classical music
-
Siegfried (Wagner) premiered VIII 16 1876
Siegfried – music drama in three acts(third of the four works which constitute the cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen) Music – Richard WagnerLibretto – Richard Wagner Premiere – August 16 1876, in Bayreuth FestspielhausLanguage – German Siegfried, Old Norse Sigurd, is a figure from the heroic literature of the ancient Germanic people. He appears in…
-
William Tell (Rossini) premiered today in 1829
William Tell, German Wilhelm Tell, is the Swiss legendary hero who symbolized the struggle for political and individual freedom.The historical existence of Tell is disputed. According to popular legend, he was a peasant from Bürglen in the canton of Uri in the 13th and early 14th centuries who defied Austrian authority, was forced to shoot…
-
The Life You Give: Enrique Granados *VII 27 1867
Enrique Granados, born July 27, 1867, in Lérida, Spain, is the pianist and composer who was a leader of the movement toward nationalism in late 19th-century Spanish music. Granados made his debut as a pianist at 16. He studied composition in Barcelona with Felipe Pedrell, the father of Spanish nationalism in music. He studied piano…
-
The Life You Give: Alexis Weissenberg *VII 26 1929
If one wanted to make a biographical feature film about a classical musician, the life of the Bulgarian-American-French pianist Alexis Weissenberg would furnish ideal subject material. Born in Sofia in 1929, Weissenberg was taught to play the piano by his mother. Several members of her family were Vienna Conservatory-trained musicians, and Weissenberg grew up in…
-
“Parsifal” (Wagner) premiered on July 26 1882
The Poem Parzival, an epic poem, is one of the masterpieces of the Middle Ages, written between 1200 and 1210 in Middle High German by Wolfram von Eschenbach. This 16-book, 25,000-line poem is in part a religious allegory describing Parzival’s painful journey from utter ignorance and naïveté to spiritual awareness. The poem introduced the theme…
-
The Life You Give: Pinchas Zukerman *VII 16 1948
Pinchas Zukerman, born July 16, 1948, in Tel Aviv, Israel, is the violinist, violist, and conductor who earned widespread acclaim in a career that spanned more than five decades. Zukerman began playing at about the age of seven; when he was eight he entered the Tel Aviv Academy of Music. In 1962, sponsored by violinist…
-
The Life You Give: Herman Prey *VII 11 1929
Growing up during the regime of the the National Socialist Party, Hermann Prey was scheduled to be drafted at the age of 15 when the end of World War II brought peace and a chance for him to study voice with Gunther Baum and Jaro Prohaska at the Hochschule fur Musik in Berlin. He sang…
-
The Life You Give: Carl Orff *VII 10 1895
Carl Orff, born July 10, 1895, in Munich, Germany, is the composer known particularly for his operas and dramatic works and for his innovations in music education. Orff studied at the Munich Academy of Music and with the German composer Heinrich Kaminski and later conducted in Munich, Mannheim, and Darmstadt. His Schulwerk, a manual describing…
-
The Life You Give: George Walker *VI 27 1922
Although he started out as a highly promising concert pianist in a grand style (some of his most prominent concerts featured concertos by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, and Brahms), George Walker was writing substantial music from his mid-twenties. By the time he was 40, he had solidly established himself as a flexible, fully contemporary composer and it…
-
The Valkyrie (Wagner) premiered today in 1870
Valkyrie, also spelled Walkyrie, Old Norse Valkyrja (“Chooser of the Slain”), in Norse mythology, any of a group of maidens who served the god Odin and were sent by him to the battlefields to choose the slain who were worthy of a place in Valhalla. These foreboders of war rode to the battlefield on horses,…
-
Remembering James Levine *VI 23 1943
James Levine, born June 23, 1943, in Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.A., is the conductor and pianist, especially noted for his work with the Metropolitan Opera (Met) of New York City. He was considered the preeminent American conductor of his generation. As a piano prodigy, Levine made his debut in 1953 with the Cincinnati Orchestra in Ohio.…
-
The Life You Give: Peter Pears *VI 22 1910
Sir Peter Pears, born Peter Neville Luard Pears, June 22, 1910, in Farnham, Surrey, England, is the tenor, a singer of outstanding skill and subtlety who was closely associated with the works of Sir Benjamin Britten. He received a knighthood in 1977. Pears studied at the University of Oxford, at the Royal College of Music,…
-
The Life You Give: Eva Marton *1943
Hungarian soprano Eva Marton has enjoyed a highly successful career on the world’s leading operatic stages since the late ’60s. With her powerful, attractive voice she has managed to score numerous successes in the Italian spinto roles of Verdi and Puccini, the heftier roles of Wagner and Richard Strauss, and the more delicate but equally…
-
The Life You Give: Igor Stravinsky *1882
Igor Stravinsky, born Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky, June 5 [June 17, New Style], 1882, Oranienbaum [now Lomonosov], near St. Petersburg, Russia, is the composer whose work had a revolutionary impact on musical thought and sensibility just before and after World War I, and whose compositions remained a touchstone of modernism for much of his long working…
-
The Life You Give: Charles Gounod *1818
Charles Gounod, born Charles-françois Gounod, June 17, 1818, in Paris, France, is a composer noted particularly for his operas, of which the most famous is Faust. Gounod’s father was a painter, and his mother was a capable pianist who gave Gounod his early training in music. He was educated at the Lycée Saint-Louis, where he…
