MARIA SZYMANOVSKA - RUSSIA
BORN 14 DECEMBER
Maria Szymanowska was a Polish composer and one of the first professional virtuoso pianists of the 19th century. She toured extensively throughout Europe, especially in the 1820s, before settling permanently in St. Petersburg. In the Russian imperial capital, she composed for the court, gave concerts, taught music, and ran an influential salon.
Her compositions—largely piano pieces, songs, and other small chamber works, as well as the first piano concert etudes and nocturnes in Poland—typify the stile brillant of the era preceding Frédéric Chopin. She was the mother of Celina Szymanowska, who married the Polish Romantic poet Adam Mickiewicz.
Her professional piano career began in 1815, with performances in England in 1818, a tour of Western Europe 1823–1826, including both public and private performances in Germany, France, England (on multiple occasions), Italy, Belgium and Holland.
Her playing was very well received by critics and audiences alike, garnering her a reputation for a delicate tone, lyrical sense of virtuosity and operatic freedom. She was one of the first professional piano virtuosos in 19th-century Europe and one of the first pianists to perform memorized repertoire in public, a decade ahead of Franz Liszt and Clara Wieck-Schumann. After years of touring, she returned to Warsaw for some time before relocating in early 1828, first to Moscow and then to St. Petersburg, where she served as the court pianist to the Empress of Russia Alexandra Feodorovna.
Because of her stature as a performance artist and because of her salon, Szymanowska developed a strong web of connections with some of the most notable composers, performing musicians, and poets of her day, including: Luigi Cherubini, Gioacchino Rossini, Johann Hummel, John Field; Pierre Baillot, Giuditta Pasta; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Adam Mickiewicz. Hummel and Field dedicated compositions to her. Goethe is rumored to have fallen deeply in love with her. The salon she established in St. Petersburg drew especially prominent crowds, augmenting her status as a court musician.
♫ LISTEN
Nocturne in B Flat by Maria Szymanovska
JOCELYN MORLOCK - POLAND
BORN 14 DECEMBER
Jocelyn Morlock is a Canadian composer based in Vancouver. She is a member of the Canadian Music Centre.
Morlock was born in St. Boniface, Manitoba. She studied piano with Robert Richardson and completed a Bachelor of Music in piano performance at Brandon University. She received both a master's degree and a Doctorate of Musical Arts from the University of British Columbia, where her teachers included Gerhard Ginader, T. Patrick Carrabré, Stephen Chatman, Keith Hamel, and the late Russian-Canadian composer Nikolai Korndorf.
Morlock has received many commissions and made award-winning recordings. She was the composer-in-residence for Vancouver's Music on Main (2012-2014) and has been the composer-in-residence for the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra since 2014.
In 2018 Morlock's work was performed in Calgary as part of the Luminous Voices concert.
Morlock's music exhibits a quirky and eccentric post-modernism, but is specially centred on emotion. Her musical language is typically tonal or modal, but is expanded with extended techniques and colouristic effects.
Source: Wikipedia and Jocelyn Morlock Official Website
♫ LISTEN
Dervish by Jocelyn Morlock
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