charles-Valentin Alkan, Leopold Godowsky, and Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji when he was still young. He studied at the École de musique Vincent-d'Indy in Montreal with Yvonne Hubert and then at Temple University in Philadelphia. In 1989, he was awarded the Virginia Parker Prize. Hamelin has given recitals in many cities. Festival appearances have included Bad Kissingen, Belfast, Cervantino, La Grange de Meslay, Husum Piano Rarities, Lanaudière, Ravinia, La Roque d’Anthéron, Ruhr Piano, Halifax (Nova Scotia), Singapore Piano, S ...
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Piano Symphony
A piano symphony is a piece for solo piano in one or more movements. It is a symphonic genre by virtue of imitating orchestral tone colour, texture, and symphonic development. History An early piano symphony was written by Theodor Kullak and published in 1847. French composer Charles-Valentin Alkan composed one, which was published in 1857. José Vianna da Motta wrote of it, "Alkan demonstrates his brilliant understanding of ymphonicform in the first movement of the Symphony (the fourth Study f his Op. 39. ... The tonalities are so carefully calculated and developed that anyone listening to it can relate each note to an orchestral sound; and yet it is not just through the sonority that the orchestra is painted and becomes tangible, but equally through the style and the way that the polyphony is handled." Several decades later, Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji wrote his Third Piano Sonata (1922), which he described as a piano symphony. Between the years 1938–1976, Sorabji wrote 6 pi ...
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Egon Petri
Egon Petri (23 March 188127 May 1962) was a Dutch pianist. Life and career Petri's family was Dutch. He was born a Dutch citizen but in Hanover, Germany, and grew up in Dresden, where he attended the Kreuzschule. His father, a professional violinist, taught him to play the violin. While still a teenager, Petri played with the Dresden Court Orchestra and with his father's string quartet. He studied composition and theory with Hermann Kretzschmar and Felix Draeseke at the Dresden Conservatory. From an early age Petri had also taken piano lessons and eventually, with strong encouragement from Ignacy Jan Paderewski and Ferruccio Busoni, he concentrated on piano. He studied with Busoni, who greatly influenced him, and Petri considered himself more a disciple than a student of his. Following his example, Petri focused on the works of Johann Sebastian Bach and Franz Liszt, who, along with Busoni himself, were at the centre of his repertoire. During World War I, Petri moved wit ...
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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 Sch ...
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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), a Canadian animated short * ''Strings'' (2004 film), a film directed by Anders Rønnow Klarlund * ''Strings'' (2011 film), an American dramatic thriller 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, rather than striking the piano's keys Types of groups * String band, musical ens ...
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Symphonie Fantastique
' (''Fantastical Symphony: Episode in the Life of an Artist … in Five Sections'') Op. 14, is a program symphony written by the French composer Hector Berlioz in 1830. It is an important piece of the early Romantic period. The first performance was at the Paris Conservatoire on 5 December 1830. Franz Liszt made a piano transcription of the symphony in 1833 (S. 470). The American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein described the symphony as the first musical expedition into psychedelia because of its hallucinatory and dream-like nature, and because history suggests Berlioz composed at least a portion of it under the influence of opium. According to Bernstein, "Berlioz tells it like it is. You take a trip, you wind up screaming at your own funeral." Berlioz put a great deal of emotion into the piece, exploring the extremities of many ends of the emotional spectrum. He wanted people to understand his intentions behind it as they were the driving factor behind each movement ...
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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, String Quartet". Haydn spent much of his career as a court musician for the wealthy Esterházy family at their Eszterháza Castle. Until the later part of his life, this isolated him from other composers and trends in music so that he was, as he put it, "forced to become original". Yet his music circulated widely, and for much of his career he was the most celebrated composer in Europe. He was Haydn and Mozart, a friend and mentor of Mozart, Beethoven and his contemporaries#Joseph Haydn, a tutor of Beethoven, and the elder brother of composer Michael Haydn. Biography Early life Joseph Haydn was born in Rohrau, Austria, Rohrau, Habsburg ...
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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 ...
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Anton Bruckner
Josef Anton Bruckner (; 4 September 182411 October 1896) was an Austrian composer, organist, and music theorist best known for his symphonies, masses, Te Deum and motets. The first are considered emblematic of the final stage of Austro-German Romanticism because of their rich harmonic language, strongly polyphonic character, and considerable length. Bruckner's compositions helped to define contemporary musical radicalism, owing to their dissonances, unprepared modulations, and roving harmonies. Unlike other musical radicals such as Richard Wagner and Hugo Wolf, Bruckner showed extreme humility before other musicians, Wagner in particular. This apparent dichotomy between Bruckner the man and Bruckner the composer hampers efforts to describe his life in a way that gives a straightforward context for his music. Hans von Bülow described him as "half genius, half simpleton". Bruckner was critical of his own work and often reworked his compositions. There are several version ...
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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: * Claudio Monte ...
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