Spring (Vesna), Op. 20, is a single-movement cantata for baritone, chorus and orchestra, written by Sergei Rachmaninoff in 1902.
The work was finished after the famous Second Piano Concerto. Rachmaninoff intended to revise the cantata's orchestration but never did so.
The work is based on a poem by Nikolay Nekrasov and describes the return of the Zelyoniy shum, or "green rustle". The poem tells of a husband who, fraught with murderous thoughts towards his unfaithful wife during the winter season, is ultimately freed from his frustration and choler by the return of spring.
Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music. Early influences of Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and other Russian composers gave way to a thoroughly personal idiom notable for its song-like melodicism, expressiveness, dense contrapuntal textures, and rich orchestral colours. The piano is featured prominently in Rachmaninoff's compositional output and he used his skills as a performer to fully explore the expressive and technical possibilities of the instrument.
Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30, was composed in the summer of 1909. The piece was premiered on November 28 of that year in New York City with the composer as soloist, accompanied by the New York Symphony Society under Walter Damrosch. The work has the reputation of being one of the most technically challenging piano concertos in the standard classical piano repertoire.
Ottorino Respighi was an Italian composer, violinist, teacher, and musicologist and one of the leading Italian composers of the early 20th century. His compositions range over operas, ballets, orchestral suites, choral songs, chamber music, and transcriptions of Italian compositions of the 16th–18th centuries, but his best known and most performed works are his three orchestral tone poems which brought him international fame: Fountains of Rome (1916), Pines of Rome (1924), and Roman Festivals (1928).
Arnold Böcklin was a Swiss Symbolist painter.
The Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18, is a concerto for piano and orchestra composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff between June 1900 and April 1901. The piece established his fame as a concerto composer and is one of his most enduringly popular pieces.
Six moments musicaux, Op. 16, is a set of solo piano pieces composed by the Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff between October and December 1896. Each Moment musical reproduces a musical form characteristic of a previous musical era. The forms that appear in Rachmaninoff's incarnation are the nocturne, song without words, barcarolle, virtuoso étude, and theme and variations.
Francesca da Rimini, Op. 25, is an opera in a prologue, two tableaux and an epilogue by Sergei Rachmaninoff to a Russian libretto by Modest Ilyich Tchaikovsky. It is based on the story of Francesca da Rimini in the fifth canto of Dante's epic poem The Inferno. The fifth canto is the part about the Second Circle of Hell (Lust). Rachmaninoff had composed the love duet for Francesca and Paolo in 1900, but did not resume work on the opera until 1904. The first performance was on 24 January 1906 at the Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow, with the composer himself conducting, in a double-bill performance with another Rachmaninoff opera written contemporaneously, The Miserly Knight.
The Yellow River Cantata is a cantata by Chinese composer Xian Xinghai (1905–1945). Composed in Yan'an in early 1939 during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the work was inspired by a patriotic poem by Guang Weiran, which was also adapted as the lyrics. Premiered on April 13 of the same year in the Shanbei Gongxue Hall of Yan'an, the work soon spread to all parts of China.
Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 1 in D minor, his Op. 13, was composed between January and October 1895 at his Ivanovka estate near Tambov, Russia. Despite its poor initial reception, the symphony is now seen as a dynamic representation of the Russian symphonic tradition, with British composer Robert Simpson calling it "a powerful work in its own right, stemming from Borodin and Tchaikovsky, but convinced, individual, finely constructed, and achieving a genuinely tragic and heroic expression that stands far above the pathos of his later music."
Piano Concerto No. 4 in G minor, Op. 40, is a major work by Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, completed in 1926. The work exists in three versions. Following its unsuccessful premiere, the composer made cuts and other amendments before publishing it in 1928. With continued lack of success, he withdrew the work, eventually revising and republishing it in 1941. The original manuscript version was released in 2000 by the Rachmaninoff Estate to be published and recorded. The work is dedicated to Nikolai Medtner, who in turn dedicated his Second Piano Concerto to Rachmaninoff the following year.
Suite No. 1 in G minor, Op. 5, is a suite for two pianos written by Sergei Rachmaninoff. The suite was a musical depiction of four poems written in the summer of 1893 at the Lysikof estate in Lebeden, Kharkov. The premiere took place in Moscow, on November 30, 1893, played by Rachmaninoff himself alongside Pavel Pabst. The work was dedicated to Tchaikovsky, who intended to attend the work's premiere, but died five weeks prior. Its four movements alongside their respective poems are as follows:
Monna Vanna is an unfinished opera by Sergei Rachmaninoff after a play by Maurice Maeterlinck. Rachmaninoff had completed Act I in short vocal score, with piano accompaniment, and then he went to ask for permission to set the text in a full three-act treatment. However, another composer, Henry Février, had by then received the rights to an operatic setting of the text. Had Rachmaninoff proceeded to a complete operatic setting, such a work could not have been produced in European countries that were signatories to copyright laws that covered the work of Maeterlinck. This opera could only have been produced in countries that at the time were not signatories to European copyright law, such as Russia. Ultimately, Rachmaninoff abandoned further work on this opera and never wrote a complete setting.
Georgy Vasilyevich Sviridov was a Soviet and Russian neoromantic composer. He is most widely known for his choral music, strongly influenced by the traditional chant of the Russian Orthodox Church, as well as his orchestral works which often celebrate elements of Russian culture.
The Golden Legend is an 1886 cantata by Arthur Sullivan with libretto by Joseph Bennett, based on the 1851 poem of the same name by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The piece premiered at the triennial Leeds Music Festival. At least 17 performances of the cantata were given in Britain during the first year after its premiere in October 1886, and during Sullivan's lifetime it was widely considered his greatest and most successful work of serious music. Indeed, outside of the comic operas with W. S. Gilbert, this cantata was widely regarded as Sullivan's most successful large-scale composition.
Patrick Arthur Sheldon Hadley was a British composer.
The Rock, Op. 7 (Utyos) is a fantasia or symphonic poem for orchestra written by Sergei Rachmaninoff in the summer of 1893. It is dedicated to Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
The Bells, Op. 35, is a choral symphony by Sergei Rachmaninoff, written in 1913 and premiered in St Petersburg on 30 November that year under the composer's baton. The words are from the poem The Bells by Edgar Allan Poe, very freely translated into Russian by the symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont. The traditional Gregorian melody Dies Irae is used frequently throughout the work. It was one of Rachmaninoff's two favorite compositions, along with his All-Night Vigil, and is considered by some to be his secular choral masterpiece. Rachmaninoff called the work both a choral symphony and (unofficially) his Third Symphony shortly after writing it; however, he would later write a purely instrumental Third Symphony at his new villa in Switzerland. Rachmaninoff dedicated The Bells to Dutch conductor Willem Mengelberg and the Concertgebouw Orchestra. The US Premiere of the work was given by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra and Chorus on 6 February 1920 and the UK Premiere by Sir Henry Wood and the Liverpool Philharmonic and Chorus on 15 March 1921.
Musical quotation is the practice of directly quoting another work in a new composition. The quotation may be from the same composer's work (self-referential), or from a different composer's work (appropriation).
The Three Russian Songs, Op. 41 for chorus and orchestra were written by Sergei Rachmaninoff in 1926. It is the last of Rachmaninoff's three works for chorus and orchestra, the others being the cantata Spring, Op. 20 (1902), and the choral symphony The Bells, Op. 35 (1913). The work takes about 15 minutes to perform.
Henryk Opieński was a Polish composer, violinist, teacher, administrator and musicologist. His writings on, and collected letters by, Frédéric Chopin, were considered of paramount importance in Chopin studies of the time.
