Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. He is one of the most revered figures in the history of Western music; his works rank among the most performed of the classical music repertoire and span the transition from the Classical period to the Romantic era in classical music. His early period, during which he forged his craft, is typically considered to have lasted until 1802. From 1802 to around 1812, his middle period showed an individual development from the styles of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and is sometimes characterized as heroic. During this time, Beethoven began to grow increasingly deaf. In his late period, from 1812 to 1827, he extended his innovations in musical form and expression.
Kathleen Wendy Herald Peyton, who wrote primarily as K. M. Peyton, was a British author of fiction for children and young adults in the 1960s and 1970s.
Anton Grigoryevich Rubinstein was a Russian pianist, composer and conductor who founded the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. He was the elder brother of Nikolai Rubinstein, who founded the Moscow Conservatory.
Carl Czerny was an Austrian composer, teacher, and pianist of Czech origin whose music spanned the late Classical and early Romantic eras. His vast musical production amounted to over a thousand works and his books of studies for the piano are still widely used in piano teaching. He was one of Ludwig van Beethoven's best-known pupils and would later on be one of the main teachers of Franz Liszt.
Itzhak Perlman is an Israeli-American violinist. He has performed worldwide and throughout the United States, in venues that have included a state dinner for Elizabeth II at the White House in 2007, and at the 2009 inauguration of Barack Obama. He has conducted the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Westchester Philharmonic. In 2015, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Perlman has won 16 Grammy Awards, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and four Emmy Awards.
Claudio Arrau León was a Chilean and American pianist known for his interpretations of a vast repertoire spanning the baroque to 20th-century composers, especially Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt and Brahms. He is widely considered one of the greatest pianists of the twentieth century.
Leopold von Auer was a Hungarian violinist, academic, conductor, composer, and instructor. Many of his students went on to become prominent concert performers and teachers.
The Suzuki method is a mid-20th-century music curriculum and teaching method created by Japanese violinist and pedagogue Shinichi Suzuki. The method claims to create a reinforcing environment for learning music for young learners.
Josef Lhévinne was a Russian pianist and piano teacher. Lhévinne wrote a short book in 1924 that is considered a classic: Basic Principles in Pianoforte Playing. Asked how to say his name, he told The Literary Digest it was lay-VEEN.
Harvey Lavan "Van" Cliburn Jr. was an American pianist. At the age of 23, Cliburn achieved worldwide recognition when he won the inaugural International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958 during the Cold War.
Isaac Ignaz Moscheles was a Bohemian piano virtuoso and composer. He was based initially in London and later at Leipzig, where he joined his friend and sometime pupil Felix Mendelssohn as professor of piano in the Conservatory.
Rudolf Serkin was a Bohemian-born Austrian-American pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest Beethoven interpreters of the 20th century.
Julián Carrillo Trujillo was a Mexican composer, conductor, violinist and music theorist, famous for developing a theory of microtonal music which he dubbed "The Thirteenth Sound".
The Westing Game is a mystery book written by Ellen Raskin and published by Dutton on May 1, 1978. It won the Newbery Medal recognizing the year's most distinguished contribution to American children's literature.
Sparky's Magic Piano is the second in a series of children’s audio stories featuring Sparky, an original character created for Capitol Records in 1947. Sparky is a little guy with an overactive imagination. His adventures involve inanimate objects which magically come to life and talk to him.
Mykola Petrovich Suk is a Ukrainian American pianist and Merited Artist of Ukraine.
Conrack is a 1974 American drama film based on the 1972 autobiographical book The Water Is Wide by Pat Conroy, directed by Martin Ritt and starring Jon Voight in the title role, alongside Paul Winfield, Madge Sinclair, Hume Cronyn and Antonio Fargas. The film was released by 20th Century Fox on March 15, 1974.
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.
Walter Bache was an English pianist and conductor noted for his championing the music of Franz Liszt and other music of the New German School in England. He studied privately with Liszt in Italy from 1863 to 1865, one of the few students allowed to do so, and continued to attend Liszt's master classes in Weimar, Germany regularly until 1885, even after embarking on a solo career. This period of study was unparalleled by any other student of Liszt and led to a particularly close bond between Bache and Liszt. After initial hesitation on the part of English music critics because he was a Liszt pupil, Bache was publicly embraced for his keyboard prowess, even as parts of his repertoire were questioned.
Richard Kastle is an American classical pianist and composer.
