Christopher White | |
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Born | 1984 (age 38–39) |
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Christopher White (born 1984) [1] is an English classical pianist, musicologist and repetiteur. He plays internationally, not only the standard classical and romantic repertory, but also premieres of new music. He made a transcription of four movements of Mahler's unfinished Tenth Symphony for piano, playing and recording the work.
White studied at the Royal Academy of Music, graduating in 2007. He studied piano with Hamish Milne and Nicholas Walker, and piano accompaniment with Michael Dussek. [1] [2]
White played piano concertos by Beethoven, Brahms, and Rachmaninow with the Orchestra of the City in London. [3] He played the Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor by Camille Saint-Saëns at the Philharmonie Berlin in 2016. [4]
White premiered new music. On 17 July 2003, he played the first performance of Blue Medusa by John Casken, a piece for bassoon and piano commissioned by Rosemary Burton's parents for her birthday. [5] With the same bassoonist, he played in 2009 Phoenix Arising , written by Graham Waterhouse in memory of his father, the bassoonist William Waterhouse. [6]
In opera, White worked as repetiteur and conductor, including at the Frankfurt Opera and the English National Opera. [3] He was a Piano Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Centre in Massachusetts, assisting James Levine for Kurt Weill's Mahagonny , also appearing onstage as the pianist. [7] He was solo repetiteur at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in 2014 [3] and has since been promoted to Stellvertretender Studienleiter (Deputy Director of Musical Studies). [8]
He arranged movements two to five of Gustav Mahler's unfinished Tenth Symphony for piano, based on Deryck Cooke's performing version. [9] In 2008, he made a recording, using the arrangement of the first movement by Ronald Stevenson which is also based on Cooke. [9] The recording was taken at Rosslyn Hill Unitarian Chapel, Hampstead, [10] and released in 2010. [9] Christopher Abbot summarized in The Fanfare in a detailed review: "His transcription is not merely evidence of a familiarity with the Mahlerian idiom; it is infused with a profound understanding of the importance of this work in the larger context of Mahler's symphonic journey." [9] White played the transcription for the Gustav Mahler Society UK in London on 17 January 2010. [7]
Gustav Mahler was an Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect, which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi era. After 1945 his compositions were rediscovered by a new generation of listeners; Mahler then became one of the most frequently performed and recorded of all composers, a position he has sustained into the 21st century.
Bruno Walter was a German-born conductor, pianist and composer. Born in Berlin, he escaped Nazi Germany in 1933, was naturalised as a French citizen in 1938, and settled in the United States in 1939. He worked closely with Gustav Mahler, whose music he helped to establish in the repertory, held major positions with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Salzburg Festival, Vienna State Opera, Bavarian State Opera, Staatsoper Unter den Linden and Deutsche Oper Berlin, among others, made recordings of historical and artistic significance, and is widely considered to be one of the great conductors of the 20th century.
This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1888.
The Symphony No. 10 in F-sharp major by Gustav Mahler was written in the summer of 1910, and was his final composition. At the time of Mahler's death, the composition was substantially complete in the form of a continuous draft, but not fully elaborated or orchestrated, and thus not performable. Only the first movement is regarded as reasonably complete and performable as Mahler intended. Perhaps as a reflection of the inner turmoil he was undergoing at the time, the 10th Symphony is arguably his most dissonant work.
Kurt Sanderling, CBE was a German conductor.
Hartmut Haenchen is a German conductor, known as a specialist for the music of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, and for conducting operas in the leading opera houses of the world.
Colin Matthews, OBE is an English composer of contemporary classical music. Noted for his large-scale orchestral compositions, Matthews is also a prolific arranger of other composer's music, including works by Berlioz, Britten, Dowland, Mahler, Purcell and Schubert. Other arrangements include orchestrations of all Debussy's 24 Préludes, both books of Debussy's Images, and two movements—Oiseaux tristes and La vallée des cloches—from Ravel's Miroirs. Having received a doctorate from University of Sussex on the works of Mahler, from 1964–1975 Matthews worked with his brother David Matthews and musicologist Deryck Cooke on completing a performance version of Mahler's Tenth Symphony.
Ferenc Fricsay was a Hungarian conductor. From 1960 until his death, he was an Austrian citizen.
Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt was a German conductor and composer. After studying at several music academies, he worked in German opera houses between 1923 and 1945, first as a répétiteur and then in increasingly senior conducting posts, ending as Generalmusikdirektor of the Deutsche Oper Berlin.
George Alexander Albrecht was a German conductor and composer, who also worked as a musicologist and academic teacher. A prolific composer at a young age, he was Generalmusikdirektor (GMD) of the Staatsoper Hannover from 1965 for 30 years, where he led not only the major operas by Mozart and stageworks by Wagner, but contemporary composers, such as Aribert Reimann's Troades in 1987. He was GMD of the Nationaltheater Weimar from 1996, and taught at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt, Weimar. Albrecht promoted the works of neglected composers such as Wilhelm Furtwängler, Hans Pfitzner, and Erwin Schulhoff.
William Waterhouse was an English bassoonist and musicologist. He played with notable orchestras, was a member of the Melos Ensemble, professor at the Royal Northern College of Music, author of the Yehudi Menuhin Music Guide "Bassoon", of The New Langwill Index, and contributor to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.
Harold Byrns was a German-American conductor and orchestrator.
Marc Albrecht is a German conductor who lives in The Netherlands. He was chief conductor of the Dutch National Opera, the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra from 2009 to 2020.
Victor Bruns was a German composer and bassoonist. He played with the Leningrad Opera, the Volksoper Berlin and the Staatskapelle Berlin. As a composer, he is known for his ballets and for bassoon concertos and sonatas.
Eberhard Kloke is a German conductor and composer.
Eugen Szenkar was a Hungarian-born German-Brazilian conductor who made an international career in Austria, Germany, Russia, and Brazil. He promoted the stage works of Bela Bartók and other contemporary music at the Oper Frankfurt, the Cologne Opera, where he conducted the world premiere of The Miraculous Mandarin, and in Berlin. He conducted all of the symphonies by Gustav Mahler.
Karl Dammer was a German conductor, Generalmusikdirektor at the Städtische Oper Berlin from 1937.
Roland Böer is a German conductor with a focus on opera. He has worked at leading European opera houses, including the Oper Frankfurt where he began as répétiteur in 1996, was Kapellmeister from 2002 to 2008, and has often appeared as a guest. He was artistic director of the Cantiere Internazionale d'Arte in Montepulciano from 2015 to 2020.
Kai Bumann was a German conductor who led orchestras and opera companies mainly in Poland, such as the Opera Krakowska, Warsaw Chamber Opera and the Polish Baltic Philharmonic. He was conductor and artistic director of the Swiss Youth Symphony Orchestra (SJSO) from 1998 until his death.