Valentine's Day is celebrated on February 14.
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Leonard Bernstein (1918 - 1990), American composer, pianist and conductor was the first conductor born in the USA to achieve world fame, considered one of the best conductors in the world and famous for having conducted the New York Philharmonic Orchestra , for his Concerts for young people on television between 1958 and 1972 and for his varied and exquisite compositions. He was also an essential figure in the modern revival of the music of Gustav Mahler , a composer in whom he was passionately interested. As a composer he wrote music for piano, chamber music, choral music, religious music, numerous stage works for ballet, film, opera, and musicals, as well as abundant orchestral work.
West Side Story is a musical with a book by Arthur Laurents , music by Leonard Bernstein , and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim . Loosely based on William Shakespeare 's Romeo and Juliet , the action takes place in a New York neighborhood in the mid-1950s between two youth gangs of different ethnicities: the Jets (of European roots) and the Sharks (of Puerto Rican origin). Things get complicated when Tony , a former member of the Jets , falls in love with Maria , the sister of the leader of the Sharks . The approach to the social problems of the time marked a turning point in American musical theater. In 1961 it was brought to the big screen under the direction of Robert Wise .
Today we offer one of the most moving scenes with Sierra Boggess and Julian Ovenden as protagonists accompanied by John Wilson with his own orchestra.
Alessandro Marcello (1673-1747) was an Italian nobleman and dilettante who was interested in various fields, including poetry, philosophy, mathematics, and perhaps most notably music. A contemporary of Antonio Vivaldi , Marcello gave concerts in his hometown of Venice . He composed several concert groups, including concertos under the title La cetra (the lyre), as well as cantatas, arias, canzonettas, and violin sonatas. It uses, according to the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , "a concise use of counterpoint in the Vivaldian style, elevating its category to the most recognized within the baroque Venetian classical concerto"; today Marcello is considered a very competent composer. His brother Benedetto Marcello (1686-1739) was also a famous composer.
His best-known work is the Oboe Concerto in D minor , the third movement of which we offer today in a trumpet version (in C minor) with the English trumpeter Alison Balsom as soloist.
Franz Schubert (1797-1828) was an Austrian composer who at the age of 11 was admitted as a member of the choir of the Imperial Chapel in Vienna, where he was taught by Salieri . At that time, what brought money was the theater, the opera, a genre in which he never managed to excel, so he turned to lieder (songs), among which we must highlight his Ave Maria and the lieder ensemble La Bella Molinera . Despite dying at the age of 31, he left written more than 1,500 works including numerous piano and chamber music pieces, 8 symphonies, concertante works, incidental music, sacred music (among others, 7 Masses, 1 Oratorio and 1 Requiem). , several singspiel (small operettas), some opera and more than 600 small vocal works, mainly the aforementioned lieder.
The nocturne is a piece of vocal or instrumental music, with a sweet melody and free structure. The denomination "nocturne" was given, in the first instance, in the 18th century , to a piece played at night parties. In its most common form (that is, as a one-movement piece usually written for a piano solo), the genre was cultivated mainly in the 19th century . The most famous exponent of this music was Frédéric Chopin , who wrote 21 works in this genre.
Today we offer the Nocturne in Eb , op. 148, by Schubert performed by the AlesiEnsemble composed of Marco Alesi (piano), Martin Osiak (violin) and Anna Martin-Scrase (cello).
José Antonio Donostia or Aita Donostia, in Spanish Father Donostia (1886-1956) was a writer, composer, musicologist and organist from San Sebastian, who began his musical studies in 1896 in the town of Lekaroz (Nafarroa/Navarra). At the age of ten he entered the Lekaroz Seminary as a student. In 1908, after becoming a priest, he expanded his musical training in Barcelona and in the years 1920 and 21 he perfected it in Paris with Eugenio Cools . In 1932 he became a euskaltzain , that is, a member of the Royal Academy of the Basque Language (Euskaltzaindia). As a composer he produced abundant chamber music, organ pieces, numerous choral works, melodies and piano songs, which brought him well-deserved renown. As a folklorist, he collected more than a thousand Basque popular songs.
Today we offer one of these songs collected and harmonized for a choir of low voices in an interpretation by the Easo Choir.
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Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788) was a German harpsichordist and composer, the second son of Johann Sebastian Bach 's first marriage with whom he studied harpsichord, interpretation and composition; He was one of the promoters of Classicism (1750-1810). In 1738 he became part of the Court of Frederick the Great ; not feeling sufficiently appreciated, he left the Court to move to Zittau and later to Leipzig . In 1768, after Telemann 's death, he succeeded him as Kapellmeister of Hamburg , where he lived until his death in 1788. Throughout his career he wrote numerous keyboard works, some two hundred chamber works, nineteen symphonies, fifteen concerts for different instruments, several songs and hymns, two oratorios and twenty passions.
Symphony . The word symphony derives from the Latin symphonĭa and this in turn from the Greek συμφωνία (symphōnía), which means "consonance" as opposed to διαφωνία (diaphōnia), which means "dissonance". In the Middle Ages and later, the word symphony was used to describe various instruments, especially those capable of producing more than one sound simultaneously; in the sense of "sounding together", the word began to appear in the titles of some works by composers of the 16th and 17th centuries, and by the end of the 18th century the word had already acquired the common meaning currently assigned to it: a work that generally consists of several different sections or movements and composed most of the time for orchestra.
Today we offer the Symphony in E minor by CPE Bach for string orchestra structured in three movements I (0´00´´) ALLEGRO ASSAI .–. II (4´10´´) ANDANTE MODERATO .- . III ALLEGRO (6´08´´). The interpretation is given by the Budapest Festival Orchestra conducted by the German maestro Reinhard Göbel .
Piotr Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) was a Russian composer who graduated from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory and wrote works of different genres, although he achieved his greatest success with his ballets. In 1859 he obtained a position as a civil servant in the Ministry of Justice, which he would abandon at the age of three to be able to dedicate himself solely to music. His personal life was plagued by continuous crises since the death of his mother and his repressed homosexuality, which forced him into a marriage that only lasted a few months. He wrote more than 150 compositions, including piano works, quartets, suites, symphonies, concertos, chorales, cantatas, operas, and ballets. He died at the age of 53 and is considered one of the greatest composers in history.
Romeo and Juliet is a musical work by Tchaikovsky , subtitled Overture-Fantasia , based on Shakespeare 's play of the same name written (in its first version) in 1869; In it, he portrays the moods of the characters who have to live between love and violence, confronted over and over again, until the theme of love appears langid and lifeless, announcing the suicide of the two protagonists. Tchaikovsky , like other composers such as Berlioz and Prokofiev, was deeply inspired by Shakespeare . The idea of composing this Overture-Fantasy with a Shakespearean theme came initially from Mili Balakirev , the leader of the Group of Five , and although the work was finished in 1869, the version we know today dates from the year 1880.
Today it is offered to us by the Edinburgh Youth Orchestra conducted by the illustrious English maestro Sian Edwards .
Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848), was a very prolific Italian dramatic composer, known for his operas The Elixir of Love, Lucia of Lammermoor, Don Pasquale, The Favorite and The Daughter of the Regiment . Although his composer's repertoire spans a large number of genres, including religious music, string quartets, and orchestral works, he is mostly known for his lyrical work, having composed as many as 75 operas. He was a singing boy and in 1806, one of the first pupils at the Lezioni Caritatevoli School , where he received comprehensive training in the arts of fugue and counterpoint, and it was here that he began his operatic career, full of successes starting with his fourth opera. , Zoraïda di Granata, until being hired to write in France and Italy . He died in Bergamo , his native town, in 1848.
The Elixir of Love (L'elisir d'amore) is an operatic melodramma giocoso in two acts with music by Gaetano Donizetti and a libretto in Italian by Felice Romani , based on the libretto Le philtre (1831), by Eugène Scribe , for the opera by Daniel-François Auber . It is one of the most frequently performed of all of Donizetti 's operas, in which his best-known musical number from the opera is the aria Una furtiva lágrima .
Its plot deals with the vicissitudes that Nemorino , a melancholic and naive young farmer, in love with Adina , a beautiful landowner, who torments Nemorino with her indifference, has to go through. Desperate, Nemorino buys from a charlatan, a seller of "miraculous" potions, a "love" potion, which is actually a Bordeaux wine. Today we will watch it with César Arrieta in the role of Nemorino, Beatriz de Sousa in the role of Adina, the Tenerife Opera Choir and the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the young maestro Antonio Méndez from the Canary Islands.
Sofia Gubaidulina (1931) is a Tatarstan- born Russian composer. He studied piano and composition at the Kazan Conservatory ; in 1954 he moved to Moscow where he continued his studies until graduating in 1963. His music was criticized for exploring alternative tunings, although Shostakovich encouraged him to continue seeking his own path. His violin concerto, Ofertorium, performed by Gidon Kremer opened the doors to critical acclaim. She is a deeply religious woman, as her catalog of works attests, especially her Johannes Passion. In 2002 he received the Polar Music Prize , awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Music .
De Profundis is a demonstration of all the remarkable things the accordion can do in the hands of a virtuoso. Gubaidulina went to great lengths to study the accordion with the Russian interpreter Friedrich Lips and makes the most of his resources. De Profundis is a work of complex polyphony, dense groups of notes, glissandi, quasi-percussive effects, sepulchral breathing sounds (with 'air button' effects); all this within a very wide dynamic scale and contrasting speeds.
Today it is brought to us by Hanzhi Wang , who is the first accordionist to win a spot on the Young Concert Artists list in its 58-year history and the first time a solo accordionist has appeared on WQXR's Young Artists Showcase in New York . .
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Ella Fitzgerald (1917-1996), considered the most important and influential singer in the entire history of jazz and known as the Queen of Jazz , was an American jazz singer, although her repertoire included gospel, blues, swing, bossa nova, pop, Christmas songs, etc., etc.; She had a vocal range of three octaves, a clear and precise vocalization, and a formidable capacity for improvisation. In the fifties he established a chair with his conception of the melodic song, in parallel to the work of Frank Sinatra , with his versions of the themes of the great composers of American popular song. She won fourteen Grammy Awards , including the Lifetime Achievement Grammy , and was awarded the USA National Medal of Arts .
John Lennon (1940-1980) was a Liverpool -born artist, musician, multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, composer, poet, cartoonist, producer, writer, pacifist, activist and actor known for being one of the founding members of the rock band The Beatles . . When the group disbanded at the end of that decade, Lennon began a solo career in which he released several albums, most of whose songs express his liberal and pacifist ideas. He retired from the music scene in 1975 to raise their young son Sean , but resurfaced with Ono , his wife, in 1980 with the new album Double Fantasy . He was assassinated three weeks after its release. Until 2012, in the USA , sales as a soloist exceeded fourteen million units.
Bebel Gilberto (1966), is a composer and performer of Brazilian music, coming from a family of Brazilian artists: daughter of João Gilberto and singer Miúcha and niece of singer-songwriter Chico Buarque . She began to sing from a very young age, participating in children's choirs and in records and musical works. At the age of 9, for example, Bebel participates with her mother and saxophonist Stan Getz at the Carnegie Hall Jazz Festival. Since the release of " Tanto Tempo " in the year 2000, Bebel has sold more than two and a half million records and his music has been part of the soundtracks of different movies and television series; music that can be defined within a modern style of bossa nova , influenced by electronic music .
Alejandro Sanz ( 1968) is a Spanish singer-songwriter and composer. He has sold more than 25 million records worldwide and has won 24 Latin Grammys and 4 American Grammys . Likewise, he has collaborated with various national and international artists. He is the Adoptive Son of the city of Cádiz , having spent his childhood in Algeciras , the city of which he was appointed ambassador. She performed at the opening ceremony of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics , performing along with three other internationally famous artists the song " Imagine " by John Lennon . Each of these artists represented a continent and Alexander was the representative of Europe . Throughout his successful career, Alejandro has experimented, searched for, and accommodated different styles.
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Anton Arensky (1861–1906) was a Russian Romantic composer and music teacher. His father and mother moved to Saint Petersburg in 1879, where he studied composition at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory , as a student of Rimsky-Korsakov . After graduating in 1882 he became a professor at the Moscow Conservatory . Among his students were Skriabin and Rachmaninov . In 1895 Arensky returned to Saint Petersburg as conductor of the Imperial Choir , having been recommended by Balakirev . He retired in 1901, using his time as a pianist, conductor, and composer. Arensky died of tuberculosis in a Finnish sanatorium in 1906. Drinking and gambling are alleged to have ruined his health.
Cléopâtre is a one-act ballet choreographed by Mikhail Fokine and music by Anton Arensky based on the previous ballet by the same authors, Les Nuits égyptiennes . Set design and costumes were created by Léon Baskt and the first production opened at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris on June 2, 1909.
Léo Delibes (1836 -1891) was a French romantic composer. His mother was a musician and his grandfather an opera singer. His nephew Frédéric was the paternal grandfather of the Spanish writer Miguel Delibes . He began his musical studies at the Paris Conservatoire in 1847, where he was a student of Adolphe Adam . As a composer, he achieved real fame in 1870 with the success of his ballet Coppélia; Among his other ballets , Sylvia , written jointly with Léon Minkus ; the Pizzicato of this ballet is very popular, one of Delibes ' greatest successes. He also composed several operas and operettas, a mass, a cantata, and occasional music for the theater, such as dances and ancient airs.
Coppélia is a sentimental and comic ballet, in three acts, with original choreography by Arthur Saint-Léon to a ballet libretto by Saint-Léon and Charles Nuitter and music by Léo Delibes . It is based on a macabre story by ETA Hoffmann entitled Der Sandmann (The Sandman). The ballet premiered on May 25, 1870 at the Paris Opera . The story is about a mysterious inventor, Doctor Coppélius , who has a life-size dancing doll. She seems so real that Franz falls in love with her, leaving aside his true love, Swanilde , who in Act II shows him her madness, by dressing up as a doll and pretending to come to life.
Today we offer the Waltz of the Hours belonging to the third act of this ballet offered in our case by the Orchestra and the Ballet Corps of the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow.
Mikis Theodorakis (1925-2021) was a Greek composer and intellectual, also known for his political militancy, especially as an opponent of the Junta de los Colonels in 1974. Born on the Island of Chios and raised within Greek folklore and Orthodox liturgy, Since his childhood he began to compose before receiving music lessons or knowing how to play an instrument. At just seventeen years old, during the Second World War , the young Mikis joined the resistance, first against Fascist Italy and then against Nazi Germany ; although it is equally true that he had previously belonged to fascist groups of the Ioannis Metaxas regime. Helping Jewish families to escape German authorities, he was arrested and tortured by the Italians in 1943.
In 1954 , he obtained a scholarship to complete his studies in Paris , where he enrolled in the conservatory and studied musical analysis, under the direction of Olivier Messiaen and conducting with Eugène Bigot . In this period he intensively studied the Western musical tradition. In 1957 he won first prize at the Moscow Music Festival for his Suite No. 1 for piano and orchestra. In 1960, he returned to Greece . His return to the homeland is not only physical, but also artistic and spiritual. Theodorakis considered his classical musical training complete and began a period that will be greatly influenced by traditional and popular Greek music, solidly structured but with a popular breath, with which a true revolution began on the Greek music scene.
In 1963 he composed the music for Zorba the Greek , the film by Michalis Cacoyiannis in which actor Anthony Quinn played the main character. The story recounts the conflict between the two main characters, Zorba and Basil , who represent the human conflict between passion and reason, seeking to represent humanity's own cognitive dualism.
Sirtaki (Sirtáki or Syrtáki - in Greek συρτάκι) is a dance created for the film Zorba the Greek , in which slow and fast versions of the Hasapiko dance (Hasápikos, Chasápikos) are mixed; a distinctive feature of Sirtaki dance and music is its acceleration: the dance starts out slow, gradually becoming faster; in general it does not include jumps. Today we offer the performance performed by the Igor Moiseyev Ballet .
Piotr Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) was a Russian composer who graduated from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory and wrote works of different genres, although he achieved his greatest success with his ballets. In 1859 he obtained a position as a civil servant in the Ministry of Justice, which he would abandon at the age of three to be able to dedicate himself solely to music. His personal life was plagued by continuous crises since the death of his mother and his repressed homosexuality, which forced him into a marriage that only lasted a few months. He wrote more than 150 compositions, including piano works, quartets, suites, symphonies, concertos, chorales, cantatas, operas, and ballets. He died at the age of 53 and is considered one of the greatest composers in history.
Today we attend a rehearsal of his Sixth Symphony by Valery Gergiev (1953), Russian director and one of the most appreciated today; He is currently the general director of the Mariinsky Theater and associate director of the Metropolitan Opera , the Munich and Rotterdam Philharmonics , as well as the London Symphony . Impulsive in nature, his style may seem somewhat primitive, due to his passionate way of expressing himself.
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Various Wikipedia articles have been used to write these texts.
The texts of Videomusicalis are written in Basque, Spanish and English.