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(Achille) Claude Debussy was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Henry Kenneth Alfred Russell was a British film director, known for his pioneering work in television and film and for his flamboyant and controversial style. His films in the main were liberal adaptations of existing texts, or biographies, notably of composers of the Romantic era. Russell began directing for the BBC, where he made creative adaptations of composers' lives which were unusual for the time. He also directed many feature films independently and for studios.
Women in Love is a 1969 British romantic drama film directed by Ken Russell and starring Alan Bates, Oliver Reed, Glenda Jackson, and Jennie Linden. The film was adapted by Larry Kramer from D.H. Lawrence's 1920 novel Women in Love. It was the first film to be released by Brandywine Productions.
Robert Oliver Reed was an English actor known for his well-to-do, macho image and "hellraiser" lifestyle. After making his first significant screen appearances in Hammer Horror films in the early 1960s, his notable films include The Trap (1966), playing Bill Sikes in the 1968 Best Picture Oscar winner Oliver!, Women in Love (1969), Hannibal Brooks (1969), The Devils (1971), portraying Athos in The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974); the lover and stepfather in Tommy (1975), Funny Bones (1995) and Gladiator (2000).
Amédée-Ernest Chausson was a French Romantic composer who died just as his career was beginning to flourish.
The Devils is a 1971 British historical drama horror film written, produced and directed by Ken Russell, and starring Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave. A dramatised historical account of the fall of Urbain Grandier, a 17th-century Roman Catholic priest accused of witchcraft after the possessions in Loudun, France, the plot also focuses on Sister Jeanne des Anges, a sexually repressed nun who incites the accusations.
The Music Lovers is a 1971 British drama film directed by Ken Russell and starring Richard Chamberlain and Glenda Jackson. The screenplay by Melvyn Bragg, based on Beloved Friend, a collection of personal correspondence edited by Catherine Drinker Bowen and Barbara von Meck, focuses on the life and career of 19th-century Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. It was one of the director's biographical films about classical composers, which include Elgar (1962), Delius: Song of Summer (1968), Mahler (1974) and Lisztomania (1975), made from an often idiosyncratic standpoint.
Tommy is a 1975 British satirical operetta fantasy drama film written and directed by Ken Russell and based upon The Who's 1969 rock opera album Tommy about a "psychosomatically deaf, mute, and blind" boy who becomes a pinball champion and religious leader. The film featured a star-studded ensemble cast, including the band members themselves, Ann-Margret, Oliver Reed, Eric Clapton, Tina Turner, Elton John, and Jack Nicholson.
Emma Bardac was a French singer and the mutual love interest of both Gabriel Fauré and Claude Debussy.
Vladek Sheybal was a Polish character actor, singer and director of both television and stage productions. He was well known for his portrayal of the chess grandmaster Kronsteen in the James Bond film From Russia with Love (1963), a role for which he had been personally recommended by his friend Sean Connery, and as Otto Leipzig in Smiley's People (1982).
Savage Messiah is a 1972 British biographical drama film of the life of French sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, made by Russ-Arts and distributed by MGM. It was directed and produced by Ken Russell, with Harry Benn as associate producer, from a screenplay by Christopher Logue, based on the 1931 book Savage Messiah by H. S. Ede. Much of the content of Ede's book came from letters sent between Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and his lover Sophie Brzeska.
Murray Melvin was an English actor. He was best known for his acting work with Joan Littlewood, Ken Russell and Stanley Kubrick. He was the author of two books: The Art of Theatre Workshop (2006) and The Theatre Royal, A History of the Building (2009).
Des pas sur la neige is a musical composition by French composer Claude Debussy. It is the sixth piece in the composer's first book of Préludes, written between late 1909 and early 1910. The title is in French and translates to "Footprints in the Snow" The piece is 36 measures long and takes approximately three and a half to four and a half minutes to play. It is in the key of D minor. The prelude was, along with Danseuses de Delphes, one of the preludes Debussy believed should be played "entre quatre-z-yeux" meaning intimately, as if privately.
Song of Summer is a 1968 black-and-white television film co-written, produced, and directed by Ken Russell for the BBC's Omnibus series which was first broadcast on 15 September 1968. It portrays the final six years of Frederick Delius' life, during which Eric Fenby lived with the composer and his wife Jelka as Delius's amanuensis. The title is borrowed from the Delius tone poem A Song of Summer, which is heard along with other Delius works on the film's soundtrack.
Pour le piano, L. 95, is a suite for solo piano by Claude Debussy. It consists of three individually composed movements, Prélude, Sarabande and Toccata. The suite was completed and published in 1901. It was premiered on 11 January 1902 at the Salle Érard, played by Ricardo Viñes. Maurice Ravel orchestrated the middle movement.
Edward Lockspeiser was an English musicologist, composer, art critic and radio broadcaster on music who specialized in the works and life of French composer Claude Debussy and was considered one of the few British authorities on French classical music. Lockspeiser studied at the Paris Conservatory between 1922 and 1926 with Alexandre Tansman and Nadia Boulanger and at the Royal College of Music in London from 1929 to 1930 with Charles Herbert Kitson and Malcolm Sargent. He was voted into the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1948 for his services to French music.
Claude Debussy's Six sonatas for various instruments was a projected cycle of sonatas that was interrupted by the composer's death in 1918, after he had composed only half of the projected sonatas. He left behind his sonatas for cello and piano (1915), flute, viola and harp (1915), and violin and piano (1916–1917).
Always on Sunday is a 1965 British television film directed by Ken Russell about Henri Rousseau. It was written by Russell and Melvyn Bragg for the Monitor series. Russell's first fully dramatised biopic, the narrator was Oliver Reed.
The Secret Life of Arnold Bax is a 1992 British TV movie directed by Ken Russell, who also stars in the title role as composer Arnold Bax. It was one of eight musical drama documentaries directed by Russell for The South Bank Show on London Weekend Television between 1983 and 2002. The film focuses on the composer's complicated relationship with pianist Harriet Cohen while at the same time seeking inspiration for his music from the dancer Annie. As with all of Russell's films on composers the drama serves as a showcase for the music. Set in 1948, when the film Oliver Twist had just been released, the film mostly uses earlier compositions such as The Garden of Fand, Tintagel and the Symphony No 2 as its soundtrack. Lewis Foreman was musical adviser.
Alison Mary Fiske was an English actress, who won Actress of the Year in a New Play at the 1977 Laurence Olivier Awards for playing Fish in Dusa, Fish, Stats and Vi. She was also nominated in the 1979 Laurence Olivier Awards for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for playing Evie in For Services Rendered, and she won awards for her television performance in Helen: A Woman of Today.
