Karl Amadeus Hartmann was a German composer. Sometimes described as the greatest German symphonist of the 20th century, he is now largely overlooked, particularly in English-speaking countries.
Sir Harrison Birtwistle was an English composer of contemporary classical music best known for his operas, often based on mythological subjects. Among his many compositions, his better known works include The Triumph of Time (1972) and the operas The Mask of Orpheus (1986), Gawain (1991), and The Minotaur (2008). The last of these was ranked by music critics at The Guardian in 2019 as the third-best piece of the 21st century. Even his compositions that were not written for the stage often showed a theatrical approach. A performance of his saxophone concerto Panic during the BBC's Last Night of the Proms caused "national notoriety". He received many international awards and honorary degrees.
IRCAM is a French institute dedicated to the research of music and sound, especially in the fields of avant garde and electro-acoustical art music. It is situated next to, and is organisationally linked with, the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The extension of the building was designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers. Much of the institute is located underground, beneath the fountain to the east of the buildings.
Paul Sacher was a Swiss conductor, patron and billionaire businessman. At the time of his death Sacher was majority shareholder of pharmaceutical company Hoffmann-La Roche and was considered the third richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of US$13 billion.
Contemporary classical music is Western art music composed close to the present day. At the beginning of the 21st century, it commonly referred to the post-1945 modern forms of post-tonal music after the death of Anton Webern, and included serial music, electronic music, experimental music, and minimalist music. Newer forms of music include spectral music, and post-minimalism.
Hans Werner Henze was a German composer. His large oeuvre is extremely varied in style, having been influenced by serialism, atonality, Stravinsky, Italian music, Arabic music and jazz, as well as traditional schools of German composition. In particular, his stage works reflect "his consistent cultivation of music for the theatre throughout his life".
Polystylism is the use of multiple styles or techniques in literature, art, film, or, especially, music.
The London Sinfonietta is an English contemporary chamber orchestra founded in 1968 and based in London.
Ulf Håkan Hardenberger is a Swedish trumpeter, conductor and professor at the Malmö Academy of Music. Taking up the trumpet at the age of eight under the guidance of hometown teacher Bo Nilsson, Hardenberger pursued further studies at the Paris Conservatoire, with Pierre Thibaud, and in Los Angeles with Thomas Stevens. Hardenberger is a pioneer of important virtuosic new trumpet works. He collaborated with contemporary composers Harrison Birtwistle, Brett Dean, HK Gruber (Aerial), Hans Werner Henze, Betsy Jolas, György Ligeti and Mark-Anthony Turnage. In 2021, he premiered Jörg Widmann's Towards Paradise and in 2022 Helen Grime's Trumpet Concerto, night-sky-blue. Hardenberger performed with New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Wiener Philharmoniker, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, NHK Symphony Orchestra and conductors Alan Gilbert, Daniel Harding, Paavo Järvi, Ingo Metzmacher, Andris Nelsons, John Storgårds and David Zinman. From 2016 to 2018, he was artistic director of the Malmö Chamber Music Festival. In the 2019/20 season, he conducted Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, Malmö Symphony Orchestra, Swedish Chamber Orchestra and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. Hardenberger has been called "the cleanest, subtlest trumpeter on earth" by The Times.
The Fires of London, founded as the Pierrot Players, was a British chamber music ensemble which was active from 1965 to 1987.
Requiem is an instrumental musical composition by Hans Werner Henze, premiered in Cologne on 24 February 1993. It consists of nine sacred concertos for piano solo, trumpet and large chamber orchestra. About this piece, the composer has the following comments.
These nine instrumental pieces are concerned with the human fears and problems of our time, with illness and death, love and loneliness, and in particular with the character of Michael Vyner, an extremely lively and passionate man, his life and his death, and my grief at his loss which stands for the loss of so many others who have also tragically departed from our world. The spirit of this music can be explained by such facts and by our time, by which it seems to me to be strongly influenced, by its horrors and passions, its beauty and dynamics. The movements of the Requiem can be played separately or in any desired combination. Hans Werner Henze
Gerald English was an English tenor. He performed operatic and concert repertoire, was a recording artist, and was a sometime academic.
The Melos Ensemble is a group of musicians who started in 1950 in London to play chamber music in mixed instrumentation of string instruments, wind instruments and others. Benjamin Britten composed the chamber music for his War Requiem for the Melos Ensemble and conducted the group in the first performance in Coventry.
Barrie Gavin is a British film director.
The Dr K–Sextett is a short, occasional composition for six instrumentalists, written in 1969 by Karlheinz Stockhausen and given the number 28 in his catalogue of works.
A Garland for Dr. K. is a set of eleven short compositions created in 1969 for the celebration of the eightieth birthday of Dr Alfred Kalmus, the director of the London branch of Universal Edition. It is also the title of an album containing these eleven pieces of music, recorded in 1976.
The Music for the Requiem Mass is any music that accompanies the Requiem, a Mass in the Catholic Church for the deceased. It has inspired a large number of compositions, including settings by Charpentier, Mozart, Berlioz, Donizetti, Verdi, Bruckner, Saint-Saëns, Dvořák, Fauré and Duruflé. Originally, such compositions were meant to be performed in liturgical service, with monophonic chant. Eventually the dramatic character of the text began to appeal to composers to an extent that they made the requiem a genre of its own, and the compositions of composers such as Verdi are essentially concert pieces rather than liturgical works.
Luciano Berio was an Italian composer noted for his experimental work, and for his pioneering work in electronic music. His early work was influenced by Igor Stravinsky and experiments with serial and electronic techniques, while his later works explore indeterminacy and the use of spoken texts as the basic material for composition.
Elizabeth Laurence is a classical mezzo-soprano singer. She is best known for her performances of 20th century operatic repertoire, and has created several operatic roles.
Harold Rosenbaum is an American conductor and musician. He is the artistic director and conductor of the New York Virtuoso Singers and the Canticum Novum Singers. The New York Virtuoso Singers appear on 48 albums on labels including Naxos Records and Sony Classical. He has collaborated extensively with many ensembles including the New York Philharmonic, Juilliard Orchestra, American Symphony Orchestra, Bang on a Can, Mark Morris Dance Group, Orchestra of Saint Luke's, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Riverside Symphony, and Brooklyn Philharmonic.
