Klaus Döring's Classical Music/Klaus Döring's Klassische Musik

by   Maureen Buja We’ve noted many times the fascination the northern Europeans had with southern Europe: musical trips to Greece, Italy, and Spain seemed to be   de rigeur   in the 19th century if you were Scandinavian, German, or French. French composer Édouard Lalo (1823-1892) was born in Lille; his father had been a member of Napoleon’s army. His fascination with Spain culminated in his  Symphonie espagnole , Op. 21, which really isn’t a symphony, but is now considered a violin concerto. The use of Spanish motifs set the tone for the northern fascination with Spain, with Bizet’s  Carmen , which had its premiere at the Opéra-Comique in Paris only a month after Lalo’s work. Pierre Petit:  Édouard Lalo , 1965 (Gallica: btv1b8421663h) The work was written for the Spanish virtuoso violinist Pablo Sarasate and received its premiere in Paris on 7 December 1875. Its five-movement structure and its symphony name caused many early 20th-ce...

 by Hermione Lai It’s not really common knowledge, but   Georges Bizet   was an absolutely brilliant pianist. He entered the class of Antoine-François Marmontel at the Paris Conservatoire at the age of nine, eventually winning Premiers Prix for piano, organ, fugue, and composition. Young Georges Bizet, 1860 In 1861 Bizet met Franz Liszt and sight-read a fearsomely difficult work that Liszt had just performed. Liszt commented, “my young friend, I had thought that there were only two men capable of struggling victoriously against the difficulties with which I enjoyed peppering this piece; I was mistaken; there are three of us, and the youngest of us is perhaps the boldest and most brilliant.”  In terms of praise, it doesn’t get any better! However, Bizet performed very little in public as he was not interested in a career as a concert pianist. “I find the performer’s trade an odious one,” he wrote to a friend. He also feared that being labelled a virtuoso mi...

  Meet the inspiring composer who died tragically young Lili Boulanger was one of the most talented composers of the 20th century, until her untimely death at the age of 24.  Picture: Alamy By Classic FM @ClassicFM   Lili Boulanger was one of the most exciting composers of the early 20th century, until she died at just 24. Here’s everything you need to know about her life, music, and how her influence lives on today.  Born on 21 August 1893, Marie-Juliette Olga ‘Lili’ Boulanger was one of the  21st century ’s brightest stars in music and the arts. A promising talent from a very early age, Boulanger was a multi-instrumentalist and pioneering composer, who shared her musical genius with the world right up to her untimely death in 1918, at just 24 years old. Lili was part of the musically-gifted Boulanger family Lili Boulanger was born to a prodigious family of musicians, so it’s no wonder she followed the family tradition with several generations’ worth of musical...