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• Major Operas
• Modern Era
• Opera

The Cranks abduct Fata Morgana. The rat is found on the princess’s throne. Celio somehow changes it back into Ninetta. The traitors are condemned, but escape. Personalities | Sergei Prokofiev | Modern Era | Opera ...

• Major Operas
• Modern Era
• Opera

Pierre is told that Hélène and Andrey are dead, but life is returning to Moscow. The Russian people, led by Kutuzov, celebrate their victory. Personalities | Sergei Prokofiev | Modern Era | Opera ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Modern Era

he played himself) while still a student. He soon attracted the attention of Diaghilev, who commissioned a score (Ala and Lolly) for his Ballets Russes, but rejected it: Prokofiev had imitated Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring too closely. In rapid succession he then wrote Chout (‘The Clown’, 1915), a ballet in his ironic, strongly rhythmic manner, an ...

• Personalities
• Modern Era
• Opera

1891–1953, Russian One of the most accessible and well known of twentieth-century Russian composers, Prokofiev merged an experimental approach with melodic conventionality to create music that was distinct in its national style. A fine pianist and impetuous personality who studied orchestration at the St Petersburg Academy with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1909), Prokofiev wrote three childhood operas by the age of ...

• Instruments
• Keyboards

just below bérets and louche moustaches. Despite its association with popular music, it has quite often found its way into concert-hall compositions by, among others, Berg, Prokofiev, Mátyás Seiber, Paul Creston, Roy Harris, Virgil Thomson and many others. A music school exclusively for accordion teachers was established in Trossingen, Germany, in ...

• Instruments
• Ensembles

flexibility of the piano. The combination of violin and piano has been written for extensively, notably in the sonatas of Mozart, Beethoven, Johannes Brahms (1833–97) and Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953), while partnerships of piano and cello, clarinet or flute have also been very popular. Any acoustic melodic instrument will form an effective combination with a piano, as ...

• Instruments
• Keyboards
• Percussion

a solo instrument in the twentieth-century orchestra – as in Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936) and in the music of Stockhausen, Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–75), Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953) and Pierre Boulez (b. 1925). Marimba The marimba appears to have been largely unknown in Europe until the manufacture of orchestral instruments from 1910, but it has become ...

• Instruments
• Classical
• Modern Era

The twentieth century saw the piano return to the orchestra: notable works including the orchestral piano are Kodály’s Háry János (1926), Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony and Orff’s Carmina Burana (1937). Modern composers realized that, as it creates sound with hammers that strike strings, the piano is technically a member of the percussion family. Indeed, in Grainger’s The Warriors (1916) ...

• Instruments
• Percussion

Bass Drum The dominant feature of every military band is its big bass drum. Throughout the history of percussion instruments, this drum has been the mainstay of time-keeping, whether it is used for a marching army or in a late-twentieth century heavy metal band. Early versions of the bass drum (it was certainly known in Asia around 3500 BC) ...

• Instruments
• Classical
• Modern Era

The most widely used tuned percussion in early twentieth-century classical music are the timpani. These instruments, often called ‘kettledrums’, are metal hemispheres with a tense membrane (formerly leather, now plastic) across the top and are tuned to play a single note. An instrument with military origins (as the timpani/trumpets combination in Monteverdi’s Orfeo, 1607, reminds us), timpani ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Modern Era

1902–83 English composer After singing in the choir at Christ Church, Oxford, Walton became an undergraduate there, his talent attracting the attention of the Sitwell family (the poets Edith and Osbert and their writer brother Sacheverell). They supported him for 10 years, enabling him to write music at leisure until he earned enough to become independent. At ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Contemporary Classical
• Singer

b. 1971 Russian-Austrian soprano After studies at the Conservatory in St Petersburg, she made her stage debut in 1994 at the Kirov (now Mariinsky) Opera, of which she remains a company member. Her US debut a year later (San Francisco) was followed by appearances at Covent Garden, Salzburg and the Metropolitan Opera (2002). She excels in both Italian ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Conductor
• Contemporary Classical

1979–96, music director of the Vienna State Opera 1986–91, and principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra 1990–2002. A renowned interpreter of Verdi in his early career, Prokofiev and Stravinsky in mid-career, and Mahler in his later career, he was also founding artistic director of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra (2003) and the Orchestra Mozart (2004). Introduction ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Modern Era

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 Union, but ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Modern Era

monologue of a woman abandoned by her lover. Recommended Recording: Édition du 50e anniversaire, Various Artists incl. Francis Poulenc (EMI/Erato) Introduction | Modern Era | Classical Personalities | Sergei Prokofiev | Modern Era | Classical ...