Real name Francesco Ezecchiele Ermenegildor Cavaliere Suppe-Demelli. Austrian, but Belgi an by descent, born in Split, Dalmatia later to a part of Yugoslavia. Suppé made his career principally in Vienna as composer and conductor of operetta. He composed over 150 operas and operettas, which had a high popularity especially in Vienna. His overture to Dichter and Bauer (Poet and Peasant) is still everywhere performed and exists in nearly 60 arrangements for different instrumental combinations.
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Grieg’s mother was a pianist and became his first teacher. On the advice of Ole Bull he was sent to Leipzig but then settled for a time in Copenhagen. Later he returned to Norway, founding a musical society at Christiana (now Oslo) and conducting for 13 years. He married his cousin Nina Hagerup, a singer who helped to popularize his songs. Liszt much encouraged him, especially praising his piano concerto, which remains one of the most popular ever written.
Grieg was a fine pianist and hardly a year passed when he did not give concerts either as a soloist or with his wife. He wrote his Piano Concerto as a vehicle for his own talents, and its youthful exuberance – reminiscent of Schumann’s only concerto, also in A minor – has ensured its place on the CV’s of most concert pianists. Composed in 1868 while Grieg was holidaying with his wife and young child in Denmark, it is replete with a sense of tenderness and well-being, expressed in a proliferation of enchanting thematic ideas.
The opening motif – an idea as well-known as the opening of that other virtuoso warhorse, Tchaikovsky’s first concerto – is built upon a descending second followed by a descending third, intervals typical in Norwegian folk music.
The Adagio boasts a touchingly beautiful melody – sombre in its orchestral form, gloriously refulgent in its piano version.
The work closes with a spirited rondo containing at its centre an extremely tender new theme that is triumphantly restated at the work’s conclusion.
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Johann Strauss, Jr. was born October 25, 1825 the first of five children. A number of great composers encountered parental opposition when they decided to undertake a musical career, but none met more than Johann Jr. His father, Johann Sr., had decided that one musician in the family was enough and went to great lengths to keep his sons from following in his footsteps. Ironically, all three, Johann Jr., Josef (1827-1870) and Eduard (1835-1916) achieved success as musicians.
It was his mother, Anna, who encouraged Johann's ambition, who bought him his first violin and saw to it that he received musical instruction. Little Johann secretly studied the violin, making his first attempt at writing a waltz at 6 years of age.
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| Grandson of the famous philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn, and son of a banker, he was trained by Berlin teacher Zelter, and became young friend of Goethe. Before he was 15, Mendelssohn had written many symphonies, an opera and other things, and at 17 the beautiful overture to A Midsummer Nights Dream.
From an early age he was an active propagandist for the music of Bach. From 20 to 24 he travelled extensively spending much time in Britain where he was always welcomed as an accomplished pianist, organist and composer.
The Italian Symphony was inspired by a visit to Italy in 1831, and it was finished in 1833 but not published until after his death 14 years later.
The slow movement has become to be known as the ‘Pilgrims March’. The last movement is a Saltarello.
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