1.
London
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London /ˈlʌndən/ is the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south east of the island of Great Britain and it was founded by the Romans, who named it Londinium. Londons ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its 1. 12-square-mile medieval boundaries. London is a global city in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism. It is crowned as the worlds largest financial centre and has the fifth- or sixth-largest metropolitan area GDP in the world, London is a world cultural capital. It is the worlds most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the worlds largest city airport system measured by passenger traffic, London is the worlds leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. Londons universities form the largest concentration of education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted the modern Summer Olympic Games three times, London has a diverse range of people and cultures, and more than 300 languages are spoken in the region. Its estimated mid-2015 municipal population was 8,673,713, the largest of any city in the European Union, Londons urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census. The citys metropolitan area is the most populous in the EU with 13,879,757 inhabitants, the city-region therefore has a similar land area and population to that of the New York metropolitan area. London was the worlds most populous city from around 1831 to 1925, Other famous landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Pauls Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, and The Shard. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world, the etymology of London is uncertain. It is an ancient name, found in sources from the 2nd century and it is recorded c.121 as Londinium, which points to Romano-British origin, and hand-written Roman tablets recovered in the city originating from AD 65/70-80 include the word Londinio. The earliest attempted explanation, now disregarded, is attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae and this had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. From 1898, it was accepted that the name was of Celtic origin and meant place belonging to a man called *Londinos. The ultimate difficulty lies in reconciling the Latin form Londinium with the modern Welsh Llundain, which should demand a form *lōndinion, from earlier *loundiniom. The possibility cannot be ruled out that the Welsh name was borrowed back in from English at a later date, and thus cannot be used as a basis from which to reconstruct the original name. Until 1889, the name London officially applied only to the City of London, two recent discoveries indicate probable very early settlements near the Thames in the London area
2.
Cello
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The cello or violoncello is a bowed or plucked string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. The strings from low to high are generally tuned to C2, G2, D3 and A3 and it is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin and viola and the double bass. The cello is used as a musical instrument, as well as in chamber music ensembles, string orchestras, as a member of the string section of symphony orchestras. It is the second-largest and second lowest bowed string instrument in the symphony orchestra. Cello parts are written in the bass clef, but both tenor clef and treble clefs are used for higher-range parts, both in orchestral/chamber music parts and in solo cello works. A person who plays the cello is called a cellist or violoncellist, in a small Classical ensemble, such as a string quartet, the cello typically plays the bass part, the lowest-pitched musical line of the piece. In orchestra, in Baroque era and Classical music period, the cello plays the bass part. In Baroque era music, the cello is used to play the basso continuo bassline, in a Baroque performance, the cello player might be joined by other bass instruments, playing double bass, viol or other low-register instruments. The name cello is a contraction of the Italian violoncello, which means little violone, in modern symphony orchestras, it is the second largest stringed instrument. Thus, the name contained both the augmentative -one and the diminutive -cello. By the turn of the 20th century, it had become common to shorten the name to cello and it is now customary to use cello without apostrophe as the full designation. Viol is derived from the viola, which was derived from Medieval Latin vitula. Cellos are tuned in fifths, starting with C2, followed by G2, D3 and it is tuned in the same intervals as the viola, but an octave lower. Unlike the violin or viola but similar to the double bass, the cello is most closely associated with European classical music, and has been described as the closest sounding instrument to the human voice. The instrument is a part of the orchestra, as part of the string section. A large number of concertos and sonatas have been written for the cello, among the most well-known Baroque works for the cello are Johann Sebastian Bachs six unaccompanied Suites. The Prelude from the First Suite is particularly famous, romantic era repertoire includes the Robert Schumann Concerto, the Antonín Dvořák Concerto as well as the two sonatas and the Double Concerto by Johannes Brahms. The cello is increasingly common in traditional music, especially Scottish fiddle music
3.
Writer
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A writer is a person who uses written words in various styles and techniques to communicate their ideas. Writers texts are published across a range of media, skilled writers who are able to use language to express ideas well often contribute significantly to the cultural content of a society. The word is used elsewhere in the arts – such as songwriter – but as a standalone term. Some writers work from an oral tradition, Writers can produce material across a number of genres, fictional or non-fictional. Other writers use multiple media – for example, graphics or illustration – to enhance the communication of their ideas, some writers may use images or multimedia to augment their writing. In rare instances, creative writers are able to communicate their ideas via music as well as words, as well as producing their own written works, writers often write on how they write, why they write, and also comment on the work of other writers. Writers work professionally or non-professionally, that is, for payment or without payment and may be either in advance. Payment is only one of the motivations of writers and many are never paid for their work, Writers choose from a range of literary genres to express their ideas. Most writing can be adapted for use in another medium, for example, a writers work may be read privately or recited or performed in a play or film. Satire for example, may be written as a poem, an essay, a film, the writer of a letter may include elements of criticism, biography, or journalism. The genre sets the parameters but all kinds of creative adaptation have been attempted, novel to film, poem to play, Writers may begin their career in one genre and change to another. For example, historian William Dalrymple began in the genre of travel literature, many writers have produced both fiction and non-fiction works and others write in a genre that crosses the two. For example, writers of romances, such as Georgette Heyer, invent characters. In this genre, the accuracy of the history and the level of detail in the work both tend to be debated. Some writers write both fiction and serious analysis, sometimes using different names to separate their work. Dorothy Sayers, for example, wrote crime fiction but was also a playwright, essayist, translator, poets make maximum use of the language to achieve an emotional and sensory effect as well as a cognitive one. To create these effects, they use rhyme and rhythm and they also exploit the properties of words with a range of techniques such as alliteration. A common theme is love and its vicissitudes, Shakespeares famous love story Romeo and Juliet, for example, written in a variety of poetic forms, has been performed in innumerable theatres and made into at least eight cinematic versions
4.
Order of the British Empire
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There is also the related British Empire Medal, whose recipients are affiliated with, but not members of, the order. Recommendations for appointments to the Order of the British Empire were at first made on the nomination of the United Kingdom, the self-governing Dominions of the Empire, nominations continue today from Commonwealth countries that participate in recommending British honours. Most members are citizens of the United Kingdom or the Commonwealth realms that use the Imperial system of honours and awards. Honorary knighthoods are appointed to citizens of nations where the Queen is not head of state, occasionally, honorary appointees are, incorrectly, referred to as Sir or Dame – Bill Gates or Bob Geldof, for example. In particular, King George V wished to create an Order to honour many thousands of those who had served in a variety of non-combatant roles during the First World War, when first established, the Order had only one division. However, in 1918, soon after its foundation, it was divided into Military. The Orders motto is For God and the Empire, at the foundation of the Order, the Medal of the Order of the British Empire was instituted, to serve as a lower award granting recipients affiliation but not membership. In 1922, this was renamed the British Empire Medal, in addition, the BEM is awarded by the Cook Islands and by some other Commonwealth nations. The British monarch is Sovereign of the Order, and appoints all members of the Order. The next most senior member is the Grand Master, of whom there have been three, Prince Edward, the Prince of Wales, Queen Mary, and the current Grand Master, the Duke of Edinburgh. The Order is limited to 300 Knights and Dames Grand Cross,845 Knights and Dames Commander, and 8,960 Commanders. There are no limits applied to the number of members of the fourth and fifth classes. Foreign recipients, as members, do not contribute to the numbers restricted to the Order as full members do. Though men can be knighted separately from an order of chivalry, women cannot, and so the rank of Knight/Dame Commander of the Order is the lowest rank of damehood, and second-lowest of knighthood. Because of this, Dame Commander is awarded in circumstances in which a man would be created a Knight Bachelor, for example, by convention, female judges of the High Court of Justice are created Dames Commander after appointment, while male judges become Knights Bachelor. The Order has six officials, the Prelate, the Dean, the Secretary, the Registrar, the King of Arms, the Bishop of London, a senior bishop in the Church of England, serves as the Orders Prelate. The Dean of St Pauls is ex officio the Dean of the Order, the Orders King of Arms is not a member of the College of Arms, as are many other heraldic officers. From time to time, individuals are appointed to a higher grade within the Order, thereby ceasing usage of the junior post-nominal letters
5.
Catgut
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Catgut is a type of cord that is prepared from the natural fibre found in the walls of animal intestines. Catgut makers usually use sheep or goat intestines, but occasionally use the intestines of cattle, hogs, horses, mules, despite the name, catgut manufacturers do not use cat intestines. The word catgut may have been an abbreviation of the word cattlegut, alternatively, it may derive by folk etymology from kitgut or kitstring—the word kit, meaning fiddle, having at some point been confused with the word kit for a young cat. Most musical instruments produced today use strings with cores made of other materials, many acoustic guitarists moved away from gut strings in the early 1900s when the C. F. Martin & Company introduced steel strings, which gave greater volume to the guitar. The demand for steel came from players, who couldnt make themselves heard clearly without it. Within a few years the majority of Martin guitars were made with steel strings to accommodate the demand, after World War II, most classical and flamenco guitarists switched from catgut to the new nylon strings for their greater smoothness, durability, and stability of intonation. Before 1900, the best strings for musical instruments were reputedly from Italy, musicians believed the best were from Naples, though Rome and other Italian cities also produced excellent strings. Today high quality gut strings are produced mostly in Italy, Germany, and they are also made elsewhere, for example in India and Morocco, for local use. Catgut suture was once a widely used material in surgical settings, there is debate about whether to continue using catgut in a medical setting, since cotton is usually cheaper and wounds closed with either cotton or synthetic threads are less prone to infection. Catgut sutures remain in use in developing countries where they are less expensive. Natural gut is still used as a string in tennis racquets. To prepare catgut, workers clean the small intestines, free them from fat, then they scrape off the external membrane with a blunt knife, and steep the intestines again for some time in potassium hydroxide. Then they smooth and equalize the intestines by drawing them out, lean animals yield the toughest gut. Next, they twist the prepared gut strands together to make string, string diameter is determined by the thickness of the individual guts, and by the number used. A thin string, such as a violin E, uses three or four guts, whereas a double bass string may use twenty or more. After twisting and drying, workers polish the strings to the required diameter, before the twentieth century, the strings were simply rubbed with an abrasive to smooth them. Today they are ground down to the desired diameter using a centerless grinder. After drying and polishing, workers bleach and disinfect the strings using sulfur dioxide, dye them if necessary, notes Sources This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh, ed. Catgut
6.
Russia
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Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
7.
Midweek (BBC Radio 4)
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Midweek was a British weekly radio magazine series broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It was aired on Wednesday at 09.00 and repeated later the day at 21.00. It was presented by Libby Purves and each week several guests discussed various topics with her, start the Week and Stop the Week, also broadcast on Radio 4, employ similar formats, although Stop the Week is no longer broadcast. The final broadcast of Midweek aired on 29 March 2017, in 1986, then-producer Victor Lewis-Smith employed cockney comedian Arthur Mullard as stand-in for Purves who was on holiday. The result was an hour of broadcasting which polarised the opinion of its listeners. Lewis-Smith later said, it was intended to talk show conventions in a humorous way. 25 years later iPM ran a programme profiling what Purves described as a piece of post-modern neo-dada performance art subverting the entire genre of Radio 4, rivers angrily rejected his suggestion, accusing him of implying she was a racist and called him a son of a bitch. According to a Radio 4 spokeswoman, around twenty people contacted the station, subsequent to the live broadcast, some critical of the swearing, meet the disembodied friends of BBC Radio 4
8.
Vienna
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Vienna is the capital and largest city of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austrias primary city, with a population of about 1.8 million, and its cultural, economic and it is the 7th-largest city by population within city limits in the European Union. Today, it has the second largest number of German speakers after Berlin, Vienna is host to many major international organizations, including the United Nations and OPEC. The city is located in the part of Austria and is close to the borders of the Czech Republic, Slovakia. These regions work together in a European Centrope border region, along with nearby Bratislava, Vienna forms a metropolitan region with 3 million inhabitants. In 2001, the city centre was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, apart from being regarded as the City of Music because of its musical legacy, Vienna is also said to be The City of Dreams because it was home to the worlds first psycho-analyst – Sigmund Freud. The citys roots lie in early Celtic and Roman settlements that transformed into a Medieval and Baroque city and it is well known for having played an essential role as a leading European music centre, from the great age of Viennese Classicism through the early part of the 20th century. The historic centre of Vienna is rich in architectural ensembles, including Baroque castles and gardens, Vienna is known for its high quality of life. In a 2005 study of 127 world cities, the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked the city first for the worlds most liveable cities, between 2011 and 2015, Vienna was ranked second, behind Melbourne, Australia. Monocles 2015 Quality of Life Survey ranked Vienna second on a list of the top 25 cities in the world to make a base within, the UN-Habitat has classified Vienna as being the most prosperous city in the world in 2012/2013. Vienna regularly hosts urban planning conferences and is used as a case study by urban planners. Between 2005 and 2010, Vienna was the worlds number-one destination for international congresses and it attracts over 3.7 million tourists a year. The English name Vienna is borrowed from the homonymous Italian version of the name or the French Vienne. The etymology of the name is still subject to scholarly dispute. Some claim that the name comes from Vedunia, meaning forest stream, which produced the Old High German Uuenia. A variant of this Celtic name could be preserved in the Czech and Slovak names of the city, the name of the city in Hungarian, Serbo-Croatian and Ottoman Turkish has a different, probably Slavonic origin, and originally referred to an Avar fort in the area. Slovene-speakers call the city Dunaj, which in other Central European Slavic languages means the Danube River, evidence has been found of continuous habitation since 500 BC, when the site of Vienna on the Danube River was settled by the Celts. In 15 BC, the Romans fortified the city they called Vindobona to guard the empire against Germanic tribes to the north
9.
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
10.
City of London School
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It is the brother school of the City of London School for Girls and a member of the Headmasters and Headmistresses Conference. The School was founded by a private Act of Parliament in 1834, the original school was established at Milk Street, moving to the Victoria Embankment in 1879 and its present site on Queen Victoria Street in 1986. The school provides day education to about 900 boys aged 10 to 18 and employs approximately 100 teaching staff, the majority of pupils enter at 11, some at 13 and some at 16 into the Sixth form. There is an intake at 10 into Old Grammar, a year group consisting of two classes equivalent to primary school Year 6. Admissions are based on an examination and an interview. Among Old Citizens who have attained eminence in fields are prime minister H. H. The City of London School traces its origins to a bequest of land by John Carpenter, on his death in 1442, it was found that Carpenter had listed many bequests, most to his relatives but some to charitable causes. There were no bequests listed to directly support the education of boys in the City of London, until they be preferred, and then others in their places for ever. The four boys became known as Carpenters Children, little is known of the early years of the legacy. This bequest was administered by the Corporation of London in around 1460, in 1547, under the Chantries Act the Guildhall Chapel and Library were forfeited. The funding for the four boys was also discontinued, in 1823, a report published by the Charity Commission revealed that over the centuries, the income from the bequest vastly exceeded the expenses of the boys education. Had the Corporation instead looked for the will of John Don, lacking that guidance, discussions began on how the bequest money should be spent. The City Lands Committee suggested in a report that the bequest should be spent on educating a number of boys. In 1830, they proposed that the City of London Corporation School be founded with Taylor as a governor, in the mean time, a small number of boys, who became known as Carpenters scholars, were sent to Tonbridge School. In 1829, an Act of Parliament was passed to transform the workhouse into a school, conditions at the workhouse site had deteriorated and much money was needed for its maintenance. The only funds available, though, were the same £300 a year budget the workhouse had received. Over the next few years, the proposal was seen, by the City of London Lord Mayors deputation. In 1832, Warren Stormes Hale, who believed that the Workhouse proposal was not the best use of Carpenters legacy, was appointed to the City Lands Committee
11.
Scotland
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Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and covers the northern third of the island of Great Britain. It shares a border with England to the south, and is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east. In addition to the mainland, the country is made up of more than 790 islands, including the Northern Isles, the Kingdom of Scotland emerged as an independent sovereign state in the Early Middle Ages and continued to exist until 1707. By inheritance in 1603, James VI, King of Scots, became King of England and King of Ireland, Scotland subsequently entered into a political union with the Kingdom of England on 1 May 1707 to create the new Kingdom of Great Britain. The union also created a new Parliament of Great Britain, which succeeded both the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England. Within Scotland, the monarchy of the United Kingdom has continued to use a variety of styles, titles, the legal system within Scotland has also remained separate from those of England and Wales and Northern Ireland, Scotland constitutes a distinct jurisdiction in both public and private law. Glasgow, Scotlands largest city, was one of the worlds leading industrial cities. Other major urban areas are Aberdeen and Dundee, Scottish waters consist of a large sector of the North Atlantic and the North Sea, containing the largest oil reserves in the European Union. This has given Aberdeen, the third-largest city in Scotland, the title of Europes oil capital, following a referendum in 1997, a Scottish Parliament was re-established, in the form of a devolved unicameral legislature comprising 129 members, having authority over many areas of domestic policy. Scotland is represented in the UK Parliament by 59 MPs and in the European Parliament by 6 MEPs, Scotland is also a member nation of the British–Irish Council, and the British–Irish Parliamentary Assembly. Scotland comes from Scoti, the Latin name for the Gaels, the Late Latin word Scotia was initially used to refer to Ireland. By the 11th century at the latest, Scotia was being used to refer to Scotland north of the River Forth, alongside Albania or Albany, the use of the words Scots and Scotland to encompass all of what is now Scotland became common in the Late Middle Ages. Repeated glaciations, which covered the land mass of modern Scotland. It is believed the first post-glacial groups of hunter-gatherers arrived in Scotland around 12,800 years ago, the groups of settlers began building the first known permanent houses on Scottish soil around 9,500 years ago, and the first villages around 6,000 years ago. The well-preserved village of Skara Brae on the mainland of Orkney dates from this period and it contains the remains of an early Bronze Age ruler laid out on white quartz pebbles and birch bark. It was also discovered for the first time that early Bronze Age people placed flowers in their graves, in the winter of 1850, a severe storm hit Scotland, causing widespread damage and over 200 deaths. In the Bay of Skaill, the storm stripped the earth from a large irregular knoll, when the storm cleared, local villagers found the outline of a village, consisting of a number of small houses without roofs. William Watt of Skaill, the laird, began an amateur excavation of the site, but after uncovering four houses
12.
Oberlin Conservatory of Music
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Students of Oberlin Conservatory enter a very broad network within the music world, as the schools alumni can be found in most major professional ensembles. It is one of the few American conservatories to be attached to a liberal arts college. This allows students the opportunity to pursue degrees in both music and a traditional liberal arts subject via the five year Double-Degree program. Oberlin College and Conservatory pride themselves on being almost exclusively undergraduate, the Oberlin Collegiate Institute was built on 500 acres of land, founded in 1833 and became Oberlin College in 1850. In 1867, two years after the Oberlin Conservatorys founding in 1865, the previously separate Oberlin Conservatory became incorporated with the college on a similar grant, Oberlin Colleges role as an educator of African-American students prior to the Civil War and thereafter is historically significant. Notable is the graduation of William Grant Still, a student who became regarded as the dean of African-American composers. These efforts have helped Oberlin remain committed to its values of freedom, social justice and it is also the oldest continuously operating coeducational conservatory, since its incorporation with Oberlin College, the first coeducational college. The college and conservatory were listed as a National Historic Landmark on December 21,1965, the TIMARA program was the worlds first conservatory program in this field, established in 1967. The Oberlin Conservatory of Music is the professional music school to be so honored by President Barack Obama. Admission is based primarily on a competitive audition, over 1,400 musicians from around the world apply for a freshman class of around 120. The Conservatory was previously housed in Warner Hall, a stone building where the King Building now stands. It now occupies four interconnected buildings on the side of Tappan Square. In 2010, The Bertram and Judith Kohl Building opened to provide a new home for the Jazz Studies, Music History, and Music Theory departments. Kohl is connected to Robertson by an enclosed bridge, which also contains the Sky Bar. The Robertson Building houses around 150 practice rooms, most with windows, schoepfle Vocal Arts Center, Career Resource Center, Kulas Organ Center, reed-making rooms, computer labs, faculty studios, and staff offices are located here. The Conservatory contains the largest collection of Steinway & Sons pianos, outside of the Steinway factory and they are understandably worried about their next step as musicians, How are they going to enter the industry. How are they going to make a living, and because of that, that can trickle down. The nice thing at Oberlin is that they are immensely talented and they might be a little bit, but its not what occupies their thoughts
13.
Fortepiano
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A fortepiano is an early piano. In principle, the fortepiano can designate any piano dating from the invention of the instrument by Bartolomeo Cristofori around 1700 up to the early 19th century. Most typically, however, it is used to refer to the late-18th to early-19th century instruments for which Haydn, Mozart, starting in Beethovens time, the fortepiano began a period of steady evolution, culminating in the late 19th century with the modern grand. The earlier fortepiano became obsolete and was absent from the scene for many decades. In the 20th century the fortepiano was revived, following the rise of interest in historically informed performance, fortepianos are built for this purpose today in specialist workshops. The fortepiano has leather-covered hammers and thin, harpsichord-like strings and it has a much lighter case construction than the modern piano and, except for later examples of the early nineteenth century, it has no metal frame or bracing. The action and hammers are lighter, giving rise to a lighter touch. The range of the fortepiano was about four octaves at the time of its invention, Mozart wrote his piano music for instruments of about five octaves. The piano works of Beethoven reflect an expanding range, his last piano compositions are for an instrument of about six octaves. Fortepianos from the start often had similar to the pedals of modern pianos. Like the modern piano, the fortepiano can vary the volume of each note. The tone of the fortepiano is quite different from that of the piano, however. Sforzando accents tend to stand out more than on the piano, as they differ from softer notes in timbre as well as volume. Fortepianos also tend to have different tone quality in their different registers—slightly buzzing in the bass, tinkling in the high treble. In comparison, modern pianos are rather more uniform in sound through their range, the piano was invented by harpsichord maker Bartolomeo Cristofori in Florence around the turn of the 18th century. The first reliable record of a piano appears in the inventory of the Medici family, Cristofori continued to develop the instrument until the 1720s, the time from which the surviving three Cristofori instruments date. Cristofori is perhaps best admired today for his ingenious piano action, however, other innovations were also needed to make the piano possible. Merely attaching the Cristofori action to a harpsichord would have produced a weak tone
14.
Robert D. Levin
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Robert D. Levin is a classical performer, musicologist and composer, and is the artistic director of the Sarasota Music Festival. Levin attended the Brooklyn Friends School and Andrew Jackson High School and he attended Harvard, where he earned his Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude in 1968 with a thesis entitled The Unfinished Works of W. A. Mozart. He was subsequently appointed associate professor of music and coordinator of instruction at the SUNY Purchase. From 1986 to 1993, he served as professor of piano at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg in Germany, in 1993 he became professor of music at his alma mater, Harvard University, and still is. In 1994 he was made Dwight P. Robinson Jr Professor of the Humanities at Harvard, levins academic career has included teaching and tutoring performance practice in addition to music history and theory. He currently holds the position of Hogwood Fellow with the Academy of Ancient Music, Levin has completed or reconstructed a number of eighteenth-century works, especially unfinished compositions by Mozart and Johann Sebastian Bach. His completions of several unfinished Mozart works, including the Requiem in D minor, in the Mozart Requiem, he reconstructed an Amen fugue from Mozarts own sketches
15.
Boston
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Boston is the capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. Boston is also the seat of Suffolk County, although the county government was disbanded on July 1,1999. The city proper covers 48 square miles with a population of 667,137 in 2015, making it the largest city in New England. Alternately, as a Combined Statistical Area, this wider commuting region is home to some 8.1 million people, One of the oldest cities in the United States, Boston was founded on the Shawmut Peninsula in 1630 by Puritan settlers from England. It was the scene of several key events of the American Revolution, such as the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Siege of Boston. Upon U. S. independence from Great Britain, it continued to be an important port and manufacturing hub as well as a center for education, through land reclamation and municipal annexation, Boston has expanded beyond the original peninsula. Its rich history attracts many tourists, with Faneuil Hall alone drawing over 20 million visitors per year, Bostons many firsts include the United States first public school, Boston Latin School, first subway system, the Tremont Street Subway, and first public park, Boston Common. Bostons economic base also includes finance, professional and business services, biotechnology, information technology, the city has one of the highest costs of living in the United States as it has undergone gentrification, though it remains high on world livability rankings. Bostons early European settlers had first called the area Trimountaine but later renamed it Boston after Boston, Lincolnshire, England, the renaming on September 7,1630 was by Puritan colonists from England who had moved over from Charlestown earlier that year in quest of fresh water. Their settlement was limited to the Shawmut Peninsula, at that time surrounded by the Massachusetts Bay and Charles River. The peninsula is thought to have been inhabited as early as 5000 BC, in 1629, the Massachusetts Bay Colonys first governor John Winthrop led the signing of the Cambridge Agreement, a key founding document of the city. Puritan ethics and their focus on education influenced its early history, over the next 130 years, the city participated in four French and Indian Wars, until the British defeated the French and their Indian allies in North America. Boston was the largest town in British America until Philadelphia grew larger in the mid-18th century, Bostons harbor activity was significantly curtailed by the Embargo Act of 1807 and the War of 1812. Foreign trade returned after these hostilities, but Bostons merchants had found alternatives for their investments in the interim. Manufacturing became an important component of the economy, and the citys industrial manufacturing overtook international trade in economic importance by the mid-19th century. Boston remained one of the nations largest manufacturing centers until the early 20th century, a network of small rivers bordering the city and connecting it to the surrounding region facilitated shipment of goods and led to a proliferation of mills and factories. Later, a network of railroads furthered the regions industry. Boston was a port of the Atlantic triangular slave trade in the New England colonies
16.
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
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The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment is a British period instrument orchestra. The OAE is a resident orchestra of the Southbank Centre, London, the leadership is rotated between four musicians, Matthew Truscott, Kati Debretzeni and Margaret Faultless. The OAE does not have a conductor, but chooses conductors individually. Having no permanent music director gives the flexibility to work with some of the world’s greatest conductors. The current Principal Artists are Sir Simon Rattle, Vladimir Jurowski, Iván Fischer, John Butt, Sir Roger Norrington and William Christie are Emeritus Conductors, as were the late Frans Brüggen and Sir Charles Mackerras. The Ethos of the Orchestra is based on democracy, with the idea that the players are not simply technicians, when it began anyone who wanted to could become a member of the orchestra, although they wouldn’t necessarily be asked to play. Responsibility for concert planning is given to a Players Artistic Committee which is elected annually by the members, the OAE’s first concerts, in June 1986, were booked at Oxfords Town Hall and London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. Conducted by Sigiswald Kuijken, their first programme consisted of an Overture Suite by Telemann, Rameau’s Suite from Dardanus, the OAEs current recurring season at the Southbank Centre in London includes concerts at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and Royal Festival Hall. In May 2006, the OAE started a series of late night concerts called The Night Shift. The OAE celebrated the 21st anniversary of its founding with a concert at the Royal Festival Hall on 30 June 2007, conducted by Norrington, Elder, Mackerras and Jurowski respectively. In July 2008 the OAE moved its headquarters to Kings Place in London where it now shares an office with the London Sinfonietta, while continuing its Southbank season. On 29 January 2010 The Night Shift made its first appearance at The Roundhouse in Camden, in August 2010 the OAE played at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms season, performing Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and the Love Scene from Romeo and Juliet by Berlioz. The concert was conducted by Sir Simon Rattle and included soloists Sarah Connolly, Ben Heppner, the OAE has toured many countries, including South America and the US in 2002, and toured South East Asia for the first time in autumn 2003. Over the spring/summer of 2010, the OAE are running a series of three concerts inspired by Monteverdi’s Vespers for the schools in which they work, the Night Shift is a concert series where classical music is presented in a relaxed and informal setting. Established in 2006 by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, unusual characteristics include the concise length of each performance, the invitation to bring alcoholic drinks into the concert hall, and the ability to clap and talk at your own convenience. Since its creation, The Night Shift has proven successful among people under age 35, over 80% of the audience falls within this age bracket and approximately 20% of the audience is attending a classical concert for the first time. The Ann and Peter Law OAE Experience scheme is a scheme for young period instrumentalists. Official website Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment Blog The Night Shift Bach Cantatas page on the OAE2007 Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards page Charity Commission, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, registered charity no.295329
17.
Simon Rattle
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Sir Simon Denis Rattle OM CBE is an English conductor. He rose to prominence during the 1980s and 1990s, while Music Director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Simon Rattle has been conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic since 2002. It was announced in March 2015 that Simon Rattle would become Music Director of the London Symphony Orchestra from September 2017, Simon Rattle was born in Liverpool, the son of Pauline Lila Violet and Denis Guttridge Rattle, a Commander in the Royal Navy. He was educated at Liverpool College, although Rattle studied piano and violin, his early work with orchestras was as a percussionist for the Merseyside Youth Orchestra. He entered the Royal Academy of Music, in 1971, there, his teachers included John Carewe. In 1974, his year, Rattle won the John Player International Conducting Competition. He spent the academic year 1980/81 at St Annes College, Oxford studying English Language and he had been attracted to the college by the reputation of Dorothy Bednarowska, Fellow and Tutor in English. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of St Annes in 1991 and he was admitted to the degree of Doctor of Music honoris causa of the University of Oxford in 1999. In 1974, he was assistant conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. His first Prom at the Royal Albert Hall, conducting the London Sinfonietta, was, according to the BBC Proms Archive web-site, the programme included Harrison Birtwistles Meridian and Arnold Schoenbergs First Chamber Symphony. In 1977 he became assistant conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and his time with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra from 1980 to 1998 drew him to the attention of critics and the public. In 1980, Simon Rattle became the CBSOs Principal Conductor and Artistic Adviser, Rattle increased both his profile and that of the orchestra over his tenure. One of his long-term concert projects was the series of concerts of 20th-century music titled Towards the Millennium. One other major achievement during his time was the move of the CBSO from its former venue, Birmingham Town Hall, to a newly built hall, Symphony Hall. The BBC commissioned film director Jaine Green to follow him in his year with the CBSO to make Simon Rattle—Moving On. Rattle was appointed a CBE in 1987 and made a Knight Bachelor in 1994, in 1992, Rattle was named a Principal Guest Conductor of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, along with Frans Brüggen. Rattle now has the title of Principal Artist with the OAE, in 2001, he conducted the OAE at Glyndebourne in their first production of Fidelio with a period-instrument orchestra
18.
Edward Elgar
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Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet OM GCVO was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos for violin and cello and he also composed choral works, including The Dream of Gerontius, chamber music and songs. He was appointed Master of the Kings Musick in 1924, although Elgar is often regarded as a typically English composer, most of his musical influences were not from England but from continental Europe. He felt himself to be an outsider, not only musically and he nevertheless married the daughter of a senior British army officer. His later full-length religious choral works were received but have not entered the regular repertory. In his fifties, Elgar composed a symphony and a concerto that were immensely successful. His second symphony and his cello concerto did not gain immediate public popularity, Elgars music came, in his later years, to be seen as appealing chiefly to British audiences. His stock remained low for a generation after his death and it began to revive significantly in the 1960s, helped by new recordings of his works. Some of his works have, in recent years, been taken up again internationally, Elgar has been described as the first composer to take the gramophone seriously. Between 1914 and 1925, he conducted a series of recordings of his works. Edward Elgar was born in the village of Lower Broadheath, outside Worcester. His father, William Henry Elgar, was raised in Dover and had apprenticed to a London music publisher. In 1841 William moved to Worcester, where he worked as a tuner and set up a shop selling sheet music. In 1848 he married Ann Greening, daughter of a farm worker, Edward was the fourth of their seven children. Ann Elgar had converted to Roman Catholicism shortly before Edwards birth, William Elgar was a violinist of professional standard and held the post of organist of St. Georges Roman Catholic Church, Worcester, from 1846 to 1885. At his instigation, masses by Cherubini and Hummel were first heard at the Three Choirs Festival by the orchestra in which he played the violin, all the Elgar children received a musical upbringing. Elgars mother was interested in the arts and encouraged his musical development and he inherited from her a discerning taste for literature and a passionate love of the countryside. His friend and biographer W. H, Billy Reed wrote that Elgars early surroundings had an influence that permeated all his work and gave to his whole life that subtle but none the less true and sturdy English quality
19.
Sergei Prokofiev
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Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian and Soviet composer, pianist and conductor. As the creator of acknowledged masterpieces across numerous genres, he is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century. Prokofievs greatest interest, however, was opera, and he composed works in that genre, including The Gambler. Prokofievs one operatic success during his lifetime was The Love for Three Oranges, composed for the Chicago Opera and subsequently performed over the decade in Europe. During that time he married a Spanish singer, Carolina Codina, in the early 1930s, the Great Depression diminished opportunities for Prokofievs ballets and operas to be staged in America and western Europe. He enjoyed some success there – notably with Lieutenant Kijé, Peter and the Wolf, Romeo and Juliet, the Nazi invasion of the USSR spurred him to compose his most ambitious work, an operatic version of Leo Tolstoys War and Peace. Prokofiev was born in 1891 in Sontsovka, a rural estate in the Yekaterinoslav Governorate of the Russian Empire. His father, Sergei Alexeyevich Prokofiev, was an agronomist, Prokofievs mother, Maria, came from a family of former serfs who had been owned by the Sheremetev family, under whose patronage serf-children were taught theatre and arts from an early age. She was described by Reinhold Glière as a woman with beautiful. Who knew how to create an atmosphere of warmth and simplicity about her, after their wedding in the summer of 1877, the Prokofievs had moved to a small estate in the Smolensk governorate. Eventually Sergei Alexeyevich found employment as a engineer, employed by one of his former fellow-students, Dmitri Sontsov. By seven, he had learned to play chess. At the age of nine, he was composing his first opera, The Giant, as well as an overture, unable to arrange that, Tanayev instead arranged for composer and pianist Reinhold Glière to spend the summer of 1902 in Sontsovka teaching Prokofiev. The first series of lessons culminated, at the 11-year-old Prokofievs insistence, the following summer, Glière revisited Sontsovka to give further tuition. By 1904, his mother had decided instead on Saint Petersburg, glazunov was so impressed that he urged Prokofievs mother to have her son apply for admission to the Conservatory. He passed the tests and enrolled that year. Several years younger than most of his class, Prokofiev was viewed as eccentric and arrogant and he also shared classes with the composers Boris Asafyev and Nikolai Myaskovsky, the latter becoming a relatively close and lifelong friend. As a member of the Saint Petersburg music scene, Prokofiev developed a reputation as a rebel, while getting praise for his original compositions
20.
Udmurtia
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Udmurtia, or the Udmurt Republic, is a federal subject of Russia within the Volga Federal District. Its capital is the city of Izhevsk, on November 4,1920, Votsk Autonomous Oblast was formed. On January 1,1932, it was renamed Udmurt Autonomous Oblast, during World War II, many industrial factories were evacuated from Ukraine and western borderlands to Udmurtia. The republic is located in the portion of the Eastern European Plain. Major rivers include, Cheptsa River Izh River Kama River Kilmez River Siva River The republic has a continental climate, with warm summers. Average annual precipitation, 400–600 mm Population,1,521, 420 ,1,570, 316 ,1,609, although as of 2007 the population was declining, the decline was more pronounced in urban areas. Out of the 19,667 births reported in 2007,12,631 were in areas and 7,036 were in rural areas. Birth rates for rural areas are 25% higher than that of urban areas, of the total of 21,727 deaths,14,366 were reported in urban areas and 7,361 were in rural areas. Natural decline of population was measured at -0. 16% for urban areas, source TFR source According to the 2010 Census, Russians make up 62. 2% of the republics population, while the ethnic Udmurts only make up 28%. Other groups include Tatars, Ukrainians, Mari, and a host of smaller groups, over two thirds of the world population of Udmurts live in the republic. According to a 2012 official survey,33, in addition, 29% of the population declares to be spiritual but not religious, 19% is atheist, and 3. 9% follows other religions or did not give an answer to the question. The Ashkenazi Jews on the territory of the Udmurt Republic first appeared in the 1830s, one of the characteristic features of the Udmurt Idiom is a noticeable number of Udmurt and Tatar loan words. One of the oldest arms museums is located in Izhevsk, as well as the newer Kalashnikov Museum, Закона №62-РЗ от22 ноября2007 г. Изд-во «Известия Советов народных депутатов СССР»,1987, lost Cosmonaut, Observations of an Anti-tourist. The mass media and the question in Udmurtia in the 1990s. Media related to Udmurtia at Wikimedia Commons Official website of the Udmurt Republic
21.
Cardiff
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Cardiff is the capital and largest city in Wales and the eleventh-largest city in the United Kingdom. The city is the chief commercial centre, the base for most national cultural and sporting institutions, the Welsh national media. The unitary authority areas mid-2011 population was estimated to be 346,100, the Cardiff metropolitan area makes up over a third of the total population of Wales, with a mid-2011 population estimate of about 1,100,000 people. Cardiff is a significant tourist centre and the most popular destination in Wales with 18.3 million visitors in 2010. In 2011, Cardiff was ranked sixth in the world in National Geographics alternative tourist destinations, the city of Cardiff is the county town of the historic county of Glamorgan. Cardiff is part of the Eurocities network of the largest European cities, the Cardiff Urban Area covers a slightly larger area outside the county boundary, and includes the towns of Dinas Powys and Penarth. A small town until the early 19th century, its prominence as a port for the transport of coal following the arrival of industry in the region contributed to its rise as a major city. Cardiff was made a city in 1905, and proclaimed the capital of Wales in 1955, since the 1980s, Cardiff has seen significant development. A new waterfront area at Cardiff Bay contains the Senedd building, home to the Welsh Assembly, sporting venues in the city include the Millennium Stadium, SWALEC Stadium, Cardiff City Stadium, Cardiff International Sports Stadium and Cardiff Arms Park. The city was awarded the title of European City of Sport twice, due to its role in hosting major sporting events, first in 2009. The Millennium Stadium hosted 11 football matches as part of the 2012 Summer Olympics, including the opening event. Caerdydd derives from the earlier Welsh form Caerdyf, the change from -dyf to -dydd shows the colloquial alteration of Welsh f and dd, and was perhaps also driven by folk etymology. This sound change had probably first occurred in the Middle Ages, Caerdyf has its origins in post-Roman Brythonic words meaning the fort of the Taff. The fort probably refers to that established by the Romans, the anglicised form Cardiff is derived from Caerdyf, with the Welsh f borrowed as ff /f/, as also happens in Taff and Llandaff. As English does not have the vowel the final vowel has been borrowed as /ɪ/, although some sources repeat this theory, it has been rejected on linguistic grounds by modern scholars such as Professor Gwynedd Pierce. A group of five Bronze Age tumuli is at the summit of The Garth, four Iron Age hill fort and enclosure sites have been identified within Cardiffs present-day county boundaries, including Caerau Hillfort, an enclosed area of 5.1 hectares. The fort was one of a series of military outposts associated with Isca Augusta that acted as border defences, the fort may have been abandoned in the early 2nd century as the area had been subdued. However, by this time a settlement, or vicus, was established
22.
BBC National Orchestra of Wales
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The BBC National Orchestra of Wales is a Welsh symphony orchestra and one of the BBCs five professional orchestras. The BBC NOW is the professional symphony orchestra organisation in Wales. The BBC NOW has its base in Cardiff, at the BBC Hoddinott Hall on the site of the Wales Millennium Centre. The orchestra records many soundtracks for BBC television, including Doctor Who, Torchwood, Human Planet, the precursor ensemble of the BBC NOW was the Cardiff Station Orchestra, which was founded in 1928. Funding problems resulted in the disbandment of this orchestra in 1931, in 1935, the BBC Welsh Orchestra was established as a 20-member ensemble, but the orchestra was dissolved in 1939. After World War II, the BBC Welsh Orchestra was revived as a 31-member ensemble, in 1947, the BBC Welsh Chorus was founded as the affiliate chorus of the orchestra. It reached a full symphonic complenent of 88 players in 1987, in the 1970s, a new chorus to supplant the former BBC Welsh Chorus, the BBC Welsh Choral Society, was established. In 1993, the orchestra was renamed the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, in parallel, the chorus was renamed the BBC National Chorus of Wales. Tadaaki Otaka, principal conductor from 1987 to 1995, is currently the BBC NOWs conductor laureate, richard Hickox, principal conductor from 2000 to 2006, was the orchestras conductor emeritus until his death in November 2008. In July 2011, the BBC NOW announced the appointment of Thomas Søndergård as its 14th principal conductor, effective with the 2012-2013 season, in February 2016, the BBC NOW announced the further extension of Søndergårds contract as principal conductor through at least 2018. Past principal guest conductors have included Maris Jansons, James Loughran, françois-Xavier Roth was the past associate guest conductor of the BBC NOW. In December 2015, the BBC NOW announced the appointment of Xian Zhang as its principal guest conductor, effective with the 2016-2017 season. She is the first female conductor named to a titled post with any BBC orchestra, past Composers-in-Association have included B Tommy Andersson. Huw Watkins is currently the BBC NOWs Composer-in-Association, contracted for the period of 2015-2018, adrian Partington is the current artistic director of the BBC National Chorus of Wales. In addition to its work for the BBC, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales has an extensive commercial discography with such labels as Chandos, Hyperion. These include recorded cycles of music of Lennox Berkeley and Michael Berkeley, Frank Bridge, Tommy Andersson Huw Watkins Mark Bowden The BBC National Orchestra of Wales, A Celebration, Peter Reynolds BBC NOW official home page BBC NOW page on the history of the orchestra
23.
John Tavener
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Sir John Kenneth Tavener was an English composer, known for his extensive output of religious works, including The Protecting Veil, Song for Athene and The Lamb. Tavener first came to prominence with his cantata The Whale, premiered in 1968, then aged 24, he was described by The Guardian as the musical discovery of the year, while The Times said he was among the very best creative talents of his generation. The Lamb featured in the soundtrack for Paolo Sorrentinos film The Great Beauty, Tavener was knighted in 2000 for his services to music and won an Ivor Novello Award. Tavener was born on 28 January 1944 in Wembley, London and his parents ran a family building firm and his father was also an organist at St Andrews Presbyterian Church in Frognal, Hampstead. At the age of 12, Tavener was taken to Glyndebourne to hear Mozarts The Magic Flute and that same year he heard Stravinsky’s most recent work, Canticum Sacrum, which he later described as the piece that woke me up and made me want to be a composer. Tavener became a scholar at Highgate School. The school choir was often employed by the BBC in works requiring boys voices, so Tavener gained choral experience singing in Mahlers Third Symphony and he also became organist and choirmaster in 1961 at St Johns Presbyterian Church, Kensington, a post he held for 14 years. Tavener entered the Royal Academy of Music in 1962, where his tutors included Sir Lennox Berkeley, during his studies there he decided to give up the piano and devote himself to composition. Tavener first came to prominence in 1968 with his dramatic cantata The Whale and it was premièred at the London Sinfoniettas début concert, which was also the opening concert of the Queen Elizabeth Hall. The following year Tavener began teaching at Trinity College of Music, when staged in 1979 the opera was thought too static to be a successful drama. Tavener had also been affected by his brief 1974 marriage to the Greek dancer Victoria Maragopoulou. His chamber opera A Gentle Spirit, with a libretto by McLarnon based on a story by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and it has been deemed far superior to Thérèse, with the internal drama more suited to the stage. Significantly, it touched on Russian Orthodoxy, to which McLarnon had been a convert for several years. Tavener converted to the Russian Orthodox Church in 1977, Orthodox theology and liturgical traditions became a major influence on his work. Of more lasting success was Taveners short unaccompanied four-part choral setting of William Blakes poem The Lamb and this simple homophonic piece is usually performed as a Christmas carol. The two choral works were settings of texts by Mother Thekla, a Russian Orthodox abbess who was Taveners long-time spiritual adviser until her death in 2011, Song for Athene in particular gained worldwide exposure when performed at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997. Taveners Fall and Resurrection, first performed in 2000, used such as rams horn, ney flute. It was dedicated to the Prince of Wales, with whom Tavener formed a lasting friendship, in 2003 Tavener composed the exceptionally large work The Veil of the Temple, based on texts from a number of religions
24.
David Matthews (composer)
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David Matthews is an English composer of mainly orchestral, chamber, vocal and piano works. Then, for three years, he was associated with Benjamin Britten and the Aldeburgh Festival, not until he was 25 did he produce a work that satisfied him sufficiently to be pronounced his Opus 1. He has largely avoided teaching, but to support his career has been employed in much editorial work. He has also occasional articles and reviews for various music journals - the culmination of which activity being his 1980 book about Michael Tippett. His series of thirteen string quartets is one of the most distinguished that any composer has essayed in recent years, Matthews celebrated his 70th birthday in 2013. 7 and Vespers for Choir and Orchestra Michael Tippett, An Introductory Study, Faber & Faber,1980
25.
Wolfgang Rihm
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Wolfgang Rihm is a German composer. Rihm is musical director of the Institute of New Music and Media at the University of Music Karlsruhe and has been composer in residence at the Lucerne Festival and he was honoured as Officier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2001. Most recently, he is the recipient of the 2015 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition sponsored by the University of Louisville for his orchestral work In-Schrift 2, Rihm was born in Karlsruhe, Germany. In the late 1970s and early 1980s his name was associated with the movement called New Simplicity and his work still continues to plough expressionist furrows, though the influence of Luigi Nono, Helmut Lachenmann and Morton Feldman, amongst others, has affected his style significantly. Rihm is a prolific composer, with hundreds of completed scores. The New York Philharmonic premièred Rihms 2004 commission Two Other Movements, in 2008 Rihm composed KOLONOS |2 Fragments by Hölderlin after Sophokles for orchestra and countertenor, premiered in Bad Wildbad with the countertenor Matthias Rexroth. In 1995 he contributed Communio to the Requiem of Reconciliation, in 2003 he received the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize. In March 2010 the BBC Symphony Orchestra featured the music of Rihm in one of their total immersion weekends at the Barbican Centre, recordings from this weekend were used for three Hear and Now programmes on BBC Radio 3 dedicated to his work. This performance was voted World Premiere of the Year for 2010/11 by Opernwelt magazine and he revised his Gegenstück for bass saxophone, percussion and piano, premiered by Trio Accanto on 16 August 2010 to celebrate the 80th birthday of Walter Fink. Anne-Sophie Mutter premiered his violin concerto Lichtes Spiel in Avery Fisher Hall with the New York Philharmonic on 18 November 2010. Dionysos Die Eroberung von Mexico Die Hamletmaschine Jakob Lenz Faust und Yorick Oedipus Form /2 Formen Gejagte Form Gejagte Form IN-SCHRIFT Jagden und Formen Jagden und Formen Symphonie n°1 op, elf späte Gedichte von Heiner Müller Rilke,4 Gedichte Sechs Gedichte von Friedrich Nietzsche Lavant-Gesänge. Fünf Gedichte von Christine Lavant Brentano-Phantasie Eins und doppelt, fünf Lieder aus dem Zwielicht, für Bariton und Klavier. Abendempfindung Gingo biloba Dämmrung senkte sich von oben Ausgang Worte sind der Seele Bild Drei Hölderlin-Gedichte 2 Sprüche Heine zu „Seraphine“, 1–7 1970–80 Ländler 1979 Nachstudie Zwiesprache 1999 Drei Fantasien Rihm, Wolfgang. Mosch, Ulrich, ed. Ausgesprochen, Schriften und Gespräche, the Hunt for Form in Wolfgang Rihms Ninth String Quartet, Quartettsatz. Perspectives of New Music 54, no
26.
Mikhail Pletnev
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Mikhail Vasilievich Pletnev is a Russian concert pianist, conductor, and composer. Pletnev was born into a family in Arkhangelsk, then part of the Soviet Union. His father played and taught the bayan, and his mother was a pianist and he entered the Central School of Music at the age of 13, studying under Evgeny Timakin, and, in 1974, entered the Moscow Conservatory, studying under Yakov Flier and Lev Vlassenko. At age 21, he won the Gold Medal at the VI International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1978, the following year he made his debut in the United States. He also taught at the Moscow Conservatory, Pletnev has acknowledged Sergei Rachmaninoff as a particularly notable influence on him as a musician. In 1988, Pletnev was invited to perform at the conference in Washington, D. C. where he met. He and the made their recording debut on Virgin Classics, releasing Tchaikovskys Sixth Symphony. He stepped down as Principal Conductor in the late 1990s, Mikhail Pletnev was principal guest conductor of the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano, Switzerland from 2008 to 2010. Pletnev has made a number of recordings with Deutsche Grammophon and his recordings are mostly of Russian works, though in 2007 he recorded the complete Beethoven symphonies. The first works he recorded were for orchestra, including Tchaikovskys The Sleeping Beauty, his Pathétique Symphony and Manfred Symphony, and Rachmaninoffs Second and Third Symphonies. His piano repertoire is extensive and includes The Seasons, many Scarlatti sonatas, Pictures at an Exhibition as well as his own transcriptions of suites from The Nutcracker and The Sleeping Beauty. With Pentatone, Pletnev has also recorded Russian works, such as all of Tchaikovskys symphonies, Shostakovitchs symphonies no.15 and 11, in July 2010, Pletnev, a resident of Thailand, was arrested by Thai authorities in connection with allegations of child molestation. Pletnev, who was released on bail, denied the charges and he cancelled appearances at the BBC Proms and the Edinburgh International Festival in order to prepare his defense, but the charges were dropped on 28 September. Coronation March / Capriccio Italien / Francesca da Rimini / Romeo, Alexander Scriabin - Symphony No.1 & The Poem of Ecstasy. Mikhail Pletnev, Svetlana Shilova, Mikhail Gubsky, Vladislav Lavrik, Norbert Gembaczka, Alexander Solovyev, Russian National Orchestra, peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky The Symphonies and Manfred. Dmitri Shostakovich - Symphony No.15 & Hamlet, maurice Ravel & Serge Prokofiev - Piano Concertos & Schlimé -3 Improvisations. Mikhail Pletnev, Francesco Tristano Schlimé, Russian National Orchestra, PENTATONE PTC5186080 Dmitri Shostakovich - Symphony No.11 The Year 1905 Mikhail Pletnev, Russian National Orchestra. Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky Symphony No.1 in G Minor, Op.13 Winter Daydreams Marche Slave Op.31, peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky Symphony No.2 in C Minor Op.17 Little Russian Symphony No.2 in C Minor
27.
Royal Academy of Music
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The Royal Academy of Music is a conservatoire in London, England, is a constituent college of the University of London and is one of the leading conservatoires in the world. It was founded in 1822 and is Britains oldest degree-granting music school and it received a Royal Charter in 1830. It is a charity under English law. The Academy was founded by Lord Burghersh in 1822 with the help and ideas of the French harpist, the Academy was granted a Royal Charter by King George IV in 1830. The Academys current facilities are situated on Marylebone Road in central London adjacent to Regents Park, the Royal Academy of Music offers training from infant level, with the senior Academy awarding the LRAM diploma, B. Mus. and higher degrees to Ph. D. The former degree GRSM, equivalent to a university honours degree, all undergraduates now take the University of London degree of BMus. There are also departments for musical performance and jazz. The Academy collaborates with other worldwide, including participating in the SOCRATES student. The Academy has students from over 50 countries, following diverse programmes including instrumental performance, conducting, composition, jazz, musical theatre, the Academy has an established relationship with Kings College London, particularly the Department of Music, whose students receive instrumental tuition at the Academy. In return, many students at the Academy take a range of Humanities choices at Kings, the Junior Academy, for pupils under the age of 18, takes place every Saturday. The Academys library contains over 160,000 items, including significant collections of printed and manuscript materials. The library also houses dedicated to Sir Arthur Sullivan and Sir Henry Wood. The Academys museum displays many of these items, the Orchestral Library has approximately 4,500 sets of orchestral parts. Other collections include the libraries of Sir Henry Wood and Otto Klemperer, noted for her performances of Bach and modern English music, she was a friend and advocate of Arnold Bax and also premièred Vaughan Williams Piano Concerto — a work dedicated to her — in 1933. In 1886, Franz Liszt performed at the Academy to celebrate the creation of the Franz Liszt Scholarship, in summer 2012, John Adams conducted an orchestra which combined students from the Academy and New Yorks Juilliard School at the Proms and at New Yorks Lincoln Center. Conductors who have worked with the orchestras include Semyon Bychkov, Daniel Barenboim, Sir Simon Rattle, Pierre-Laurent Aimard. Famous people who have conducted the Academys orchestra also include Carl Maria Von Weber in 1826, for many years, the Academy celebrated the work of a living composer with a festival in the presence of the composer. In February–March 2006, an Academy festival celebrated the violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini, the festival included a recital by Academy professor Maxim Vengerov, who performed on Il Cannone Guarnerius, Paganinis favourite violin
28.
Guadagnini
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Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, was an Italian luthier, regarded as one of the finest craftsmen of string instruments in history. He is widely considered the third greatest maker after Antonio Stradivari, recent research has shed light as to the influence of both Casa Stradivari and Casa Guarneri of Cremona on the lines of symmetry of instruments by Guadagnini, hence J. B. Antonio Stradivari died at age 92 in 1737 while J. B. Guadagnini was 26 years old, hence, a logical nexus could be made whereby the young J. B. It was the use of trade in 18th-century Italy for a young person to start as an apprentice in a masters workshop around age m12. Guild shops, either in consortium or under one roof, were headed by a master who provided journeymen papers for successful apprentices, trade guilds, providing career opportunities for skilled tradesmen including musical instrument makers, were a mercantile arrangement in Europe since medieval times, including in Italy. Guilds were a pre-capitalist industrial organization under ducal oversight which regulated trade practice, quality of articles produced, the fact that J. B. Guadagnini was a skilled luthier as well as violin maker possibly before his Piacenza period attests to thorough guild training and graduation from journeyman status. His work is divided into four periods corresponding to, and named after, Piacenza, Milan, Parma and Turin. J. B. Guadagnini died in Turin in 1786, violinists Violists Li-Kuo Chang plays the ex-Vieuxtemps G. B. Guadagnini viola, Parma c.1768 Geraldine Walther plays a G. B, Guadagnini viola, Turin 1774 Cellists Natalie Clein plays the Simpson Guadagnini cello David Geringas plays a G. B. Guadagnini cello made in 1761 Maxine Neuman plays a 1772 Guadagnini Han-na Chang plays the G. B, Guadagnini cello made in Milan in 1757 Gilberto Munguia plays a G. B. Guadagnini cello Saša Večtomov played a G. B, Guadagnini cello made in Milan in 1754 Sol Gabetta plays a G. B. N. Doring, The Guadagnini Family of Violin Makers A. H. König, bruxelles, Les Amis de la musique. Universal Dictionary of Violin & Bow Makers, walter Hamma, Meister Italienischer Geigenbaukunst, Wilhelmshaven 1993, ISBN 3-7959-0537-0 Duane Rosengard, G. B. Guadagnini - The life and achievement of a maker, Carteggio Media,2000 Images of the ex-Joachim G. B
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Nippon Music Foundation
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The Nippon Music Foundation is an organisation under the supervision of the Arts and Culture Promotion Division, Agency for Cultural Affairs, a special body of the Japanese Ministry of Education. Established 3 March 1972, its purpose is to develop international networks of music. NMF has in its endowment one of the largest collections of instruments made by luthier Antonio Stradivari
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National Concert Hall
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The National Concert Hall is a concert hall located on Earlsfort Terrace in Dublin, Ireland, close to St. Stephens Green, and is the principal national venue for classical music concerts in Ireland. When UCD began to relocate to a new campus at Belfield in the 1960s, part of the building was converted, since then, the structure has been shared with UCD. Today the NCH is one of Irelands National Cultural Institutions, under the aegis of the Irish Governments Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism and, the NCH is a statutory corporate body, with a management team, and a Government-appointed Board. In 2011, the National Concert Hall celebrated its 30th Anniversary Although its facade is quite impressive and it is also unsuitable for large-scale opera stagings, lacking full stage facilities. Consequently, calls for a purpose-built venue are made from time to time, plans have been developed in the early 2000s which involve revamping the existing Auditorium, building a larger newer one plus another small auditorium. This comes after the UCD section was bought from the college to enlarge the Concert Hall, the National Concert Hall generally makes a small surplus, unlike most of Irelands National Cultural Institutions. This is despite the fact that although it has a level of attendance, it has only a small public funding element. Due to its location, lunchtime concerts and recitals are common. In summer, outdoor recitals are given in the adjacent Iveagh Gardens, the resident orchestra is the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra. Other regular performances are made from the rest of the RTÉ Performing Groups, presently, the NCH has three performance areas. The Main Auditorium, seating 1,200, is used for large scale concerts, the Hall was converted from use as an examination hall when the building was the headquarters of UCD. The stage area is considered small, making large opera performances impossible at the NCH, the John Field Room, seating 250, is used for small scale recitals and as an exhibition space. The Carolan Room, seating 100, is used for pre-event talks, receptions, the organ in the NCH was installed by the organ builders Kenneth Jones and Associates in 1991, ten years after the auditorium was built. It features prominently in performances at the NCH. It is one of the largest organs in Ireland with 4 manuals and 50 stops, one of the notable features of the organ is the magnificent State Trumpet, a horizontal reed stop that faces out into the auditorium. The Helix, opened in 2002 and located on the campus of Dublin City University, is a performance space in Dublin. The main auditorium, the Mahony Hall, is a purpose built 1, 260-seater concert hall, list of concert halls National Concert Hall, Dublin website
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Dublin
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Dublin is the capital and largest city of Ireland. Dublin is in the province of Leinster on Irelands east coast, the city has an urban area population of 1,345,402. The population of the Greater Dublin Area, as of 2016, was 1,904,806 people, founded as a Viking settlement, the Kingdom of Dublin became Irelands principal city following the Norman invasion. The city expanded rapidly from the 17th century and was briefly the second largest city in the British Empire before the Acts of Union in 1800, following the partition of Ireland in 1922, Dublin became the capital of the Irish Free State, later renamed Ireland. Dublin is administered by a City Council, the city is listed by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network as a global city, with a ranking of Alpha-, which places it amongst the top thirty cities in the world. It is a historical and contemporary centre for education, the arts, administration, economy, the name Dublin comes from the Irish word Dubhlinn, early Classical Irish Dubhlind/Duibhlind, dubh /d̪uβ/, alt. /d̪uw/, alt /d̪u, / meaning black, dark, and lind /lʲiɲ pool and this tidal pool was located where the River Poddle entered the Liffey, on the site of the castle gardens at the rear of Dublin Castle. In Modern Irish the name is Duibhlinn, and Irish rhymes from Dublin County show that in Dublin Leinster Irish it was pronounced Duílinn /d̪ˠi, other localities in Ireland also bear the name Duibhlinn, variously anglicized as Devlin, Divlin and Difflin. Historically, scribes using the Gaelic script wrote bh with a dot over the b and those without knowledge of Irish omitted the dot, spelling the name as Dublin. Variations on the name are found in traditionally Irish-speaking areas of Scotland, such as An Linne Dhubh. It is now thought that the Viking settlement was preceded by a Christian ecclesiastical settlement known as Duibhlinn, beginning in the 9th and 10th century, there were two settlements where the modern city stands. Baile Átha Cliath, meaning town of the ford, is the common name for the city in modern Irish. Áth Cliath is a name referring to a fording point of the River Liffey near Father Mathew Bridge. Baile Átha Cliath was an early Christian monastery, believed to have been in the area of Aungier Street, there are other towns of the same name, such as Àth Cliath in East Ayrshire, Scotland, which is Anglicised as Hurlford. Although the area of Dublin Bay has been inhabited by humans since prehistoric times and he called the settlement Eblana polis. It is now thought that the Viking settlement was preceded by a Christian ecclesiastical settlement known as Duibhlinn, beginning in the 9th and 10th century, there were two settlements where the modern city stands. The subsequent Scandinavian settlement centred on the River Poddle, a tributary of the Liffey in an area now known as Wood Quay, the Dubhlinn was a small lake used to moor ships, the Poddle connected the lake with the Liffey. This lake was covered during the early 18th century as the city grew, the Dubhlinn lay where the Castle Garden is now located, opposite the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin Castle
32.
Joshua Bell
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Joshua David Bell is an American violinist and conductor. Bell was born in Bloomington, Indiana, United States and his mother, Shirley, was a therapist. His father, Alan P. Bell, was a psychologist, Professor Emeritus of Indiana University, in Bloomington, and his father is of Scottish descent, and his mother is Jewish. Bell told The Jewish Journal, I identify myself as being Jewish and his parents got a scaled-to-size violin for their then five-year-old son and started giving him lessons. Bell studied as a child first under Donna Bricht, widow of Indiana University music faculty member Walter Bricht, satisfied that the boy was living a normal life, Gingold took Bell on as his student. By age 12, Bell was serious about the instrument, thanks in part to Gingolds inspiration. At the age of 14, Bell appeared as a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Riccardo Muti and he studied the violin at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and graduated from Bloomington High School North in 1984. In 1989, Bell received an Artist Diploma in Violin Performance from Indiana University and his alma mater also honored him with a Distinguished Alumni Service Award only two years after his graduation. He has been named an Indiana Living Legend and received the Indiana Governors Arts Award, Bell made his Carnegie Hall debut in 1985, at age 17, with the St. Louis Symphony. He has since performed many of the worlds major orchestras. As well as the concerto repertoire, Bell has performed new works. Nicholas Maws violin concerto is dedicated to Bell, who premiered it in 1993 and he performed the solo part on John Coriglianos Oscar-winning soundtrack for the film The Red Violin and was also featured in Ladies in Lavender. Bell made an appearance in the movie Music of the Heart, Bells instrument is a 300-year-old Stradivarius violin called the Gibson ex Huberman, which was made in 1713 during what is known as Antonio Stradivaris Golden Era. This violin had been stolen twice from the owner, Bronisław Huberman. Bell had held and played the violin, and its owner at the time, violinist Norbert Brainin, shortly thereafter, by chance, Bell came across the violin again and discovered it was about to be sold to a German industrialist to become part of a collection. According to Bells website, Bell was practically in tears, as with his previous Stradivarius violin, Bell entrusts the upkeep of the Gibson ex Huberman to expert luthier Emmanuel Gradoux-Matt. The story of the theft, return, and subsequent acquisition by Bell is told in the 2013 documentary The Return of the Violin, Bells first recording made with the Gibson ex Huberman was Romance of the Violin in 2003. Bell is a partner for the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra
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Stephen Hough
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Stephen Andrew Gill Hough, CBE is a British-born classical pianist, composer and writer. He became an Australian citizen in 2005 and thus has dual nationality, Hough was born in Heswall on the Wirral Peninsula, and grew up in Thelwall, where he began piano lessons at the age of five. His father, who was born in Australia, worked as a representative for British Steel before his death at the age of 54. At a young age, Hough was able to memorise about 100 nursery rhymes and, after much pleading, his parents agreed to buy a piano, for £5 from a local antique shop. At the age of 12 he suffered what he has described as a breakdown, triggered by a mugging incident. He studied at Chethams School of Music, which he described as not a wonderful place. In 1978, he was a finalist in the BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition and won the piano section, in 1982, he won the Terence Judd Award in England. In 1983, he took first prize at the Naumburg International Piano Competition in New York City, Hough holds a masters degree from the Juilliard School where his studies were assisted by the receipt of the first ever Royal Philharmonic Society Julius Isserlis Scholarship for study abroad. He has studied with Heather Slade-Lipkin, Gordon Green, and Derrick Wyndham and he is also a composer and transcriber, and often includes his own works in his recitals. He has written over 30 published pieces, in 2009, his trio for piccolo, contrabassoon and piano was premiered at the Philharmonie in Berlin by members of the Berlin Philharmonic. His song cycles Herbstleider and Other Love Songs were premiered and recorded by members of The Prince Consort and his Sonata for Piano was premiered by himself at the Wigmore Hall in 2011. In 2012 the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and Symphonic Choir gave the premiere of the orchestrated version of his Missa Mirabilis. He was given a doctorate by the University of Liverpool in 2011. He became the first classical music performer to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2001, joining prominent writers, in 2009 he was named by The Economist and Intelligent Life magazines as one of 20 living polymaths. In 2010 he was named Instrumentalist of the Year at the prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards and he is a Governor of the Royal Ballet Companies. He is a patron of the charity The Nightingale Project, which music and art into hospitals. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to music and he had a solo exhibition of his paintings at the Broadbent Gallery in London in October 2012. In October 2016 Hough was the guest for BBC Radio 4s Desert Island Discs and his choices were Cortots recording of Prélude No
