Showing posts with label Roland Wilson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Roland Wilson. 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."

12-09: Stereolab : Liverpool & London 1999 - Garnett Silk : It's Growing 1992 - Big Walter Horton Memphis Recordings 1951 - James Moody : Never Again 1972

Not shown above: Gottlieb Muffat, José Ángel Lamas & François Leonard Rouwyzer
1770 Gottlieb Muffat (Austrian composer & organist, son of Georg)
1814
José Ángel Lamas (Venezuelan composer & player of the tiple & chirimía)
1827
François Leonard Rouwyzer (Dutch composer)
1893
Sir George Job Elvey (English organist & composer)
1905
Henry Holmes (English violinist, composer & teacher)
1924 – Bernard Zweers (Dutch composer & music teacher)
1925
Eugène Gigout (French organist & composer)
1931
Marie Lehmann (German soprano)
1950
Georg Hann (Austrian bass-baritone)
1956
Hans Barth (German-born American composer, pianist & organist, invented quarter-tone & just-tuned pianos)
1960
Gunnar Graarud (Norwegian tenor)
1960
Mado Robin (French soprano)
1966
Yuri Shaporin [Юрий Шапорин] (Russian composer)
1974
Jorge Croner de Vasconcellos (Portuguese pianist, composer & teacher)
1974
Ludwig Weber (Austrian bass)
1976
Nino Martini (Italian tenor & actor)
1981
Sonny Til (American R&B singer, The Orioles)
1982
Paul Godwin [Pinchas Goldfein] (Polish-born German violinist & dance bandleader)
1994 – Garnett Silk (Jamaican reggae singer)
1996 – Patty Donahue (American new wave singer, The Waitresses)
1996
Faron Young (American country singer, songwriter, guitarist & actor)
2002 – Mary Hansen (Australian alternative guitarist and singer, Stereolab)
2005 – György Sándor (Hungarian pianist & author, friend of Bartók)
2007 – Thore Skogman (Swedish singer, songwriter & actor)
2010 – James Moody (American jazz saxophonist & flutist)


Okay. Now is not the time to panic. Most, or many, or at least some of you, are aware of the problem with our friends over at the place that starts with "Mega" and ends with "upload." It's a serious matter, one that has put a major dent in plans I had for today, and plans that many of us have had for a very long time. And it's exactly at times like these that each and every one of us needs to step back, take a few deep breaths, and say the following words to himself or herself, out loud, if possible:

"I am not my past or my future. I am not whatever story I have made up about myself, and told myself is true. I am not whatever hurts or joys I have experienced, or will experience. I am only present, now, in this very moment. I am the watcher watching, the listener listening. I am the space that the objects in this universe occupy. I am pure, eternal consciousness."

Okay, you can all scream now. I'll figure something out.

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UPDATE: That took longer than expected. But you're all set now. Also, Big Walter Horton is here since I'd neglected him in the previous post.