A slender, petite man — and the giant legacy he left us — draw parallels with Maurice Ravel. Over the decades, a total of four biographies of the French composer Florent Schmitt have been published – all of them written in French. Three of these biographies were written during the composer’s lifetime, and with his […]
Tag Archives: Vincent Figuri
It’s quite likely that many music-lovers who know of French composer Florent Schmitt are most familiar with his “big” pieces scored for large orchestral forces, overlaid with sparkling orchestration in the grandest post-Rimsky tradition. And it’s true that many of Schmitt’s best-known works are just those kinds of compositions — pieces like La Tragédie de Salomé, […]
In the late 1980s the first and only commercial recording of Florent Schmitt’s intriguing composition Fonctionnaire MCMXII, Op. 74 (Functionary #1,912) was released on the Cybelia label, featuring the Rhenish State Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by James Lockhart. Schmitt published this symphonic picture 1923, and it received its premiere performance at the Lamoureux Concerts in 1924, conducted […]
Around the world today, the news is full of stories about bloated government bureaucracies and the inefficiencies of various public agencies. From France and Italy to the United States, there are persistent calls for governments to become leaner and more effective, beginning with eliminating “waste, fraud and abuse” from various agencies. But this isn’t a […]