Roll of Honour

Bass Yevgeny Nesterenko died yesterday in Vienna

One that I believe was missed by this thread,

Pianist Dmitri Bashkirov passed away earlier this year on March 7th, 2021 at the age of 91, having been born in 1931:


I first encountered Bashkirov's pianism on a Harmonia Mundi CD of Brahms solo piano music. Right away, I recognized that this was among the most extraordinary Brahms playing I'd heard in my life, and to this day, it remains so. Bashkirov's Schumann is equally as fine, yet his early 1960s EMI recording of the Fantasie in C major, and Bunte Blätter is harder to acquire these days. Bashkirov was a winner of the Marquerite Long Piano Competition in Paris in 1955, and a former teacher at the Moscow Conservatory between 1957-1991. Along with Vladimir Ashkenazy, he was one of the last remaining pianists of the great Russian School in 20th century.

Brahms:


Schumann:


Bunte Blätter, Op. 99 (LP excerpts):

Sylvano Bussotti (Oct. 1st, 1931 - Sept. 19th, 2021)

Italian composer dies days before his 90th birthday

https://www.tellerreport.com/news/2...tribute-to-the-great-composer.SybVx3C4mF.html

"The Florentine" (from the week prior) lists the cultural events planned to celebrate him.

https://www.theflorentine.net/2021/09/14/sylvano-bussotti-composer-artist/

CULTURE

Sylvano Bussotti

One of the city's most multitalented native sons

Deirdre Pirro
SEPTEMBER 14, 2021 - 9:57

For five days between September 20 and 25, as part of Estate Fiorentina, several major Florentine cultural organisations will celebrate the 90th birthday of Sylvano Bussotti, one of the city's most multitalented native sons, a composer and performer, artist, writer, actor, director, set and costume designer.

Born in Florence on October 1, 1931, Bussotti began studying music at an early age, beginning with the violin. Later, at the Luigi Cherubini Conservatory, he studied piano, harmony and counterpoint, but he failed to receive a diploma because World War II interrupted his studies. The relationship with his uncle, Tono Zancanaro, and brother, Renzo, both painters, would be decisive in the development of the artist he would become, as would his later meeting with the poet Aldo Braibanti...

Bernard Haitink 4 March 1929 - 21 October 2021) was a Dutch conductor and violinist.




Bernard Haitink 4 March 1929 - 21 October 2021) was a Dutch conductor and violinist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Haitink

Stephen Sondheim passed away at 91



Stephen Joshua Sondheim (/ˈsɒndhaɪm/ SOND-hym; March 22, 1930 - November 26, 2021) was an American composer and lyricist. One of the most important figures in 20th-century musical theater, Sondheim was praised for having "reinvented the American musical"[1] with shows that tackled "unexpected themes that range far beyond the [genre's] traditional subjects"[2] with "music and lyrics of unprecedented complexity and sophistication."[3] His shows addressed "darker, more harrowing elements of the human experience,"[4] with songs often tinged with "ambivalence"[5] about various aspects of life.

Carlisle Floyd (June 11, 1926 - September 30, 2021)

Carlisle Sessions Floyd (June 11, 1926 - September 30, 2021) was an American composer primarily known for his dozen or so operas.



His best known opera, Susannah, is based on a story from the Biblical Apocrypha, transferred to contemporary rural Tennessee, and written for a Southern dialect. It was premiered at Florida State University in 1955, with Phyllis Curtin in the title role. When it was staged at the New York City Opera the following year, the reception was initially mixed; some considered it a masterpiece, while others degraded it as a 'folk opera'. Subsequent performances led to an increase in Susannah's reputation and the opera quickly became among the most performed of American operas. (Wikipedia)

His other opera Of Mice and Men is his second most popular work.

According to Opera News, Susannah is the most frequently performed American opera after Gershwin's Porgy and Bess and Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors. In addition to Gershwin and Menotti, Floyd stands with Adams, Barber, Bernstein, Glass and Rorem in the pantheon of preeminent 20th-century American opera composers.