dimecres, 15 d’octubre del 2025

ZANDER, Johan David (1753-1796) - Sinfonia för Stor Orchester (1785)

Unknown - A Group of Edinburgh Characters (c.1790)


Johan David Zander (1753-1796) - Sinfonia (B-Dur) | för Stor Orchester,
Ödmjukast tillägnad | Sällskapet | Utile Dulci (1785)
Performers: Kungliga Operаns Orkester; Philip Brunеllе (conductor)

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Swedish conductor, violinist, viola player and composer. He was born into a musical family. His father, Johan David Gottfried Zander (1714-1774), was a musician (bassoonist, oboist, and violinist) who had emigrated to Sweden and played in the Royal Court Orchestra, the Hovkapellet. Following his father's footsteps, he joined the Hovkapellet as a violinist in 1772. His talent quickly earned him recognition, and he was promoted to assistant concertmaster in 1787, and deputy Konzertmeister the next year, a post he held until his death. He taught the violin at the Swedish Royal Academy of Music from 1785 and at the Opera school from 1786; he became a member of the Academy in 1786. He gained a considerable reputation as a highly skilled soloist on both the violin and viola in public concerts throughout the capital. While best known for his theatrical music, he also composed a significant body of instrumental work, displaying his awareness of contemporary European stylistic trends, particularly the influence of the Austrian composers. His most notable surviving large-scale orchestral work is the Symphony in B-flat major (1785), one of the few four-movement symphonies written in Sweden during the 18th Century. He also composed several concertos (mostly lost), three string quartets and various solo and chamber pieces published in collections like Musikaliskt Tidsfördrif. His promising career was tragically cut short when he died prematurely of pneumonia in 1796. He remains as an important figure in the Gustavian era of Swedish music. 

dilluns, 13 d’octubre del 2025

ROSS, John (1763-1837) - Concerto in B flat major

French school (18th Century) - Caroline Wuiet De Meonide (1784)


John Ross (1763-1837) - Concerto (V) in B flat major, Op.1
Performers: Roger Bеvаn Williams (organ); Scοttish Baroque Players

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English organist and composer. He studied for seven years with Matthias Hawdon, organist of St. Nicholas's Church. From 1783 to 1836 he was organist of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Aberdeen, and was for several years organist to the Aberdeen musical society. In Aberdeen he was long the only resident musician of any standing. He died on 28 July 1837 at Craigie Park, a suburban residence. He was a prolific composer of pianoforte and vocal music. He contributed several airs to Robert Archibald Smith's ‘Scottish Minstrel,’ and was complimented by Robert Tannahill for setting some of his songs to music. He edited ‘Sacred Music, consisting of Chants, Psalms, and Hymns for three Voices,’ London, 1828, the tunes in which are mostly his own. His anthem, ‘When sculptured urns,’ was once very popular.

diumenge, 12 d’octubre del 2025

GLEBA, David Joseph (b. 1956) - Missa in honorem Sanctissimae Trinitatis

Jørgen Roed (1808-1888) - Street in Roskilde. In the Background the Cathedral (1836)


David Joseph Gleba (b. 1956) - Missa in honorem Sanctissimae Trinitatis (1994)
Performers: Schola Cantorum of the Saint Gregory Society; members of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra;
Nicholas Renouf (conductor)
Further info: David J. Gleba

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American organist, composer, and teacher. His father was an officer in the United States Army. Due to his father's career, Gleba's family traveled extensively during his childhood and adolescence, which included a prolonged period living in Europe. He began teaching himself to play the pianoforte at an early age. As a teenager, he studied piano for one year with the late Leopold Godowsky III, who was a grandson of the pianist Leopold Godowsky I, and a nephew of George and Ira Gershwin. Gleba has served as an organist and music director at numerous churches, which has fostered his particular fondness for sacred choral music. Through intensive study of classical scores, he taught himself to compose symphonies, sonatas, concerti, and other classical forms. He insists on composing in the Viennese classical style of the second half of the 18th Century. Today, he performs only occasionally. He teaches harmony, counterpoint, composition, piano, harpsichord, clavichord, and organ at his home in Branford, Connecticut. 

divendres, 10 d’octubre del 2025

HERTEL, Johann Wilhelm (1727-1789) - Concerto per il Organo

Cornelis Troost (1696-1750) - Sint Nicolaasfeest


Johann Wilhelm Hertel (1727-1789) - Concerto per il Organo | accompagnato | da | 2 Corni, 2 Flauti | 2 Violini, Violetta et Basso, | composto et dedicato | all'Altezza Serenissima | di | FEDERICO |
Duca Regnante di Meclenburgo
Performers: Mеrsеburger Hofmusik; Michael Schönhеit (organ & conductor)

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German violinist, keyboard player and composer. Son of Johann Christian Hertel (1697-1754), he received his musical training from his father and members of the Bach family. He also came to the attention of Franz Benda, who heard him perform in 1742 in Strelitz, where his father had moved. Upon Benda’s recommendation Hertel was trained in Berlin and at the court of Zerbst before obtaining a position as Kapellmeister with Duke Christian Ludwig of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. From 1770 he was the privy councillor in the service of Princess Ulrike but continued to compose, arrange concerts at the court and give music instruction. In his last years he gave up the violin and devoted himself to keyboard instruments. As a theorist, Hertel wrote four volumes on musical compositions, which were published in Leipzig between 1757 and 1758. In his youth Hertel was considered one of the best violinists of Franz Benda’s school. As a composer, he is best known for his craftsmanship that blends a progressive harmonic language with technical display. His music includes a Mass, five Passions, 12 secular cantatas (and seven with nontraditional sacred texts), 11 Lutheran cantatas, numerous chorales, 40 concert arias, 60 Lieder, three motets, three Psalms (in German), two sets of incidental music for Shakespeare plays, 63 symphonies, 15 keyboard concertos (and 31 other concertos), three partitas, five trios, 19 violin sonatas, and 30 keyboard sonatas. His literary works include a treatise on thoroughbass, three autobiographies and a collection of essays by Voltaire and others. 

dimecres, 8 d’octubre del 2025

WOODCOCK, Robert (1690-1728) - Concerto ex De a.5 (1727)

Thomas Whitcombe (1763-1834) - The Thames at Chelsea (1784)


Robert Woodcock (1690-1728) - Concerto ex De | a.5. | Hautbois Concerto | Violino Primo |
Violino Secundo | Viola | et | Cembalo
[previously attributed to Georg Friedrich Händel (1685-1759) and Jacques Loeillet (1685-1748)]
Performers: Les Solistes de Liege; Géry Lemaire (1926-2013, conductor)

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English painter, composer and woodwind player. Son of Robert Woodcock (1642-1710) and Deborah Littleton, he grew up in Shrewsbury House, Chelsea, London, where his parents ran a girls school. In 1714, he married Ayliffe Stoaks, by whom he had several children. According to a contemporaneous biographical account, he worked as a civil servant, holding a 'place or clerkship in the Government.' He resigned his government post around 1723 to devote himself to marine painting, and that he was ‘very skillful in music, had judgement and performed on the hautboy in a masterly manner’. John Hawkins called Woodcock ‘a famous performer on the flute’, but he was more likely an enthusiastic amateur on the oboe, recorder and flute. As a composer, his only surviving compositions are a set of XII Concertos in Eight Parts (1727). They are of historical importance as the first flute concertos ever published and the first oboe concertos published by an English composer.