Thomas Rajna (b. 1928) : Concerto for violin and orchestra (2007)

Thomas Rajna (b. 1928) (Hongrie/Afrique du Sud depuis 1970) Concerto for violin and orchestra (2007) Violonist : Suzanne Martens Dir : Corvin Matei 1- Maestoso (6.09) 2- Molto tranquillo (3.18) 3- Presto furioso (3.53) 4- Lento (5.47) 5- Allegro energico (4.23) With the authorization of the composer Thomas Rajna. Thomas Rajna is a Hungarian-born composer and pianist, domiciled in Cape Town in South Africa since 1970. He started to play the piano and compose at an early age and studied at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music where he won the Liszt Prize in 1947. That year he left Hungary to settle in London and enrolled at the Royal College of Music. He soon appeared at the Proms under great conductors, also becoming a frequent broadcaster at the BBC. His first commercial recording was the complete piano solo works of Igor Stravinsky. Since then he has recorded music by Alexander Scriabin, Robert Schumann and Olivier Messiaen, the piano part of Igor Stravinsky's « Petrushka » with the New Philharmonia Under Erich Leinsdorf, and Bela Bartok's « Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta » with Sir Georg Solti and the London Symphony Orchestra. He has completed a cycle of recordings devoted to the entire piano music of Enrique Granados. Subsequently he undertook to record Franz Liszt's « 12 Transcendental Etudes » and « 12 Etudes, op. 1 ». Thomas Rajna has often performed his own two piano concertos. He settled with his family in Cape Town, South Africa in 1970 to take up an appointment at the Faculty of Music of the University of Cape Town (UCT), where he became Associate Professor of Piano in 1989. In January 1981 he was awarded a University Fellowship by UCT and the same year received an Artes Award from the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) for his series of radio programmes on Franz Liszt, entitled "A Lisztian Metamorphosis". He completed his « Piano Concerto No. 2 » in 1984. The following year he received a doctorate in music from UCT in recognition of his body of compositions. His 1990 « Harp Concerto » had its European première in Copenhagen at the Fifth World Harp Congress in July 1993. This work and his Second Piano Concerto (with Rajna as soloist) was recorded by the National Symphony Orchestra of the SABC and released on CD in 1993. [...] 1994 saw the completion of « Video Games for Orchestra » and his opera « Amarantha ». The former Foundation for the Creative Arts commissioned these works as well as the « Rhapsody for Clarinet and Orchestra » (1995), premièred by Robert Pickup, the NSO and Richard Cock in 1996. In the same year Dr. Rajna was a recipient of the UCT Book Award for his « Harp Concerto ». This annual award is given in recognition of outstanding contribution to any branch of learning and it was the first time that a musical composition was thus honoured. In 1997 Dr. Rajna received the Molteno Award for lifetime achievement from the Cape Tercentenary foundation. Rajna's « Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra » (1996), commissioned by the then Natal Philharmonic Orchestra, was premièred in Durban in 1998. Lyon and Healy Harps of Chicago commissioned his « Suite for Violin and Harp » for presentation at the Seventh World Harp Congress in Prague in July 1999. [...] The opera « Amarantha » was premiered in November 2000 by Cape Town Opera in conjunction with the UCT Opera School. In 2001 Rajna created his own CD label, Amarantha Records. His catalogue includes his performance of « Goyescas » by Granados, music by fellow Hungarian Dohnanyi and a selection of Rajna's representative compositions. The same year Rajna wrote « Tarantulla » for violin and piano in response to a commission for the 2002 Pretoria contest by the University of South Africa (Unisa) International String Competition. [...] Between 2002 and 2004 Rajna completed another opera, « Valley Song », based on the play by Athol Fugard. [...] 2006 saw the completion of « The Creation-A Negro Sermon » for chorus and orchestra, written for the First Cape Town International Summer Music Festival in 2006. [...] His « Violin Concerto » (2007) will be given its premiere in October 2010 at the University of Stellenbosch. In the course of celebrating Rajna's 80th birthday the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra performed extracts from « Valley Song » in a concert during the Third Cape Town International Summer Music Festival in November 2008. Rajna himself was the soloist in his « Piano Concerto No.2 ». (Wikipedia) LIST OF UPLOADS OF COLLECTIONCB, COLLECTIONCB2 and COLLECTIONCB3 and IDEAL "DISCOTHEQUE" OF MORE THAN 1,300 ORCHESTRAL WORKS OF FEELINGS : http://www.corentinboissier.net/