Gioachino Antonio Rossini was an Italian composer who gained fame for his 39 operas, although he also wrote many songs, some chamber music and piano pieces and some sacred music. He set new standards for both comic and serious opera before retiring from large-scale composition while still in his thirties, at the height of his popularity.
In music, a cadenza, is, generically, an improvised or written-out ornamental passage played or sung by a soloist(s), usually in a "free" rhythmic style, and often allowing virtuosic display. During this time the accompaniment will rest, or sustain a note or chord. Thus an improvised cadenza is indicated in written notation by a fermata in all parts. A cadenza will usually occur over either the final or penultimate note in a piece, the lead-in, or the final or penultimate note in an important subsection of a piece. A cadenza can also be found before a final coda or ritornello.
Joseph Joachim Raff was a German-Swiss composer, pedagogue and pianist.
William Tell is a French-language opera in four acts by Italian composer Gioachino Rossini to a libretto by Victor-Joseph Étienne de Jouy and L. F. Bis, based on Friedrich Schiller's play Wilhelm Tell, which, in turn, drew on the William Tell legend. The opera was Rossini's last, although he lived for nearly 40 more years. Fabio Luisi said that Rossini planned for Guillaume Tell to be his last opera even as he composed it. The often-performed overture in four sections features a depiction of a storm and a vivacious finale, the "March of the Swiss Soldiers".
The Band Concert is a 1935 American animated short film produced in 3-strip Technicolor by Walt Disney Productions and released by United Artists. The 73rd short film in the Mickey Mouse series, it was the second release of the year, and notable as the first in the series to be produced in color.
Humphrey Searle was an English composer and writer on music. His music combines aspects of late Romanticism and modernist serialism, particularly reminiscent of his primary influences, Franz Liszt, Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, who was briefly his teacher. As a writer on music, Searle published texts on numerous topics; he was an authority on the music of Franz Liszt, and created the initial cataloguing system for his works.
William Alwyn, was an English composer, conductor, and music teacher.
The China Philharmonic Orchestra is an orchestra founded in Beijing, China, on May 25, 2000, based on the previous China Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra. It is a division of the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT) of the People's Republic of China.
Franz Theodor Reizenstein was a German-born British composer and concert pianist. He left Germany for sanctuary in Britain in 1934 and went on to have his teaching and performing career there. As a composer, he successfully blended the equally strong but very different influences of his primary teachers, Hindemith and Vaughan Williams.
Bugs Bunny Rides Again is a 1948 Merrie Melodies animated short directed by Friz Freleng. The short was released on June 12, 1948, and stars Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam.
Symphony No. 34 in C major, K. 338, was written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1780, and completed on 29 August that year.
Paul William Whear was an American composer, conductor, music educator, and double-bassist.
The Symphony No. 73 in D major, Hoboken 1/73, is a symphony by Joseph Haydn composed in 1782. It is often known by the subtitle La chasse due to the hunting horn calls in the final movement, a popular trope in eighteenth century music.
The Symphony No. 63 in C major, Hoboken I/63, is a symphony by Joseph Haydn written sometime between 1779 and 1781. It is often known by the title of the second movement, La Roxelane, named for Roxelana, the influential wife of Suleiman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire. This second movement was originally part of Haydn's incidental music for Charles Simon Favart's stage work Soliman der zweite in which Roxelana was a character.
Les préludes, S.97, is the third of Franz Liszt's thirteen symphonic poems. The music was composed between 1845 and 1854, and began as an overture to Liszt's choral cycle Les quatre élémens, then revised as a stand-alone concert overture, with a new title referring to a poem by Alphonse de Lamartine. Its premiere was on 23 February 1854, conducted by Liszt himself. The score was published in 1856 by Breitkopf & Härtel. Les préludes is the earliest example of an orchestral work entitled "Symphonic Poem".
The symphonic poems of the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt are a series of 13 orchestral works, numbered S.95–107. The first 12 were composed between 1848 and 1858 ; the last, Von der Wiege bis zum Grabe, followed in 1882. These works helped establish the genre of orchestral program music—compositions written to illustrate an extra-musical plan derived from a play, poem, painting or work of nature. They inspired the symphonic poems of Bedřich Smetana, Antonín Dvořák, Richard Strauss and others.
Bugs Bunny's Overtures to Disaster is a Looney Tunes television special directed by Greg Ford and Terry Lennon. In new animation, Jeff Bergman voiced Bugs, Daffy, Porky, Elmer and Sylvester. The special first aired on April 17, 1991 on CBS.
Farmyard Symphony is a 1938 Silly Symphonies animated short film. It can be seen as a precursor to Fantasia due to using various pieces of classical music in one short. The film was directed by Jack Cutting and produced by Walt Disney.
Matinées musicales is a 1941 composition by Benjamin Britten using music composed by Gioachino Rossini in and around the 1830s. The suite is a successor to Britten's earlier suite based on Rossini, Soirées musicales (1937).
Soirées musicales,, Op. 9, is a suite of five movements by Benjamin Britten, using music composed by Gioachino Rossini. The suite, first performed in 1937, derives its title from Rossini's collection of the same name, dating from the early 1830s, from which Britten drew much of the thematic material.
