ADELA MADDISON - UK
BORN 15 DECEMBER
Adela Maddison was a British composer of operas, ballets, instrumental music and songs. She was also a concert producer. She composed a number of French songs in the style of mélodies; for some years she lived in Paris, where she was a pupil, friend and possibly lover of Gabriel Fauré. Subsequently, living in Berlin, she composed a German opera which was staged in Leipzig. On returning to England she created works for Rutland Boughton's Glastonbury Festivals.
Around 1896, she became Fauré's pupil, and he thought her a gifted composer. She composed a number of mélodies, setting the works of poets such as Sully Prudhomme, Coppée, Verlaine and Samain; in 1900 Fauré told the latter that her treatment of his poem Hiver was masterly.
During 1898 – c. 1905, she lived in Paris without her husband; Fauré's biographer Robert Orledge believes there was a romantic liaison with Fauré, who dedicated his Nocturne No. 7, Op. 74, to her in 1898; this piece was expressive of his feelings towards her, according to Orledge. Fauré gave her the nocturne's manuscript; it is now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. In Paris she was also acquainted with Delius, Debussy and Ravel, and produced performances of her own works and those of others.
From Paris she moved to Berlin, where she continued to produce concerts, and composed an opera, Der Talisman, which was staged in Leipzig in 1910. In Germany she started a lifelong friendship with Martha Mundt, the editor of a Berlin socialist journal. Born in 1872, Mundt came from Königsberg; she had studied sociology and economics there and in Berlin, Genoa and Rome. Music historian Sophie Fuller believes it is quite likely the relationship between the two women was a lesbian one. They left Germany for France, where Mundt obtained work with the Princesse de Polignac, and they moved on to London when World War I started.
Maddison moved to Glastonbury, Somerset and spent a number of years in the production of works for the Glastonbury Festivals of that era. Her piano quintet, written in 1916, but first performed in 1920, was a success. She continued to compose opera and songs, and to produce concerts, into the 1920s. Maddison died in Ealing, London in 1929.
♫ LISTEN
Allegro Vivo by Adela Maddison
ANNE VICTORINO D'ALMEIDA - FRANCE
BORN 15 DECEMBER
Anne de Medeiros Harlé Victorino d'Almeida is a Portuguese violinist and composer.
She was born on December 15, 1978 in Poissy (France). The youngest daughter of composer António Victorino d'Almeida and Sybil Harlé, she soon awakened her desire to study music, starting at the age of 4 piano lessons in Vienna, Austria. At the age of 7, already in Portugal, she started violin lessons at the Fundação Musical dos Amigos das Crianças with Inês Barata, with whom she studied for eleven years. In 1997, she entered the Regional Conservatory of Rueil-Malmaison (France) studying in the class of Dominique Barbier. One year later he returned to Lisbon and joined the National Superior Academy of Orchestra in the class of Ágnes Sárosi, concluding in 2003 her degree.
In 2004, she attended and completed the first year of orchestra conducting at the Superior Academy of Orchestra. She has dedicated a large part of her musical career to the composition of soundtracks, being awarded the prize for best musical proposal in the Teatro na Década competition. She also composed the music of several plays, staged at the Portuguese Youth Institute, Teatro da Comuna and Teatro da Trindade.
She is a founding member of the Camões Quartet and the Rumos Ensemble group with whom she has performed in Portugal, Brazil, Germany, Namibia, South Africa, the United States, Cuba, France, Switzerland, Tunisia, Cape Verde and China with the multimedia recital "Playing Portugal, a recital almost a doc".
In 2019 she released his chamber music record "A Sombra dos Sentidos" (AvA Musical Editions label).
She has been a violin teacher since 2004 at the Escola Artística de Música do Conservatório Nacional, where she has been assistant director since 2017 and has also been teaching the AMAC faculty since 2016.
♫ LISTEN
Diurno by Anne Victorino D'Almeida
