Montague Rhodes James was an English author, medievalist scholar and provost of King's College, Cambridge (1905–1918), and of Eton College (1918–1936). He was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge (1913–1915).
A concerto is, from the late Baroque era, mostly understood as an instrumental composition, written for one or more soloists accompanied by an orchestra or other ensemble. The typical three-movement structure, a slow movement preceded and followed by fast movements, became a standard from the early 18th century.
Aldeburgh is a coastal town in the county of Suffolk, England, north of the River Alde. Its estimated population was 2,276 in 2019. It was home to the composer Benjamin Britten and remains the centre of the international Aldeburgh Festival of arts at nearby Snape Maltings, which was founded by Britten in 1948. It also hosts an annual poetry festival and several food festivals and other events.
Esa-Pekka Salonen is a Finnish conductor and composer. He is the music director of the San Francisco Symphony and conductor laureate of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra in London and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Clive Walter Swift was an English actor and songwriter. A classically trained actor, his stage work included performances with the Royal Shakespeare Company, but he was best known to television viewers for his role as Richard Bucket in the BBC sitcom Keeping Up Appearances. He played many other television and film roles.
Le Grand Macabre is the third and only major stage-work by Hungarian composer György Ligeti, following his Absurdist sung "mimodramas" Aventures and Nouvelles aventures (1965).
Peter Vaughan was an English character actor known for many supporting roles in British film and television productions. He also acted extensively on the stage.
Pehr Henrik Nordgren was a Finnish composer.
A Ghost Story for Christmas is a strand of annual British short television films originally broadcast on BBC One between 1971 and 1978, and revived sporadically by the BBC since 2005. With one exception, the original instalments were directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark and the films were all shot on 16 mm colour film. The remit behind the series was to provide a television adaptation of a classic ghost story, in line with the oral tradition of telling supernatural tales at Christmas.
Cecil Aronowitz was a British viola player, a founding member of the Melos Ensemble, a leading chamber musician, and an influential teacher at the Royal College of Music and the Royal Northern College of Music.
Lawrence Power is a British violist, born 1977, noted both for solo performances and for chamber music with the Nash Ensemble and Leopold String Trio.
"A Warning to the Curious" is a ghost story by British writer M. R. James, included in his book A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories first published in 1925. The tale tells the story of Paxton, an antiquarian and archaeologist who holidays in "Seaburgh" and inadvertently stumbles across one of the three lost crowns of East Anglia, which legendarily protect the country from invasion. Upon digging up the crown, Paxton is stalked by its supernatural guardian. Written a few years after the end of the First World War, "A Warning to the Curious" ranks as one of M. R. James's bleakest stories.
The Stalls of Barchester is the first of the BBC's A Ghost Story for Christmas strand, first broadcast on BBC 1 at 11.00pm on 24 December 1971. Based on the story "The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral" from the 1911 collection More Ghost Stories by M. R. James, it was adapted, produced and directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark.
John (Jack) William Gordon was an English writer of young-adult supernatural fiction. He wrote sixteen chlldren's fantasy novels, including The Giant Under the Snow, four short story collections, over fifty short stories, and a teenage memoir.
Helen Grime is a Scottish composer of contemporary classical music. Her work, Virga, was selected as one of the best ten new classical works of the 2000s by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.
Joseph Phibbs is an English composer of orchestral, choral and chamber music. He has also composed for theatre, both in the UK and Japan. Since 1998 he has written regularly to commissions for Festivals, for private sponsors, and for the BBC, which has broadcast premieres of his orchestral and chamber works from the Proms and elsewhere. His works have been given premieres in Europe, the United States and the Far East, and he has received prestigious awards, including most recently a British Composer Award, and a Library of Congress Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation Award. Many of his works have been premiered by leading international musicians, including Dame Evelyn Glennie, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Leonard Slatkin, Sakari Oramo, Vasily Petrenko, Gianandrea Noseda, and the Belcea Quartet.
The Concerto for Cello and Orchestra is a cello concerto by György Ligeti written in 1966. It is dedicated to cellist Siegfried Palm, who gave the concerto its premiere performance.
"The Haunted Dolls' House" (1923) is a short story by M. R. James, collected by him in A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories (1925). It was commissioned by Queen Mary, wife of George V, as a miniature book for her famous Dolls' House, which can still be seen in Windsor Castle. It is in many ways a typical James story, thematically linked to other works of his, especially "The Mezzotint". Though usually considered a story for adults, it has also been claimed as children's fiction.
Lost Hearts is a 1973 supernatural gothic drama produced by the BBC as part of its A Ghost Story for Christmas series. Running at 35 minutes and directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark, it was written by Robin Chapman and was based on the 1895 short story "Lost Hearts" by M. R. James.
There have been many adaptations of the works of M. R. James for television, radio, audio and the stage, as well as a 1957 film adaptation of "Casting the Runes" by Jacques Tourneur, titled Night of the Demon.
