Franz Ignaz Danzi was a German cellist, composer and conductor, the son of the Italian cellist Innocenz Danzi (1730–1798) and brother of the noted singer Franzeska Danzi. Danzi lived at a significant time in the history of European music. His career, spanning the transition from the late Classical to the early Romantic styles, coincided with the origin of much of the music that lives in our concert halls and is familiar to contemporary classical-music audiences. In his youth he knew Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whom he revered; he was a contemporary of Ludwig van Beethoven, about whom he — like many of his generation — had strong but mixed feelings and he was a mentor for the young Carl Maria von Weber, whose music he respected and promoted.
Joan Tower is a Grammy-winning contemporary American composer, concert pianist and conductor. Lauded by The New Yorker as "one of the most successful woman composers of all time", her bold and energetic compositions have been performed in concert halls around the world. After gaining recognition for her first orchestral composition, Sequoia (1981), a tone poem which structurally depicts a giant tree from trunk to needles, she has gone on to compose a variety of instrumental works including Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, which is something of a response to Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, the Island Prelude, five string quartets, and an assortment of other tone poems. Tower was pianist and founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning Da Capo Chamber Players, which commissioned and premiered many of her early works, including her widely performed Petroushskates.
John Harris Harbison is an American composer, known for his symphonies, operas, and large choral works.
Sinfonia concertante is an orchestral work, normally in several movements, in which one or more solo instruments contrast with the full orchestra. It emerged as a musical form during the Classical period of Western music from the Baroque concerto grosso. Sinfonia concertante encompasses the symphony and the concerto genres, a concerto in that soloists are on prominent display, and a symphony in that the soloists are nonetheless discernibly a part of the total ensemble and not preeminent. Sinfonia concertante is the ancestor of the double and triple concerti of the Romantic period corresponding approximately to the 19th century.
Susan Milan is an English professor of flute of the Royal College of Music, classical performer, recording artiste, composer, author and entrepreneur.
Ruth Dorothy Louisa ("Wid") Gipps was an English composer, oboist, pianist, conductor and educator. She composed music in a wide range of genres, including five symphonies, seven concertos and many chamber and choral works. She founded both the London Repertoire Orchestra and the Chanticleer Orchestra and served as conductor and music director for the City of Birmingham Choir. Later in her life she served as chairwoman of the Composers' Guild of Great Britain.
Sir Andrzej Panufnik was a Polish composer and conductor. He became established as one of the leading Polish composers, and as a conductor he was instrumental in the re-establishment of the Warsaw Philharmonic orchestra after World War II. After his increasing frustration with the extra-musical demands made on him by the country's regime, he defected to the United Kingdom in 1954, and took up British citizenship. In 1957, he became chief conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, a post he relinquished after two years to devote all his time to composition.
Roberto Sierra is a Puerto Rican composer of contemporary classical music.
Valery Popov is a Russian bassoonist, described as the foremost of his era in Russia in his Grove Music Online entry.
Margaret Ruth Fingerhut is a British classical pianist. She is known for her innovative recital programmes and recordings in which she explores lesser known piano repertoire.
Huw Thomas Watkins is a British composer and pianist. Born in South Wales, he studied piano and composition at Chetham's School of Music in Manchester, where he received piano lessons from Peter Lawson. He then went on to read music at King's College, Cambridge, where he studied composition with Robin Holloway and Alexander Goehr, and completed an MMus in composition at the Royal College of Music, where he studied with Julian Anderson. Huw Watkins was awarded the Constant and Kit Lambert Junior Fellowship at the Royal College of Music, where he used to teach composition. He is currently Honorary Research Fellow at the Royal College of Music.
Karl Aage Rasmussen is a Danish composer and writer.
John W. Downey was a contemporary classical composer, conductor, pianist and educator. His works have been performed extensively in Western and Eastern Europe, South America, Australia, Africa, the Middle East, Israel, Asia, Mexico, and Canada, as well as throughout the United States.
Philip Edward Fisher is an English classical pianist.
Richard Fleischman is an American violist and viola d'amore player, conductor and pedagogue.
The Bassoon Concerto, composed by Andrzej Panufnik in 1985, is a concerto for bassoon and orchestra dedicated to Jerzy Popiełuszko, an anti-communist Polish priest who was murdered by three secret police agents in 1984. The work was commissioned by the American bassoonist Robert Thompson.
Clare Hammond is a British concert pianist. In 2016, she was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society's Young Artist award.
The bassoon repertoire consists of pieces of music composed for bassoon as a principal instrument that may be performed with or without other instruments. Below is a non-exhaustive list of major works for the bassoon.
Philip Sawyers is a British composer of orchestral and chamber music, including six symphonies.
The Cello Concerto is a composition for cello and orchestra by the composer Andrzej Panufnik. The work was commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra for the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. Its world premiere was performed by Rostropovich and the London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Hugh Wolff on 24 June 1992. The concerto was Panufnik's last completed composition, which was finished just two weeks before his death on 27 October 1991.
