In 1939, Russian composer Dmitri Kabalevsky wrote incidental music for a children's play called 'The Inventor and the Comedians', by the Soviet Jewish writer Mark Daniel. The play was staged at the 'C...
In 1883 Grieg composed 'The Norwegian Dances'. Like all of Grieg's best music, the 'Norwegian Dances' are filled with achingly beautiful tunes set to supple chromatic harmonies, joyously festive tunes...
As a composer Lehár started with contributions to the opera-genre but the great triumph of his first operetta Die lustige Witwe, (The merry widow), in 1905 made him clear that he had to give his talen...
'Parsifal' is an opera in three acts by German composer Richard Wagner. It is loosely based on 'Parzival' by Wolfram von Eschenbach, a 13th-century epic poem of the Arthurian knight Parzival (Percival...
In 1934 Alexander Glazunov composed his 'Concerto for Alto Saxophone and String Orchestra'. Although invented in the early 1840s, the saxophone was still fairly new and unfamiliar in Glazunov's day it...
Karl Millöcker (1842-1899) was one of Johann Strauss II's greatest rivals in his lifetime, but his music is almost unknown in England. Der Bettelstudent (The Beggar Student) is an operetta in three ac...
