Carmen Fantasie is a virtuoso showpiece for violin and orchestra. [1] The piece is part of Franz Waxman's score to the 1946 movie Humoresque for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture. The music, based on various themes from Georges Bizet's opera Carmen and unrelated to the similarly titled work Carmen Fantasy by Pablo de Sarasate, [2] was initially meant to be played by Jascha Heifetz. [3] However, he was replaced by a young Isaac Stern for the film's recording of the score. Stern's hands can be seen in the close-up shots from the movie.
After seeing the film, Heifetz asked Waxman to expand the work because he wanted to play it on the radio program, The Bell Telephone Hour , where it premiered on 9 September 1946. The work has been played since by many virtuoso violinists in concerts. [2] It has also been adapted for a variety of orchestral/chamber arrangements, such as a versions for trumpet and orchestra, for violin and piano, as well as for viola and piano/orchestra. [2] [4]
The score and parts are published by Fidelio Music and is available on IMSLP. [5] [6] It and the rest of Waxman's catalog was acquired by G. Schirmer from the composer's son in 2022. [7]
The Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61, was written by Ludwig van Beethoven in 1806. Its first performance by Franz Clement was unsuccessful and for some decades the work languished in obscurity, until revived in 1844 by the then 12-year-old violinist Joseph Joachim with the orchestra of the London Philharmonic Society conducted by Felix Mendelssohn. Joachim would later claim it to be the "greatest" German violin concerto. Since then it has become one of the best-known and regularly performed violin concertos.
The Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16, composed by Edvard Grieg in 1868, was the only concerto Grieg completed. It is one of his most popular works, and is among the most popular of the genre. Grieg, who was only 24 years old at the time of the composition, had taken inspiration from Robert Schumann's piano concerto (Op.54), also in A minor.
John Paul Corigliano Jr. is an American composer of contemporary classical music. With over 100 compositions, he has won accolades including a Pulitzer Prize, five Grammy Awards, Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, and an Academy Award.
The 7th Annual Grammy Awards were held on April 13, 1965, at Beverly Hilton Hotel, Beverly Hills. They recognized accomplishments of musicians for the year 1964. João Gilberto & Stan Getz won 4 awards.
Pablo Martín Melitón de Sarasate y Navascués, commonly known as Pablo de Sarasate, was a Spanish violinist, composer and conductor of the Romantic period. His best known works include Zigeunerweisen, the Spanish Dances, and the Carmen Fantasy.
Erich Wolfgang Korngold was an Austrian composer and conductor, who fled Europe in the mid-1930s and later adopted US nationality. A child prodigy, he became one of the most important and influential composers in Hollywood history. He was a noted pianist and composer of classical music, along with music for Hollywood films, and the first composer of international stature to write Hollywood scores.
Islamey: Oriental Fantasy, is a composition for piano by Russian composer Mily Balakirev written in 1869. Harold C. Schonberg noted that Islamey was "at one time…considered the most difficult of all piano pieces and is still one of the knucklebusters." Its difficulty has led to the creation of numerous ossias and made it popular as a virtuosic showpiece.
Franz Waxman was a German-born composer and conductor of Jewish descent, known primarily for his work in the film music genre. His film scores include Bride of Frankenstein, Rebecca, Sunset Boulevard, A Place in the Sun, Stalag 17, Rear Window, Peyton Place, The Nun's Story, and Taras Bulba. He received twelve Academy Award nominations, and won two Oscars in consecutive years. He also received a Golden Globe Award for the former film. Bernard Herrmann said that the score for Taras Bulba was "the score of a lifetime."
The Carmen Fantasy, Op. 25, by Pablo de Sarasate is a fantasy on themes from Bizet's Carmen for violin and piano or orchestra, composed in 1881. A version with piano accompaniment was published in 1882. It was dedicated to Joseph Hellmesberger.
Efrem Zimbalist was a Russian and American concert violinist, composer, conductor and director of the Curtis Institute of Music.
Paul Felix Weingartner, Edler von Münzberg was an Austrian conductor, composer and pianist.
Florence Beatrice Price was an American classical composer, pianist, organist and music teacher. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, Price was educated at the New England Conservatory of Music, and was active in Chicago from 1927 until her death in 1953. Price is noted as the first African-American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer, and the first to have a composition played by a major orchestra. Price composed over 300 works: four symphonies, four concertos, as well as choral works, art songs, chamber music and music for solo instruments. In 2009, a substantial collection of her works and papers was found in her abandoned summer home.
Norman Dello Joio was an American composer active for over half a century. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1957.
The Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso in A minor, Op. 28, is a composition for violin and orchestra written in 1863 by Camille Saint-Saëns. It was dedicated to the virtuoso violinist Pablo de Sarasate, who performed the solo violin part at the premiere in April 1867.
Joseph Yulyevich Achron, also seen as Akhron was a Russian-born Jewish composer and violinist, who settled in the United States. His preoccupation with Jewish elements and his desire to develop a "Jewish" harmonic and contrapuntal idiom, underscored and informed much of his work. His friend, the composer Arnold Schoenberg, described Achron in his obituary as "one of the most underrated modern composers".
František Alois Drdla was a prominent Czech concert violinist and composer of light music.
Humoresque is a 1946 American melodrama film by Warner Bros. starring Joan Crawford and John Garfield in a tale about a violinist and his patroness. The screenplay by Clifford Odets and Zachary Gold was based upon the 1919 short story "Humoresque" by Fannie Hurst, which previously was made into a film in 1920. Humoresque was directed by Jean Negulesco and produced by Jerry Wald.
The Carmen Suites are two suites of orchestral music drawn from the music of Georges Bizet's 1875 opera Carmen and compiled posthumously by his friend Ernest Guiraud. They adhere very closely to Bizet's orchestration. However the order of the musical allusions are in reversed chronological order, and do not adhere to the operatic versions entirely, although the Suite is directly inspired by Bizet's opera.
From March 1816 to August 1817, Franz Schubert composed four violin sonatas. All four were published after the composer's death: the first three, D 384, 385 and 408, as Sonatinas in 1836, and the last one, D 574, as Duo in 1851. Schubert composed two more pieces for violin and piano, in October 1826 and December 1827 respectively: a Rondo, D 895, which was published during the composer's lifetime (Op. 70), and a Fantasy, D 934, which was premiered in January 1828, less than a year before the composer's death.
Franz Schubert composed his Fantasy in C major for violin and piano, Op. posth. 159, D 934, in December 1827. It was the last of his compositions for violin and piano, and was premiered in January 1828 by the violinist Josef Slavik and the pianist Carl Maria von Bocklet at the Landhaussaal in Vienna.
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