Renowned Italian soprano Mirella Freni dies at age 84

Mirella Freni (Italian: [miˈrɛlːa ˈfreːni] ; born Mirella Fregni on 27 February 1935) is an Italian soprano whose repertoire includes Verdi, Puccini, Mozart and Tchaikovsky. Freni was married for many years to the Bulgarian bass Nicolai Ghiaurov, with whom she performed and recorded. Freni died Sunday, 9 FEB 2020 at her home in Modena, Italy, from a degenerative muscular disease and a series of stokes, according to her manager, Jack Mastroianni of IMG Artists.

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Pianist Peter Serkin dies, age 72

Peter Adolf Serkin (July 24, 1947 – February 1, 2020) was an American classical pianist. He taught at the Curtis Institute of Music, the Juilliard School, Yale University, and Bard College. He was the son of pianist Rudolf Serkin, and grandson of the influential violinist Adolf Busch, whose daughter Irene was Peter's mother. Peter was given the middle name Adolf in honor of his grandfather. In 1958, at age 11, Serkin began studying at the Curtis Institute of Music, where his teachers included the Polish pianist Mieczysław Horszowski, the American virtuoso Lee Luvisi, as well as his own father. He graduated in 1965. He also studied with Ernst Oster, flutist Marcel Moyse, and Karl Ulrich Schnabel.

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Othmar Mága (10 June 1929 – 28 January 2020) was a German conductor

Maga was a conductor known internationally, with symphony orchestras including the Odense Symphony Orchestra in Denmark and the KBS Symphony Orchestra in Korea. Among his many recordings are several rarely played concertos for instruments such as horn and double bass, including works of the 20th century.

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RIP BARRY TUCKWELL

Barry Emmanuel Tuckwell AC, OBE (5 March 1931 – 16 January 2020) was an Australian horn player who spent most of his professional life in the United Kingdom and the United States. He is generally considered to have been one of the world's leading horn players. WIKIPEDIA BIO

Peter Schreier (29 July 1935 – 25 December 2019) was a German tenor

Peter Schreier (29 July 1935 – 25 December 2019) was a German tenor in opera, concert and lied, and a conductor. He was regarded as one of the leading lyric tenors of the 20th century. He was regarded as one of the leading lyric tenors of the 20th century. Schreier made many recordings, especially of Bach's works as both a singer and a conductor, even simultaneously. He recorded many lieder including the song cycles by Schubert and Schumann. He was known for intelligent understanding of texts and their musical expression with intensity. Schreier received awards including the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, Léonie Sonning Music Prize.

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Gerald Sheldon Herman (July 10, 1931 – December 26, 2019) was an American composer and lyricist,

JERRY HERMAN will be best known for his work in Broadway musical theater. He composed the scores for the hit Broadway musicals Hello, Dolly!, Mame, and La Cage aux Folles. He was nominated for the Tony Award five times, and won twice, for Hello, Dolly! and La Cage aux Folles. In 2009, Herman received the Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre. He was a recipient of the 2010 Kennedy Center Honors.


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Dalton Baldwin (December 19, 1931 – December 12, 2019) was an American collaborative pianist.

Baldwin made more than 100 recordings and won numerous prizes, working with outstanding singers such as Gérard Souzay, Elly Ameling, Arleen Auger, and Jessye Norman. He visited southern Africa on numerous occasions, accompanying Gérard Souzay three times (in 1958 for the first time) and Elly Ameling twice (in 1973 for the first time). He died on December 12, 2019, aged 87.

NY TIMES OBIT YOU TUBE Master Class

Abbey Henry Simon (January 8, 1920– December 18, 2019) was an American concert pianist.

He was a pupil of Josef Hofmann at the Curtis Institute of Music and a winner of the Naumburg International Piano Competition in 1940. Simon performed to critical acclaim. The critic Harold C. Schonberg of the New York Times once hailed Simon as a "supervirtuoso." Boston Globe critic Richard Dyer wrote, "Simon's recital offered more than a glimpse into the fabled golden age of piano playing... His virtuosity is marked not only by speed, power, lightness and accuracy but also by intricate interplay of voices and lambent colors." Simon toured in Europe, the Middle East, and the Pacific. He appeared with the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, and the Trenton Symphony Orchestra. He died on December 18, 2019, just a few weeks shy of his 100th birthday. WIKIPEDIA

Conductor Mariss Jansons has died at age 76

Mariss Ivars Georgs Jansons (14 January 1943 – 30 November 2019) was a Latvian conductor, the son of conductor Arvīds Jansons and the singer Iraida Jansone. Jansons died in the late evening of November 30, 2019, at his home in St. Petersburg after a longstanding battle with a heart condition. He was 76. He had lived for several years with an implanted defibrillator. Complete bio at Wikipedia

RIP Sir Stephen Cleobury CBE

He Who Sings, Prays Twice. 

A quote from St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo
 an early (354-430 AD) theologian. 

It speaks to the power of singing.

Sir Stephen Cleobury CBE (/ˈkliːbəri/ KLEE-bər-ee; 31 December 1948 – 22 November 2019) was an English organist and Director of Music. He worked with the Choir of King's College, Cambridge where he served as music director from 1982 to 2019, and with the BBC Singers. WIKIPEDIA

Johannes Wolfgang Zender (22 November 1936 – 22 October 2019) was a German conductor and composer.

Zender was the chief conductor of several opera houses, and his compositions, many of them vocal music, have been performed at international festivals. As a conductor, he worked at the Theater Freiburg, Theater Bonn, Opernhaus Kiel and Hamburg State Opera, and led the radio orchestra Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern. He taught at the Musikhochschule Frankfurt. His opera Stephen Climax premiered in 1986 at the Oper Frankfurt, and his third opera, Chief Joseph, premiered in 2005 at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden.

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RIP conductor RAYMOND LEPPARD

Raymond John Leppard CBE (11 August 1927 – 22 October 2019) was a British conductor, harpsichordist, composer and editor. In the 1960s, he played a prime role in the rebirth of interest in Baroque music; in particular, he was one of the first major conductors to perform Baroque opera, reviving works by Claudio Monteverdi and Francesco Cavalli. He conducted operas at major international opera houses and festivals, including the Glyndebourne Festival where he led the world premiere of Nicholas Maw's The Rising of the Moon, the Metropolitan Opera and the Royal Opera House. He composed film scores such as Lord of the Flies and Alfred the Great. WIKIPEDIA

Jessye Norman (September 15, 1945 – September 30, 2019) was an American opera singer and recitalist.

A dramatic soprano, Norman was associated in with roles such as Wagner's Sieglinde, Ariadne by Richard Strauss, Gluck's Alceste, Beethoven's Leonore and Cassandra in Les Troyens by Berlioz.[3] and Cassandre. Norman was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 1999, and became a Spingarn Medalist in 2013. Apart from receiving several honorary doctorates and other awards, she also received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Medal of Arts, and was a member of the British Royal Academy of Music. WIKIPEDIA

Paul Badura-Skoda (6 October 1927 – 25 September 2019) was an Austrian pianist.

He was best known for his performances of works by Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, but had an extensive repertoire including many works of Chopin and Ravel. Badura-Skoda was well known for his performances on historical instruments, and owned several (his recording of the complete piano sonatas of Schubert is on five instruments from his private collection). A prolific recording artist, Badura-Skoda made over 200 records, including many duplicates created to highlight the sound of different pianos. For instance, in a 2013 record, he recorded Schubert's last sonata three times on instruments from the 1820s, 1920s, and early 2000s (having already recorded the piece several times before); one of his box sets of the complete piano sonatas of Beethoven similarly included three different versions of the "Hammerklavier" Sonata. Indeed, he is the only person to have recorded the complete piano sonatas of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert on both historic and modern instruments. WIKIPEDIA

RIP: CHRISTOPHER ROUSE....(February 15, 1949 – September 21, 2019)

Christopher Chapman Rouse III. American composer. Though he wrote for various ensembles, Rouse is primarily known for his orchestral compositions, including a Requiem, a dozen concertos, and six symphonies. His work received numerous accolades, including the Kennedy Center Friedheim Award, the Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition, and the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Rouse was the composer-in-residence for the New York Philharmonic from 2012 to 2015.

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Roger Boutry (27 February 1932 – 7 September 2019) was a French composer and conductor.

As a conductor, he began his career with the Opéra de Monte-Carlo Orchestra, then conducted the orchestras of the Brussels R.A.T.B., the Rome R.A.I., the Concerts Colonne, Orchestre Lamoureux, Pasdeloup Orchestra. Appointed a professor at the Conservatoire, he taught harmony from 1962 to 1997. His students included Claude Pichaureau, Thierry Escaich, Olivier Chassain, François Weigel, Naji Hakim etc. He also taught choral conducting at the Centre national de préparation au CAEM (Paris) from 1965 to 1970, and from 1963 he was in charge of preparing the writing tests for the recruitment competitions for army music conductors. In January 1973, after a competition on title, he was appointed music director of the Republican Guard and thus conducted the harmony orchestra, symphony orchestra, string orchestra and chamber music ensembles until February 1997.

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Anner Bylsma

Anner Bylsma (born Anne Bijlsma, 17 February 1934, The Hague; died 25 July 2019, Amsterdam) was a Dutch cellist who played on both modern and period instruments in a historically informed style. He took an interest in music from an early age. He studied with Carel van Leeuwen Boomkamp at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague and won the Prix d'excellence in 1957.







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Aaron Rosand (March 15, 1927 – July 9, 2019) was an American violinist.

Born in Hammond, Indiana, he studied with Leon Sametini at the Chicago Musical College and with Efrem Zimbalist at the Curtis Institute of Music, where he taught from 1981 until his death. Particularly noted for his insightful and passionate performances of the romantic repertoire and his beautiful but not syrupy tone, Rosand recorded prolifically and appeared all over the world with many major orchestras and concert organizations.

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BIO

Jörg Demus (2 December 1928 – 16 April 2019) was an Austrian classical pianist

He was also a composer and a lecturer at music academies. In composition and playing, he focused on chamber music and lieder. He played with singers such as Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, as a piano duo with Paul Badura-Skoda, and with string players such as Josef Suk and Antonio Janigro. Demus was instrumental in bringing the historic fortepiano to concert podiums. He was a member of the Legion of Honour, among many awards. He is regarded as one of the leading Austrian pianists of the immediate post-World War II era.


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Hawaii's gift to good music, Jack de Mello has died at the age of 102

Composer, arranger, producer and recording artist Jack de Mello, who created an expansive new synthesis of Hawaiian melodies and lush, contemporary orchestral music, died Saturday in Las Vegas. He was 102. During his prolific career, de Mello recorded close to 160 albums of all types of music, including almost 500 Hawaiian songs. He recorded at top studios around the world and “gave Hawaiian music a new identity,” according to a statement from his family. Born Nov. 15, 1916, in Oakland, Calif., de Mello showed early musical talent. He studied music and music theory at the Bickett Military Band School in San Francisco and was only 9 years old when he began playing the trumpet. The family recalled his stories about piling into a Model T Ford with his brother to go to his lessons, which also required travel by ferry boat and train since the Bay Bridge had yet to be built. As a young musician in San Francisco, de Mello joined the staff band at the CBS radio network and later served as a musical director at ABC and NBC. He entered the Army as a bandmaster at Camp McQuaide in California. As musical director of Mutual Network top-rated radio show, “Beat The Villian,” de Mello hired the Society Band led by Joe Reichman. They went on to perform together at major U.S. hotels including the Waldorf Astoria and Roosevelt in New York. During a run at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, they accepted an invitation to reopen the Royal Hawaiian hotel in 1947. The hotel had been used exclusively by the U.S. Navy during World War II. From...HONOLULU STAR ADVERTISER