Topic: incursiune in lumea muzicii sau de la palestrina la wagner

[Garbarek]

Johann Sebastian Bach
(1685 - 1750)

Bach is considered by many to have been the greatest composer in the history of western music. Bach's main achievement lies in his synthesis and advanced development of the primary contrapuntal idiom of the late Baroque, and in the basic tunefullness of his thematic material. He was able to successfully integrate and expand upon the harmonic and formal frameworks of the national schools of the time: German, French, Italian & English, while retaining a personal identity and spirit in his large output. Bach is also known for the numerical symbolism and mathematical exactitude which many people have found in his music – for this, he is often regarded as one of the pinnacle geniuses of western civilization, even by those who are not normally involved with music.

Bach spent the height of his working life in a Lutheran church position in Leipzig, as both organist and music director. Much of his music is overtly religious, while many of his secular works admit religious interpretations on some levels. His large output of organ music is considered to be the greatest legacy of compositions for the instrument, and is the measure by which all later efforts are judged. His other solo keyboard music is held in equally high esteem, especially for its exploration of the strictly contrapuntal fugue; his 48 Preludes & Fugues (The Well-Tempered Clavier) are still the primary means by which these forms are taught. His other chamber music is similarly lofty, the sets for solo violin & solo cello being the summits of their respective genres. Bach's large-scale sacred choral music is also unique in its scope and development, the Passions and B Minor Mass having led to the rediscovery of his music in the 19th century. His huge output of cantatas for all occasions is equally impressive. Finally, his large output of concerti includes some of the finest examples of the period, including the ubiquitous Brandenberg Concertos. ~ Todd McComb

http://media.putfile.com/j-s-bach---double-violin-concerto-in-D-minor

[Garbarek]

Gabriel Fauré
(1845 - 1924)

He trained at the Ecole Niedermeyer (1854-65) as organist and choirmaster, coming under the influence of Saint-Saëns and his circle while working as a church musician (at Rennes, 1866-70; St. Sulpice, 1871-3; the Madeleine, from 1874) and giving lessons. Though he met Liszt and was fascinated by Wagner, he sought a distinctive style in his piano pieces and numerous songs, which had to be composed during summer holidays. Recognition came slowly owing to the modernity of his music. In 1892 he became national inspector of of the provincial conservatories, and in 1896 chief organist at the Madeleine and composition professor at the Conservatoire, where his pupils included Ravel, Koechlin, Roger-Ducasse, Enescu and Nadia Boulanger; from 1905 to 1920 he was the Conservatoire's resolute and influential director, becoming celebrated for the vocal and chamber masterpieces he produced until his death.

Fauré's stylistic development can be traced from the sprightly or melancholy song settings of his youth to the bold, forceful late instrumental works, traits including a delicate combination of extended tonality and modality, rapid modulations to remote keys and continuously unfolding melody. Widely regarded as the greatest master of French song, he produced six important cycles (notably the novel op. 61) and three collections each of twenty pieces (1879, 1897, 1908). In chamber music he enriched all the genres he attempted, while his works for piano (chiefly nocturnes, barcarolles and impromptus) embody the full scope of his stylistic evolution. Among his few large-scale works, the popular and delicately written Requiem op. 48 and the "song opera" Pénélope (1913) are noteworthy.

Extracted with permission from
The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music
edited by Stanley Sadie


left]Pavane, Op. 50/London 421440-2
    Charles Dutoit/Montreal Symphony Orchestra[/left]
http://media.putfile.com/gabriel-faure-pavane

[Garbarek]

Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770 - 1827)

    For someone who was destined to be lionized by the aristocracy of his time, Beethoven's start in life was inauspicious. He was born in Bonn on 17 December 1770, the son of an obscure tenor singer in the employ of the Elector of Cologne. His father was said to be a violent and intemperate man, who returned home late at night much worse for drink and dragged young Ludwig from his bed in order to "beat" music lessons into the boy's sleepy head. There are also stories of his father forcing him to play his violin for the amusement of his drinking cronies. Despite these and other abuses - which might well have persuaded as lesser person to loathe the subject - the young Beethoven developed a sensitivity and vision for music.

    When, despite his father's brutal teaching methods, Ludwig began to show signs of promise, other teachers were called in. By the age of seven he was advanced enough to appear in public. A year or so later the composer Christian Gottlob Neefe took over his musical training and progress thereafter was rapid. Ch. G. Neefe introduced Beethoven to the works of Bach and Mozart. Beethoven must have felt immense pride when his Nine Variations for piano in C minor were published, and was listed later in a prominent Leipzig catalogue as the work of 'Louis van Betthoven (sic), aged ten'. (The former is an intentional misspelling)

    In 1787, Beethoven went to Vienna, a noted musical center, where then Count Waldstein engaged Beethoven was piano teacher and became his friend and patron. Beethoven must have felt a little out of his depth for he was clumsy and stocky; his manners were loutish, his black hair unruly and he habitually wore an expression of surliness on his swarthy face. It was here that Beethoven met the great Mozart, who was dapper and sophisticated. He received the boy doubtfully, but once Beethoven started playing the piano his talent was evident. "Watch this lad," Mozart reported. "Some day he will force the world to talk about him."
    The death of Beethoven's mother in the summer of 1787 brought him back to Bonn.
         With the death of Beethoven's mother, the last steadying influence on Beethoven's father was removed. The old singer unhesitatingly put the bottle before Ludwig, his two younger brothers, and his one-year-old sister. The situation became so bad that by 1789 Beethoven was forced to show the mettle that was to stand him in good stead later in life. He went resolutely to his father's employer and demanded - and got - half his father's salary so that the family could be provided for; his father could drink away the rest. In 1792 the old man died. No great grief was felt: as his employer put it, "That will deplete the revenue from liquor excise."

    For four years Ludwig supported the family. He also made some good friends, among them Stephan von Breuning, who became a friend for life, and Doctor Franz Wegeler, who wrote one of the first biographies of Beethoven. Also, Count Ferdinand von Waldstein entered Beethoven's circle and received the dedication of a famous piano sonata in 1804.

The mature Beethoven was a short, well build man. His dark grey hair, then white, but was always thick and unruly. Reports differ as to the color of this eyes. His skin was pock-marked and his mouth, which had been a little petulant in youth, later became fixed in a grim, down-curving line, as if in a permanent expression of truculent determination. He seldom took care of his appearance, and, as he strode through the streets of Vienna with hair escaping from beneath his top hat, his hands clasped behind his back and his coat cross-buttoned he was the picture of eccentricity. His moods changed constantly, keeping his acquaintances guessing. They could never be sure that a chance remark might be misconstrued or displease the master in some way, for his powerful will would admit of no alternative view once he had made a judgement.
    Beethoven's career as a virtuoso pianist was brought to an end when he began to experience his first symptoms of deafness. In a letter written to his friend Karl Ameda on 1 July 1801, he admitted he was experiencing signs of deafness.

    How often I wish you were here, for your Beethoven is having
    a miserable life, at odds with nature and its Creator, abusing
    the latter for leaving his creatures vulnerable to the slightest
    accident ... My greatest faculty, my hearing, is greatly
    deteriorated.

    Apparently Beethoven had been aware of the problem for about three years, avoiding company lest his weakness be discovered, and retreating into himself. Friends ascribed his reserve to preoccupation and absentmindedness. In a letter to Wegeler, he w rote:

    How can I, a musician, say to people "I am deaf!" I shall, if
    I can, defy this fate, even though there will be times when I
    shall be the unhappiest of God's creatures ... I live only in
    music ... frequently working on three or four pieces simultaneously.

    Many men would have been driven to suicide; Beethoven may indeed have contemplated it. Yet his stubborn nature strengthened him and he came to terms with his deafness in a dynamic, constructive way. In a letter to Wegeler, written five months after the despairing one quoted above, it becomes clear that Beethoven, as always, stubborn, unyielding and struggling against destiny, saw his deafness as a challenge to be fought and overcome:

    Free me of only half this affliction and I shall be a complete,
    mature man. You must think of me as being as happy as it is
    possible to be on this earth - not unhappy. No! I cannot endure
    it. I will seize Fate by the throat. It will not wholly conquer
    me! Oh, how beautiful it is to live - and live a thousand times over!

    With the end of his career as a virtuoso pianist inevitable, he plunged into composing. It offered a much more precarious living than that of a performer, especially when his compositions had already shown themselves to be in advance of popular taste . In 1802 his doctor sent him to Heiligenstadt, a village outside Vienna, in the hope that its rural peace would rest in his hearing. The new surroundings reawakened in Beethoven a love of nature and the countryside, and hope and optimism returned. Chief amongst the sunny works of this period was the charming, exuberant Symphony no. 2. However, when it became obvious that there was no improvement in his hearing, despair returned. By the autumn the young man felt so low both physically and mentally that he feared he would not surive the winter. He therefore wrote his will and left instructions that it was to be opened only after his death. This 'Heiligenstadt Testament' is a long moving document that reveals more about his state of mind than does the music he was writing at the time. Only his last works can reflect in sound what he then put down in words.

    O ye men who accuse me of being malevolent, stubborn and
    misanthropical, how ye wrong me! Ye know not the secret
    cause. Ever since childhood my heart and mind were disposed
    toward feelings of gentleness and goodwill, and I was eager
    to accomplish great deeds; but consider this: for six years
    I have been hopelessly ill, aggravated and cheated by quacks in
    the hope of improvement but finally compelled to face a lasting
    malady ... I was forced to isolate myself. I was misunderstood
    and rudely repulsed because I was as yet unable to say to people,
    "Speak louder, shout, for I am deaf" ... With joy I hasten to meet
    death. Despite my hard fate ... I shall wish that it had come later;
    but I am content, for he shall free me of constant suffering. Come
    then, Death, and I shall face thee with courage. Heiglnstadt (sic)
    6 October, 1802.

http://media.putfile.com/beethoven---egmont-ouverture
http://media.putfile.com/Beethoven-9th-sympathy

[Garbarek]

Hector Berlioz
(1803 - 1869)

As a boy he learnt the flute, guitar and, from treatises alone, harmony (he never studied the piano); his first compositions were romances and small chamber pieces. After two unhappy years as a medical student in Paris (1821-3) he abandoned the career chosen for him by his father and turned decisively to music, attending Le Sueur's composition class at the Conservatoire. He entered for the Prix de Rome four times (1827-30) and finally won. Among the most powerful influences on him were Shakespeare, whose plays were to inspire three major works, and the actress Harriet Smithson, whom he idolized. pursued and, after a bizarre courtship, eventually married (1833). Beethoven's symphonies too made a strong impact, along with Goethe's Faust and the works of Moore, Scott and Byron. The most important product of this time was his startlingly original, five movement Symphonie fantastique (1830).

Berlioz's 15 months in Italy (1831-2) were significant more for his absorption of warmth, vivacity and local colour than for the official works he wrote there: he moved out of Rome as often as possible and worked on a sequel to the Symphonie fantastique (Le retour à la vie, renamed Lélio in 1855) and overtures to King Lear and Rob Roy, returning to Paris early to promote his music. Although the 1830s and early 1840s saw a flow of major compositions - Harold en Italie, Benvenuto Cellini, Grande messe des morts, Roméo et Juliette, Grande symphonie funebre et triomphale, Les nuits d'été - his musical career was now essentially a tragic one. He failed to win much recognition, his works were considered eccentric or 'incorrect' and he had reluctantly to rely on journalism for a living; from 1834 he wrote chiefly for the Gazette musicale and the ]ournal des débats.

As the discouragements of Paris increased, however, performances and recognition abroad beckoned: between 1842 and 1863 Berlioz spent most of his time touring, in Germany, Austria, Russia, England and elsewhere. Hailed as an advanced composer, he also became known as a leading modern conductor. He produced literary works (notably the Mémoires) and another series of musical masterpieces - La damnation de Faust, the Te Deum, L'enfance du Christ, the vast epic Les troyens (1856-8; partly performed, 1863) and Béatrice et Bénédict (1860-62) - meanwhile enjoying happy if short-lived relationships with Liszt and Wagner. The loss of his father, his son Louis (1834-67), two wives, two sisters and friends merely accentuated the weary decline of his last years, marked by his spiritual isolation from Parisian taste and the new music of Germany alike.

A lofty idealist with a leaping imagination, Berlioz was subject to violent emotional changes from enthusiasm to misery; only his sharp wit saved him from morbid self-pity over the disappointments in his private and professional life. The intensity of the personality is inextricably woven into the music: all his works reflect something in himself expressed through poetry, literature, religion or drama. Sincere expression is the key - matching means to expressive ends, often to the point of mixing forms and media. ignoring pre-set schemes. In Les troyens, his grand opera on Virgil's Aeneid, for example, aspects of the monumental and the intimate, the symphonic and the operatic, the decorative and the solemn converge. Similarly his symphonies, from the explicitly dramatic Symphonie fantastique with its idée fixe (the theme representing his beloved, changed and distorted in line with the work's scenario), to the picturesque Harold en Italie with its concerto element, to the operatic choral symphony cum tone poem Roméo et Juliette, are all characteristic in their mixture of genres. Of his other orchestral works, the overture Le carnaval romain stands out as one of the most extrovert and brilliant. Among the choral works, Faust and L'enfance du Christ combine dramatic action and philosophic reilection, while the Requiem and Te Deum exploit to the full Berlioz's most spacious, ceremonial style.

Though Berlioz's compositional style has long been considered idiosyncratic, it can be seen to rely on an abundance of both technique and inspiration. Typical are expansive melodies of irregular phrase length, sometimes with a slight chromatic inflection, and expressive though not tonally adventurous harmonies. Freely contrapuntal textures predominate, used to a variety of fine effects including superimposition of separate themes; a striking boldness in rhythmic articulation gives the music much of its vitality. Berlioz left perhaps his most indelible mark as an orchestrator, finding innumerable and subtle ways to combine and contrast instruments (both on stage and off), effectively emancipating the procedure of orchestration for generations of later composers. As a critic he admired above all Gluck and Beethoven, expressed doubt about Wagner and fought endlessly against the second-rate.

Extracted with permission from
The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music

http://media.putfile.com/hector-berlioz---symphonie-fantastique

[Garbarek]

Franz Joseph Haydn
(1732 - 1809)

The son of a wheelwright, he was trained as a choirboy and taken into the choir at St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna, where he sang from circa 1740 to circa 1750. He then worked as a freelance musician, playing the violin and keyboard instruments, accompanying for singing lessons given by the composer Porpora, who helped and encouraged him. At this time he wrote some sacred works, music for theatre comedies and chamber music. In circa 1759 he was appointed music director to Count Morzin; but he soon moved, into service as Vice-Kapellmeister with one of the leading Hungarian families, the Esterházys, becoming full Kapellmeister (on Werner's death) in 1766. He was director of an ensemble of generally some 15-20 musicians, with responsibility for the music and the instruments, and was required to compose as his employer - from 1762, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy - might command. At first he lived at Eisenstadt, circa 30 miles south-east of Vienna; by 1767 the family's chief residence, and Haydn's chief place of work, was at the new palace at Eszterháza. In his early years Haydn chiefly wrote instrumental music, including symphonies and other pieces for the twice-weekly concerts and the prince's Tafelmusik, and works for the instrument played by the prince, the baryton (a kind of viol), for which he composed circa 125 trios in ten years. There were also cantatas and a little church music. Around 1766 church music became more central, and so, after the opening of a new opera house at Eszterháza in 1768, did opera. Some of the symphonies from circa 1770 show Haydn expanding his musical horizons from occasional, entertainment music towards larger and more original pieces, for example nos.26, 39, 49, 44 and 52 (many of them in minor keys, and serious in mood, in line with trends in the contemporary symphony in Germany and Austria). Also from 1768-72 come three sets of string quartets, probably not written for the Esterházy establishment but for another patron or perhaps for publication (Haydn was allowed to write other than for the Esterházys only with permission); op.20 clearly shows the beginnings of a more adventurous and integrated quartet style.

Among the operas from this period are Lo speziale (for the opening of the new house), L'infedeltà delusa (1773) and Il mondo della luna (1777). Operatic activity became increasingly central from the mid-1770s as regular performances came to be given at the new house. It was part of Haydn's job to prepare the music, adapting or arranging it for the voices of the resident singers. In 1779 the opera house burnt down; Haydn composed La fedelta premiata for its reopening in 1781. Until then his operas had largely been in a comic genre; his last two for Eszterháza, Orlando paladino (1782) and Armida (1783), are in mixed or serious genres. Although his operas never attained wider exposure, Haydn's reputation had now grown and was international. Much of his music had been published in all the main European centres; under a revised contract with the Esterháza his employer no longer had exclusive rights to his music.

His works of the 1780s that carried his name further afield include piano sonatas, piano trios, symphonies (nos.76-81 were published in 1784-5, and nos.82-7 were written on commission for a concert organization in Paris in 1785-6) and string quartets. His influential op.33 quartets, issued in 1782, were said to be 'in a quite new, special manner': this is sometimes thought to refer to the use of instruments or the style of thematic development, but could refer to the introduction of scherzos or might simply be an advertising device. More quartets appeared at the end of the decade, op.50 (dedicated to the King of Prussia and often said to be influenced by the quartets Mozart had dedicated to Haydn) and two sets (opp.54-5 and 64) written for a former Esterházy violinist who became a Viennese businessman. All these show an increasing enterprise, originality and freedom of style as well as melodic fluency, command of form, and humour. Other works that carried Haydn's reputation beyond central Europe include concertos and notturnos for a type of hurdy-gurdy, written on commission for the King of Naples, and The Seven Last Words, commissioned for Holy Week from Cadíz (Spain) Cathedral and existing not only in its original orchestral form but also for string quartet, for piano and (later) for chorus and orchestra.

In 1790, Nikolaus Esterházy died; Haydn (unlike most of his musicians) was retained by his son but was free to live in Vienna (which he had many times visited) and to travel. He was invited by the impresario and violinist J.P. Salomon to go to London to write an opera, symphonies and other works. In the event he went to London twice, in 1791-2 and 1794-5. He composed his last 12 symphonies for performance there, where they enjoyed great success; he also wrote a symphonie concertante, choral pieces, piano trios, piano sonatas and songs (some to English words) as well as arranging British folksongs for publishers in London and Edinburgh. But because of intrigues his opera, L'anima del filosofo, on the Orpheus story, remained unperformed. He was honoured (with an Oxford DMus) and feted generously and played, sang and conducted before the royal family. He also heard performances of Handel's music by large choirs in Westminster Abbey.

Back in Vienna, he resumed work for Nikolaus Esterházy's grandson (whose father had now died); his main duty was to produce masses for the princess's nameday. He wrote six works, firmly in the Austrian mass tradition but strengthened and invigorated by his command of symphonic technique. Other works of these late years include further string quartets (opp.71 and 74 between the London visits, op.76 and the op.77 pair after them), showing great diversity of style and seriousness of content yet retaining his vitality and fluency of utterance; some have a more public manner, acknowledging the new use of string quartets at concerts as well as in the home. The most important work, however, is his oratorio The Creation in which his essentially simple-hearted joy in Man, Beast and Nature, and his gratitude to God for his creation of these things to our benefit, are made a part of universal experience by his treatment of them in an oratorio modelled on Handel's, with massive choral writing of a kind he had not essayed before. He followed this with The Seasons, in a similar vein but more a series of attractive episodes than a whole.

Haydn died in 1809, after twice dictating his recollections and preparing a catalogue of his works. He was widely revered, even though by then his music was old-fashioned compared with Beethoven's. He was immensely prolific: some of his music remains unpublished and little known. His operas have never succeeded in holding the stage. But he is regarded, with some justice, as father of the symphony and the string quartet: he saw both genres from their beginnings to a high level of sophistication and artistic expression, even if he did not originate them. He brought to them new intellectual weight, and his closely argued style of development laid the foundations for the larger structures of Beethoven and later composers.

Extracted with permission from
The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music

http://media.putfile.com/yo-yo-ma---cello-concerto
http://media.putfile.com/winton-marsalis---concert-for-trumpet-hydn-E-flat-M
http://media.putfile.com/haydn---piano-sonata-in-f-flat-major---glenn-gould

[Garbarek]

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(1756 - 1791)

Born in Salzburg, Austria on Jan. 27, 1756; full name Johannes Chrysostomus
    Wolfgangus Gottlieb Mozart; he was baptized as Johannes
   Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart.  Mozart is named after his
   grandfather on his mother's side and after the Saint on his date of
    birth, Johannes Chrysostomus.
Parents: Leopold Mozart - composer and violinist, concertmaster at the    
   archiepiscopal court, and in 1763, vice-kapellmeister at Salzburg court;
     and Anna Maria Pertl, daughter of Wolfgang Nikolaus Pertl, an official    
   from Sankt Gilgen
Sibling: Maria Anna (Nannerl) Mozart
Age 3: started to play the keyboard
Age 5: started composing minuets
1763-1766 toured Europe with his father and sister played for Louis XV at    
   Versailles and George III in London
1764 wrote his first three symphonies; also met Johann Christian Bach
By his teenage years, he mastered the piano, violin, and harpsichord
1768 completed first opera, La finta semplice (The Simple Pretense)
1769-1773 made three trips to Italy
   In Rome, there was a myth that Mozart attended the performance of    
   Allegri's Misere.  He wanted the score but when no one agreed he    
   wrote down the music from memory.
1770 Mitridate, re di Ponte (Mithridates, King of Pontus) performed in Milan    
   was Mozart's first major opera
1772 appointed concertmaster in the orchestra of Archbishop of Salzburg.     
   During this period, he wrote many sacred works.
1777 toured with his mother hoping to find a court position; traveled to    
   Mannheim where he met and fell in love with Aloysia Weber
1778, July Anna Maria Mozart died
1779 unable to find a court position, Mozart went back to Salzburg; appointed    
   as court organist to the Archbishop of Salzburg
1781 resigned from his position due to increasing tension and disagreements    
   between Mozart and the Archbishop.  Mozart stayed in Vienna instead    
   of returning to Salzburg.  Mozart's resignation and his move to Vienna    
   put a strain in his relationship with his father.
1782 married Constanze Weber in Vienna's St. Stephen's Cathedral.  After    
   Mozart's death, Constanze married Danish diplomat Georg Nikolaus    
   von Nissen.  In Vienna, Mozart supported his family by performing in    
   public and private, teaching , and composing.  His first opera written    
   after his residency in Vienna, Abduction from Seraglio became a    
   success.
1786 The Marriage of Figaro, the first of three operas Mozart collaborated with
   librettist, Lorenza da Ponte, premiered at the    Burg Theater.
1787 became composer of Imperial and Royal Chamber with an annual salary of
   800fl.  His father, Leopold, died on May 28, 1787.  Don Giovanni    
   premiered in Prague at the National Theater.
1790 Cosi fan tutte premiered at Burg Theater.  Mozart declined an    
   opportunity to compose in London.
1791 composed dance music for the Vienna Court; publishers began to pay    
   fees for the rights to publish his works; appointed assistant to the    
   Cathedral Kapellmeister at St. Stephens with no pay.  Mozart was    
   already feeling ill in Prague while finishing La clemenza di Tito.
Dec. 5, 1791, a few minutes before 1AM, Mozart died of rheumatic fever.

http://media.putfile.com/requiem53

[Garbarek]

Sergei Vassilievich Rachmaninoff
(1873 - 1943)

He studied at the Moscow Conservatory (1885-92) under Zverev (where Skryabin was a fellow pupil) and his cousin Ziloti for piano and Taneyev and Arensky for composition, graduating with distinction as both pianist and composer (the opera Aleko, given at the Bol'shoy in 1893, was his diploma piece). During the ensuing years he composed piano pieces (including his famous c-sharp Minor Prelude), songs and orchestral works, but the disastrous premiere in 1897 of his Symphony no.1, poorly conducted by Glazunov, brought about a creative despair that was not dispelled until he sought medical help in 1900: then he quickly composed his Second Piano Concerto. Meanwhile he had set out on a new career as a conductor, appearing in Moscow and London; he later was conductor at the Bol'shoy, 1904-6.

By this stage, and most particularly in the Piano Concerto no.2, the essentials of his art had been assembled: the command of the emotional gesture conceived as lyrical melody extended from small motifs, the concealrnent behind this of subtleties in orchestration and structure, the broad sweep of his lines and forms, the predominant melancholy and nostalgia, the loyalty to the finer Russian Romanticism inherited from Tchaikovsky and his teachers. These things were not to change, and during the remaining years to the Revolution they provided him with the matenals for a sizable output of operas, liturgical music, orchestral works, piano pieces and songs, even though composition was generally restricted to periods of seclusion between concert engagements. In 1909 he made his first American tour as a pianist, for which he wrote the Piano Concerto no.3.

Soon after the October Revolution he left Russia with his family for Scandinavia; in 1918 they arrived in New York, where he mainly lived thereafter, though he spent periods in Paris (where he founded a publishing firm), Dresden and Switzerland. There was a period of creative silence until 1926 when he wrote the Piano Concerto no.4, followed by only a handful of works over the next 15 years, even though all are on a large scale. During this period, however, he was active as a pianist on both sides of the Atlantic (though never again in Russia). As a pianist he was famous for his precision, rhythmic drive, legato and clarity of texture and for the broad design of his performances.

Extracted with permission from
The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music

http://media.putfile.com/rachmaninoff---concert-3

[Garbarek]

George Enescu ( * 19 august 1881, Liveni - † 4 mai 1955, Paris ) a fost un compozitor, violonist, pedagog, pianist şi dirijor şi este considerat cel mai important muzician român.

Născut la Liveni în judeţul Botoşani, a manifestat încă din copilărie o înclinaţie extraordinară pentru muzică. A început să cânte la vioară la vârsta de 4 ani, la vârsta de 5 ani apare în primul său concert şi începe studii de compoziţie sub îndrumarea lui Eduard Caudella.

Între anii 1888-1894 studiază la Conservatorul din Viena, având ca profesori printre alţii pe Joseph Hellmesberger (vioară) şi Robert Fuchs (compoziţie). Se încadrează rapid în viaţa muzicală a Vienei, concertele sale în care interpretează compoziţii de Johannes Brahms, Pablo Sarasate, Henri Vieuxtemps, Felix Mendelsohn-Bartholdy, entuziasmând presa şi publicul, deşi avea doar 12 ani.

După absolvirea Conservatorului din Viena cu medalia de argint, îşi continuă studiile la Conservatorul din Paris (1895-1899) sub îndrumarea lui Armand Marsick (vioară), André Gédalge (contrapunct), Jules Massenet şi Gabriel Fauré (compoziţie). În ziua de 6 februarie 1898 îşi face debutul în calitate de compozitor în cadrul Concertelor Colonne din Paris cu Suita simfonică Opus 1 Poema Română. În acelaşi an începe să dirijeze concerte în Bucureşti şi să dea recitaluri de vioară. Admirat de Regina Elisabeta a României (celebra iubitoare a artei Carmen Sylva) era deseori invitat să execute piese pentru vioară în Castelul Peleş din Sinaia.

Din primii ani ai secolului XX datează compoziţiile sale mai cunoscute, cum sunt cele două Rapsodii Române (1901-1902), Suita Nr. 1 pentru orchestră (1903), prima sa Simfonie de maturitate (1905), Şapte Cântece pe versuri de Clément Marot (1908).

Activitatea sa muzicală alternează între Bucureşti şi Paris, întreprinde turnee în mai multe ţări europene, având parteneri prestigioşi ca Alfredo Casella, Pablo Casals, Louis Fournier, Richard Strauss.
George Enescu interpretând Poemul de Chausson
Extinde
George Enescu interpretând Poemul de Chausson

În timpul Primului Război Mondial rămâne în Bucureşti, dirijează Simfonia a IX-a de Ludwig van Beethoven (pentru prima dată în audiţie integrală în România), compoziţii de Hector Berlioz, Claude Debussy, Richard Wagner, precum şi creaţiile proprii: Simfonia Nr. 2 (1913), Suita pentru orchestră Nr. 2 (1915). În acelaşi an are loc prima ediţie a concursului de compoziţie George Enescu.

După război îşi continuă activitatea împărţită între România şi Franţa. De neuitat au rămas interpretările sale a Poemului pentru vioară şi orchestră de Ernest Chausson şi ale Sonatelor şi Partitelor pentru vioară solo de Johann Sebastian Bach. Face mai multe călătorii în Statele Unite ale Americii, unde a dirijat orchestrele din Philadelphia (1923) şi New York (1938). Activitatea sa pedagogică capătă deasemenea o importanţă considerabilă. Printre elevii săi se numără violoniştii Christian Ferras, Ivry Gitlis, Arthur Grumiaux şi Yehudi Menuhin. Acesta din urmă, virtuoz cu o profundă cultură umanistă, a păstrat un adevărat cult şi o profundă afecţiune pentru Enescu, considerându-l părintele său spiritual. "Pentru mine, Enescu va rămâne una din veritabilele minuni ale lumii. Caracterul său şi figura sa sunt gravate în sufletul meu ca un arbore sau un munte din Sinaia. Rădăcinile puternice şi nobleţea sufletului său sunt provenite din propria lui ţară, o ţară de inegalată frumuseţe" (Yehudi Menuhin).

extras din wikipedia

http://media.putfile.com/enescu---rapsodia-romana-nr-1