Felix Mendelssohn
Felix Mendelssohn, (born Feb. 3, 1809, Hamburg—died Nov. 4, 1847, Leipzig), German composer. Grandson of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, he grew up in a wealthy Jewish family that had converted to Protestantism. He began to compose at age 11; at 16 he wrote his first masterpiece, the String Octet in E Flat Major (1825), followed by the Overture to […]
Henri Vieuxtemps
Henri Vieuxtemps (born Feb. 17, 1820, Verviers, Neth. [now in Belgium]—died June 6, 1881, Mustapha, Alg.) was a Belgian violinist and composer who was one of the most influential figures in the development of violin playing. As a prodigy, Vieuxtemps was taken by his father on a number of European tours, during which he studied violin with Charles de Bériot […]
Choose Your Destiny
For our third Masterworks, we asked for your vote and we have our final lineup! The program beings with Mendelssohn’s haunting Hebrides Overture, followed by Concertmaster Leonid Sigal for a performance of Vieuxtemps’s 5th Violin Concerto—a rarely performed masterpiece by a 19th Century Belgian virtuoso. We close our performance with Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony—an impassioned piece […]
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, (born May 7, 1840, Votkinsk, Russia—died Nov. 6, 1893, St. Petersburg), Russian composer. Sensitive and interested in music from his early childhood, Tchaikovsky turned to serious composition at age 14. In 1862 he began studying at the new St. Petersburg Conservatory; from 1866 he taught at the Moscow Conservatory. His Piano Concerto No. […]