On the last night of February and the first of March in Spain, young marceros, or March serenaders, wander through the streets singing songs to their girlfriends and asking for donations of food and sweets to celebrate the arrival of spring. The term marzas refers both to the traditional songs they sing and to the gifts they receive. Although the songs themselves vary, they always mention the month of March and the coming of spring, leading many to believe that the tradition has its roots in paganrituals celebrating the passing of winter. More…Discuss
The youngest child of Joseph Stalin, and his only daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva caused a furor when she defected to the West in the 1960s, leaving behind her two grown children in the process. After becoming a naturalized US citizen, she published two successful memoirs, married, took the name Lana Peters, had a daughter, and divorced. In 1984, she returned to the USSR and renounced her defection, but her resolve soon wavered. How long was it before she left again for the West? More…Discuss
Following Japan‘s defeat in World War II, Taiwan was placed under the administrative control of the Republic of China. The transition did not go smoothly. The Taiwanese had been content under Japanese rule and quickly grew to resent the heavy-handed tactics of the Kuomintang. On February 27, 1947, a dispute between a cigarette vendor and authorities escalated the next day into an anti-government uprising that was violently suppressed. How many Taiwanese are thought to have been massacred? More…Discuss
When is a window seat not a window seat? When the plane’s cabin has no windows. An aerospace company is in the process of designing a new supersonicjet, and it is planning to eliminate cabin windows entirely. Such windows, while offering passengers breathtaking views, create drag and require additional structural support that adds weight to an aircraft. This poses a challenge when building a jet meant to fly from New York to London in under four hours. Thus, in place of windows, the craft will have display screens embedded in the cabin walls that are linked to cameras mounted on the aircraft’s exterior. More…Discuss
The lingam is a Hindu symbol of the god Shiva and of generative power. Fashioned from wood, gems, metal, or stone, lingams are common in family shrines throughout India. Historically, the lingam was a representation of the phallus, and a sexual dimension is apparent today as the yoni—symbol of the female sex organ—often forms the base of the lingam to emphasize the male and female aspects of existence. What did British missionary William Ward say about lingams in his 1815 book? More…
Marian Anderson “Ave Maria” by Schubert
With Leopold Stokowski, 1944 Latin Text
Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum.
Benedicta tu in mulieribus,
et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus.
Sancta Maria, Mater Dei,
ora pro nobis peccatoribus,
nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.
English Translation Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and in the hour of our death. Amen.
Public displays of patriotism are commonplace for Ecuadorans on this national holiday, observed on the anniversary of the Battle of Tarqui in 1822. The flag of Ecuador is prominently featured during the day’s celebrations. Along with receiving a public display at government and private buildings, the flag also appears in the traditional ceremonies at schools throughout the country. Students with exemplary academic records will have the honor of being flag bearers in official parades, and all students are expected to deliver an oath and kiss the flag as a symbol of their allegiance.More…Discuss
Though Anderson was recognized as one of the finest contraltos of her time, racism in the US limited her performing career. Her most electrifying moment came in 1939, when she was refused permission to sing in Washington’sConstitution Hall. Outraged, then-first lady Eleanor Roosevelt arranged for Anderson to sing at the Lincoln Memorial instead. The concert was broadcast to great acclaim. Anderson continued to break down racial barriers, becoming the first black singer to perform where in 1955? More…Discuss
More than a decade after a blaze on a train packed with Hindu pilgrims claimed 59 lives—many of the victims women and children—the debate rages on as to whether it was a tragic accident or deliberately set as part of a larger conspiracy. The train was passing through the Indian state of Gujarat when it was set upon by a Muslim mob near the Godhratrain station and the fire broke out. Several investigations have yielded conflicting results as to the source of the blaze, yet what was done in 2011? More…Discuss
The plight of honeybees, which have been dying out en masse for reasons that have yet to be fully understood, has dominated bee news of late; however, bumblebeepopulations around the globe have also been in steep decline. For decades, experts have attributed this largely to habitat loss, but researchers have now identified two previously unknown threats to bumblebee survival—deformed wing virus and a fungal parasite called Nosema ceranae. These two pathogens had been known to affect honeybees, but they have now been observed in wild bumblebees as well. More…Discuss
In 1784, French astronomer Charles Messier compiled a list of non-stellar celestial objects. He had no understanding of what these items—now known to be galaxies, nebulae, and star clusters—actually were; he just wanted to further the search for comets by listing the indistinct objects that might be mistaken for them. Designations from his catalog are still used to refer to some nebulae and star clusters—for instance, M1 is the Crab Nebula and M45 is the Pleiades. What is a “Messier Marathon“? More…Discuss
Slovak Chamber Orchestra Established in 1960 by Professor Bohdan Warchal, the Slovak Chamber Orchestra has since developed into one of the most popular ensembles in the field of Slovak classical music, and one of the principal interpreters of Slovak art music abroad. Over the years the Slovak Chamber Orchestra has introduced itself on the most important concert stages and music festivals in Europe, North and South America, Asia and Australia. It has co-operated with many prominent world-renowned soloists, and inspired the work of several Slovak composers, resulting in premiere performances of their new compositions. The ensemble has recorded more than 100 music titles originating in different periods, for domestic as well as foreign record companies.
Bohdan Warchal (27 January 1930, Orlová, Czechoslovakia 30 December 2000, Bratislava, Slovakia) was a Slovak violinist, a member of the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra and founder, chief conductor and soloist of the Slovak Chamber Orchestra.
* 19571964 – concertmaster of the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra * 1964 – artistic leader of the Slovak Chamber Orchestra * 19591963 – external pedagogue at the State Conservatory Bratislava * 1980 – pedagogue at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava * 1995 – moved from the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra to the Prague Chamber Orchestra * 1997 – became the leader of the Slovak Chamber Orchestra again Related articles
– Blue-card Question: Phillipe Lamberts MEP (Belgium), Greens group
• Joint Debate: European Semester
1. European Semester for economic policy coordination: annual growth survey 2014 Report: Philippe De Backer (A7-0084/2014) – Report on the European Semester for economic policy coordination: Annual Growth Survey 2014 [2013/2157(INI)] Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs
2. European Semester for economic policy coordination: employment and social aspects Report: Sergio Gutiérrez Prieto (A7-0091/2014) – Report on the European Semester for economic policy coordination: Employment and Social Aspects in the Annual Growth Survey 2014 [2013/2158(INI)] Committee on Employment and Social Affairs
“Well, I’ve sat here this morning feeling like the odd man out. I mean, to me it’s beyond parody for the Greek finance minister, Mr Kourkoulas, to come along here and tell us our fortune.
“‘The policies are bearing fruit!’
“‘We’re going to tackle unemployment!’
“And no one says anything. No, because of course everybody here is tied up with the same obsession: the obsession that the euro must and will work; the obsession that you’ll use the crisis to build a United States of Europe.
“What you could have told them, Mr Koukoulas, is that according to the respected medical journal The Lancet, there are now 800,000 people in Greece without access to welfare or medical care.
“You could have told them that. But even if had they would not have listened, so obsessed are they with building the euro.
“Okay, simple listen in economics. When you have two countries that are completely at different stages of the economic cycle, one currency needs to devalue, but if those countries are pegged or tied inside the same currency and they cannot devalue you have to devalue the country. And that is what is happening to the Mediterranean. We are devaluing the Mediterranean and it’s leading towards Third World status.
“No amount of socialist state spending can mend this imbalance, and it’s about time – if people here cared for the citizens of Europe, particularly in the south – that we admitted the euro does not work for Southern Europe and it’s time that we broke it up and gave countries currencies that reflected their current economic status.”
This was followed by a ‘blue-card question’ from Belgian Greens MEP Phillipe Lamberts. ……………………………. Video source: EbS (European Parliament) …………………………….
• EU Member States: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Spain, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, United Kingdom
Also known as Days of Ha, the Ayyam-i-Ha are intercalary days (extra days inserted in a calendar) in the Baha’icalendar. The calendar is made up of 19 months of 19 days, plus the period of four days added between the 18th and 19th months, which allows for the year to be adjusted to the solar cycle. The days are set aside for rejoicing, hospitality, gift-giving, special acts of charity, and spiritually preparing for the Baha’i fast from March 2–20. The new calendar was inaugurated by Mirza Ali Mohammad, known as the Bab, founder of the Babi religion from which the Baha’i faith emerged. More…Discuss
Cody’s father passed away when he was just a boy, leaving him to support the family. He worked as a wagoner, trapper, and prospector before joining the Pony Express at 14. After serving in the American Civil War, he became a buffalo hunter—hence the nickname “Buffalo Bill.” Writers chronicled his frontier exploits, making him a folk hero. He capitalized on his fame with “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show,” which toured the US and Europe for decades. How many buffalo did Bill claim to have killed? More…Discuss
A cautionary tale for financial institutions the world over, the collapse of Barings Bank, a centuries-old British bank, resulted from the activities of a single, unscrupulous employee. The man in question, derivatives broker Nick Leeson, made unauthorized, unhedged futures transactions on Nikkei, racking up £827 million ($1.3 billion) in losses in no time. He hid these losses by reporting them as gains and got away with it due to a lack of oversight. What brought the whole scheme crashing down?More…Discuss
Biomass is the total amount of living organisms in a given area, expressed in terms of living weight per unit area. It can include microorganisms, plants, and animals. An amazing amount of biomass is created by the approximately 10 quintillion insects living at any one time. In fact, the almost one million known insect species comprise 300 times the total weight of Earth’shuman population. What other single class of organisms makes up a staggering 25% of the global biomass? More…Discuss
A good night’s sleep could help keep you pain free. Then again, being in pain could prevent you from sleeping well. A recent study found that people over age 50 who suffer from sleep problems are almost twice as likely as those who sleep well to develop widespread pain. Poor sleep quality was the strongest predictor of pain studied, surpassing anxiety, osteoarthritis, cognitive impairment, and physical health, among other factors. Further investigation is needed to determine whether non-restorative sleep is a cause of widespread pain or vice versa. More…Discuss
V.A.Mozart – 12 Variations on a French folk song ”Ah, Vous dirai-je, Maman” . Composed during 1781-1782 K.265, in C-Dur This theme is widely known as a children’s song ( such as ”Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, ”Alphabet Song” and others). Performed by Anastasia Kaminskagia during a piano recital in Athens on 26th of January 2013. The lyrics ( French and English) are the following:
Ah! Vous dirai-je, Maman Ce qui cause mon tourment? Papa veut que je raisonne Comme une grande personne Moi je dis que les bonbons Valent mieux que la raison.
Ah! Shall I tell you, Mommy What is tormenitg me? Daddy wants me to reason Like a grown-up person Me, I say that sweets Are worth more than reasoning.
The premiere performance was given on 2 December 1883 by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, under the direction of Hans Richter. The shortest of Brahms’ four symphonies, a typical performance lasts between 30 and 40 minutes.
Form
The symphony consists of four movements, marked as follows:
Poco allegretto (C minor), in ternary form (A B A’).
Allegro (F minor/F major), in a modified sonata form.
History
Hans Richter, who conducted the premiere of the symphony, proclaimed it to be Brahms’ Eroica. The symphony was well received, more so than his Second Symphony. Although Richard Wagner had died earlier that year, the public feud between Brahms and Wagner had not yet subsided. Wagner enthusiasts tried to interfere with the symphony’s premiere, and the conflict between the two factions nearly brought about a duel.[1]
After each performance, Brahms polished his score further, until it was published in May 1884. His friend and influential music critic Eduard Hanslick said, “Many music lovers will prefer the titanic force of the First Symphony; others, the untroubled charm of the Second, but the Third strikes me as being artistically the most nearly perfect.”[1]
Last but not least. It took the legendary pianist three separate days to record this piece to his satisfaction, and he died a mere four days after its completion on November 5, 1989.
Horowitz did not record the other Liszt transcriptions of Wagner such as the Tanhauser Overture, though the biography by authored Harold Schonberg noted that he played an enormous amount of his own transcriptions of operatic music, including the Ride of the Valkyrie. However, Horowitz did not programme most of them once he arrived in the United States.
The jewish coductor Daniel Barenboim aptly said: “The music is bigger than the man”. Anyone who dismisses Wagner’s music on the basis of his views as a man, is missing something truly wonderful.
I’ve chosen Karajan’s version because he gets the tempo and the feel just right. Not too much vibratro here, which other conductors sometimes bring to the piece, making it sound too overwrought. He gets it spot on. A touch of vibrato, but he let’s the notes speak for themselves, whilst the languid tempo evokes a mystical atmosphere to the piece.
Wagner was forced to abandon his position as conductor of the Dresden Opera in 1849, as there was a warrant posted for his arrest for his participation in the unsuccessfulMay Revolution. He left his wife, Minna, in Dresden, and fled to Zürich. There, in 1852, he met the wealthy silk trader Otto Wesendonck. Wesendonck became a supporter of Wagner and bankrolled the composer for several years. Wesendonck’s wife, Mathilde, became enamoured of the composer. Though Wagner was working on his epic Der Ring des Nibelungen, he found himself intrigued by the legend of Tristan and Iseult.
The re-discovery of mediæval Germanic poetry, including Gottfried von Strassburg‘s version of Tristan, the Nibelungenlied and Wolfram von Eschenbach‘s Parzival, left a large impact on the German Romantic movements during the mid-19th century. The story of Tristan and Isolde is a quintessential romance of the Middle Ages and theRenaissance. Several versions of the story exist, the earliest dating to the middle of the 12th century. Gottfried’s version, part of the “courtly” branch of the legend, had a huge influence on later German literature.[3]
I. Allegretto – Allegro non troppo [0:00] II. Allegro (Scherzo) [9:16] III. Lento – [13:43] IV. Allegro molto [23:29]
The first symphony by Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), which he dedicated to his friend Mikhail Kvadri. Shostakovich completed the work at age 19 as his graduation assignment for the Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg, later Leningrad) Conservatory, which was directed at the time by Alexander Glazunov. Shostakovich’s main composition teacher Maximilian Steinberg oversaw the project. The composer initially wished to use his Scherzo, Op. 7 (1923-24) as the second movement of the symphony, but Steinberg was appalled by its grotesque character and suggested that Shostakovich compose a different movement. He followed his teacher’s advice in composing a new movement, but it was ever more steeped in grotesquerie than the earlier scherzo, and the same brash, brittle character pervades much of the symphony; as Shostakovich wrote to his friend Lev Oborin, “It would be more fitting to call this work the ‘Symphony-Grotesque’.” Although the symphony is vintage Shostakovich, it also bears the influence of earlier Russian masters – from the piquant harmonies of Stravinsky’s Petrushka and the sharp wit of the young Prokofiev to the lush colours and chromaticism of Scriabin and the long-drawn lyricism of Tchaikovsky.
The symphony’s premiere on May 12, 1926 in the Great Hall of the Leningrad Philharmonic (conducted by Nikolai Malko) was a resounding success. Shostakovich’s mother recalled the performance: “All went more than brilliantly – a splendid orchestra and magnificent execution … At the end, Mitya was called to the stage over and over again. When our handsome young composer appeared, looking almost like a little boy, the enthusiasm turned into one long thunderous ovation.”
This recording dates from 1951. The conductor Kirill Kondrashin leads the USSR State Symphony Orchestra.
The seaport of Viña del Mar in Valparaiso, Chile, is the site of one of the continent’s biggest music events, the Viña del Mar International Song Festival. Established in 1960, this annual weeklong festival takes place at an outdooramphitheater called the Quinta Vergara. From its inception, the festival has held a song competition that traditionally features performers from about 10 Spanish-speaking countries. There is also a program featuring folk musicians and an international show that includes English-speaking as well as Latinperformers. More…Discuss
“My country, right or wrong,” is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, “My mother, drunk or sober.”
Born into a Zoroastrian family of Persian descent, Meher Baba underwent a spiritual awakening at 19 and in time concluded that he was the avatar—the incarnation of God in human form—of his age. He formulated a belief system that identified the goal of life as realizing the oneness of God, from whom the universe emanates. In an effort to bring others to that realization through love, he worked extensively with the poor and the physically and mentally ill. For how many years did he remain silent? More…Discuss
When Philippinepolitical leaderFerdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda were driven into exile following the assassination of opposition leader Benigno Aquino, they left behind evidence of a lavish lifestyle that pointed to possible corruption and embezzlement. The former first lady’s shoe collection, which numbered in the thousands, became a symbol of the Marcos’s excesses. Despite her alleged misdeeds, Imelda returned to home after Ferdinand’s death and ran for president with what result? More…Discuss
Studies have consistently shown that bullying is tied to worse physical and mental health, but few have looked at the cumulative effects of bullying over time. As might be expected, a longitudinal study of bullying found that teens who had been subject to bullying throughout their schooling had a lowerquality of life than those who had either been bullied in the past or who were being bullied at the time of the study. The findings further highlight the importance of preventing bullying or, at the very least, putting a stop to it soon after it starts. More…Discuss
The Mamluks were members of a warrior caste that ruled Egypt from about 1250 to 1517. Islamic rulers created the caste by collecting non-Muslim slave boys, grooming them as cavalry soldiers, and converting them to Islam during training. The Mamluks initially served the Ayyubid sultans but grew powerful enough to challenge them and claim the sultanate. Though the Ottomans crushed the Mamluks and took Cairo in 1517, the word “mamluk” lives on in various cultures today. What meanings does it have? More…Discuss
Recorded at the Chamber Hall of the Moscow International House of Music, with Mr. Corigliano in the audience, March 2003. Russian premiere. With author’s permission, Misha Rachlevsky amended the Suite with other episodes from the film’s score, giving every violinist of the orchestra a chance to shine.
[caption id="attachment_99163" align="alignnone" width="300"] CIDSE – TOGETHER FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE (CHANGE FOR THE PLANET -CARE FOR THE PROPLE-ACCESS THIS NEW WEBSITE FROM EUZICASA)[/caption]
CIDSE - TOGETHER FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE (CHANGE FOR THE PLANET -CARE FOR THE PROPLE-ACCESS THIS NEW WEBSITE FROM EUZICASA)