TOMASO ALBINONI's "Adagio" with Sissel, Il Divo, The Eroica Trio, Dominic Miller, Mostar Sinfonie

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Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni was born in Venice in 1671, eldest son of a wealthy paper merchant. At an early age he became proficient as a singer and, more notably, as a violinist, though not being a member of the performers' guild he was unable to play publicly so he turned his hand to composition. His first opera, Zenobia, regina de Palmireni, was produced in Venice in 1694, coinciding with his first collection of instrumental music, the 12 Sonate a tre, Op.1. Thereafter he divided his attention almost equally between vocal composition (operas, serenatas and cantatas) and instrumental composition (sonatas and concertos).

Until his father's death in 1709, he was able to cultivate music more for pleasure than for profit, referring to himself as "Dilettante Veneto" - a term which in 18th century Italy was totally devoid of unfavorable connotations. Under the terms of his father's will he was relieved of the duty (which he would normally have assumed as eldest son) to take charge of the family business, this task being given to his younger brothers. Henceforth he was to be a full-time musician, a prolific composer who according to one report, also ran a successful academy of singing.

A lifelong resident of Venice, Albnoni married an opera singer, Margherita Raimondi (d 1721), and composed as many as 81 operas several of which were performed in northern Europe from the 1720s onwards. In 1722 he traveled to Munich at the invitation of the Elector of Bavaria to supervise performances of I veri amici and Il trionfo d'amore as part of the wedding celebrations for the Prince-Elector and the daughter of the late Emperor Joseph I.

Most of his operatic works have been lost, having not been published during his lifetime. Nine collections of instrumental works were however published, meeting with considerable success and consequent reprints; thus it is as a composer of instrumental music (99 sonatas, 59 concertos and 9 sinfonias) that he is known today. In his lifetime these works were favorably compared with those of Corelli and Vivaldi, and his nine collections published in Italy, Amsterdam and London were either dedicated to or sponsored by an impressive list of southern European nobility.

Albinoni was particularly fond of the oboe, a relatively new introduction in Italy, and is credited with being the first Italian to compose oboe concertos (Op. 7, 1715). Prior to Op.7, Albinoni had not published any compositions with parts for wind instruments.

The concerto, in particular, had been regarded as the province of stringed instruments. It is likely that the first concertos featuring a solo oboe appeared from German composers such as Telemann or Handel. Nevertheless, the four concertos with one oboe (Nos. 3, 6, 9 and 12) and the four with two oboes (Nos. 2, 5, 8 and 11) in Albinoni's Op.7 were the first of their kind to be published, and proved so successful that the composer repeated the formula in Op.9 (1722).

Though Albinoni resided in Venice all his life, he traveled frequently throughout southern Europe; the European nobility would also have made his acquaintance in Venice, now a popular destination city. With its commercial fortunes in the Adriatic and Mediterranean in decline, the enterprising City-State turned to tourism as its new source of wealth, taking advantage of its fabled water setting and ornate buildings, and putting on elongated and elaborate carnivals which regularly attracted the European courts and nobility.

Apart from some further instrumental works circulating in manuscript in 1735, little is known of Albinoni's life and musical activity after the mid-1720s. However, so much of his output has been lost, one can surely not put our lack of knowledge down to musical or composition inactivity. Much of his work was lost during the latter years of World War II with the bombing of Dresden and the Dresden State library -- which brings us to the celebrated Adagio.

Albinoni died in 1751, in the city of his birth.
For a comprehensive biography on Tomaso Albinoni, please go to:
http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Lib/Albinoni-Tomaso.htm
http://www.baroquemusic.org/bqxalb.html

For more information on Il Divo, please go to"
http://www.ildivo.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Il_Divo

For more information on Sissel Kyrkjebø (Soprano), please go to:
http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Sissel.htm
http://www.sissel.cc/Sisselbio.html

For more information on Dominic Miller, please go to:
http://www.dominicmiller.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_Miller

For more information on The Eroica Trio, please go to:
http://m.eroicatrio.com/biography.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eroica_Trio

The Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18, is a concerto for piano and orchestra composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff between the autumn of 1900 and April 1901. The second and third movements were first performed with the composer as soloist on 2 December 1900.[2] The complete work was premiered, again with the composer as soloist, on 27 October 1901, with his cousin Alexander Siloti conducting. This piece is one of Rachmaninoff's most enduringly popular pieces, and established his fame as a concerto composer

At its 1897 premiere, Rachmaninoff's first symphony, though now considered a significant achievement, was derided by contemporary critics. Compounded by problems in his personal life, Rachmaninoff fell into a depression that lasted for several years. His second piano concerto confirmed his recovery from clinical depression and writer's block. The concerto was dedicated to Nikolai Dahl, a physician who had done much to restore Rachmaninoff's self-confidence.

For more information, please visit - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Concerto_No._2_(Rachmaninoff)

"All by Myself" is a power ballad written and performed by Eric Carmen in 1975.

The verse borrows heavily from the second movement (Adagio Sostenuto) of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Opus 18, which Carmen believed was in the public domain. Having found it was not only after the record had been issued, Carmen had to come to an agreement with the Rachmaninoff estate. Early versions, therefore, only give writing credit to Carmen while later versions also credit Rachmaninoff. The chorus borrows from a song "Let's Pretend" that Carmen had written for the Raspberries in 1973. Carmen's full version has an extended piano solo and lasts over seven minutes. There is also an edited version of 4 minutes 22 seconds.

The song was the first release from Carmen's first solo LP after leaving the power pop group the Raspberries and was originally recorded by the author and released in December 1975 to great success. It reached number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, number 1 on Cash Box Top 100 Singles and number 12 in the UK. The single sold more than one million copies in the United States and was certified gold by the RIAA in April 1976. In a 2006 poll for UK's Five programme Britain's Favourite Break-up Songs Eric Carmen's version of this song was voted seventeenth.

For more information, please visit - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_by_Myself