Tags
Berlioz, Chopin, classical, classical music, composers, Grieg, Handel, Mozart, philharmonic
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
You can listen to the Classical Music Almanac Podcast Daily here.
Birthdays
In 1766 Samuel Wesley was born in Bristol. He was an English organist and composer in the late Georgian period. Wesley was a contemporary of Mozart (1756–1791) and was called by some “the English Mozart”. 1
In 1842 Arrigo Boito was born in Padua. His original name was Enrico Giuseppe Giovanni Boito and he wrote essays under the anagrammaticpseudonym of Tobia Gorrio. He was an Italian poet, journalist, novelist, librettist and composer, best known today for his libretti, especially those for Giuseppe Verdi’s operas Otello and Falstaff, and his own opera Mefistofele. Along with Emilio Praga, and his own brother Camillo Boito he is regarded as one of the prominent representatives of the Scapigliatura artistic movement.
Happy birthday Arcadi Volodos! Born in Leningrad in 1972, he began his musical training studying voice, following the example of his parents, who were singers, and later shifted his emphasis to conducting while a student at the Glinka Chapel School and the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Though he had played the piano from the age of eight, he did not devote himself to serious study of the instrument until 1987. His formal piano training took place at the Moscow Conservatory with Galina Eguiazarova. Volodos also studied at the Paris Conservatory with Jacques Rouvier. In Madrid, he studied at the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía with Dimitri Bashkirov. Despite the relative brevity of his formal studies, Volodos has been naturally and rapidly propelled into the elite pantheon of the world’s most important pianists. Thomas Frost, the producer of many of Horowitz’s recordings, and producer of Volodos’ recordings for Sony Classical, has said that Volodos “has everything: imagination, colour, passion and a phenomenal technique to carry out his ideas.” Volodos received the German award Echo Klassik as the best instrumentalist of 2003; he received the Gramophone Award for best instrumental recording in 1999 for Arcadi Volodos Live at Carnegie Hall, in 2010 for Volodos in Vienna, and in 2014 for Volodos plays Mompou. 3
Premieres
In 1607 Claudio Monteverdi’s opera La vavola d’Orfeo was premiered in Mantua.
In 1711 George Frideric Handel’s opera Rinaldo was premiered in London at the Queen’s Theater.
In 1876 Edvard Grieg’s incidental music to Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt was premiered in Oslo.
In 1939 Roy Harris’ Symphony No. 3 was premiered by the Boston Symphony with Serge Koussevitzky conducting.
On This Day in Classical Music
In 1788 Mozart wrapped up work on his Piano Concerto No. 26 in Vienna.
In 1809 the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane was destroyed by fire a second time. They would rebuild yet again.
In 1818 Frédéric Chopin made his first public performance. He was seven years old.
In 1835 Hector Berlioz started his career as music critic for the French newspaper Journal of Debates.
In 1848 Jules Massenet receives his first music lesson from his mother – in the midst of the February Revolution in France.
Recommended Listening
Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite 1 and 2 performed by the Spanish Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra conducted by Guillermo Garcia Calvo.
- Wikipedia contributors, “Samuel Wesley,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Samuel_Wesley&oldid=704767679 (accessed February 22, 2016).
- Wikipedia contributors, “Arrigo Boito,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arrigo_Boito&oldid=702572021 (accessed February 22, 2016).
- Wikipedia contributors, “Arcadi Volodos,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arcadi_Volodos&oldid=705172835 (accessed February 22, 2016).