Eino Tamberg's Concerto Grosso, Op. 5, was composed in 1956. It was awarded a gold medal at the 6th World Festival of Youth and Students the following year and was subsequently performed through both the Eastern and Western Blocs, launching the Estonian composer's career.
Eino Tamberg was an Estonian composer.
The 6th World Festival of Youth and Students was opened on 28 July 1957, in Moscow, Soviet Union. The festival attracted 34,000 people from 130 countries. This became possible after the political changes initiated by Nikita Khrushchev. It was the first World Festival of Youth and Students held in the Soviet Union.
The Eastern Bloc was the group of Communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia and Southeast Asia under the hegemony of the Soviet Union (USSR) during the Cold War (1947–1991) in opposition to the non-Communist Western Bloc. Generally, in Western Europe the term Eastern Bloc comprised the USSR and its East European satellite-states in the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon); in Asia, the Socialist bloc comprised the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the Lao People's Democratic Republic and the People's Republic of Kampuchea; the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the People's Republic of China ; and in the Americas, the Communist Bloc included the Caribbean Republic of Cuba, since 1961.
Tamberg's Concerto Grosso is scored for a wind quintet consisting of flute, clarinet, trumpet, alto saxophone and bassoon, piano, percussion and a string orchestra, and consists of three movements lasting ca. 25 minutes:
A wind quintet, also known as a woodwind quintet, is a group of five wind players. Some quintets alternatively use an English horn instead of a French horn. The term also applies to a composition for such a group.
The flute is a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening. According to the instrument classification of Hornbostel–Sachs, flutes are categorized as edge-blown aerophones. A musician who plays the flute can be referred to as a flute player, flautist, flutist or, less commonly, fluter or flutenist.
The clarinet is a musical-instrument family belonging to the group known as the woodwind instruments. It has a single-reed mouthpiece, a straight, cylindrical tube with an almost cylindrical bore, and a flared bell. A person who plays a clarinet is called a clarinetist.
A high-spirited neoclassical composition, it is representative of the mild modernism promoted by the Soviet regime though the Thaw after years of harsh artistic repression, and it is notable for its use of the saxophone, which had been banned in 1949 as a decadent instrument. Tamberg would use no less than three saxophones in his next composition, the Symphonic Dances.
Neoclassicism in music was a twentieth-century trend, particularly current in the interwar period, in which composers sought to return to aesthetic precepts associated with the broadly defined concept of "classicism", namely order, balance, clarity, economy, and emotional restraint. As such, neoclassicism was a reaction against the unrestrained emotionalism and perceived formlessness of late Romanticism, as well as a "call to order" after the experimental ferment of the first two decades of the twentieth century. The neoclassical impulse found its expression in such features as the use of pared-down performing forces, an emphasis on rhythm and on contrapuntal texture, an updated or expanded tonal harmony, and a concentration on absolute music as opposed to Romantic program music.
In music, modernism is a philosophical and aesthetic stance underlying the period of change and development in musical language that occurred around the turn of the 20th century, a period of diverse reactions in challenging and reinterpreting older categories of music, innovations that led to new ways of organizing and approaching harmonic, melodic, sonic, and rhythmic aspects of music, and changes in aesthetic worldviews in close relation to the larger identifiable period of modernism in the arts of the time. The operative word most associated with it is "innovation". Its leading feature is a "linguistic plurality", which is to say that no one music genre ever assumed a dominant position.
Inherent within musical modernism is the conviction that music is not a static phenomenon defined by timeless truths and classical principles, but rather something which is intrinsically historical and developmental. While belief in musical progress or in the principle of innovation is not new or unique to modernism, such values are particularly important within modernist aesthetic stances.
For information about the government, see Government of the Soviet Union.
“ | Actually, I had no intention to write a concerto grosso; I just wanted to write a concerto. Since there were many skilful wind players in the orchestra of the Estonian Radio, I decided to use a wind ensemble. To get some edginess into the sound and rhythm, I added the piano and percussion. The title turned out wordy: Concerto for five wind instrument, piano, percussion and string orchestra. Only then did it come to my mind that at one time such ensemble concertos were called concerto grosso. This title may have influenced the style of the work. However, I had nothing to do with renewing an old genre. I merely wrote the kind of music I needed at that time. | ” |
A concerto is a musical composition generally composed of three movements, in which, usually, one solo instrument is accompanied by an orchestra or concert band. It is accepted that its characteristics and definition have changed over time. In the 17th century, sacred works for voices and orchestra were typically called concertos, as reflected by J. S. Bach's usage of the title "concerto" for many of the works that we know as cantatas.
The concerto grosso is a form of baroque music in which the musical material is passed between a small group of soloists and full orchestra. This is in contrast to the solo concerto which features a single solo instrument with the melody line, accompanied by the orchestra.
The alto saxophone, also referred to as the alto sax, is a member of the saxophone family of woodwind instruments invented by Belgian instrument designer Adolphe Sax in the 1840s, and patented in 1846. It is pitched in E♭, and is smaller than the tenor, but larger than the soprano. The alto sax is the most common saxophone and is commonly used in concert bands, chamber music, solo repertoire, military bands, marching bands, and jazz. The fingerings of the different saxophones are all the same so a saxophone player can play any type of saxophone.
Václav Nelhýbel was a Czech American composer, mainly of works for student performers.
Tolib-khon Shakhidi or Tolib Shahidi is a Tajik, Russian, and Soviet composer who was born in the city of Dushanbe, Tajik SSR. He is a son of the founder of Professional Tajik Academic Music – Ziyodullo Shakhidi.
Concerto grosso in G minor, Op. 6, No. 8 by Arcangelo Corelli, known commonly as the Christmas Concerto, was commissioned by Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni and published posthumously in 1714 as part of Corelli's Twelve concerti grossi, Op. 6. The concerto bears the inscription Fatto per la notte di Natale. Its composition date is uncertain, but there is a record of Corelli having performed a Christmas concerto in 1690 for the enjoyment of his new patron.
The Symphony No. 6 in D major is an early symphony written in 1761 by Joseph Haydn and the first written after Haydn had joined the Esterházy court. It is the first of three that are characterised by unusual virtuoso writing across the orchestral ensemble. It is popularly known as Le matin (Morning).
Werner Wolf Glaser was a German-born Swedish composer, conductor, pianist, professor, music critic, and poet.
Zdeněk Lukáš was a prolific Czech composer having composed over 330 works. He graduated from a teachers' college and worked as a teacher from 1953 to 1963. He was a musical editor and program director at the National Broadcasting Company in Pilsen and conducted the Česká píseň, one of the most famous choirs in the Czechoslovakia.
Yoshirō Vladimir Irino was a Japanese composer.
The Concerti Grossi, Op. 6, or Twelve Grand Concertos, HWV 319–330, are 12 concerti grossi by George Frideric Handel for a concertino trio of two violins and violoncello and a ripieno four-part string orchestra with harpsichord continuo. First published by subscription in London by John Walsh in 1739, in the second edition of 1741 they became Handel's Opus 6. Taking the older concerto da chiesa and concerto da camera of Arcangelo Corelli as models, rather than the later three-movement Venetian concerto of Antonio Vivaldi favoured by Johann Sebastian Bach, they were written to be played during performances of Handel's oratorios and odes. Despite the conventional model, Handel incorporated in the movements the full range of his compositional styles, including trio sonatas, operatic arias, French overtures, Italian sinfonias, airs, fugues, themes and variations and a variety of dances. The concertos were largely composed of new material: they are amongst the finest examples in the genre of baroque concerto grosso.
The Symphony No. 5 by the Russian composer Alfred Schnittke, which is also his Concerto Grosso No. 4, was composed in 1988.
The Concerti Grossi, Op. 3, HWV 312–317, are six concerti grossi by George Frideric Handel compiled into a set and published by John Walsh in 1734. Musicologists now agree that Handel had no initial knowledge of the publishing. Instead, Walsh, seeking to take advantage of the commercial success of Corelli's Opus 6 Concerti Grossi, simply combined several of Handel's already existing works and grouped them into six "concertos".
The lute concerto in D major, RV 93, is one of four works featuring the solo lute written by Antonio Vivaldi. Vivaldi wrote the piece in the 1730s, a period in which he wrote two of his other works featuring the lute, the trios for violin and lute in G minor and C major.
Concerto grosso in D major, Op. 6, No. 4, is a composition by Arcangelo Corelli, and was published as the fourth concerto in his Twelve Concerti Grossi, Op. 6 in 1714. This concerto grosso is the second most notable of the twelve, after No. 8, the famous Christmas Concerto. No. 4 is mainly notable for its overall joyfully charged sound, making it a frequently used example when demonstrating Corelli's renowned cantabile style.
Serge Jean Mathieu Lancen was a French composer and classical pianist.
The Sinfonie di concerto grosso is the title of twelve works for flute, strings and basso continuo by Alessandro Scarlatti, composed in Naples from June 1, 1715 - the same year as the performance of his opera Tigrane, one of his greatest successes, and his oratorio La Santissima Trinità.
Neeme Järvi is an Estonian American conductor.
BIS Records is a record label founded in 1973 by Robert von Bahr. It is located in Åkersberga, Sweden.