Showing posts with label Hans Knappertsbusch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hans Knappertsbusch. Show all posts

01-12a: Szymanowski Violin Concertos : Zehetmair / Rattle 1996 - Wagner Parsifal : Windgassen / Knappertsbusch Bayreuth 1951 - Stravinsky Chamber Works - Carissimi Oratorios / Roland Wilson 2003

Not shown: John Eccles, Michael Gottard Fischer, Koos van de Griend & Hervey Alan


1674 – Giacomo Carissimi (Italian composer & priest)
1735 – John Eccles (English composer)
1765 – Johann Melchior Molter (German composer & violinist)
1829 – Michael Gottard Fischer (German organist & composer)
1893 – Karl Hill (German baritone, creator of Alberich in the Ring cycle & Klingsor in Parsifal)
1921 – Gervase Elwes (English tenor)
1933 – Václav Suk [Вячеслав Сук] (Czech violinist, conductor & composer, active in Poland, Ukraine & Russia)
1934 – Paul Kochanski [Paweł Kochański] (Russian-born Polish violinist, composer & arranger, active also in the U.K. & U.S.)
1950 – Koos van de Griend (Dutch composer)
1953 – Simeón Roncal (Bolivian composer)
1958 – Arthur Shepherd (American composer & conductor)
1962 – Richard de Guide (Belgian composer)
1982 – Hervey Alan (English bass-baritone, creator of Mr. Redburn in Britten's Billy Budd)


The presence of the Szymanowski disc is thanks to his close friend Paweł Kochański, who performed the composer's works for violin and piano with him many times, collaborated with him on the violin parts of both his concertos, and was the dedicatee of those works and several others Szymanowski wrote for him.

The link above will take you to a scholarly article detailing Kochański's various collaborative efforts with composers. These efforts also produced works such as Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1, and violin sonatas by Arnold Bax and Ernest Bloch. Works dedicated to Kochański also include the violin/piano version of Stravinsky's Suite Italienne, which consists of material from Pulcinella, Stravinsky's 1920 ballet based on music (at the time thought to have been written) by Giovanni Pergolesi.

When Kochański was helping Szymanowski with his Second Concerto, he was already sick with the cancer that would cut his life short at the age of 47. Still, he forged ahead and gave the premiere of the work. Szymanowski's score, published after his friend's death, contained a moving dedication to him. The pall-bearers at Kochański's funeral, held at the Juilliard School, included Arturo Toscanini, Frank and Walter Damrosch, Jascha Heifetz, Vladimir Horowitz, Serge Koussevitzky, Efrem Zimbalist, Sr., and Leopold Stokowski.

No less affecting was the passing of the great concert and recital tenor Gervase Elwes, who perished hours after a horrific accident at a railway station in Boston when he leaned over too far as he attempted to return to the conductor an overcoat which had fallen off a train. His death was mourned all over Britain, and concerts in his memory took place across the nation. Edward Elgar wrote "my personal loss is greater than I can bear to think upon, but this is nothing - or I must call it so - compared to the general artistic loss - a gap impossible to fill - in the musical world."

12-07: The Germs : GI 1979 - Kirsten Flagstad : Mahler 1957 | Wagner 1956 - Willaert Missa Mente Tota / Cinquecento 2009 - Clara Haskil : Mozart Piano Concertos 20 & 23 1956

Shown above: Adrian Willaert, Nicolas-Prosper Levasseur, Antoni Kątski, Ludwig Minkus, Adele Aus der Ohe, a book by Cecil Forsyth, Clara Haskil (many years before she achieved recognition), Kirsten Flagstad, Darby Crash, Victor de Narke, Dee Clark, John Addison, Frederick Fennell, Jerry Scoggins & Jay McShann.



1562 – Adrian Willaert (Flemish composer, founder of Venetian School, teacher of Zarlino)
1811 – Ignaz Spangler (German composer)
1823 – Johann Gottlieb Schwencke (German composer, organist & cantor)
1829 – Johann Christoph Kienlen (German composer)
1834 – Ludwig Schuncke (German pianist & composer, friend of Schumann)
1839 – Jan August Vitásek (Czech composer)
1841 – Johann Daniel Ferstenberg (composer)
1867 – Rudolf Viole (pianist & composer)
1871 – Nicolas-Prosper Levasseur (French operatic bass)
1899 – Antoni Kątski [Anton de Kontski] (Polish pianist & composer)
1917 – Ludwig Minkus [Léon Minkus, Людвиг Минкус] (Austrian ballet composer
& violinist of Czech & Hungarian ancestry, active in Russia)
1937 – Adele Aus der Ohe (German pianist & composer, pupil of Liszt)
1941 – Cecil Forsyth (English composer, musicologist, violist & author)
1944 – Julius Von Raatz-Brockmann (German baritone)
1948 – Godfrey Turner (American composer)
1960 – Clara Haskil (Romanian-born Swiss pianist)
1960 – Lila Robeson (American mezzo-soprano)
1962 – Kirsten Flagstad (Norwegian dramatic soprano)
1980 – Darby Crash (American punk rock singer & songwriter, The Germs)
1986 – Victor de Narke (Argentine operatic bass)
1990 – Dee Clark (American soul singer, "Raindrops")
1998 – John Addison (English film composer, Tom Jones, A Bridge Too Far, Murder, She Wrote)
2004 – Frederick Fennell (American band conductor, percussionist & teacher, Eastman Wind Ensemble)
2004 – Jerry Scoggins (American country singer & guitarist, "The Ballad of Jed Clampett")
2006 – Jay McShann (American blues & jazz bandleader, singer, pianist & composer)


Really been slacking off. I slacked off so much on the collage, I'm now telling you who IS in it, instead of who isn't. Slacked off so much on Johann Daniel Ferstenberg and Rudolf Viole I didn't even dig deep enough to determine their nationalities. I should have put down Ferstenberg as Swedish and Viole as Belgian just so you wouldn't lie awake tonight wondering about it.

Anyway, looks like I'll be slacking off on this part too. But is me telling you that Willaert was one of the most important composers of the 16th century, or that Haskil was one of the supreme interpreters of Mozart and Beethoven, or that Flagstad was probably the Wagnerian soprano par excellence, or that Frederick Fennell did more than anyone else to elevate the artistic level of wind-band music really going to change anything?

You know... this blog is really for me, if you hadn't figured that out by now. It's for my own personal edification, and it gives me a sort-of fun hobby to work on. I only offer you these "goodies" to get butts in the seats, as it were. But once again, what other blog in the world will give you serene sacred works from the Renaissance and brutal late-70s punk rock in the same post? I mean, fer realz.