AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

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(Jörd’-ji Koor-tag) b. 1926 Hungarian composer Kurtág’s music is unusual for the depth and intensity with which it addresses human concerns. He has never been interested in forging new musical paths and often revisits familiar territory. The one abiding concern of his work is to strip away everything that is inessential structurally or emotionally (Messages of the Late R.V. Troussova ...

• 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
• Contemporary Classical
• Instrumentalist

b. 1970 Norwegian pianist A Eurovision Young Musicians finalist in 1988, he performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 1989, made his Proms debut in 1991, and has since appeared regularly with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and other major orchestras. Praised especially for his Grieg performances, his repertoire also embraces Mozart, Schubert, ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Conductor
• Contemporary Classical

b. 1952 English composer and conductor Knussen gained initial public attention at 15 conducting his own First Symphony with the London Symphony Orchestra. He then studied composition in the US, achieving success not long after his return with the fantasy operas Where the Wild Things Are (1979–83) and Higglety Pigglety Pop! (1984–85), based on the children’s books by Maurice ...

• Classical
• Contemporary Classical

After the devastation wrought in Europe by World War II, the urgent task of rebuilding the continent’s war-torn urban fabric demanded radical solutions. These were found in the centralized urban planning advocated before the war by architects such as Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Writing in 1953, the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928–2007) created an explicit analogy ...