Thursday, May 14, 2015

The Great Conductors in Rehearsal

great conductors in rehearsal

Riccardo Chailly

(C) Classic FM London

Friday, April 24, 2015

Carl Zeller - His Music and His Life

The Austrian Carl Zeller was born on June 19, 1842 in St. Peter in der Au. He became a Viennese vocalist boy and later a jurist. Since 1873, Zeller was art consultant of the Austrian Department of Education. Music remained just as a hobby during that time.

Then suddenly, Carl Zeller started composing mall chorals, a comique opera and begun with operettas sometime in 1890. 1891, Zeller succeeded his "Der Vogelhaendler" ("The Birdseller"), followed by "Der Obersteiger" ("The Upper Foreman", in 1894). Those operettas became musical universal history because of enticing traditionalism.

In some compositions Zeller showed a terrible sentimental Austrian mawkishness. He passed away in Baden nearby Vienna on August 17, 1898.

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Blind Test: Can You Recognize the Sound of a Stradivarius?


Just how good does a Stradivarius sound, and could you pick one out in a blind test? The Strad magazine staged one to find out.
image: http://assets7.classicfm.com/2010/04/stradivarius-violin-1264422192-article-0.jpg
Stradivarius violin
Earlier this month, The Strad magazine got the leader of the London Symphony Orchestra to play six different violins in a blind test - one of them being a legendary Stradivarius model from 1709.

Listen to the test below and see if you can work out which violin is the Stradivarius - you might be surprised…
The other violins that you can hear are an 1850 Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, a 1923 Giuseppe Fiorini, a modern Del Gesù copy, a Mirecourt French trade violin from around 1900 and an 1835 A.S.P. Bernardel.

Visit The Strad's feature on the experiment to find out more about what happened.

Der Vogelhändler (Medley); Carl Zeller (1842-1898)