Author : Arnold Steinhardt
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 324 pages
File Size : 27,19 MB
Release : 2000-06-15
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780374527006
The author tells of his own development as a student, "of how he and his intrepid colleagues were converted to chamber music ... [and of how] four individualists master and then overcome the confining demands of ensemble playing."--Jacket.
Author : David Rounds
Publisher :
Page : 222 pages
File Size : 22,26 MB
Release : 1999
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN :
Spotlighting the four women of the Lafayette Quartet, a leading Canadian ensemble, Rounds offers both a comprehensive history of the beloved instrumental form and an inside view of the complex world of professional quartet players, revealing the exultation and heatache that are the performing artists' daily fare. A treat for every music lover, whether player, listener or composer.
Author : Edward Dusinberre
Publisher : Faber & Faber
Page : 145 pages
File Size : 20,87 MB
Release : 2016-01-19
Category : Music
ISBN : 0571317154
'They are not for you but for a later age!' Ludwig van Beethoven, on the Opus 59 quartets. Tackling the Beethoven quartets is a rite of passage that has shaped the Takács Quartet's work together for over forty years. Using the history of the composition and first performances of the quartets as the backbone to his story, Edward Dusinberre, first violinist of the Takács since 1993 - recounts the life of the Quartet from its inception in Hungary, through emigration to the US and its present-day life as one of the world's renowned string quartets. He also describes what it was like for him, as a young man fresh out of the Juilliard School, to join the Quartet as its first non-Hungarian member - an exhilarating challenge. Beethoven for a Later Age takes the reader inside the life of a quartet, vividly showing how four people enjoy making music together over a long period of time. The key, the author argues, is in balancing continuity with change and experimentation - a theme that also lies at the heart of Beethoven's remarkable compositions.
Author : Arnold Steinhardt
Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Page : 276 pages
File Size : 19,34 MB
Release : 2006
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780547086002
"A rapturous, witty, and passionate memoir ... Violin Dreams is not only the story of a man becoming an artist, it’s a history of twentieth-century music.” -- John Guare, Tony Award-winning playwright Arnold Steinhardt, for more than forty years an international soloist and the first violinist of the Guarneri String Quartet, brings warmth, wit, and fascinating insider details to the story of his lifelong obsession with the violin, that most seductive and stunningly beautiful instrument. His story is rich with vivid scenes: the terror inflicted by his early violin teachers, the sensual pleasure involved in the pursuit of the perfect violin, the charged atmosphere of high-level competitions. Steinhardt describes Bach’s Chaconne as the holy grail for the solo violin, and he illuminates, from the perspective of an ardent owner of a great Storioni violin, the history and mysteries of the renowned Italian violinmakers. Violin Dreams includes a remarkable CD recording of Steinhardt performing Bach’s Partita in D Minor as a young violinist forty years ago and playing the same piece especially for this book. A conversation between the author and Alan Alda on the differences between the two performances is included in the liner notes.
Author : Joseph J. Ellis
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 322 pages
File Size : 50,84 MB
Release : 2016-05-03
Category : History
ISBN : 080417248X
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Founding Brothers tells the unexpected story of America’s second great founding and of the men most responsible—Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, John Jay, and James Madison. Ellis explains of why the thirteen colonies, having just fought off the imposition of a distant centralized governing power, would decide to subordinate themselves anew. These men, with the help of Robert Morris and Gouverneur Morris, shaped the contours of American history by diagnosing the systemic dysfunctions created by the Articles of Confederation, manipulating the political process to force the calling of the Constitutional Convention, conspiring to set the agenda in Philadelphia, orchestrating the debate in the state ratifying conventions, and, finally, drafting the Bill of Rights to assure state compliance with the constitutional settlement, created the new republic. Ellis gives us a dramatic portrait of one of the most crucial and misconstrued periods in American history: the years between the end of the Revolution and the formation of the federal government. The Quartet unmasks a myth, and in its place presents an even more compelling truth—one that lies at the heart of understanding the creation of the United States of America.
Author : Barbara Pym
Publisher : Pan Macmillan
Page : 209 pages
File Size : 46,16 MB
Release : 2015-10-08
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1447289625
With an introduction by Alexander McCall Smith, author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. One did not drink sherry before the evening, just as one did not read a novel in the morning. In 1970s London, Edwin, Norman, Letty and Marcia work in the same office and suffer the same problem – loneliness. Lovingly and with delightful humour, Barbara Pym conducts us through their day-to-day existence: their preoccupations, their irritations, their judgements, and – perhaps most keenly felt – their worries about having somehow missed out on life as post-war Britain shifted around them. Deliciously, blackly funny and full of obstinate optimism, Quartet in Autumn shows Barbara Pym's sensitive artistry at its most sparkling. Its world is both extraordinary and familiar, revealing the eccentricities of everyday life.
Author :
Publisher :
Page : pages
File Size : 16,37 MB
Release : 2015-09-19
Category :
ISBN : 9780988908031
In the immediate aftermath of World War II, violinist and Holocaust survivor Alfred Mur could not help but tell people of his terrifying experiences. Written between 1951 and 1952, read the incredible story of how Alfred and his brother Fredi not only escaped the Nazi's in Poland, but kept their hope alive throughout their ordeal through the power of music.
Author : Rebecca Rischin
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 218 pages
File Size : 15,94 MB
Release : 2006
Category : History
ISBN : 9780801472978
The clarinetist Rebecca Rischin has written a captivating book.... Her research dispels several long-cherished myths about the 1941 premiere.... Rischin lovingly brings to life the other musicians-- tienne Pasquier, cellist; Henri Akoka, clarinetist; and Jean Le Boulaire, violinist--who played with Messiaen, the pianist at the premiere."--Alex Ross, The New Yorker "This book offers a wealth of new information about the circumstances under which the Quartet was created. Based on original interviews with the performers, witnesses to the premiere, and documents from the prison camp, this first comprehensive history of the Quartet's composition and premiere held my interest from beginning to end.... For the End of Time touches on many things: faith, friendship, creativity, grace in a time of despair, and the uncommon human alliances that wartime engenders."--Arnold Steinhardt, Chamber Music"The clarification of the order of composition of the movements is just one of the minor but cumulatively significant ways in which Rischin modifies the widely accepted account of the events at Stalag VIII A.... For the End of Time is a thorough and readable piece of investigative journalism that clarifies some important points about the Quartet's genesis."--Michael Downes, Times Literary Supplement The premiere of Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time on January 15, 1941, has been called one of the great stories of twentieth-century music. Composed while Messiaen (1908-1992) was imprisoned by the Nazis in Stalag VIII A, the work was performed under the most trying of circumstances: the temperature, inferior instruments, and the general conditions of life in a POW camp.Based on testimonies by the musicians and their families, witnesses to the premiere, former prisoners, and on documents from Stalag VIII A, For the End of Time examines the events that led to the Quartet's composition, the composer's interpretive preferences, and the musicians' problems in execution and how they affected the premiere and subsequent performances. Rebecca Rischin explores the musicians' life in the prison camp, their relationships with each other and with the German camp officials, and their intriguing fortunes before and after the momentous premiere. This paperback edition features supplementary texts and information previously unavailable to the author about the Quartet's premiere, Vichy and the composer, the Paris premiere, a recording featuring Messiaen as performer, and an updated bibliography and discography.
Author : Alexander Borodin
Publisher : Eulenburg
Page : 53 pages
File Size : 10,37 MB
Release : 2018-07-25
Category : Music
ISBN : 3795715784
Over 200 works of the well-known Edition Eulenburg series of scores from orchestral and choral literature, chamber music and music theatre are now available in digital format. You can now enjoy the yellow study scores digitally with one click in excellent reproduction quality. Über 200 Werke der berühmten Edition Eulenburg Partiturreihe für Orchester- und Chorliteratur, Kammermusik und Musiktheater sind nun auch in einer digitalen Aufbereitung erhältlich. In optisch hervorragender Darstellung kann man die gelben Studienpartituren mit einem Klick jetzt auch digital genießen.
Author : Nathan Shaham
Publisher : Grove Press
Page : 366 pages
File Size : 27,27 MB
Release : 1991
Category : Drama
ISBN : 9780802133168
Four German Jews , all refugees from Nazi Germany, and all first-rate musicians, arrive in Palestine in the 1930s. There they join a symphony orchestra, which although made up of Europeans serves as a propaganda vehicle for the Zionist state-in-the-making. Unable to express themselves within this melting-pot orchestra, they join together to form The Rosendorf Quartet. In this compelling and provocative novel, awarded Israel's prestigious Bialik Prize for Literature, Nathan Shaham examines the plight of these refugees, who must adjust to the old-new land--a place fraught with political struggle and impending violence. Kurt Rosendorf, the quartet's founder and first violin, would like to believe that his true homeland is music. Forced to leave his Christian wife and daughter in Berlin, he cannot adjust to life in Palestine and tries to live "outside history and geography." Konrad Friedman, second violin, is a young Zionist who constantly battles the urge to renounce the European, cultured life of the musician and dedicate himself to the Jewish cause. Bernard Litovsky, the cellist, is tired of wandering and longs for firm ground and a sense of home. The fourth in the quartet is the stunning Eva Staubenfeld, whose beauty and sexual liberation baffle and mesmerize her colleagues. Relieved to be far from the abuses of her past, she is furious that the accident of being born Jewish has disrupted her life. Uniting the four is Egon Loewenthal, a brilliant and underrated German author who has survived Dachau but cannot forsake the language of his persecutors. He decides that his next novel, written in German, will be about the quartet. The Rosendorf Quartet is not only a deft portrait of the complexities and contradictions that have gone to make up the state of Israel; it is also a stunning tribute to the curative powers of music, in whose realm dissonance, politics, and personal anguish dissolve into art, transcending human conflict and national boundaries
