1.
Lincoln Center
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Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is a 16. 3-acre complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It hosts many notable performing arts organizations, which are nationally and internationally renowned, including the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, and the New York City Ballet. Respected architects were contracted to design the buildings on the site. Rockefeller was Lincoln Centers inaugural president from 1956 and became its chairman in 1961, the centers three buildings, David Geffen Hall, David H. Koch Theater and the Metropolitan Opera House were opened in 1962,1964 and 1966, respectively. While the center may have been named because it was located in the Lincoln Square neighborhood, the name was bestowed on the area in 1906 by the New York City Board of Aldermen, but records give no reason for choosing that name. There has long been speculation that the name came from a local landowner, City records from the time show only the names Johannes van Bruch, Thomas Hall, Stephan de Lancey, James de Lancey, James de Lancey, Jr. and John Somerindyck as area property owners. One speculation is that references to President Lincoln were omitted from the records because the mayor in 1906 was George B, mcClellan, Jr. son of General George B. McClellan, who was general-in-chief of the Union Army early in the American Civil War, Architects who designed buildings at the center include, Max Abramovitz, David Geffen Hall Pietro Belluschi, The Juilliard School. Koch Theater Eero Saarinen, Vivian Beaumont Theater Davis, Brody and Associates, The Samuel B. the centers cultural institutions also make use of facilities located away from the main campus. In 2004, the center was expanded through the addition of Jazz at Lincoln Centers newly built facilities, in March 2006, the center launched construction on a major redevelopment plan that modernized, renovated, and opened up its campus. Redevelopment was completed in 2012 with the completion of the Presidents Bridge over West 65th Street, when it was first announced in 1999, Lincoln Centers campuswide redevelopment was to cost $1.5 billion over 10 years and radically transform the campus. Among the architects that have been involved were Frank Gehry, Cooper, Robertson & Partners, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Beyer Blinder Belle, Fox & Fowle, Olin Partnership, and Diller & Scofidio. Additionally, Alice Tully Hall was modernized and reopened to critical and popular acclaim in 2009, topped by a sloping lawn roof, the film center is part of a new pavilion that also houses a destination restaurant named Lincoln, as well as offices. Subsequent projects were added which addressed improvements to the main plazas, under the direction of the Lincoln Center Development Project, Diller Scofidio + Renfro in association with FXFOWLE Architects and Beyer Blinder Belle Architects provided the design services. Additionally, Turner Construction Company and RCDolner, LLC were the managers for the projects. April 21,1955, Lincoln Square designated for urban renewal, june 22,1956, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc. incorporated. May 14,1959, Ground-breaking ceremony with U. S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower September 23,1962, a two-hour live CBS special, Opening Night at Lincoln Center, preserved the event on videotape. April 6,1964, Lincoln Center Fountain opened, renamed the Revson Fountain April 23,1964, New York State Theater opened
2.
Russian language
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Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
3.
Volhynia
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Volhynia or Volyn is a historic region in Central and Eastern Europe straddling Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus. The borders of the region are not clearly defined, while the territory that still carries the name is Volyn Oblast, Volhynia has changed hands numerous times throughout history and been divided among competing powers. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, it has been part of the independent nation of Ukraine, among important cities are Lutsk, Rivne, Volodymyr-Volynskyi, Iziaslav, Novohrad-Volynskyi. In other versions, the city was located over 20 km to the west of Volodymyr-Volynskyi near the mouth of Huczwa River, before the partitions of Poland, eastern edge stretched a little west along the right-banks of Sluch River or just east of it. Volhynia is located in basins of Western Bug and Prypyat, therefore most of its rivers flow either in northern or western directions, relative to other historical regions, it is northeast of Galicia, east of Lesser Poland, and northwest of Podolia. The borders of the region are not clearly defined, and it is considered to overlap a number of other regions, among which are Polesia. Territories of historical Volhynia are now part of the Volyn, Rivne, major cities include Lutsk, Rivne, Kovel, Volodymyr-Volynskyi, Kremenets, and Starokostiantyniv. Before World War II, many Jewish shtetls, such as Trochenbrod, at one time all of Volhynia was part of the Pale of Settlement designated by Imperial Russia on its southwesternmost border. The land was mentioned in works of the Arabian scholar Al-Masudi who denoted the local tribe as people of Valin, in his work of 947-948 Al-Masudi mentions that Valinians as an intertribal union were ruled by their leader Madjak. In the opinion of Ukrainian historian Yuriy Dyba, the chronicle phrase «и оустави по мьстѣ, и по лузѣ погосты и дань и ѡброкы» reflects the actual route of the Olgas raid against Drevlians further to the west up to the Western Bugs right tributary Luha River. As early as 983, Vladimir the Great appointed his son Vsevolod the ruler of the Volhynian Principality and in 988 established the city of Volodymer. The first records can be traced to the Ruthenian chronicles, such as the Primary Chronicle, which mentions tribes of the Dulebe, Buzhan, volhynias early history coincides with that of the duchies or principalities of Halych and Volhynia. These two successor states of the Kievan Rus formed Halych-Volhynia between the 12th and the 14th centuries, after 1569 Volhynia formed a province of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. During this period many Poles and Jews settled in the area, the Roman and Greek Catholic churches became established in the province. In 1375 was established a Roman Catholic Diocese of Lodomeria but it was suppressed in 1425, many Orthodox churches joined the latter organization in order to benefit from a more attractive legal status. Records of the first agricultural colonies of Mennonites date from 1783, after the Third partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795, Volhynia was annexed as the Volhynian Governorate of the Russian Empire. It covered an area of 71,852.7 square kilometers, many Roman Catholic church buildings were also given to the Russian Church, and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Lutsk was suppressed on orders of Empress Catherine II. In 1897, the population amounted to 2,989,482 people and it consisted of 73.7 percent East Slavs,13.2 percent Jews,6.2 percent Poles, and 5.7 percent Germans
4.
Jewish
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The Jews, also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Israelites, or Hebrews, of the Ancient Near East. Jews originated as a national and religious group in the Middle East during the second millennium BCE, the Merneptah Stele appears to confirm the existence of a people of Israel, associated with the god El, somewhere in Canaan as far back as the 13th century BCE. The Israelites, as an outgrowth of the Canaanite population, consolidated their hold with the emergence of the Kingdom of Israel, some consider that these Canaanite sedentary Israelites melded with incoming nomadic groups known as Hebrews. The worldwide Jewish population reached a peak of 16.7 million prior to World War II, but approximately 6 million Jews were systematically murdered during the Holocaust. Since then the population has risen again, and as of 2015 was estimated at 14.3 million by the Berman Jewish DataBank. According to the report, about 43% of all Jews reside in Israel and these numbers include all those who self-identified as Jews in a socio-demographic study or were identified as such by a respondent in the same household. The exact world Jewish population, however, is difficult to measure, Israel is the only country where Jews form a majority of the population. The modern State of Israel was established as a Jewish state and defines itself as such in its Declaration of Independence and its Law of Return grants the right of citizenship to any Jew who requests it. The English word Jew continues Middle English Gyw, Iewe, according to the Hebrew Bible, the name of both the tribe and kingdom derive from Judah, the fourth son of Jacob. The Hebrew word for Jew, יְהוּדִי ISO 259-3 Yhudi, is pronounced, with the stress on the syllable, in Israeli Hebrew. The Ladino name is ג׳ודיו, Djudio, ג׳ודיוס, Djudios, Yiddish, ייִד Yid, ייִדן, Yidn. The etymological equivalent is in use in languages, e. g. but derivations of the word Hebrew are also in use to describe a Jew, e. g. in Italian. The German word Jude is pronounced, the corresponding adjective jüdisch is the origin of the word Yiddish, in such contexts Jewish is the only acceptable possibility. Some people, however, have become so wary of this construction that they have extended the stigma to any use of Jew as a noun, a factual reconstruction for the origin of the Jews is a difficult and complex endeavor. It requires examining at least 3,000 years of ancient human history using documents in vast quantities, as archaeological discovery relies upon researchers and scholars from diverse disciplines, the goal is to interpret all of the factual data, focusing on the most consistent theory. In this case, it is complicated by long standing politics and religious, Jacob and his family migrated to Ancient Egypt after being invited to live with Jacobs son Joseph by the Pharaoh himself. The patriarchs descendants were later enslaved until the Exodus led by Moses, traditionally dated to the 13th century BCE, Modern archaeology has largely discarded the historicity of the Patriarchs and of the Exodus story, with it being reframed as constituting the Israelites inspiring national myth narrative. The growth of Yahweh-centric belief, along with a number of practices, gradually gave rise to a distinct Israelite ethnic group
5.
Kremenets
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Kremenets is a city of regional significance in the Ternopil Oblast of western Ukraine. It is the center of the Kremenets Raion, and lies 18 km north-east of the great Pochayiv Monastery. The city is situated in the region of Volhynia. According to some sources the Kremenets fortress was built in the 8th or 9th century, the first documented reference to the fortress is given in a Polish encyclopedic dictionary written in 1064. The first reference to Kremenets in Old Slavic literature dates from 1226 when the ruler, Mstislav the Bold. During the Mongol invasion of Rus in 1240-41, Kremenets was one of few cities that Batu Khan failed to capture, in 1382, after the death of Louis I of Hungary, Lithuanian duke Liubartas captured Kremenets from the Kingdom of Hungary. The city obtained Magdeburg rights in 1431, and in 1569, after the Union of Lublin, it part of Crown of Poland, known as Polish. In the fall of 1648 Cossack Colonel Maxym Kryvonis surrounded the Kremenets fortress, in October, after a six-week siege, the royal garrison surrendered. As a consequence of the fighting, the fortress was damaged and was never rebuilt. In 1795 Kremenets was annexed by the Russian Empire following the Third Partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and it remained a part of Russia until World War I. During 1917-1920 Kremenets 7 times passed from hand to hand, the authorities Ukrainian state - Ukrainian Peoples Republic - it was subject to early 1918 to June 1919. In 1921, following Peace of Riga, the returned to Poland. In the interwar period, Kremenets was famous for its high school, Liceum Krzemienieckie. According to the 1931 Polish census, the town had a population of 19,877, in 1934, upon initiative of Ludwik Gronowski, teacher of the Kremenets High School, Volhynian School of Gliding Sokola Góra was opened 14 kilometers from Kremenets, in the village of Kulików. Among its students was the daughter of Jozef Piłsudski, Jadwiga Piłsudska, in September 1939, the Polish government was temporarily located in Kremenets, which during this time was subject to heavy aerial bombing until captured by invading Soviet forces on 17 September. By then the government had evacuated Kremenets and was on its way to neutral Romania, on July 28,1941, most of the teachers of the Krzemieniec High School were arrested by the Germans, who used a list provided to them by local Ukrainians. By the end of the month,30 teachers and members of Polish intelligentsia were murdered at the so-called Hill of Crosses, Shevchenko, Kremenetskiy Regional Museum Juliusz Slowacki, increasing the flow of tourists. In 1991 at the Teachers College Shevchenko created a modern Kremenets Lyceum, Jews are known to have settled in the Kremenets area as early as 1438, when the Grand Duke of Lithuania gave them a charter
6.
San Francisco Conservatory of Music
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The San Francisco Conservatory of Music is an elite music school with an enrollment of about 400 undergraduate and graduate students, located at 50 Oak Street, San Francisco, California. The highly acclaimed Pre-College Division offers a music education to gifted young musicians. The San Francisco Conservatory of Music was founded in 1917 by Ada Clement and its first location was the home of Lillians parents, at 3435 Sacramento Street. The school opened with three pianos, four studios, two blackboards and 40 students, the Ada Clement Piano School quickly expanded. Several years after its founding, the changed to the Ada Clement Music School. In 1956 the Conservatory moved from Sacramento Street to 1201 Ortega Street and it resided there for fifty years, before moving to its current location at 50 Oak Street in 2006. San Francisco Conservatory of Music offers music education in addition to community enrichment programs and this expansion of the school will dramatically increase its instructional and performance opportunities as well as its contribution to the cultural life of the Bay Area. Acquired around March 2000, the conservatorys Civic Center location includes two existing buildings,50 and 70 Oak Street between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin and this Concert Hall seats up to 450, a new Recital Hall seats up to 160 and a smaller Salon seats up to 120. An annual award for orchestral composition given by The San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the competition is open to current students and recent alumni of the conservatory. The winner is selected by an independent panel of each spring
7.
Louis Persinger
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Louis Persinger was an American violinist, pianist and professor of violin. Persinger had early lessons in Colorado, appearing in public by the age of 12, arthur Nikisch described him as ‘one of the most talented pupils the Leipzig Conservatory ever had’. He was also Riccis piano accompanist for many recitals and recordings, arthur Nikisch described him as ‘one of the most talented pupils the Leipzig Conservatory ever had’. Louis Persinger played on several superb instruments throughout his illustrious career including the Lipinski Stradivarius circa 1715, Domenico Montagnana, groves Dictionary Juilliard Review Winter 1961-2 Louis Persinger - A Tribute on his 75th The Art of Violin Playing, Daniel Melsa, Foulsham & Co. Ltd. The Book of the Violin, edited by Dominic Gill, Phaidon Press, ISBN 0-7148-2286-8 An Encyclopedia of the Violin, by Alberto Bachmann, Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-80004-7 The Great Violinists, by Margaret Campbell, Robson Books, ISBN 1-86105-623-0 Paganini-The Genoese, by G. I. C. de Courcy, University of Oklahoma Press Stuff Smith-Pure at Heart, edited by Anthony Barnett & Eva Løgager, Allardyce Barnett Publishers. ISBN 0-907954-15-4 Szigeti on the Violin, by Joseph Szigeti, Dover Publications, ISBN 0-486-23763-X Tartini-His Life and Times, by Prof. Dr. Lev Ginsburg, Paganiniana Publications Inc. ISBN 0-87666-590-3 Unfinished Journey, Yehudi Menuhin, Macdonald and Janes, ISBN 0-354-04146-0 The Violin, by Yehudi Menuhin, Flammarion. ISBN 2-08-013623-2 The Violin and I, by Kato Havas, Bosworth & Co. Ltd, violins & Violinists, by Franz Farga, Rockliff Publishing Corporation Ltd. Ysaÿe, by Prof. Dr. Lev Ginsburg, Paganiniana Publications Inc
8.
San Francisco Symphony
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The San Francisco Symphony, founded in 1911, is an orchestra based in San Francisco, California. Since 1980, the orchestra has performed at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in the Citys Hayes Valley neighborhood, the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus are part of the organization. Its current music director is Michael Tilson Thomas, who has held the position since September 1995, among various awards and honors for the orchestra are an Emmy Award and 15 Grammy Awards in the past 25 years. The orchestras first concerts were led by conductor composer Henry Hadley, there were sixty musicians in the Orchestra at the beginning of their first season. The first concert included music by Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Haydn, there were thirteen concerts in the 1911–1912 season, five of which were popular music. Hertz helped to refine the orchestra and arranged for the Victor Talking Machine Company to record it at their new studio in Oakland in early 1925. Hertz also led the orchestra during a number of broadcasts, including on the The Standard Hour. The series began in 1926 when the orchestra faced bankruptcy, Standard Oil of California paid the orchestras debts, the first broadcast aired on the NBC Pacific Network, on October 24,1926. and the broadcasts continued for more than 30 years. After Hertzs retirement in 1930, the orchestra was led by two conductors, Basil Cameron and Issay Dobrowen, the French maestro Pierre Monteux, who had conducted the world premiere of Igor Stravinskys The Rite of Spring, was hired to restore the orchestra. Monteux succeeded to the point where NBC began broadcasting some of its concerts, in 1949, Monteux invited Arthur Fiedler to lead summer pops concerts in the Civic Auditorium. Fiedler also conducted the orchestra at concerts in Sigmund Stern Grove in San Francisco. Fiedlers relationship with the orchestra continued until the mid-1970s, stokowski made a series of RCA Victor recordings with the orchestra in 1952 and 1953. In 1954 the board hired the young Spanish maestro Enrique Jordá as music director, surviving eyewitness and newspaper accounts describe him as having youthful enthusiasm, energy, and charm. Jordá sometimes conducted so vigorously that his baton flew from his hand, szells comments, along with growing dissatisfaction among musicians and the public, led the symphony board to dismiss Jordá. In the fall of 1963, the Austrian conductor Josef Krips became music director and he quickly became known as a benevolent autocrat, and would not tolerate sloppy playing. He soon began to refine the performance of the musicians, particularly of the standard German-Austrian repertoire. One of his innovations was a tradition on New Years Eve, A Night in Old Vienna. Similar concerts continued into the 2000s, though the format has changed in recent years, Krips would not make recordings with the orchestra, insisting they werent ready
9.
Pierre Monteux
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Pierre Benjamin Monteux was a French conductor. After violin and viola studies, and a decade as a player and occasional conductor. Thereafter he directed orchestras around the world for more than half a century, from 1917 to 1919 Monteux was the principal conductor of the French repertoire at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He led the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, Orchestre Symphonique de Paris, in 1961, aged eighty-six, he accepted the chief conductorship of the London Symphony Orchestra, a post which he held until his death three years later. Although known for his performances of the French repertoire, his love was the music of German composers. He disliked recording, finding it incompatible with spontaneity, but he made a substantial number of records. Monteux was well known as a teacher, in 1932 he began a conducting class in Paris, which he developed into a summer school that was later moved to his summer home in Les Baux in the south of France. After moving permanently to the US in 1942, and taking American citizenship, he founded a school for conductors and orchestral musicians in Hancock, Maine. Among his students in France and America who went on to fame were Igor Markevitch, Neville Marriner, André Previn, Lorin Maazel, Seiji Ozawa. The school in Hancock has continued since Monteuxs death, Pierre Monteux was born in Paris, the third son and the fifth of six children of Gustave Élie Monteux, a shoe salesman, and his wife, Clémence Rebecca née Brisac. The Monteux family was descended from Sephardic Jews who settled in the south of France, the Monteux ancestors included at least one rabbi, but Gustave Monteux and his family were not religious. Among Monteuxs brothers were Henri, who became an actor, and Paul, Gustave Monteux was not musical, but his wife was a graduate of the Conservatoire de Musique de Marseille and gave piano lessons. Pierre took violin lessons from the age of six, when he was nine years old Monteux was admitted to the Conservatoire de Paris. He studied the violin with Jules Garcin and Henri Berthelier, composition with Charles Lenepveu and his fellow violin students included George Enescu, Carl Flesch, Fritz Kreisler and Jacques Thibaud. Among the piano students at the Conservatoire was Alfred Cortot, with whom he developed a lifelong friendship, at the age of twelve, Monteux organised and conducted a small orchestra of Conservatoire students to accompany Cortot in performances of concertos in and around Paris. He attended the premiere of César Francks Symphony in February 1889. At the age of fifteen, while continuing his violin studies and he studied privately with Benjamin Godard, with whom he performed in the premiere of Saint-Saënss Septet, with the composer at the keyboard. Monteux joined the Geloso Quartet as violist, he played concerts with them
10.
Odessa
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Odessa or Odesa is the third most populous city of Ukraine and a major seaport and transportation hub located on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. Odessa is also a center of the Odessa Oblast and a multiethnic cultural center. Odessa is sometimes called the pearl of the Black Sea, the South Capital, the predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement, was founded by Hacı I Giray, the Khan of Crimea, in 1440 and originally named after him as Hacıbey. After a period of Lithuanian control, it passed into the domain of the Ottoman Sultan in 1529, in 1794, the city of Odessa was founded by a decree of the Empress Catherine the Great. From 1819 to 1858, Odessa was a free port, during the Soviet period it was the most important port of trade in the Soviet Union and a Soviet naval base. On 1 January 2000, the Quarantine Pier at Odessa Commercial Sea Port was declared a free port, during the 19th century, it was the fourth largest city of Imperial Russia, after Moscow, Saint Petersburg and Warsaw. Its historical architecture has a style more Mediterranean than Russian, having heavily influenced by French. Some buildings are built in a mixture of different styles, including Art Nouveau, Renaissance, the city of Odessa hosts both the Port of Odessa and Port Yuzhne, a significant oil terminal situated in the citys suburbs. Another notable port, Chornomorsk, is located in the same oblast, together they represent a major transport hub integrating with railways. Odessas oil and chemical processing facilities are connected to Russian and European networks by strategic pipelines, the city was named in compliance with the Greek Plan of Catherine the Great. It was named after the ancient Greek city of Odessos, which was believed to have been located here. Although Odessa is located in between the ancient Greek cities of Tyras and Olbia, Odessos is believed to be the predecessor of the present day city of Varna, Catherines secretary of state Adrian Gribovsky claimed in his memoirs that the name was his suggestion. Some expressed doubts about this claim, while others noted the reputation of Gribovsky as an honest and modest man, Odessa was the site of a large Greek settlement not later than the middle of the 6th century BC. Some scholars believe it to be a settlement established by Histria. Whether the Bay of Odessa is the ancient Port of the Histrians cannot yet be considered a settled question based on the available evidence, archaeological artifacts confirm extensive links between the Odessa area and the eastern Mediterranean. In the Middle Ages successive rulers of the Odessa region included various nomadic tribes, the Golden Horde, the Crimean Khanate, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Yedisan Crimean Tatars traded there in the 14th century. During the reign of Khan Hacı I Giray of Crimea, the Khanate was endangered by the Golden Horde and the Ottoman Turks and, in search of allies, the site of present-day Odessa was then a fortress known as Khadjibey. It was part of the Dykra region, however, most of the rest of the area remained largely uninhabited in this period
11.
Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
12.
David Stern (conductor)
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David Stern is an American conductor and co-founder of the ensemble Opera Fuoco. The past Music Director of St. Gallen Symphony Orchestra and Opera and Israeli Opera, Stern was born in New York, the son of violinist Isaac Stern and his second wife Vera née Lindenblit. In 1986 he received his BA from Yale University where he was the director of the Yale Bach Society. He then studied he studied conducting under Otto-Werner Mueller at the Juilliard School, from 2002 to 2005 he was Principal guest conductor of the Rouen Philharmonic Orchestra, under the direction of Austrian conductor Oswald Sallaberger. In 2003 he co-founded the Opera Fuoco ensemble, which concentrates on the 18th- and 19th- century operatic, Stern was Music Director of the St. Gallen Symphony Orchestra and Opera in Switzerland until the 2011/12 season when he was succeeded by Otto Tausk. From 2008 until 2014 he was also Music Director of the Israeli Opera, in 2015 he was appointed Chief Conductor of Palm Beach Opera. Official website Opera Fuoco website Biography on Ekkehard Jung artists management
13.
Alexander Zakin
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Alexander Zakin was a Russian-born pianist, best known for being the accompanist of the violinist Isaac Stern between 1940 and 1977. They appeared together in many of the worlds most prestigious concert halls, Zakin was born to a violinist father in Tobolsk, Tyumen Oblast, and began studying at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory from the age of 8. He was a pupil of Aleksander Michałowski from 1911 to 1914 and he emigrated in 1921 and studied music in Berlin, making his solo debut as a performer there in 1926. In February 1926, a piano quartet debuted, alternately named Klavier Kiddies, Jass auf vier Fliegen, and ERKLA and they performed for a few years on the radio and in concert, while also making gramophone recordings. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, he was a performer in parts of Central Europe, giving recitals, after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, he fled to Luxembourg and became a piano teacher to the Royal Family and was employed by the Radio Luxembourg. In 1940, he began performing with violinist Isaac Stern, a partnership which would last 37 years until 1977, Zakin played the piano at the White House on several occasions during the terms of Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. His performances of the sonatas of Brahms with Stern received considerable acclaim and he died on October 16,1990 at the St. Lukes-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York City of heart failure, aged 87
14.
Yo-Yo Ma
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Yo-Yo Ma is a Chinese American cellist. Born in Paris, he spent his years in New York City and was a child prodigy, performing from the age of four. He graduated from the Juilliard School and Harvard University and has enjoyed a career as both a soloist performing with orchestras around the world and a recording artist. He has recorded more than 90 albums and received 18 Grammy Awards and he also collaborated with Grammy Award-winning jazz singer Bobby McFerrin. Mas primary performance instrument is a Montagnana cello crafted in 1733 valued at US$2.5 million and he has been a United Nations Messenger of Peace since 2006. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2001, Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011, Yo-Yo Ma was born in Paris on October 7,1955, to Chinese parents and had a musical upbringing. His mother, Marina Lu, was a singer and his father, Hiao-Tsiun Ma, was a violinist, the family moved to New York when Ma was seven years old. At a young age, Ma began studying violin and piano and later viola, according to Ma, his first choice was the double bass due to its large size, but he compromised and took up cello instead. The child prodigy began performing before audiences at age five and performed for Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, at age eight, he appeared on American television with his sister, Yeou-Cheng Ma, in a concert conducted by Leonard Bernstein. In 1964, Isaac Stern introduced them on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and he attended Trinity School in New York but transferred to the Professional Childrens School, from which he graduated at age 15. He appeared as a soloist with the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra in a performance of the Tchaikovsky Rococo Variations, Ma studied at The Juilliard School at age 19 with Leonard Rose and attended Columbia University but dropped out. He later enrolled at Harvard College, prior to entering Harvard, Ma played in the Marlboro Festival Orchestra under the direction of cellist and conductor Pablo Casals. However, even before that time, Ma had steadily gained fame and had performed many of the worlds major orchestras. He has also played music, often with the pianist Emanuel Ax. Ma received his bachelors degree from Harvard in 1976, in 1991, he received an honorary doctorate from Harvard. In 1997, he was featured on John Williams soundtrack to the Hollywood film Seven Years in Tibet. In 2000, he was heard on the soundtrack of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and, in 2003, on that of Master and Commander and he collaborated with Williams again on the original score for the 2005 film Memoirs of a Geisha. He also has over 90 albums,18 of which are Grammy Award winners, Ma is a recipient of the International Center in New Yorks Award of Excellence
15.
Jian Wang (cellist)
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Jian Wang is a Chinese cellist known for his full, bright sound and bold technique. Wang currently has a career but is based primarily in London. Wang was born in Xian in 1968 and he began his study of the cello with his father when he was four, and entered the affiliated primary school of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music at the age of 9. While a student at the Conservatory, he was featured in the documentary film From Mao to Mozart. His instrument is graciously loaned to him by the family of the late Mr. Sau-Wing Lam, presenting Jian Wang Brahms - Piano Trios with Maria João Pires in the piano and Augustin Dumay in the violin Mozart - Piano Trios K.496 & K
16.
Itzhak Perlman
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Itzhak Perlman is an Israeli-American violinist, conductor, and pedagogue. In 2015, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Perlman was born in Tel Aviv in 1945, then British Mandate of Palestine, now Israel. His parents, Chaim and Shoshana Perlman, were natives of Poland and had immigrated to Palestine in the mid-1930s before they met. Perlman first became interested in the violin after hearing a classical music performance on the radio, at the age of three, he was denied admission to the Shulamit Conservatory for being too small to hold a violin. Perlman contracted polio at age four and he made a good recovery, learning to walk with crutches. Today, he uses crutches or an electric Amigo scooter for mobility, Perlman appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show twice in 1958, and again in 1964, on the same show with the Rolling Stones. He made his debut at Carnegie Hall in 1963 and won the Leventritt Competition in 1964, soon afterward, he began to tour widely. On July 5,1986, he performed on the New York Philharmonics tribute to the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty, the orchestra, conducted by Zubin Mehta, performed in Central Park. In 1987, he joined the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra for their concerts in Warsaw and he has also performed and recorded with his friend and fellow Israeli violinist Pinchas Zukerman on numerous occasions over the years. As well as playing and recording the music for which he is best known, Perlman has also played jazz, including an album made with jazz pianist Oscar Peterson. Perlman has been a soloist for a number of film such as the theme of the 1993 film Schindlers List by John Williams. More recently, he was the violin soloist for the 2005 film Memoirs of a Geisha along with cellist Yo-Yo Ma, Perlman played selections from the musical scores of the movies nominated for Best Original Score at the 73rd Academy Awards with Yo-Yo Ma and at the 78th Academy Awards. Perlman played at the state attended by Queen Elizabeth II on May 7,2007. He performed John Williamss Air and Simple Gifts at the 2009 inauguration ceremony for Barack Obama along with Yo-Yo Ma, Gabriela Montero, and Anthony McGill. While the quartet did play live, the music played simultaneously over speakers, Perlman was quoted as saying, It would have been a disaster if we had done it any other way. In 1975, Perlman accepted a faculty post at the Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College, in 2003, Mr. Perlman was named the holder of the Dorothy Richard Starling Foundation Chair in Violin Studies at the Juilliard School, succeeding his teacher, Dorothy DeLay. Perlman teaches at the Juilliard School for the pre-college program and he also currently teaches students one-on-one at the Perlman Music Program on Long Island, NY, rarely holding master classes. The Perlman music program, founded in 1995 by Toby Perlman and Suki Sandler, over time, it expanded to a year-long program
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Carnegie Hall
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Designed by architect William Burnet Tuthill and built by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie in 1891, it is one of the most prestigious venues in the world for both classical music and popular music. Carnegie Hall has its own programming, development, and marketing departments. It is also rented out to performing groups, the hall has not had a resident company since 1962, when the New York Philharmonic moved to Lincoln Centers Philharmonic Hall. Carnegie Hall has 3,671 seats, divided among its three auditoriums, Carnegie Hall presented about 200 concerts in the 2008–2009 season, up 3 percent from the previous year. Its stages were rented for an additional 600 events in the 2008–2009 season, Carnegie Hall contains three distinct, separate performance spaces. The Isaac Stern Auditorium seats 2,804 on five levels and was named after violinist Isaac Stern in 1997 to recognize his efforts to save the hall from demolition in the 1960s, the hall is enormously high, and visitors to the top balcony must climb 137 steps. All but the top level can be reached by elevator, the main hall was home to the performances of the New York Philharmonic from 1892 until 1962. Known as the most prestigious concert stage in the U. S. almost all of the classical music. After years of wear and tear, the hall was extensively renovated in 1986. The Ronald O. Perelman Stage is 42 feet deep, the First Tier and Second Tier consist of sixty-five boxes, the First Tier has 264 seats at eight seats per box and the Second Tier seats 238, with boxes ranging from six to eight seats each. Second from the top is the Dress Circle, seating 444 in six rows, at the top, the balcony seats 837. Although seats with obstructed views exist throughout the auditorium, only the Dress Circle level has structural columns, Zankel Hall, which seats 599, is named after Judy and Arthur Zankel. Originally called simply Recital Hall, this was the first auditorium to open to the public in April 1891, following renovations made in 1896, it was renamed Carnegie Lyceum. The completely reconstructed Zankel Hall is flexible in design and can be reconfigured in several different arrangements to suit the needs of the performers, the 599 seats in Zankel Hall are arranged in two levels. The Parterre level seats a total of 463 and the Mezzanine level seats 136, each level has a number of seats which are situated along the side walls, perpendicular to the stage. These seats are designated as boxes, there are 54 seats in six boxes on the Parterre level and 48 seats in four boxes on the Mezzanine level, the boxes on the Parterre level are raised above the level of the stage. Zankel Hall is accessible and its stage is 44 feet wide and 25 feet deep — the stage occupies approximately one fifth of the performance space, the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Recital Hall seats 268 and is named after Sanford I. Weill, a chairman of the board, and his wife Joan
18.
Johannes Brahms
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Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, Brahms spent much of his life in Vienna. Brahms composed for orchestra, chamber ensembles, piano, organ. A virtuoso pianist, he premiered many of his own works and he worked with some of the leading performers of his time, including the pianist Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim. Many of his works have become staples of the concert repertoire. An uncompromising perfectionist, Brahms destroyed some of his works and left others unpublished, Brahms has been considered, by his contemporaries and by later writers, as both a traditionalist and an innovator. His music is rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of the Classical masters. While many contemporaries found his music too academic, his contribution and craftsmanship have been admired by subsequent figures as diverse as Arnold Schoenberg, the diligent, highly constructed nature of Brahmss works was a starting point and an inspiration for a generation of composers. Embedded within his meticulous structures, however, are deeply romantic motifs, Brahmss father, Johann Jakob Brahms, was from the town of Heide in Holstein. The family name was sometimes spelt Brahmst or Brams, and derives from Bram. Against the familys will, Johann Jakob pursued a career in music, arriving in Hamburg in 1826, where he work as a jobbing musician. In 1830, he married Johanna Henrika Christiane Nissen, a seamstress 17 years older than he was, in the same year he was appointed as a horn player in the Hamburg militia. Eventually he became a player in the Hamburg Stadttheater and the Hamburg Philharmonic Society. As Johann Jakob prospered, the family moved over the years to better accommodation in Hamburg. Johannes Brahms was born in 1833, his sister Elisabeth had been born in 1831, Fritz also became a pianist, overshadowed by his brother he emigrated to Caracas in 1867, and later returned to Hamburg as a teacher. Johann Jakob gave his son his first musical training, Johannes also learnt to play the violin, from 1840 he studied piano with Otto Friedrich Willibald Cossel. Cossel complained in 1842 that Brahms could be such a good player, at the age of 10, Brahms made his debut as a performer in a private concert including Beethovens quintet for piano and winds Op.16 and a piano quartet by Mozart. He also played as a solo work an étude of Henri Herz, by 1845 he had written a piano sonata in G minor
19.
Johann Sebastian Bach
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Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the Baroque period. Bachs compositions include the Brandenburg Concertos, the Goldberg Variations, the Mass in B minor and his music is revered for its technical command, artistic beauty, and intellectual depth. He is now regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time. Bach was born in Eisenach, in the duchy of Saxe-Eisenach and his father Johann Ambrosius Bach was the director of the town musicians, and all of his uncles were professional musicians. His father probably taught him to play the violin and harpsichord, apparently at his own initiative, Bach attended St. Michaels School in Lüneburg for two years. He received the title of Royal Court Composer from Augustus III in 1736, Bachs health and vision declined in 1749, and he died on 28 July 1750. Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, the capital of the duchy of Saxe-Eisenach, in present-day Germany and he was the son of Johann Ambrosius Bach, the director of the town musicians, and Maria Elisabeth Lämmerhirt. He was the eighth and youngest child of Johann Ambrosius, who taught him violin. His uncles were all musicians, whose posts included church organists, court chamber musicians. One uncle, Johann Christoph Bach, introduced him to the organ, Bachs mother died in 1694, and his father died eight months later. The 10-year-old Bach moved in with his eldest brother, Johann Christoph Bach, there he studied, performed, and copied music, including his own brothers, despite being forbidden to do so because scores were so valuable and private and blank ledger paper of that type was costly. He received valuable teaching from his brother, who instructed him on the clavichord, also during this time he was taught theology, Latin, Greek, French and Italian at the local gymnasium. By 3 April 1700 Bach and his schoolfriend Georg Erdmann–who was two years Bachs elder–were enrolled in the prestigious St. Michaels School in Lüneburg, some two weeks travel north of Ohrdruf and their journey was probably undertaken mostly on foot. His two years there were critical in exposing Bach to a range of European culture. In addition to singing in the choir, he played the Schools three-manual organ and he came into contact with sons of aristocrats from northern Germany, sent to the highly selective school to prepare for careers in other disciplines. While in Lüneburg, Bach had access to St. Johns Church and possibly used the famous organ from 1553. His role there is unclear, but it probably included menial, non-musical duties, despite strong family connections and a musically enthusiastic employer, tension built up between Bach and the authorities after several years in the post. Bach was dissatisfied with the standard of singers in the choir and he called one of them a Zippel Fagottist
20.
Ludwig van Beethoven
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Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he one of the most famous. His best-known compositions include 9 symphonies,5 piano concertos,1 violin concerto,32 piano sonatas,16 string quartets, his great Mass the Missa solemnis, and one opera, Fidelio. At the age of 21 he moved to Vienna, where he began studying composition with Joseph Haydn and he lived in Vienna until his death. By his late 20s his hearing began to deteriorate, and by the last decade of his life he was almost completely deaf. In 1811 he gave up conducting and performing in public but continued to compose, many of his most admired works come from these last 15 years of his life. Beethoven was the grandson of Ludwig van Beethoven, a musician from the town of Mechelen in the Duchy of Brabant in the Flemish region of what is now Belgium, who at the age of twenty moved to Bonn. Ludwig was employed as a singer at the court of the Elector of Cologne, eventually rising to become, in 1761. The portrait he commissioned of himself towards the end of his life remained proudly displayed in his grandsons rooms as a talisman of his musical heritage. Ludwig had one son, Johann, who worked as a tenor in the musical establishment and gave keyboard. Johann married Maria Magdalena Keverich in 1767, she was the daughter of Johann Heinrich Keverich, Beethoven was born of this marriage in Bonn. There is no record of the date of his birth, however. Of the seven children born to Johann van Beethoven, only Ludwig, the second-born, caspar Anton Carl was born on 8 April 1774, and Nikolaus Johann, the youngest, was born on 2 October 1776. Beethovens first music teacher was his father and he later had other local teachers, the court organist Gilles van den Eeden, Tobias Friedrich Pfeiffer, and Franz Rovantini. Beethovens musical talent was obvious at a young age, some time after 1779, Beethoven began his studies with his most important teacher in Bonn, Christian Gottlob Neefe, who was appointed the Courts Organist in that year. Neefe taught Beethoven composition, and by March 1783 had helped him write his first published composition, Beethoven soon began working with Neefe as assistant organist, at first unpaid, and then as a paid employee of the court chapel conducted by the Kapellmeister Andrea Luchesi. His first three piano sonatas, named Kurfürst for their dedication to the Elector Maximilian Friedrich, were published in 1783, Maximilian Frederick noticed Beethovens talent early, and subsidised and encouraged the young mans musical studies. Maximilian Fredericks successor as the Elector of Bonn was Maximilian Francis, the youngest son of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, echoing changes made in Vienna by his brother Joseph, he introduced reforms based on Enlightenment philosophy, with increased support for education and the arts
21.
Felix Mendelssohn
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Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, born and widely known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period. A grandson of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, Felix Mendelssohn was born into a prominent Jewish family and he was brought up without religion until the age of seven, when he was baptised as a Reformed Christian. Mendelssohn was recognised early as a prodigy, but his parents were cautious. Mendelssohn enjoyed early success in Germany, where he revived interest in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. The Leipzig Conservatoire, which he founded, became a bastion of this anti-radical outlook, Mendelssohn wrote symphonies, concerti, oratorios, piano music and chamber music. His Songs Without Words are his most famous solo piano compositions and he is now among the most popular composers of the Romantic era. Mendelssohns father was the banker Abraham Mendelssohn, the son of the German Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn and his mother was Lea Salomon, a member of the Itzig family and a sister of Jakob Salomon Bartholdy. Mendelssohn was the second of four children, his older sister Fanny also displayed exceptional, the family moved to Berlin in 1811, leaving Hamburg in disguise fearing French revenge for the Mendelssohn banks role in breaking Napoleons Continental System blockade. Abraham and Lea Mendelssohn sought to give their children – Fanny, Felix, Paul, Fanny became a well-known pianist and amateur composer, originally Abraham had thought that she, rather than Felix, would be the more musical. However, at time, it was not considered proper, by either Abraham or Felix, for a woman to have a career in music, so Fanny remained an active. Abraham was also disinclined to allow Felix to follow a career until it became clear that he seriously intended to dedicate himself to it. Mendelssohn grew up in an intellectual environment, Sarah Rothenburg wrote of the household that Europe came to their living room. Abraham Mendelssohn renounced the Jewish religion, he and his wife decided not to have Felix circumcised. Felix and his siblings were first brought up without religious education, Abraham and his wife Lea were themselves baptised in 1822, formally adopting the surname Mendelssohn Bartholdy for themselves and their children. The name Bartholdy was added at the suggestion of Leas brother, Jakob Salomon Bartholdy, in 1829, his sister Fanny wrote to him of Bartholdy this name that we all dislike. Like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart before him, Mendelssohn was regarded as a child prodigy and he began taking piano lessons from his mother when he was six, and at seven was tutored by Marie Bigot in Paris. After the family moved to Berlin, all four Mendelssohn children studied piano with Ludwig Berger, from at least May 1819 Felix studied counterpoint and composition with Carl Friedrich Zelter in Berlin. This was an important influence on his future career, Zelter had almost certainly been recommended as a teacher by his aunt Sarah Levy, who had been a pupil of W. F. Bach and a patron of C. P. E. Bach
22.
Jean Sibelius
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Jean Sibelius, born Johan Julius Christian Sibelius, was a Finnish composer and violinist of the late Romantic and early-modern periods. The core of his oeuvre is his set of seven symphonies which, like his major works, continue to be performed and recorded in his home country. His other best-known compositions are Finlandia, the Karelia Suite, Valse triste, the Violin Concerto, the choral symphony Kullervo, throughout his career, the composer found inspiration in nature and Nordic mythology, especially the heroic legends of the national epic, the Kalevala. Although he is reputed to have stopped composing, he attempted to continue writing, including abortive efforts on an eighth symphony, in later life, he wrote Masonic music and re-edited some earlier works while retaining an active but not always favourable interest in new developments in music. The Finnish 100 mark note featured his image until 2002, when the euro was adopted, since 2011, Finland has celebrated a Flag Day on 8 December, the composers birthday, also known as the Day of Finnish Music. In 2015, the 150th anniversary of the birth, a number of special concerts and events were held. Sibelius was born on 8 December 1865 in Hämeenlinna in the Grand Duchy of Finland and he was the son of the Swedish-speaking medical doctor Christian Gustaf Sibelius and Maria Charlotta Sibelius née Borg. The family name stems from the Sibbe estate in Eastern Uusimaa which was owned by his paternal great-grandfather, Sibeliuss father died of typhoid in July 1868, leaving substantial debts. As a result, his mother—who was again pregnant—had to sell their property and move the family into the home of Katarina Borg, her widowed mother, who also lived in Hämeenlinna. Sibelius was therefore brought up in a decidedly female environment, the only male influence coming from his uncle, Pehr Ferdinand Sibelius and it was he who gave the boy a violin when he was ten years old and later encouraged him to maintain his interest in composition. For Sibelius, Uncle Pehr not only took the place of a father, from an early age, Sibelius showed a strong interest in nature, frequently walking around the countryside when the family moved to Loviisa on the coast for the summer months. In his own words, For me, Loviisa represented sun, Hämeenlinna was where I went to school, Loviisa was freedom. It was in Hämeenlinna, when he was seven, that his aunt Julia was brought in to give him piano lessons on the familys upright instrument and he progressed by improvising on his own, but still learned to read music. He later turned to the violin, which he preferred and he participated in trios with his elder sister Linda on piano, and his younger brother Christian on the cello. Furthermore, Sibelius often played in quartets with neighboring families, adding to his experience in chamber music, fragments survive of his early compositions of the period, a trio, a piano quartet and a Suite in D Minor for violin and piano. Around 1881, he recorded on paper his short pizzicato piece Vattendroppar for violin, in 1881, he started to take violin lessons from the local bandmaster, Gustaf Levander, immediately developing a particularly strong interest in the instrument. Despite such success as an instrumentalist, he chose to become a composer. Although his mother tongue was Swedish, in 1874 Sibelius attended Lucina Hagmans Finnish-speaking preparatory school, despite having to repeat a year, he succeeded in passing the schools final examination in 1885 which allowed him to enter a university
23.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
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He was the first Russian composer whose music made a lasting impression internationally, bolstered by his appearances as a guest conductor in Europe and the United States. Tchaikovsky was honored in 1884, by Emperor Alexander III, although musically precocious, Tchaikovsky was educated for a career as a civil servant. There was scant opportunity for a career in Russia at that time. When an opportunity for such an education arose, he entered the nascent Saint Petersburg Conservatory, Tchaikovskys training set him on a path to reconcile what he had learned with the native musical practices to which he had been exposed from childhood. From this reconciliation, he forged a personal but unmistakably Russian style—a task that did not prove easy, Russian culture exhibited a split personality, with its native and adopted elements having drifted apart increasingly since the time of Peter the Great. This resulted in uncertainty among the intelligentsia about the countrys national identity—an ambiguity mirrored in Tchaikovskys career, despite his many popular successes, Tchaikovskys life was punctuated by personal crises and depression. His homosexuality, which he kept private, has also been considered a major factor. Tchaikovskys sudden death at the age of 53 is generally ascribed to cholera, there is a debate as to whether cholera was indeed the cause of death. While his music has remained popular among audiences, critical opinions were initially mixed, some Russians did not feel it was sufficiently representative of native musical values and expressed suspicion that Europeans accepted the music for its Western elements. Others dismissed Tchaikovskys music as lacking in elevated thought, according to longtime New York Times music critic Harold C, schonberg, and derided its formal workings as deficient because they did not stringently follow Western principles. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born in Votkinsk, a town in Vyatka Governorate in the Russian Empire. His father, Ilya Petrovich Tchaikovsky, had served as a lieutenant colonel and engineer in the Department of Mines and his grandfather, Pyotr Fedorovich Tchaikovsky, served first as a physicians assistant in the army and later as city governor of Glazov in Viatka. His great-grandfather, a Ukrainian Cossack named Fyodor Chaika, distinguished himself under Peter the Great at the Battle of Poltava in 1709, Tchaikovskys mother, Alexandra Andreyevna, was the second of Ilyas three wives,18 years her husbands junior and French on her fathers side. Both Ilya and Alexandra were trained in the arts, including music—a necessity as a posting to an area of Russia also meant a need for entertainment. Of Tchaikovskys six siblings, he was close to his sister Alexandra and twin brothers Anatoly, alexandras marriage to Lev Davydov would produce seven children and lend Tchaikovsky the only real family life he would know as an adult, especially during his years of wandering. One of those children, Vladimir Davydov, whom the composer would nickname Bob, in 1844, the family hired Fanny Dürbach, a 22-year-old French governess. Four-and-a-half-year-old Tchaikovsky was initially too young to study alongside his older brother Nikolai. By the age of six, he had become fluent in French, Dürbach saved much of Tchaikovskys work from this period, which includes his earliest known compositions, and became a source of several childhood anecdotes
24.
Antonio Vivaldi
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Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was an Italian Baroque composer, virtuoso violinist, teacher and cleric. Born in Venice, he is recognized as one of the greatest Baroque composers and he composed many instrumental concertos, for the violin and a variety of other instruments, as well as sacred choral works and more than forty operas. His best-known work is a series of violin concertos known as The Four Seasons, many of his compositions were written for the female music ensemble of the Ospedale della Pietà, a home for abandoned children where Vivaldi was employed from 1703 to 1715 and from 1723 to 1740. Vivaldi also had success with expensive stagings of his operas in Venice, Mantua. After meeting the Emperor Charles VI, Vivaldi moved to Vienna, however, the Emperor died soon after Vivaldis arrival, and Vivaldi himself died less than a year later in poverty. Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was born in 1678 in Venice, then the capital of the Republic of Venice and he was baptized immediately after his birth at his home by the midwife, which led to a belief that his life was somehow in danger. Though not known for certain, the childs immediate baptism was most likely due either to his health or to an earthquake that shook the city that day. In the trauma of the earthquake, Vivaldis mother may have dedicated him to the priesthood, Vivaldis official church baptism took place two months later. Vivaldis parents were Giovanni Battista Vivaldi and Camilla Calicchio, as recorded in the register of San Giovanni in Bragora, Giovanni Battista, who was a barber before becoming a professional violinist, taught Antonio to play the violin and then toured Venice playing the violin with his young son. Antonio was probably taught at an age, judging by the extensive musical knowledge he had acquired by the age of 24. Giovanni Battista was one of the founders of the Sovvegno dei musicisti di Santa Cecilia, the president of the Sovvegno was Giovanni Legrenzi, an early Baroque composer and the maestro di cappella at St Marks Basilica. It is possible that Legrenzi gave the young Antonio his first lessons in composition, the Luxembourg scholar Walter Kolneder has discerned the influence of Legrenzis style in Vivaldis early liturgical work Laetatus sum, written in 1691 at the age of thirteen. His symptoms, strettezza di petto, have interpreted as a form of asthma. This did not prevent him from learning to play the violin, composing or taking part in musical activities, in 1693, at the age of fifteen, he began studying to become a priest. He was ordained in 1703, aged 25, and was nicknamed il Prete Rosso. Not long after his ordination, in 1704, he was given a dispensation from celebrating Mass because of his ill health, Vivaldi only said Mass as a priest a few times and appeared to have withdrawn from priestly duties, though he remained a priest. In September 1703, Vivaldi became maestro di violino at a called the Pio Ospedale della Pietà in Venice. While Vivaldi is most famous as a composer, he was regarded as an exceptional technical violinist as well, Vivaldi was only 25 when he started working at the Ospedale della Pietà
25.
Samuel Barber
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Samuel Osborne Barber II was an American composer of orchestral, opera, choral, and piano music. His Adagio for Strings has earned a permanent place in the repertory of orchestras. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music twice, for his opera Vanessa and for the Concerto for Piano, also widely performed is his Knoxville, Summer of 1915, a setting for soprano and orchestra of a prose text by James Agee. At the time of his death, nearly all of his compositions had been recorded, Barber was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, the son of Marguerite McLeod and Samuel Le Roy Barber. He was born into a comfortable, educated, social, and his father was a physician, his mother, called Daisy, was a pianist of English-Scottish-Irish descent whose family had lived in the United States since the time of the Revolutionary War. His aunt, Louise Homer, was a contralto at the Metropolitan Opera, his uncle. Louise Homer is known to have influenced Barbers interest in voice, through his aunt, Barber had access to many great singers and songs. At a very early age, Barber became profoundly interested in music and he began studying the piano at the age of 6 and at age 7 composed his first work, Sadness, a 23-measure solo piano piece in C minor. At the age of nine he wrote to his mother, Dear Mother, now dont cry when you read it because it is neither yours nor my fault. I suppose I will have to tell it now without any nonsense, to begin with I was not meant to be an athlet. I was meant to be a composer, and will be Im sure, ill ask you one more thing. —Dont ask me to try to forget this unpleasant thing and go play football. —Please—Sometimes Ive been worrying about this so much that it makes me mad. Barber attempted to write his first opera, entitled The Rose Tree, at the age of 12, he became an organist at a local church. He began composing seriously in his teenage years. Around the same time, he met fellow Curtis schoolmate Gian Carlo Menotti, at the Curtis Institute, Barber was a triple prodigy in composition, voice, and piano. He soon became a favorite of the founder, Mary Louise Curtis Bok. It was through Mrs. Bok that Barber was introduced to his lifelong publisher, at the age of 18, Barber won the Joseph H. Bearns Prize from Columbia University for his violin sonata. From his early to late twenties, Barber wrote a flurry of successful compositions and his first orchestral work, an overture to The School for Scandal, was composed in 1931 when he was 21 years old. It premiered successfully two years later in a given by the Philadelphia Orchestra under conductor Alexander Smallens
26.
Igor Stravinsky
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Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky was a Russian-born composer, pianist, and conductor. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century, Stravinskys compositional career was notable for its stylistic diversity. His Russian phase which continued with such as Renard, The Soldiers Tale. The works from this tended to make use of traditional musical forms, drawing on earlier styles. In the 1950s, Stravinsky adopted serial procedures, Stravinsky was born on 17 June 1882 in Oranienbaum, a suburb of Saint Petersburg, the Russian imperial capital, and was brought up in Saint Petersburg. It is believed that Stravinsky’s ancestry is traceable back to the 17th and 18th centuries, to the bearers of the Soulima, ivan Sulima, was a famous Ukrainian hetman 1628–1635. Stravinskys family branch most likely came from Stravinskas, polonized Lithuanian land owners and it is still unclear to when exactly the Soulima part of the surname was dropped. Stravinsky recalled his schooldays as being lonely, later saying that I never came across anyone who had any attraction for me. Stravinsky began piano lessons as a boy, studying music theory. In 1890, he saw a performance of Tchaikovskys ballet The Sleeping Beauty at the Mariinsky Theatre, despite his enthusiasm for music, his parents expected him to study law. Stravinsky enrolled at the University of Saint Petersburg in 1901, Stravinskys father died of cancer that year, by which time his son had already begun spending more time on his musical studies than on law. Thereafter, he concentrated on studying music, in 1905, he began to take twice-weekly private lessons from Rimsky-Korsakov, whom he came to regard as a second father. These lessons continued until Rimsky-Korsakovs death in 1908, in 1905 Stravinsky was betrothed to his cousin Katherine Gavrylivna Nosenko, whom he had known since early childhood. Diaghilev was sufficiently impressed by Fireworks to commission Stravinsky to carry out some orchestrations and then to compose a ballet score. The early period of Igor Stravinsky’s work would be incomplete without a research of his life while in Ukraine. From approximately 1890 till 1914 the composer was frequently visiting Ustyluh, town in Volyn Oblast and he spent most of his summers there and that’s where he met his cousin, Katherine Nosenko who he married in 1906. In 1907 Stravinsky designed and built his own house in Ustyluh where his own family stayed often during summer times until 1914 and his new Ukrainian home he called “My heavenly place”. In this house Igor Stravinsky worked on his seventeen early compositions, among which were orchestral fantasy Fireworks, ballets Firebird, Petrushka, currently, after its renovation this house is the only composers house-museum opened to the public
27.
Leonard Bernstein
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Leonard Bernstein was an American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the US to receive worldwide acclaim, according to music critic Donal Henahan, he was one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history. Bernstein was the first conductor to give a series of lectures on classical music, starting in 1954. He was a skilled pianist, often conducting piano concertos from the keyboard, as a composer he wrote in many styles encompassing symphonic and orchestral music, ballet, film and theatre music, choral works, opera, chamber music and pieces for the piano. Many of his works are performed around the world, although none has matched the tremendous popular. He was born Louis Bernstein in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the son of Ukrainian-Jewish parents Jennie and Samuel Joseph Bernstein and he was not related to film composer Elmer Bernstein, but the two men were friends, and even shared a certain physical similarity. Within the world of music, they were distinguished from each other by the use of the nicknames Bernstein West. His family spent their summers at their home in Sharon. His grandmother insisted that his first name be Louis, but his parents called him Leonard. He officially changed his name to Leonard when he was fifteen, to his friends and many others he was simply known as Lenny. His father, Sam Bernstein, was a businessman and owner of a hair product store in downtown Lawrence, it is no longer standing on the corners of Amesbury, Sam initially opposed young Leonards interest in music. Despite this, the elder Bernstein took him to concerts in his teenage years. As a child, Bernstein attended the Garrison Grammar School and Boston Latin School, as a child he was very close to his younger sister Shirley, and would often play entire operas or Beethoven symphonies with her at the piano. He had a variety of teachers in his youth, including Helen Coates. After graduation from Boston Latin School in 1935, Bernstein attended Harvard University, one of his friends at Harvard was philosopher Donald Davidson, with whom he played piano four hands. Bernstein wrote and conducted the score for the production Davidson mounted of Aristophanes play The Birds in the original Greek. Bernstein reused some of this music in the ballet Fancy Free, during his time at Harvard he was briefly an accompanist for the Harvard Glee Club. Bernstein also mounted a student production of The Cradle Will Rock, Blitzstein, who heard about the production, subsequently became a friend and influence on Bernstein
28.
Henri Dutilleux
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Henri Dutilleux was a French composer active mainly in the second half of the 20th century. His work, which garnered acclaim, followed in the tradition of Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, Albert Roussel and Olivier Messiaen. Some of his compositions include a piano sonata, two symphonies, the Cello Concerto Tout un monde lointain, the Violin Concerto Larbre des songes. Some of these are regarded as masterpieces of 20th-century classical music, writing in the New York Times, Paul Griffiths said, Mr Dutilleux’s position in French music was proudly solitary. Between Olivier Messiaen and Pierre Boulez in age, he was affected by either. But his voice, marked by sensuously handled harmony and color, was his own, in addition to his activities as a composer, he worked as the Head of Music Production for Radio France for 18 years. Henri Dutilleux was born on 22 January 1916 in Angers, Maine-et-Loire and he was the great-grandson of the painter Constant Dutilleux and of the composer Julien Koszul. He was also a cousin of the mathematician Jean-Louis Koszul, as a young man he studied harmony, counterpoint and piano with Victor Gallois at the Douai Conservatory before leaving for the Paris Conservatoire. There, between 1933 and 1938, he attended the classes of Jean and Noël Gallon, Henri Büsser and he studied music at the Conservatoire de Paris in the same class as Henri Betti, Paul Bonneau and Louiguy. Dutilleux won the Prix de Rome in 1938 for his cantata Lanneau du roi and he worked for a year as a medical orderly in the army and then returned to Paris in 1940, where he worked as a pianist, arranger and music teacher. In 1942 he conducted the choir of the Paris Opera, Dutilleux worked as Head of Music Production for Radio France from 1945 to 1963. He served as Professor of Composition at the École Normale de Musique de Paris from 1961 to 1970 and he was appointed to the staff of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in 1970 and was composer in residence at Tanglewood in 1995 and 1998. His students included the French composers Gérard Grisey and Francis Bayer, the Canadian composers Alain Gagnon and Jacques Hétu, the British composer Kenneth Hesketh, invited by Walter Fink, he was the 16th composer featured in the annual Komponistenporträt of the Rheingau Musik Festival in 2006. For many years, Dutilleux had a studio on Île Saint-Louis and he died on 22 May 2013 in Paris, aged 97 and was buried in Montparnasse Cemetery. Dutilleuxs music extends the legacies of earlier French composers such as Debussy and Ravel but is clearly influenced by Béla Bartók. Among his favourite pieces, he mentioned Beethovens late string quartets and his attitude toward serialism was more ambiguous. As an independent composer, Dutilleux always refused to be associated with any school, rather, his works merge the traditions of earlier composers and post-World War II innovations and translate them into his own idiosyncratic style. His music also contains distant echoes of jazz as can be heard in the double bass strings at the very beginning of his First Symphony
29.
Dubbing (music)
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In sound recording, dubbing is the transfer or copying of previously recorded audio material from one medium to another of the same or a different type. It may be done with a designed for this purpose. The purpose of dubbing may be simply to make copies of audio programs, or it may be done to preserve programs on old media which are deteriorating. One type of dubbing device combines two different storage media, such as a cassette deck that incorporates a Compact Disc recorder. Such a device enables the transfer of programs from an obsolete medium to a widely used medium. It may also simply be used to transfer material between two types media which are popular in different settings, so that material originating in one type of environment can be used in another, an example of the latter would be the dubbing of a Digital BetaCam videocassette to DVD. Another type of dubbing device is designed to produce many copies of a program. It may combine a single unit with multiple recording units to simultaneously create two, four, eight, sixteen, or more copies during the playback of a single original program. This type of device can perform the copying process at many times the standard playback speed. Typical multiplexed dubbing decks of either analog or digital programs can operate at 48 times the playback speed. Sometimes this high-speed dubbing incurs some loss of quality compared to the best normal speed dub, the verb dub as used here long predates and is unrelated to the Jamaican musical style dub music, the origin of both words stems from the dubplate. It is also different with the dubbing, which is mostly a type of frottage dance usually found in the Caribbean clubs. Some of the earliest dubbings were made by the Victor Talking Machine Co, in 1916, Victor developed an acoustical dubbing process to create new masters from pressings where damage had occurred to the originals. Such dubbings are marked with the symbol “s/8” stamped in the inner rim and these are occasionally noted in the New York files. Pressings made from these dubbed masters are sonically inferior to the originals
30.
Fiddler on the Roof (film)
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Fiddler on the Roof is a 1971 American musical comedy-drama film produced and directed by Norman Jewison. It is an adaptation of the 1964 Broadway musical of the name, with music composed by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick. Throughout the film, Tevye breaks the wall by talking directly to the audience or to the heavens. In addition to the difficulties of being poor, Tevye speaks of the Jewish communitys constant fear of harassment from their non-Jewish neighbors, the film was released to critical acclaim and won three Academy Awards, including Best Original Score for arranger-conductor John Williams. It was nominated for more, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Topol as Tevye, and Best Supporting Actor for Frey. Both Topol and Frey had previously performed in productions of the musical, Topol as Tevye in the London production and Frey in a minor part as Mendel. The films plot follows that of the musical from which it is adapted. In town, Tevye meets Perchik, a radical Marxist from Kiev, Tevye invites Perchik to stay with his family, and offers him food in exchange for Perchik tutoring his daughters. Tevye arranges for his oldest daughter, Tzeitel, to marry Lazar Wolf, Tzeitel is in love with her childhood sweetheart, Motel Kamzoil, and begs her father not to make her marry Lazar Wolf. Although he is angry, Tevye realizes that Tzeitel loves Motel. In order to convince his wife Golde that Tzeitel should not be married to Lazar Wolfe and he says that Goldes deceased grandmother told him Tzeitel is supposed to marry Motel, and that Lazar Wolfs late wife, Fruma-Sarah, threatened to kill Tzeitel if the two are married. Golde concludes that the dream was a message from their ancestors, meanwhile, Tevyes second daughter, Hodel, and Perchik begin to fall in love. They argue over the story of Leah and the place of old traditions in a changing world. The two dance together, which is considered forbidden by Orthodox Jewish tradition, Perchik tells Hodel that they just changed an old tradition. At Tzeitel and Motels wedding, an argument breaks out over whether a girl should be able to choose her own husband, Perchik addresses the crowd and says that, since they love each other, it should be left for the couple to decide. He creates further controversy by asking Hodel to dance with him, the crowd gradually warms to the idea and Tevye and Golde, then Motel and Tzeitel, join in dancing. The wedding proceeds with great joy, suddenly, the military presence in the town and the constable arrive and begin a pogrom. The constable stops the attack on the celebration after Perchik is wounded in the scuffle with the Tsars men, however
31.
John Garfield
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John Garfield was an American actor who played brooding, rebellious, working-class characters. He grew up in poverty in Depression-era New York City, in the early 1930s, he became a member of the Group Theater. In 1937, he moved to Hollywood, eventually becoming one of Warner Bros. stars, called to testify before the U. S. Congressional House Committee on Un-American Activities, he denied communist affiliation and refused to name names, some have alleged that the stress of this incident led to his premature death at 39 from a heart attack. Garfield is acknowledged as a predecessor of such Method actors as Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, in early infancy, a middle name—Julius—was added, and for the rest of his life those who knew him well called him Julie. His father, a presser and part-time cantor, struggled to make a living. When Garfield was five, his brother Max was born and their mother never fully recovered from what was described as a difficult pregnancy. She died two years later, and the boys were sent to live with various relatives, all poor, scattered across the boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens. Several of these lived in tenements in a section of East Brooklyn called Brownsville. At school, he was judged a poor reader and speller and he would later say of his time on the streets there, that he learned all the meanness, all the toughness its possible for kids to acquire. His father remarried and moved to the West Bronx, where Garfield joined a series of gangs, much later, he would recall, Every street had its own gang. Thats the way it was in poor sections and he soon became a gang leader. At this time, people started to notice his ability to mimic well-known performers and he also began to hang out and eventually spar at a boxing gym on Jerome Avenue. At some point, he contracted fever, causing permanent damage to his heart. After being expelled three times and expressing a wish to quit school altogether, his parents sent him to P. S,45, a school for difficult children. It was under the guidance of the schools principal—the noted educator Angelo Patri—that he was introduced to acting, noticing Garfields tendency to stammer, Patri assigned him to a speech therapy class taught by a charismatic teacher named Margaret ORyan. She gave him acting exercises and made him memorize and deliver speeches in front of the class and, as he progressed, ORyan thought he had natural talent and cast him in school plays. She encouraged him to sign up for a citywide debating competition sponsored by the New York Times, to his own surprise, he took second prize
32.
Joan Crawford
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Joan Crawford was an American film and television actress who began her career as a dancer and stage showgirl. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Crawford tenth on its list of the greatest female stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema. Beginning her career as a dancer in traveling theatrical companies, before debuting as a girl on Broadway. In the 1930s, Crawfords fame rivaled, and later outlasted, MGM colleagues Norma Shearer, Crawford often played hard-working young women who find romance and success. These stories were received by Depression-era audiences and were popular with women. But her career gradually improved in the early 1940s, and she made a comeback in 1945 by starring in Mildred Pierce. She would go on to receive Best Actress nominations for Possessed, in 1955, Crawford became involved with the Pepsi-Cola Company through her marriage to company Chairman Alfred Steele. After his death in 1959, Crawford was elected to fill his vacancy on the board of directors, following a public appearance in 1974, after which unflattering photographs were published, Crawford withdrew from public life and became increasingly reclusive until her death in 1977. Her first three ended in divorce, the last ended with the death of husband Alfred Steele. She adopted five children, one of whom was reclaimed by his birth mother, Crawfords relationships with her two older children, Christina and Christopher, were acrimonious. Crawford disinherited the two, and, after Crawfords death, Christina wrote a well-known tell-all memoir titled Mommie Dearest, Crawfords remains are interred at the Ferncliff Cemetery, in Hartsdale, New York. Born Lucille Fay LeSueur in San Antonio, Texas, on March 23, Crawfords birth year is disputed, with 1904,1905 and she was the youngest and third child of father Thomas E. LeSueur, a laundry laborer, and mother Anna Bell Johnson. Johnson was of English, French Huguenot, Swedish, and Irish ancestry, Crawfords elder siblings were sister Daisy LeSueur, who died before Lucilles birth, and brother Hal LeSueur. Crawfords father abandoned the family a few months before her birth, reappearing later in 1930 in Abilene, Texas, following LeSueurs departure from the family home, Crawfords mother married Henry J. Cassin. The marriage is listed in the census as Crawfords mothers first marriage, Crawford lived with her mother, stepfather, and siblings in Lawton, Oklahoma. There, Cassin, an impresario, ran the Ramsey Opera House and managed to book diverse. At that time, Crawford was reportedly unaware that Cassin, whom she called daddy, was not her father until her brother Hal told her the truth. Crawford preferred the nickname Billie as a child and enjoyed watching vaudeville acts perform on the stage of her stepfathers theatre, because the familys instability negatively affected Crawfords childhood, her schooling never formally progressed beyond elementary school
33.
Music of the Heart
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Music of the Heart is a 1999 American drama film directed by Wes Craven and written by Pamela Gray, based on the 1995 documentary Small Wonders. The film also stars Aidan Quinn, Gloria Estefan, and Angela Bassett and it was director Wes Cravens only foray outside of the horror/thriller genre, aside from his contribution to the multifaceted and directorially diverse Paris, je taime. It was also his film to receive Academy Award nominations. The film opens with violinist Roberta Guaspari having been deserted by her US Navy husband and feeling devastated, almost suicidal. Encouraged by her mother, she attempts to rebuild her life, despite a degree in music education, she has little experience in actual music teaching, but shes taken on as a substitute violin teacher. With a combination of toughness and determination, she inspires a group of kids, the program slowly develops and attracts publicity. Ten years later, the program is still running successfully at three schools, but suddenly the school budget is cut and Roberta is out of a job. Determined to fight the cuts, she enlists the support of former pupils, parents and teachers and plans a grand fund-raising concert, Fiddlefest, but with a few weeks to go and all participants furiously rehearsing, they lose the venue. Fortunately, the husband of a publicist friend is a violinist in the Guarneri Quartet and they arrange for the concert to be mounted at Carnegie Hall. Other famous musicians, including Mark OConnor, Michael Tree, Charles Veal Jr, arnold Steinhardt, Karen Briggs, Sandra Park, Diane Monroe, and Joshua Bell, join in the performance, which is a resounding success. The films end credits declare that the Opus 118 program is running successfully. They also report that the funding was restored during the making of the film. Sanders as Dan Paxton Cloris Leachman as Assunta Vitali Guaspari, Robertas mother Jean-Luke Figueroa as Ramone Olivas, after seeing Small Wonders, Wes Craven, known for his work on horror films, was inspired to make a full-length film about Guaspari. Madonna was originally signed to play the role of Guaspari, but left the project before filming began, when she left, Madonna had already studied for many months to play the violin. Streep learned to play Bachs Concerto for 2 Violins for the film, Streep received nominations for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award for her lead performance. The film marked the debut of singer Gloria Estefan. The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists,2006, AFIs 100 Years.100 Cheers – Nominated The film received mixed reception, most critics applauded Meryl Streeps portrayal of Roberta Guaspari. The film had a 64% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes, cinemaScore reported that audiences gave the film a rare A+ grade
34.
Meryl Streep
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Mary Louise Meryl Streep is an American actress and philanthropist. Nominated for 20 Academy Awards, Streep has more nominations than any actor or actress. Streep has also received 30 Golden Globe nominations, winning eight—more nominations, Streep made her professional stage debut in Trelawny of the Wells in 1975, and in 1976 received a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play for 27 Wagons Full of Cotton. She made her debut in the 1977 television film The Deadliest Season. In 1978, she won an Emmy Award for her role in the miniseries Holocaust and she went on to win Best Supporting Actress for Kramer vs. Kramer, and Best Actress for Sophies Choice and The Iron Lady. President Barack Obama awarded her the 2010 National Medal of Arts, in 2003, the government of France made her a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters. In 2017, Streep was awarded the Golden Globe Cecil B. Mary Louise Streep was born on June 22,1949, in Summit, New Jersey, the daughter of Mary Wolf Wilkinson, a commercial artist and art editor, the eldest child, she has two younger brothers, Dana David and Harry William III. Streeps father Harry was of German and Swiss ancestry and her fathers lineage traces back to Loffenau, Germany, from where her second great-grandfather, Gottfried Streeb, immigrated to the United States, and where one of her ancestors served as mayor. Another line of her fathers family was from Giswil, Switzerland and her mother had English, German, and Irish ancestry. Some of Streeps maternal ancestors lived in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island and were descended from 17th-century immigrants from England and her eighth great-grandfather, Lawrence Wilkinson, was one of the first Europeans to settle in Rhode Island. Streep is also a distant relative of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, Streeps maternal great-great-grandparents, Manus McFadden and Grace Strain, the namesake of Streeps second daughter, were natives of the Horn Head district of Dunfanaghy, Ireland. Streeps mother, whom she has compared in both appearance and manner to Dame Judi Dench, strongly encouraged her daughter and instilled confidence in her from a young age. Streep has said, She was a mentor because she said to me, Meryl and she was saying, You can do whatever you put your mind to. If youre lazy, youre not going to get it done, but if you put your mind to it, you can do anything. Although Streep was naturally more introverted than her mother, at times when she later needed an injection of confidence in adulthood, she would consult her mother, asking her for advice. Streep was raised as a Presbyterian in Basking Ridge, New Jersey and attended Cedar Hill Elementary School and the Oak Street School, in her Junior High debut, she starred as Lousie Heller in the play The Family Upstairs. In 1963 the family moved to Bernardsville, New Jersey, where she attended Bernards High School
35.
Harlem
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Harlem is a large neighborhood in the northern section of the New York City borough of Manhattan. Since the 1920s, Harlem has been known as a major African-American residential, cultural, originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands. Harlems history has been defined by a series of economic boom-and-bust cycles, African-American residents began to arrive by a lot in 1905, with numbers fed by the Great Migration. In the 1920s and 1930s, Central and West Harlem were the focus of the Harlem Renaissance, however, with job losses in the time of the Great Depression and the deindustrialization of New York City after World War II, rates of crime and poverty increased significantly. Harlems African-American population peaked in the 1950s, in the second half of the 20th century, Harlem became a major hub of African-American businesses. In 2008, the United States Census found that for the first time since the 1930s, less than half of residents were black, since New York Citys revival in the late 20th century, long-time residents of Harlem have been experiencing the effects of gentrification and new wealth. Harlem is located in Upper Manhattan, often referred to as Uptown by locals. Central Harlem is bounded by Fifth Avenue on the east, Central Park on the south, Morningside Park, St. Nicholas Avenue and Edgecombe Avenue on the west, and the Harlem River on the north. A chain of three large linear parks—Morningside Park, St. Nicholas Park and Jackie Robinson Park—are situated on steeply rising banks, on the east, Fifth Avenue and Marcus Garvey Park, also known as Mount Morris Park, separate this area from East Harlem. The bulk of the falls under Manhattan Community Board No.10. In the late 2000s, South Harlem, emerged from area redevelopment, the West Harlem neighborhoods of Manhattanville and Hamilton Heights comprise part of Manhattan Community Board No.9. The two neighborhoods area is bounded by Cathedral Parkway on the South, 155th Street on the North, nicholas/Bradhurst/Edgecome Avenues on the East, and Riverside Park/the Hudson River on the west. Morningside Heights is located in the southern most section of West Harlem, Manhattanville begins at roughly 123rd Street and extends northward to 135th Street. The northern most section of West Harlem is Hamilton Heights, the New York City Police Department patrols six precincts located within Harlem. The New York City Fire Department operates 9 firehouses in Harlem, as many as several hundred farmed the Harlem flatlands. Between 1637 and 1639, a few settlements were established, during the American Revolution, the British burned Harlem to the ground. It took a time to rebuild, as Harlem grew more slowly than the rest of Manhattan during the late 18th century. After the American Civil War, Harlem experienced an economic boom starting in 1868, the neighborhood continued to serve as a refuge for New Yorkers, but increasingly those coming north were poor and Jewish or Italian
36.
C-SPAN
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C-SPAN, an acronym for Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network, is an American cable and satellite television network that was created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a public service. C-SPAN televises many proceedings of the United States federal government, as well as public affairs programming. Its coverage of political and policy events is unedited, thereby providing viewers with unfiltered information about politics, non-political coverage includes historical programming, programs dedicated to non-fiction books, and interview programs with noteworthy individuals associated with public policy. The network operates independently, and neither the cable industry nor Congress has control of the content of its programming, Congress and other public affairs event and policy discussions. Lamb shared his idea with several executives, who helped him launch the network. Among them were Bob Rosencrans who provided $25,000 of initial funding in 1979 and John D. Evans who provided the wiring and access to the headend needed for the distribution of the C-SPAN signal. C-SPAN was launched on March 19,1979, in time for the first televised session made available by the House of Representatives, upon its debut, only 3.5 million homes were wired for C-SPAN, and the network had just three employees. The second C-SPAN channel, C-SPAN2, followed on June 2,1986 when the U. S. Senate permitted itself to be televised, C-SPAN Radio began operations on October 9,1997, covering similar events as the television networks and often simulcasting their programming. The station broadcasts on WCSP in Washington, D. C. is also available on XM Satellite Radio channel 120 and is streamed live at c-span. org and it was formerly available on Sirius Satellite Radio from 2002 to 2006. Lamb semi-retired in March 2012, coinciding with the channels 33rd anniversary, on January 12,2017, the online feed for C-SPAN1 was interrupted and replaced by a feed from the Russian television network RT for approximately 10 minutes. C-SPAN announced that they were troubleshooting the incident and were operating under the assumption that it was an internal routing issue, C-SPAN celebrated its 10th anniversary in 1989 with a three-hour retrospective, featuring Lamb recalling the development of the network. Five years later, the series American Presidents, Life Portraits, in 2004, C-SPAN celebrated its 25th anniversary, by which time the flagship network was viewed in 86 million homes, C-SPAN2 was in 70 million homes and C-SPAN3 was in eight million homes. Also included in the 25th anniversary was an essay contest for viewers to write in about how C-SPAN has influenced their life regarding community service. For example, one essay contest winner wrote about how C-SPANs non-fiction book programming serves as a resource in his mission to record non-fiction audio books for people who are blind. The network also had an essay contest, the winner of which was invited to host an hour of the broadcast from C-SPANs Capitol Hill studios. C-SPAN continues to expand its coverage of government proceedings, with a history of requests to government officials for greater access, in December 2009, Lamb wrote to leaders in the House and Senate, requesting that negotiations for health care reform be televised by C-SPAN. Committee meetings on health care were broadcast subsequently by C-SPAN and may be viewed on the C-SPAN website, in November 2010, Lamb wrote to incoming House Speaker John Boehner requesting changes to restrictions on cameras in the House. In particular, C-SPAN asked to add some of its own robotically operated cameras to the existing government-controlled cameras in the House chamber, in February 2011, Boehner denied the request
37.
Chaim Potok
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Chaim Potok was an American Jewish author and rabbi. Potok is most famous for his first book The Chosen, which was listed on The New York Times’ best seller list for 39 weeks, herman Harold Potok was born in Buffalo, New York, to Benjamin Max and Mollie Potok, Jewish immigrants from Poland. He was the oldest of four children, all of whom became or married rabbis. His Hebrew name was Chaim Tzvi and he received an Orthodox Jewish education. After reading Evelyn Waughs novel Brideshead Revisited as a teenager, he decided to become a writer and he started writing fiction at the age of 16. At age 17 he made his first submission to the magazine The Atlantic Monthly, although it wasnt published, he received a note from the editor complimenting his work. In 1949, at the age of twenty, his stories were published in the magazine of Yeshiva University. In 1950, Potok graduated summa cum laude with a BA in English Literature, after four years of study at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America he was ordained as a Conservative rabbi. He was appointed director of LTF, Leaders Training Fellowship, an organization affiliated with Conservative Judaism. Potok met Adena Sara Mosevitzsky, a social worker, at Camp Ramah in Ojai, California. They were married on June 8,1958, and had three children, after receiving a masters degree in English literature, Potok enlisted with the U. S. Army as a chaplain. He served in South Korea from 1955 to 1957 and he described his time in South Korea as a transformative experience. Upon his return, he joined the faculty of the University of Judaism in Los Angeles and became the director of a Conservative Jewish summer camp affiliated with the Conservative movement, Camp Ramah. A year later he began his studies at the University of Pennsylvania and was appointed scholar-in-residence at Temple Har Zion in Philadelphia. In 1963, he spent a year in Israel, where he wrote his dissertation on Solomon Maimon. In 1964 Potok moved to Brooklyn and he became the managing editor of the magazine Conservative Judaism and joined the faculty of the Teachers’ Institute of the Jewish Theological Seminary. The following year, he was appointed editor-in-chief of the Jewish Publication Society in Philadelphia and later, Potok received a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1970, Potok relocated to Jerusalem with his family and he returned to Philadelphia in 1977
38.
Nathan Milstein
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Nathan Mironovich Milstein was a Russian Empire-born American virtuoso violinist. Widely considered one of the finest violinists of the 20th century, Milstein was known for his interpretations of Bachs solo violin works and he was also known for his long career, he performed at a high level into his mid 80s, retiring only after suffering a broken hand. Milstein was born in Odessa, then part of the Russian Empire and it was a concert by the 11-year-old Jascha Heifetz that inspired his parents to make a violinist out of Milstein. As a child of seven, he started violin studies with the eminent violin pedagogue Pyotr Stolyarsky, when Milstein was 11, Leopold Auer invited him to become one of his students at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Milstein reminisced, Every little boy who had the dream of playing better than the boy wanted to go to Auer. He was a gifted man and a good teacher. I used to go to the Conservatory twice a week for classes, I played every lesson with forty or fifty people sitting and listening. Two pianos were in the classroom and a pianist accompanied us, when Auer was sick, he would ask me to come to his home. Milstein may in fact have been the last of the great Russian violinists to have had contact with Auer. Auer did not name Milstein in his memoirs but mentions two boys from Odessa, both of whom disappeared after I left St. Petersburg in June 1917. Neither is Milsteins name in the registry of the St Petersburg Conservatory, Milstein also studied with Eugène Ysaÿe in Belgium. He told film-maker Christopher Nupen, director of Nathan Milstein – In Portrait, in a 1977 interview printed in High Fidelity, he said, I went to Ysaÿe in 1926 but he never paid any attention to me. I think it might have been better this way, I had to think for myself. Milstein met Vladimir Horowitz and his pianist sister Regina in 1921 when he played a recital in Kiev and they invited him for tea at their parents home. Milstein later said, I came for tea and stayed three years, Milstein and Horowitz performed together, as children of the revolution, throughout the Soviet Union and struck up a lifelong friendship. In 1925, they went on a tour of Western Europe together. He made his American debut in 1929 with Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra and he eventually settled in New York and became an American citizen. He toured repeatedly throughout Europe, maintaining residences in London and Paris, a transcriber and composer, Milstein arranged many works for violin and wrote his own cadenzas for many concertos
39.
Arthur Grumiaux
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Arthur Grumiaux, Baron Grumiaux was a Belgian violinist. Born in the Belgian town of Villers-Perwin, on 21 March 1921 and he entered the conservatoire in Charleroi at the age of six, the normal entry age was eleven. He studied violin and piano there until the age of eleven and he variously has been described as having made his debut in Brussels at the age of 14, or in 1945, although his debut is more commonly said to have occurred in 1940. This performance was made in Belgium with the Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra playing Mendelssohns concerto, due to the German invasion of his homeland, he next played publicly after liberation in 1945 with the Allied military entertainment organisation, making his London debut later that year. In 1949 he was appointed professor of violin at the Brussels Conservatoire where he had once studied and he debuted in the United States in Boston, in 1951, and toured the United States in the following year. In 1973 he was created a baron by King Baudouin of Belgium for his services to music and he died of a sudden stroke in Brussels in 1986 at the age of 65. A recording of Grumiauxs performance of one movement from Bachs Sonatas & Partitas for Unaccompanied Violin,3, is included on the Voyager Golden Record, attached to the Voyager spacecraft, as a sample of the culture of Earth. He owned both a Guarneri, the Rose, made by Giuseppe Guarneri in 1744, and a Stradivarius, the International Grumiaux Competition for Young Violinists is held annually and takes place at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels in Belgium. It was first held in 2008 under the name of Bravo, In 2015, the competition was renamed in honour of Arthur Grumiaux, and is now called Concours International Grumiaux pour Jeunes Violonistes. The competition was created in 2008 by Igor Thatchouk, a professor at the Institut Supérieur de Musique et de Pédagogie in Namur. It took place each year at the Institut and since 2017 in the Royal Conservatoire in Brussels, in 2015, the competition was supported by the foundation Baron Arthur Grumiaux and was renamed International Arthur Grumiaux Competition for Young Violinists. The same year, Princess Léa of Belgium rewarded the winners at the Royal Theater of Namur
40.
Eugene Istomin
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Eugene George Istomin was an American pianist. He was famous for his work in a trio in which he collaborated with Isaac Stern. Born in New York City of Russian parents, Istomin was a child prodigy and his earliest public performances began at age six with his mother, and at 12 he entered the Curtis Institute, having had earlier advice from Alexander Siloti and his daughter Kyriena. He went on to study under Rudolf Serkin and also Mieczysław Horszowski, in 1943, at the age of 17, he won the Leventritt award and the Philadelphia Youth Award. He performed with the conductor Rodzinski and the New York Philharmonic a second time in December 1944 and he commissioned and premiered Roger Sessions piano concerto in 1956. Several other composers, including Henri Dutilleux and Ned Rorem, wrote music for him, the Istomin-Stern-Rose Trio he formed with Isaac Stern and Leonard Rose made many recordings, particularly of music by Beethoven, Brahms and Schubert. He won a Grammy Award in 1970 with the Istomin-Stern-Rose Trio for their recordings of Beethoven and he recorded extensively for Columbia, solo works and chamber music. As late as 2001, he made the premiere recording of Paul Parays Fantaisie for Piano and Orchestra. He married Marta Montañez Martinez, the widow of Pablo Casals and she is a former president of the Manhattan School of Music and former artistic director of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D. C. He moved to Washington in 1980 and he was an avid reader and book collector and, eventually, attracted the interest of New York publishing magnate, William Jovanovich. In 1980, Istomin was hired by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers to advise the company in the publication of editions of original editions by Joseph Conrad and Thomas Hardy. In the 1980s and 1990s, he toured 30 American cities—largely in the Midwest—in a twelve-ton truck with his own Steinway pianos and it was the expression of a lifelong conviction that classical music belonged to the ordinary American. In this same vein, he was an ardent fan of the Detroit Tigers baseball team, better known in Europe than in the United States, Eugene Istomin received the French Légion dhonneur in 2001. He died of cancer in 2003 at his home in Washington
41.
Leonard Rose
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Leonard Rose was an American cellist and pedagogue. Rose was born in Washington, D. C. his parents were immigrants from Kiev, at 21 he was principal cellist of the Cleveland Orchestra and at 26 was the principal of the New York Philharmonic. He made many recordings as a soloist after 1951, including concertos with conductors such as Leonard Bernstein, Eugene Ormandy, George Szell, Rose also joined with Isaac Stern and Eugene Istomin in a celebrated piano trio. See, List of music students by teacher, A to B#Leonard Rose and he played an Amati cello dated 1662, played today by Gary Hoffman. Rose died in White Plains, New York, of leukemia. In November 2009, a marker was placed for Rose in the Mt. Ararat Cemetery in Farmingdale, New York, next to the grave of his first wife, Minnie Knopow Rose. Minnie and Leonard met at Curtis, where she studied viola and his second wife was Xenia Petschek, whom he married in January 1965. Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance Eugene Istomin, Leonard Rose & Isaac Stern for Beethoven, The Complete Piano Trios Janof, americas Golden Age and Its First Cellist, Steven Honigberg, Amazon. com With the Artists. World Famed String Players Discuss Their Art, Samuel and Sada Applebaum, pages 203-211 are devoted to Leonard Rose. Liner notes, Leonard Rose Live in Recital, 1953–1960 VAI, Seeking Perfection by Susan M Anderson
42.
Emanuel Ax
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Emanuel Ax is a Grammy-winning Soviet-born naturalized American classical pianist. He is a teacher on the faculty of the Juilliard School, Ax was born to a Polish-Jewish family in Lviv, Ukraine, to Joachim and Hellen Ax, both Nazi concentration camp survivors. Ax began to study piano at the age of six, his father was his first piano teacher, in 1961 the family moved to New York City and Ax continued his studies at the Juilliard School under Mieczysław Munz. In 1970 he received his B. A. in French at Columbia University, in 1973 he won the Young Concert Artists International Auditions. Ax has been the main duo recital partner of cellist Yo-Yo Ma since August 3,1973 when the pair performed its first public recital at the Marlboro Music School and they have recorded much of the cello/piano repertoire together. Ax also played briefly with Ma and violinists Isaac Stern. Before the quartet disbanded in 2001 due to the death of Stern, they recorded works for Sony by Brahms, Fauré, Beethoven, Schumann and Mozart. Ax is also a featured guest artist in a film about the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Peter Oundjian, Five Days in September. In 1997, Ax was the Music Director of the Ojai Music Festival alongside the conductor Daniel Harding and he holds honorary doctorates of music from Yale University and Columbia University. He is a recipient of Yale Universitys Sanford Medal, Ax lives in New York City with his wife, pianist Yoko Nozaki, and has two children, Joey and Sarah. He continues to speak fluent Polish and uses it with his family at home
Interview with Stern on My First 79 Years, October 26, 1999, C-SPAN
