Vera Bradford
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Vera Bradford
Vera Florence Bradford (5 September 19046 January 2004) was an Australian classical pianist and teacher, with a very long career. Her playing was admired for its depth and beauty of tone, classical unity and tremendous power. Vera Bradford was born in Melbourne to a musical family. Her mother Edith was a pianist, and her father Frederick and brother Cec were violinists. She started learning the piano at the age of seven, and she graduated from the University of Melbourne Conservatorium in 1927, with the highest honours. In 1928 she took up a scholarship with Percy Grainger in Chicago. (Grainger and his wife Ella became close friends of Vera’s, and Ella always stayed with Vera on Percy's visits to Australia.) She also studied at the Chicago Musical College with Rudolph Ganz and Alexander Raab. It was Raab who introduced her to the technique that made her famous, the 'arm weight' technique of the Russian teacher Theodor Leschetizky, which she had first experienced when seein ...
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Melbourne
Melbourne ( , ; Boonwurrung language, Boonwurrung/ or ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city of the States and territories of Australia, Australian state of Victoria (state), Victoria, and the second most-populous city in Australia, after Sydney. The city's name generally refers to a metropolitan area also known as Greater Melbourne, comprising an urban agglomeration of Local Government Areas of Victoria#Municipalities of Greater Melbourne, 31 local government areas. The name is also used to specifically refer to the local government area named City of Melbourne, whose area is centred on the Melbourne central business district and some immediate surrounds. The metropolis occupies much of the northern and eastern coastlines of Port Phillip Bay and spreads into the Mornington Peninsula, part of West Gippsland, as well as the hinterlands towards the Yarra Valley, the Dandenong Ranges, and the Macedon R ...
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Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss (; ; 11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a German composer and conductor best known for his Tone poems (Strauss), tone poems and List of operas by Richard Strauss, operas. Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic and early Modernism (music), modern eras, he has been described as a successor of Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt. Along with Gustav Mahler, he represents the late flowering of German Romanticism, in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined with an advanced harmony, harmonic style. Strauss's compositional output began in 1870 when he was just six years old and lasted until his death nearly eighty years later. His first tone poem to achieve wide acclaim was ''Don Juan (Strauss), Don Juan'', and this was followed by other lauded works of this kind, including ''Death and Transfiguration'', ''Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks'', ''Also sprach Zarathustra'', ''Don Quixote (Strauss), Don Quixote'', ''Ein Heldenleben'', ''Symph ...
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Charles Moses
Sir Charles Alfred Joseph Moses (21 January 19009 February 1988) was a British-born Australian administrator who was general manager of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) from 1935 until 1965. A 1918 graduate of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, Moses served in the Occupation of the Rhineland and the Irish War of Independence. He emigrated to Australia in 1922. After a few years as a farmer and car salesman, he joined the ABC in 1930 as a radio sports announcer. During the Second World War he escaped from Singapore with Major General Gordon Bennett, led the 2/7th Cavalry Regiment at the Battle of Buna-Gona, and crossed the Rhine as a media executive accompanying the British Commandos. After the war ended, the ABC created its own news organisation. It expanded its audience in rural areas through the new ABC Rural department with '' The Country Hour'', and the iconic radio serial, '' Blue Hills''. With the arrival of television in Australia in 1956, Mose ...
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Georg Schnéevoigt
Georg Lennart Schnéevoigt (8 November 1872 – 28 November 1947) was a Finnish Conducting, conductor and cellist, born in Vyborg, Grand Duchy of Finland, which is now in Russia, to Ernst Schnéevoigt and Rosa Willandt. Career Schnéevoigt began his career as a cellist performing throughout Europe in the 1890s. He was principal cellist of the Helsinki Philharmonic from 1896 to 1902. After this, he conducted many orchestras including the Kaim Orchestra (now the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra), Riga Philharmonic Orchestra which he founded, Oslo Philharmonic (1919–1921), the Stockholm Concert Society (later the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra), the Sydney Symphony, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. From 1930 until his death in 1947, Schnéevoigt was chief conductor of the Malmö Symphony Orchestra. In Europe young Schnéevoigt was considered skilled, but by an accounting of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Schnéevoigt's conducting style was characterised as "flaccid", "p ...
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Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO) is an Australian orchestra based in Melbourne. The MSO is resident at Hamer Hall. The MSO has its own choir, the MSO Chorus, following integration with the Melbourne Chorale in 2008. The MSO relies on funding by the Victorian State Government and the Federal government and support from private corporations and donors. It is supported by Symphony Services International. Sophie Galaise joined the MSO as its first female managing director in 2016. Its chairman is David Li (). History The founder of the Albert Street Conservatorium Orchestra was musician and conductor Alberto Zelman. This orchestra gave its first concert on 11 December 1906. In 1923, Bertha Jorgensen became the first female leader of a professional orchestra in Australia, and she went on to play with the orchestra for 50 years and became the longest-serving female leader of an orchestra on an international scale. In 1927, the Albert Street Conservatorium Orchestra combin ...
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Sydney Symphony Orchestra
The Sydney Symphony Orchestra (SSO) is an Australian symphony orchestra based in Sydney. With roots going back to 1908, the orchestra was made a permanent professional orchestra on the formation of the Australian Broadcasting Commission in 1932. The orchestra has performed at the Sydney Opera House as its home concert hall, since the venue's opening in 1973. Simone Young is the orchestra's current chief conductor and the first female conductor in the post. The Sydney Symphony performs around 150 concerts a year to a combined annual audience of more than 350,000. The regular subscription concert series are mostly performed at the Sydney Opera House, but other venues around Sydney are used as well, including the City Recital Hall at Angel Place and the Sydney Town Hall. The Town Hall was the home of the orchestra until the opening of the Opera House in 1973. Since then, most concerts have been taking place in the Opera House's Concert Hall (capacity: 2,679 seats). History The ...
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Piano Concerto No
A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an action mechanism where hammers strike strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a chromatic scale in equal temperament. A musician who specializes in piano is called a pianist. There are two main types of piano: the grand piano and the upright piano. The grand piano offers better sound and more precise key control, making it the preferred choice when space and budget allow. The grand piano is also considered a necessity in venues hosting skilled pianists. The upright piano is more commonly used because of its smaller size and lower cost. When a key is depressed, the strings inside are struck by felt-coated wooden hammers. The vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that amplifies the sound by coupling the acoustic energy to the air. When the key is released, a damper stops the string's vibration, ending the sound. Most not ...
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Neville Cardus
Sir John Frederick Neville Cardus, Commander of the Order of the British Empire, CBE (2 April 188828 February 1975) was an English writer and critic. From an impoverished home background, and mainly self-educated, he became ''The Manchester Guardian''s cricket correspondent in 1919 and its List of chief music critics, chief music critic in 1927, holding the two posts simultaneously until 1940. His contributions to these two distinct fields in the years before the World War II, Second World War established his reputation as one of the foremost critics of his generation. Cardus's approach to cricket writing was innovative, turning what had previously been largely a factual form into vivid description and criticism; he is considered by contemporaries to have influenced every subsequent cricket writer. Although he achieved his largest readership for his cricket reports and books, he considered music criticism as his principal vocation. Without any formal musical training, he was ini ...
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Bernard Heinze
Sir Bernard Thomas Heinze, AC, FRCM (1 July 189410 June 1982) was an Australian conductor, academic, and Director of the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music. He conducted all the orchestras run by the ABC, most particularly the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, of which he was chief conductor from 1933 to 1950. Also, he was chief conductor of the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic from 1927, becoming Honorary Life Conductor in the 1960s, and continuing his association with the RMP until 1978. In addition he was guest conductor of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra in 1939. Discouraged by Australian audiences' lack of interest in music, he founded Children's Concerts. He also initiated the Young Performers Awards, which continue to showcase emerging international talent. He introduced Australian audiences to the works of Anton Bruckner, Dmitri Shostakovich, Béla Bartók and William Walton, and promoted Australian composers. In 1949 he became the first Australian ever to be ...
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World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many nations mobilising all resources in pursuit of total war. Tanks in World War II, Tanks and Air warfare of World War II, aircraft played major roles, enabling the strategic bombing of cities and delivery of the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, first and only nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II is the List of wars by death toll, deadliest conflict in history, causing World War II casualties, the death of 70 to 85 million people, more than half of whom were civilians. Millions died in genocides, including the Holocaust, and by massacres, starvation, and disease. After the Allied victory, Allied-occupied Germany, Germany, Allied-occupied Austria, Austria, Occupation of Japan, Japan, a ...
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Australian Broadcasting Corporation
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is Australia’s principal public service broadcaster. It is funded primarily by grants from the federal government and is administered by a government-appointed board of directors. The ABC is a publicly-owned statutory organisation that is politically independent and accountable; for example, through its production of annual reports, and is bound by provisions contained within the Public Interest Disclosure Act 2013 and the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013, with its charter enshrined in legislation, the ''Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act 1983''. ABC Commercial, a profit-making division of the corporation, also helps generate funding for content provision. The ABC was established as the Australian Broadcasting Commission on 1 July 1932 by an Act of Federal Parliament. It effectively replaced the Australian Broadcasting Company, a private company established in 1924 to provide programming for A ...
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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 England 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 mode ...
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