Joséphine Baker
Although she had announced her retirement from the stage in 1956, she continued to appear in concerts and on television, and on April 8, 1975, a few days before her death, she celebrated her 50th stage anniversary with the premiere of her show “Joséphine” at the Bobino Theater in Paris.
 

The video shows a live TV appearance of the singer at the German Schlager Festival in 1966.

Maurice Ravel
Ravel’s early works were influenced primarily by Liszt, Chabrier, Fauré and Rimsky-Korsakov. However, his encounter with Claude Debussy, whose “Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune” impressed him, was decisive for his own style. Ravel’s mother came from the Basque Country. The influence of Spanish folklore is therefore just as noticeable in Ravel’s compositions as the influence of jazz. Maurice Ravel also tried five times to win the so-called “Prix de Rome”, which is coveted among young French composers, but each time his compositions were rejected as being too avant-garde. Ravel’s best-known work is certainly his “Boléro”, which was actually written in 1928 as ballet music. He was inspired to write the ballet by Sergei Diaghilev, and the choreography was created by Bronislava Nijinska in 1929.
 

The video shows Ravel’s “Bolero” played by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Gustavo Dudamel at the closing concert of the Lucerne Festival, which was broadcast live in more than 50 cinemas across Europe on September 18, 2010.
 
Read an article about Ravel’s opera “L’enfant et les sortilèges”
from the current issue of “Musikus” here.

Armen Tigranian
composition. In 1902, Tigranian returned to Alexandropol, where he worked as a music teacher, founded a mixed amateur choir, and finally began composing. He incorporated Armenian music into his compositions and created numerous choral arrangements of folk songs. In 1908 and 1912, he composed his masterpiece “Anoush,” the first opera ever performed in Armenia, which premiered on August 4, 1912 by an amateur group in Alexandropol and quickly became a permanent fixture in the repertoire of many opera houses. Today, “Anoush” is generally considered the “national opera of the Armenian people.” After the establishment of the Soviet Union, however, Tigranian had to thoroughly rework the opera to adapt it to the principles of the new populist aesthetic. Tigranian’s other works include a dance suite for symphony orchestra, a cantata, incidental music, choral works, and songs. Tigranian’s second opera, “David Bek”, which he composed between 1941 and 1950, was premiered shortly after his death. For the musical theater, Tigranian translated the libretti of Verdi’s Rigoletto and Bizet’s Carmen into Armenian.
 

The video shows the brass band of the city of Gyumri (formerly Alexandropol) under the direction of Artak Grigoryan playing the overture to Tigranian’s opera “Anoush”.

Richard Tucker
After several unsuccessful auditions at the Metropolitan Opera, he got a contract and made his debut on January 25, 1945 as Enzo in “La Gioconda” at the MET, whose ensemble he was a member of until his death and sang 30 roles in 715 performances. In 1949, Arturo Toscanini chose the still little-known tenor for the role of Radames in his famous recording of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Aida”. His few guest tours took him to the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the Vienna State Opera and La Scala in Milan, among others.
Richard Tucker is considered the last great MET tenor. He is the only one whose funeral has ever taken place on the MET stage.
 

The video shows Richard Tucker with the aria “Guardate pazzo son” from Puccini’s opera “Manon Lescaut” in a live television recording on September 1, 1966.

Domenico Cimarosa


The video shows the Paris Voxmusicorum Orchestra during a tour to Israel with the Concerto for 2 Flutes by Domnico Cimarosa. The soloists are the Irish-American musician couple Sir James & Lady Jeanne Galway, conducted by the Israeli conductor Ada Pelleg.

Vaughan and Duke Ellington. Dizzy Gillespie hired him as orchestra leader for a tour in 1956 and in 1957 he got a contract with ABC-Paramount for his first own album “This Is How I Feel About Jazz”.

After further studies with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, he worked as a producer for the Barclay Records label, where he worked with Jacques Brel, Henri Salvador and Charles Aznavour, among others. In 1958 he led the orchestra for a gala concert by Frank Sinatra in Monaco and in 1959/60 he toured Europe with his “Quincy Jones Big Band”. In addition to his own compositions for various film scores, Quincy Jones made a name for himself as an arranger and producer for numerous jazz and pop musicians. The Michael Jackson album “Thriller”, which he produced in 1982, is still the best-selling music album to this day.

Quincy Jones has received 28 Grammys, an Emmy, a Tony Award, and the Polar Music Prize, among others. In 1995, he received an Honorary Oscar and in 2024 another Honorary Oscar for his lifetime achievement.
 

Quincy Jones live at the Montreux Jazz Festival 1996

Eugene Ormandy
accompanying silent films. In 1924 he stood in for the regular conductor and thereupon chose conducting as his career. He began conducting light classics for radio and appearing at summer concerts, which led to a position as deputy for Arturo Toscanini during a major concert series of the Philadelphia Orchestra. A contract with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra ensued, and he remained there from 1931 to 1936, gaining national prominence with a series of recordings. He returned to the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1936 to share the conductorship with Leopold Stokowski. In 1938 Ormandy was made principal conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, a post that he held until he retired in 1980. Ormandy, who was identified with the Late Romantic and early 20th-century repertoire, shaped the orchestra’s sound by developing the lush, velvety string colour that became its trademark.
 

The video shows Eugene Ormandy conducting “his” Philadelphia Orchestra and the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia Chorus. The recording of Gustav Holst’s suite “The Planets” op.32 was made in 1977 as part of a project for German television.

Charles Ives
In 1894 he began studying composition at Yale University in New Haven. After completing his studies, however, he decided to learn a conventional profession because he believed he had to make musical compromises if he wanted to make a living from music. He became an insurance salesman and founded his own insurance company in 1907. This enabled him to amass a considerable fortune, which he used to finance concerts, publications and recordings by composer friends.
Charles Ives composed music in his free time. However, his penchant for musical experimentation and the use of dissonance was largely ignored throughout his life. As a result, many of his works remained unperformed for a long time. Only after his death did interest in his music gradually grow. Today he is considered one of America’s most important composers.
Although Charles Ives wrote many songs with piano accompaniment, his instrumental music is best known today. The most famous piece is probably the “Variations on ‘America'”. The most striking example of his love of experimentation is “The Unanswered Question” from 1906, which was used several times in the 1990s as film music for death scenes. Another characteristic feature of his music is the inclusion of functional music (marches, dances, church hymns, etc.) and the use of quotations from music history, especially from the work of Ludwig van Beethoven.
 

The video features the University of Michigan Symphony Band conducted by Michael Haithcock performing “Variations on ‘America'” by Charles Ives, composed in 1892.

Richard Strauss
In 1920, Strauss, Hofmannsthal and Reinhardt founded the Salzburg Festival as a cultural contrast to the consequences of the First World War. In the 1920s, Strauss worked on lighter material such as the musical comedies “The Egyptian Helen” and “Arabella”. After the death of Hugo von Hofmannsthal in 1929, Richard Strauss found a new lyricist for his opera “The Silent Woman” in the Jewish poet Stefan Zweig, a decision that had a decisive influence on his career. As the most famous German musician of his time, Strauss was appointed President of the Reich Music Chamber by the Nazis in 1933. The fact that Strauss, whose daughter-in-law was Jewish, opposed the “Aryan paragraph”, however, led to his forced resignation in 1935. He spent most of the Second World War in seclusion in Vienna and later fled to Switzerland with his wife. Shortly before his death, Richard Strauss received recognition once again: Thomas Beecham organized a Strauss festival in London in 1948, and in Munich he received numerous honors on his 85th birthday in 1949.
 

The video shows the suite from “Der Rosenkavalier” op. 59 by Richard Strauss, which was performed on January 17, 2020 by the WDR Symphony Orchestra under the direction of its chief conductor Cristian Măcelaru in the Cologne Philharmonic Hall.
 

Austria 1.6.1989

Austria 11.6.2014

Germany 16.9.1999

Debussy in Jersey

Click on the image to watch a video about the creation of the “Debussy in Jersey” stamp series. Young stamp designer Will Bertram explains his approach to illustrating the La Corbiere stamp from the new “Debussy in Jersey” stamp series. The stamp series shows six places that the French composer Claude Debussy visited with his lover during his visit to the island of Jersey in 1904. The shape of the wave on the 98 pence stamp is inspired by the painting “Under the Wave of Kanagawa” (also known as “The Great Wave”) by the Japanese painter Hokusai. Debussy had a print of the “Great Wave” hanging on the wall of his studio.