AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Personalities
• Classical
• Contemporary Classical
• Instrumentalist

b. 1953 Hungarian-British pianist Schiff studied at the Franz Liszt Academy, Budapest, before winning prizes at both the Moscow Tchaikovsky (1974) and Leeds (1975) piano competitions. Having appeared with most of the world’s major orchestras, he has focused increasingly on chamber and solo repertoire, recording the keyboard works of Bach (on the piano), the Mozart and Schubert ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Instrumentalist
• Modern Era

(Ba’-la Bar’-tok) 1881–1945 Hungarian composer and pianist Bartók’s earliest works were influenced by Johannes Brahms (1833–97), by Hungary’s famous Liszt and by Richard Strauss, then regarded as the last word in modernism. Bartók’s personal style, though, was formed by his discovery of Debussy and of Hungarian folk music. The strongly rhythmic, percussive, sharply dissonant music that ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Contemporary Classical
• Instrumentalist

1927–2007 Russian cellist Rostropovich studied at the Moscow Conservatory, where he was appointed professor in 1956, the year of his London and New York debuts. Composers who wrote works for him include Shostakovich and Britten. He left the USSR in 1974. As well as accompanying his wife, the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, on the piano, he frequently ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Modern Era

(D’me’-tre Shus-ta-ko’vich) 1906–75 Russian composer Shostakovich was the first of his country’s composers to come to attention after the Russian Revolution of 1917, and since Stravinsky, Rachmaninov and (until the 1930s) Prokofiev were all living abroad, his early successes made him the great hope of Soviet music. He became associated with the Western-influenced modernist movement in the Soviet ...