Classical time

Music for piano and string orchestra.

Strings: Budapest Art Orchestra https://budapestartorchestra.com

Artwork: Aline Héau https://cyanotyp.es

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Journeys

From the album 'HOMMAGES', available on double LP at Bandcamp, and streaming everywhere.

Holly Roadfeldt - Piano

Hommage a Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) – The music of Hildegard has always amazed and inspired me.  Well, EVERYTHING about Hildegard has amazed and inspired me—the things that she composed, wrote, built, and accomplished—especially in an age when women were completely oppressed.  She is quite simply one of the greatest geniuses this world has ever produced, and it’s criminal that she’s not as well known as other male geniuses from her time (or later).  When I was thinking about this Hommage, I wasn’t sure how to approach it.  Then, one day (July 11th, 2018), I was doing some completely unrelated work, and out of nowhere, the entire piece came to me all at once, as in a vision.  Yeah, I know how that sounds, especially given Hildegard’s history, but that’s what happened.  The piece was written in one afternoon.

Hommage a Hildegard von Bingen (Official Album Version)

From synth keys to strings,
from the dance floor to a dream…
Welcome to Wonderland.

Wonderland blurs the line between electronic and orchestral, pop and fantasy. A world where dance floor energy collides with fairytale escapism. Both euphoric and haunting, it’s a song for dreamers who long to escape reality and find where they truly belong.

Wonderland (Preview)

Holly Roadfeldt - Piano

Hommage a Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979) – I have been fascinated by Nadia Boulanger for a long time now. How did this person inspire and produce so many of the 20th century's greatest composers? After reading about her life, I think at least part of that dedication to composers was born out of her relationship to her younger sister Lili, and the circumstances surrounding her early death. From what I understand, Nadia was a great lover of the rigors of counterpoint, but also had the rare ability of helping composers find their own voices during a time of strict dogma in the composition landscape. This piece is inspired by Lili Boulanger's "Theme and Variations", and also by Nadia's love of counterpoint, and by her voice in my head telling me, "Just be yourself."

Buy the album!

Hommage a Nadia Boulanger (Official Album Version)

Holly Roadfeldt - Piano

Hommage a Gary Gygax (1938-2008) - Given all of the artistic and scientific people I've covered so far, why write an Hommage to Gary Gygax, the creator of the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons? When I set out to write this series, I wanted to pay respects to people who inspired me to create. Gary was the first. I was introduced to D&D in the 3rd grade, and I became fascinated with it immediately. I used to sit in class drawing dungeon maps on graph paper instead of listening to my lessons. This was my first real creative outlet, and where I first encountered the mechanics of telling a story. For instance, if I drew a long hallway on the graph paper, and then drew in a secret door halfway down on the left wall, this in itself posed many questions - questions that I had to answer. Why is there a secret door here? What is it hiding? Is it an object of significance relating to the rest of the story? Is it a dangerous monster, sealed away forever? How does that relate to what the adventurers are going through? My 3rd-grade mind was sent wandering with almost endless possibilities. Through Gary's creation, I learned to craft a narrative - a skill that became invaluable in writing music. How could I not write an Hommage to Gary?

Hommage A Gary Gygax (Official Album Version)

Out Of Africa

Mozart: Clarinet Concerto In A major, K622 (Adagio)

Gran Turismo 5 (Original Game Soundtrack)

Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major, BWV 1068: II. Air "On a G String" (Arr. for Piano)

Igor Stravinsky plays in 1926 II: Adagietto of his Sonata, on Duo-Art 69560.
Recorded in 2016, and the rec updated 25 Aug 2017, and  Jan 30, 2023 by VViljanen (by permission)from digitally simulated reconstructed original reproducing piano roll, using on its playback a modelled concert grand, combined by mixing desired features from Bluethner and Petrof Mistral 284 grands, and reconfigured, revoiced and setup made by VV.
COMMERCIAL USE PROHIBITED. 
Basic info* of the original piano roll:

SONATA, 2nd Movement: Adagietto
Roll Number: 6956, 69560
Composer/Creator: Stravinsky
Pianist: Stravinsky
Roll System: Duo-Art
Country: US
Date: January, 1926
Category: classical
Original Price: $2.50
*Info source: The Piano Player Group web page (by permission)

Stravinsky: Piano Sonata. II Adagietto. Igor Stravinsky  in 1926 on Duo-Art 69560

Le Voix Du Siecle

Norma, Act 1: "Casta diva"

The Breaking Of The Fellowship By Howard Shore

Fauré, Pelleas and Melisande Suite, op. 80, III. Sicilienne

Maria Callas was born Maria Anna Sophia Cecilia Kalogeropoulou in New York on 2 December 1923 to Greek immigrant parents Evangelia and George Kalogeropoulos. In 1937 Evangelia separated from her husband and returned with her two daughters Maria and Jackie to Greece, where she intended to give them the musical education she could not afford in America. Maria began her vocal studies with the soprano Maria Trivella and the following year she became a pupil of Elvira de Hidalgo, who concentrated on coloratura training. The young Mary Kalogeropoulou, as she was then known, made her stage debut at the age of 15 as Santuzza in a student production of Cavalleria rusticana, and in June 1940 she joined the National Theatre company in Athens, and her first engagement was to sing songs in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice at the Royal Theatre.

On 21 January 1941 she made her professional operatic debut as Beatrice in Boccaccio, and on 27 August 1942 she sang her first Tosca (in Greek) at the open-air Park Summer Theatre. There was a further run of performances of Tosca in September at which the opera was sung in Italian, and these afforded Maria her first real taste of stardom. During the following three years with the company she also sang in Tiefland, Ho Protomastoraas, Cavalleria rusticana, Fidelio and Der Bettelstudent.

As soon as the Second World War had finished, Maria decided to return to the USA to further her career, and in September 1945 she sailed for New York to be reunited with her father. Now calling herself Maria Callas (adopting the surname that her father had devised back in 1929) she failed to achieve anything until Giovanni Zenatello, who was in the USA to find singers for the 1947 Verona Opera Festival, engaged her to sing in La Gioconda.

Callas arrived in Verona on 28 June, and on that same evening she met Giovanni Battista Meneghini, a middle-aged wealthy Italian industrialist and opera lover, who immediately began to take an interest in the gauche and inexperienced girl. On 2 August she made her Italian debut in the Arena at Verona in La Gioconda, conducted by Tullio Serafin. The performances were successful enough but Callas made no special impression and the expected offers of further work did not materialise. But Serafin knew that she had potential and he engaged her to sing Isolde in Italian at La Fenice in Venice in December, and this led to further engagements in Italy, mainly in heavy dramatic roles like Turandot and Aida.

On 19 January 1949, having just sung her first Brünnhilde in Die Walküre eleven days earlier, Callas, at the insistance of Serafin, replaced the indisposed Margherita Carosio as Elvira in I puritani at La Fenice, and her performance stunned the operatic world. This was the turning point in Callas's career and the start of her involvement in the rehabilitation of the Italian bel canto repertoire. On 21 April 1949 Callas married Meneghini in Verona and sailed that night for Argentina to sing at the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires. Helped by Meneghini as both husband and manager, Callas developed her career in Italy and abroad during the next two years. On 7 December 1951 she opened the season at La Scala, Milan, in I vespri siciliani to enormous acclaim, and for the next seven years La Scala was the scene of her greatest triumphs in a wide range of roles.

On 29 July 1952 Callas signed a recording contract with EMI, the first fruit of which was Lucia di Lammermoor, recorded in Florence in February 1953. Later in the year Callas began a series of complete opera recordings with the forces of La Scala, starting with I puritani and Cavalleria rusticana conducted by Serafin. These were followed by the now legendary Tosca conducted by Victor de Sabata. In 1954 Callas reduced her weight by 30 kilos and her appearance changed dramatically.

During the summer she recorded a further four complete operas at La Scala and made her first two recital discs in London. Over the following three years she consolidated her position as one of the leading divas of the operatic world, and continued to record prolifically for EMI.

In September 1957 Elsa Maxwell, the American society hostess, introduced the Meneghinis to the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis at a party in Venice. In January 1958 Callas was harshly criticised in the media for withdrawing after the first act of a gala performance of Norma in Rome. Later that year she decided not to appear again at La Scala after quarrelling with the director, and she was fired from the Metropolitan in New York after failing to agree on performances for the following season. In July 1959 Onassis invited Callas and her husband for a cruise on his yacht, the Christina; by the end of the cruise Callas and Onassis were lovers and the Meneghini marriage was over. During the next few years Callas curtailed her stage appearances and devoted herself to the international high life with Onassis, until by 1962 she was performing only at a few concerts.

In January 1964 Franco Zeffirelli persuaded Callas to return to opera at Covent Garden in a memorable new production of Tosca. In May she appeared in Paris in Norma, directed by Zeffirelli, in a spectacular staging that was to be her last new production. During the early part of 1965 she sang further performances of Tosca in Paris and New York, and then five performances of Norma in Paris, but she was unable to finish the last one due to ill health. She was advised on medical grounds to withdraw from her next performances of Tosca at Covent Garden but she decided to sing just once; she chose the Royal Gala on 5 July, which turned out to be her final appearance on the operatic stage.

In 1966 Callas relinquished her American citizenship and took Greek nationality, thereby technically annulling her marriage to Meneghini; she expected Onassis to marry her but instead, two years later, he married Jacqueline Kennedy. Callas was devastated. In the summer of 1969 she played Medea in a non-operatic film of the play by Euripides, directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini, and in 1971-2 she gave a series of Master Classes at the Juilliard School of Music in New York. There she met up again with her old colleague, the tenor Giuseppe di Stefano, who persuaded her to undertake an extensive international recital tour with him. The tour, a personal triumph but an artistic failure, began in Hamburg in October 1973 and continued into 1974. The final concert with di Stefano took place in Sapporo, Japan, on 11 November 1974; this was Callas' last public performance.

Onassis tried to rekindle his relationship with Callas, but she refused to have him back while he remained married to Jacqueline. On 15 March 1975 Onassis died after an operation; Callas was by then a virtual recluse. Alone in her Paris apartment, she died from natural causes on 16 September 1977.

Norma, Act 1: "Casta diva"

Maria Callas

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