C lassical C omposers (R)Classical music (and some jazz and folk)
from Leonarda |
| Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) Prelude in C-sharp Minor, Op. 3, No. 2 (solo piano), audio sample mp3 from Leonarda CD #LE344. Dianne Goolkasian Rahbee (b.1938), a first generation Armenian-American, began early piano studies in Boston and continued her education at the Juilliard School and the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria. At age 40, she began composing more seriously, and has since produced a large body of works for solo piano, orchestra, ensemble, percussion, voice, and various instrumental concerti. Her music has been performed internationally to critical acclaim. Dianne Goolkasian Rahbee's music reflects her background in its mixture of ethnic influences and formal Western musical training. Her pianistic writing follows a style of the traditional keyboard repertoire using an idiom akin to Prokofieff, Scriabin, and Khachaturian. Her neo-tonal musical language is wed to a strong sense of rhythmic drive, creating highly communicative and effective concert pieces. Three Preludes, Op.68 (solo piano). Audio sample mp3a; mp3b from Leonarda CD #LE345. Flicka Rahn (b. 1944, Corpus Christi, Texas), an accomplished teacher of voice, is Associate Professor of Music at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. She has also served on the faculties of Brandeis University, the Boston Conservatory of Music, and University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio. Ms. Rahn's art songs have been published in the Southern Music Company series "Art Songs by American Women Composers," and her choral works have been performed throughout South Texas. Ms. Rahn's singing career includes opera and oratorio as well as recitals. She has performed American art songs and her own compositions throughout the U.S., Europe, South America and Asia. Ms. Rahn holds degrees from Washington University in St. Louis (BME), Texas State University (MM) and Texas A&M-Kingsville (MS in Counseling). Vicarious and Shore Grass (soprano and piano). Audio sample mp3 from Leonarda CD #LE357. Priaulx Rainier (1903-1986) was born at Howick, Natal, South Africa, of English-Huguenot parents. Her early childhood was spent in a remote part of the country near Zululand, where the liquid language and music of the indigenous people, the sounds of wild animals and the calls of the birds were to prove a lasting influence. She entered the South African College of Music as a violin student at the age of ten, and in 1920 entered the Royal Academy of Music in London, where she settled permanently. Necessity required her to earn her living as a violinist. After a serious car accident in 1935, she turned exclusively to composition, aided by a grant and with the encouragement of composer Sir Arnold Bax. She studied briefly with Boulanger in Paris on a scholarship before the outbreak of World War II. In 1942 Priaulx Rainer was appointed a Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music, a post she held until 1961. Rainier's numerous honors include commissions from the BBC, Peter Pears, and Yehudi Menuhin. The BBC broadcast a retrospective concert featuring her chamber works in 1973, and in 1976 recorded and broadcast her complete chamber music. Quartet for Strings audio sample mp3 from Leonarda CD #LE336. Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) Pièce en Forme de Habanera for flute (or violin) and piano. Audio sample mp3 from Leonarda CD #LE333. Louise Reichardt (1779-1826) (Germany) Hier liegt ein Spielmann begraben, audio sample mp3 and Betteley der Vögel, audio sample mp3 are on double CD #LE353. The following works are on LP #LPI 112 (2 LP-set): Tre Canzoni (Giusto Amor, Notturno, Vanne felice rio), Hier liegt ein Spielmann begraben, Betteley der Vögel, Die Blume der Blumen, Bergmannslied, Heimweh (tenor and piano); and Duettino (two tenors and piano). Marga Richter (b.
Wisconsin, 1926) received her early musical training in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
She earned her Bachelors and Masters Degrees from the Julliard School,
where she majored in piano with Rosalyn Tureck and composition with Vincent
Persichetti. Her music has been played by more than fifty orchestras,
including concert performances by the Atlanta and Milwaukee Symphonies,
the Minnesota Orchestra and the Buffalo Philharmonic; and recordings by
the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, the Czech Radio
Symphony Orchestra and the Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestra. Bernard Rogers (1893-1968) taught at the Eastman School of Music for many years, becoming chairman of the composition department. Early in his career, he was a member of the editorial staff of Musical America. His first ambition was to become an artist, and he continued to paint as a hobby throughout his life. His interest in art, especially in Japanese prints, continued to influence his music. Soliloquy (solo flute). Audio sample mp3 from Leonarda CD #LE333. Ned Rorem (b.1923): Born in Richmond, Indiana and reared in Chicago, Ned Rorem attended Northwestern University where, many years later, he received his first honorary doctorate. He also studied at The Curtis Institute and at Juilliard (M.A. degree 1948). Soon after, Rorem moved to Morocco and then to France where he lived until 1958. A Pulitzer Prize winner, Rorem has also been the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships, three Ford Foundation grants, several grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a grant from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters (to which he was elected a member in 1979). His instrumental pieces have been conducted by such international artists as Bernstein, Mitropoulos, Ormandy, Paray, Mehta, Reiner, Steinberg, and Stokowski. Trio (1959) ( flute, cello and piano). Audio sample mp3 from Leonarda CD #LE330. Martin Rosenberg (d. 1943) conducted a worker's chorus under the pseudonym of Rosebery d'Arguto in a suburb of Berlin before the war. In 1939, he was arrested as a socialist and a Jew and sent to Sachsenhausen, where he was brutally tortured. He later formed a chorus of 25 Jewish prisoners that carried out their activities in secret in the less guarded barracks for political prisoners. In 1942, when he discovered that the Jewish prisoners were to be sent to Auschwitz, he wrote the words to Tsen Brider, setting them to the melody of the old Yiddish folk song "Yidl mit dem Fidl." Rosenberg and his chorus died in the gas chambers in 1943. This song was passed down by a non-Jewish prisoner at Sachsenhausen, Alexander Kulisiewicz, who survived the war. Rosenberg asked him not to forget Tsen Brider, and if he should survive, to sing the song and through it tell the world of the suffering in the death camps. Tsen Brider (voice and piano), audio sample mp3 from Leonarda CD #LE342. Rudd, Dorothy (see Moore, Dorothy Rudd) Vivian Adelberg Rudow (b.1936), a Baltimore-based
composer, conductor, concert producer, and pianist, received a Master
of Music degree from the Peabody Conservatory of Music of Johns Hopkins
University. She was the first Maryland composer to receive an orchestral
performance in Baltimore's Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (Baltimore Symphony,
1982). Rudow's awards include First Prize in the 1986 14th International
Electroacoustic Music Competition, program division (Bourges, France),
two Baltimore CityArts Awards; the Maryland State Arts Council Fellowship;
and ASCAP awards each year since 1987. Rudow's music has been performed
in Asia, Cuba, Europe, Eastern Europe, Puerto Rico and the United States.
Writing in genres ranging from electronic, solo instrument, and chamber,
to full orchestra, Rudow is a "Sound Portrait Painter," creating
sound canvases of life. She uses music to express lives and feelings of
people using musical language they can understand. Rebecca's Suite |
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