Vasif Adigezalov was one of Azerbaijan’s most distinguished and prolific composers and performers. He studied the piano with Simuzar Guliyeva and composition with Kara Karayev. His father, Zulfugar Adigezalov (1898–1963), was a prominent hanende singer…Adigezalov grew up listening to mugam, which he later incorporated in his works. Adigezalov was awarded Azerbaijan’s highest national awards, People’s Artist of Azerbaijan (1989), State Prize (1990), ...

The German composer Eugen d’Albert was born in Glasgow and had his early musical training in London, where his father had formerly been ballet master at the King’s Theatre and at Covent Garden. He enjoyed a career as a virtuoso pianist, later turning his attention to opera, a form in which he won immediate if ephemeral success. He died in Riga in 1932.

Stage Works

The best known of d’Albert’s stage works is his music drama Tiefl ...

Johann Georg Albrechtsberger gave lessons to Beethoven, and replaced Mozart, at the latter’s request, as assistant to the Kapellmeister of St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna. He was appointed to the position with right of succession, a promotion realised in 1793, two years after Mozart’s death. He won contemporary distinction as an organist, composer and teacher, and displayed a particular mastery of counterpoint, reflected in his own 240 fugues and in the later work of his pu ...

GRAMMY^®-winning composer Robert Livingston Aldridge (b. 1954, Richmond, VA) has written over 60 works for orchestra, opera, music theater, dance, string quartet, solo and chamber ensembles. His music has been performed throughout the United States, Europe and Japan and he has received numerous fellowships and awards for his music.

His opera, Elmer Gantry, based on the novel by Sinclair Lewis, with a libretto by Herschel Garfein, was given its fully staged world ...