The LPO Has Many Fine Performances this Season.
We are featuring the players with short biographies.
Jennifer Higdon (born December 31, 1962) is an American composer of classical music and flutist.Higdon was born in Brooklyn, but spent her first 10 years in Atlanta before moving to Tennessee. With almost no advanced flute training, she studied at Bowling Green State University towards a degree in flute performance. While at Bowling Green she met Robert Spano, who was teaching a conducting course there; Spano would go on to be the foremost champion of Higdon's music in the American orchestral community. Higdon then obtained a master's degree and doctoral degree in composition from the University of Pennsylvania under the tutelage of George Crumb. She then earned an Artist's Diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music, where she studied with David Loeb.
Joseph-Maurice Ravel (March 7, 1875 – December 28, 1937) was a French composer and pianist of the impressionistic period, known especially for the subtlety, richness and poignancy of his music. His piano, chamber music and orchestral works have become staples of the concert repertoire.Ravel's piano compositions, such as Jeux d'eau, Miroirs and Gaspard de la Nuit, demand considerable virtuosity from the performer, and his orchestral music, including Daphnis et Chloé and his arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, uses tonal color and variety of sound and instrumentation very effectively.To the general public, Ravel is probably best known for his orchestral work, Boléro, which he considered trivial and once described as "a piece for orchestra without music."
Gustav Holst (September 21, 1874, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire - May 25, 1934, London) was an English composer and was a music teacher for over 20 years. Holst is most famous for his orchestral suite The Planets. Having studied at the Royal College of Music in London, his early work was influenced by Ravel, Grieg, Richard Strauss, and Ralph Vaughan Williams, but most of his music is highly original, with influences from Hindu spiritualism and English folk tunes.Holst's music is well known for unconventional use of metre and haunting melodies.Gustav Holst wrote almost 200 catalogued compositions, including orchestral suites, operas, ballets, concertos, choral hymns, and songs. (See Selected works, below).Holst became music master at St Paul's Girls' School in 1905 and also director of music at Morley College in 1907, continuing in both posts until retirement (as detailed below).He was the brother of Hollywood actor Ernest Cossart, and father of the composer and conductor Imogen Holst, who wrote a biography of her father in 1938.
György Sándor Ligeti May 28, 1923–June 12, 2006) was a Jewish Hungarian composer born in Romania who later became an Austrian citizen. Many of his works are well known in classical music circles, but among the general public, he is probably best known for his opera Le Grand Macabre and the various pieces which feature prominently in the Stanley Kubrick films 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining, and Eyes Wide Shut.
Max Christian Friedrich Bruch (January 6, 1838 – October 2, 1920) was a German Romantic composer and conductor who wrote over 200 works, including a violin concerto which is a staple of the violin repertoire.Bruch was born in Cologne, Prussia, where he received his early musical training under the composer and pianist Ferdinand Hiller, to whom Robert Schumann dedicated his piano concerto. Ignaz Moscheles recognized his aptitude. He had a long career as a teacher, conductor and composer, moving among musical posts in Germany: Mannheim (1862-1864), Koblenz (1865-1867), Sondershausen, (1867-1870) Berlin (1870-1872), Bonn, where he spent 1873 -1878 working privately. At the height of his reputation he spent three seasons as conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society (1880-83). He taught composition at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik (the Berlin Conservatoire) from 1890 until his retirement in 1910.
Richard Strauss (June 11, 1864 – September 8, 1949) was a German composer of the late Romantic era and early modern era, particularly noted for his tone poems and operas. He was also a noted conductor.
Tone poems
Strauss's style began to change when he met Alexander Ritter, a noted composer and violinist, and the husband of one of Richard Wagner's nieces. It was Ritter who persuaded Strauss to abandon the conservative style of his youth, and begin writing tone poems; he also introduced Strauss to the essays of Richard Wagner and the writings of Schopenhauer. Strauss went on to conduct one of Ritter's operas, and later Ritter wrote a poem based on Strauss's own Tod und Verklärung.
This newly found interest resulted in what is widely regarded as Strauss' first piece to show his mature personality, the tone poem Don Juan. When this was premiered in 1889, half of the audience cheered while the other half booed. Strauss knew he had found his own musical voice, saying "I now comfort myself with the knowledge that I am on the road I want to take, fully conscious that there never has been an artist not considered crazy by thousands of his fellow men." Strauss went on to write a series of other tone poems, including Aus Italien (1886), Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration, 1888 – 89), Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche (Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, 1894 – 95), Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1896, the opening section of which is well known today for its use in Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey), Don Quixote (1897), Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life, 1897 – 98), Sinfonia Domestica (Domestic Symphony 1902 – 03) and Eine Alpensinfonie (An Alpine Symphony 1911 – 15).
Paul Hindemith
(16 November 1895 – 28 December 1963) was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.
Paul Hindemith was born in Hanau, Germany on November 16, 1895. His father, Robert Rudolf, played the zither and was enthusiastic about music. Robert ran away from home at a young age because his father would not let him become a musician and as a result, he decided his own children should have the career he was not permitted to have. He subjected Paul, his brother, Rudolf, and his sister, Toni, to a strict routine of practice and training.
Paul Hindemith’s childhood was not a happy one. His family lived in utter poverty, and the family relationships were often strained to their limits. Later on in life, Hindemith maintained an attitude of embarrassment about his humble origins. He strove to be accepted in the more affluent households of Germany through his skills as a musician. In other words he insisted on being taken for what he could do and not where he came from.
The above info comes from www.wikipedia.com
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