Barbara Hendricks

Barbara Hendricks (born November 20, 1948) is an African-American operatic soprano and concert singer. Hendricks has lived in Europe since 1977, and in Switzerland in Basel since 1985. She is a citizen of Sweden following her marriage to a Swedish citizen.

Early life and education

Hendricks was born in Stephens, Arkansas. She graduated from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and chemistry at the age of 20. She attended the Aspen Music Festival and School and then attended Juilliard School of Music in New York, where she studied with mezzo-soprano Jennie Tourel and participated in master classes led by soprano Maria Callas. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in music.

Musical career

In 1974, Hendricks made her professional operatic debut in Europe at the Glyndebourne Festival and in America at the San Francisco Opera. During her career, she has appeared at major opera houses throughout the world, including the Opéra National de Paris, the Metropolitan Opera, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and La Scala. In 1998 she sang Liu in the historical performance of Turandot at the Forbidden City in Beijing. Hendricks has performed more than twenty roles, twelve of which she has recorded.

Barbara Hendricks (politician)

Barbara Anne Hendricks (born 29 April 1952) is a German politician and member of the SPD.

Since 17 December 2013 she has been Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. From 2007 to 2013, she was Federal Treasurer of the SPD, and from 1998 to 2007 she was Parliamentary Secretary of State at the Federal Ministry of Finance.

Early life and career

Barbara Hendricks was born in Kleve.

After obtaining her Abitur in 1970 at the Johanna Sebus Gymnasium in Kleve, Barbara Hendricks studied History and Social Sciences in Bonn, passing the Staatsexamen examination for high school teachers in 1976. She then worked for the Association for Student Affairs until 1978. After that, until 1981, she was a deputy press secretary at the press office of the Bundestag parliamentary party of the SPD. In 1980 she was awarded a doctorate based on a thesis entitled Die Entwicklung der Margarineindustrie am unteren Niederrhein [The development of the margarine industry on the lower Rhine]. She was then press secretary of the minister of finance of the state of North Rhine-Westfalia until 1990. In 1991 she was appointed Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of the Environment, Spatial Planning and Agriculture of the State of North Rhine-Westfalia.

Symphony No. 3 (Schuman)

American composer William Schuman's Symphony No. 3 was completed on January 11, 1941, and premiered on October 17 of that year by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Serge Koussevitsky, to whom it is dedicated.

Instrumentation

The symphony is scored for an orchestra consisting of piccolo (doubling flute), 2 flutes, 2 oboes, clarinet in E♭, 2 clarinets in B♭, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns in F, 4 trumpets in C, 4 trombones, tuba, snare drum, cymbals, bass drum, xylophone, timpani and strings, with third flute (doubling second piccolo), third oboe, third clarinet in B♭, third bassoon, contrabassoon, 4 more horns in F, and piano listed as "optional, but very desirable".

Structure

Rather than the usual four movements, the symphony is in two parts, each consisting of two continuous sections in a tempo relation of slow-fast and given titles suggesting Baroque formal practices, though Schuman does not follow these forms strictly:

Symphony No. 3 (MacMillan)

The Symphony No. 3 (also known as Symphony No. 3 "Silence") is the third symphony by the Scottish composer James MacMillan. The piece was first performed on April 17, 2003 in NHK Hall, Tokyo, by the NHK Symphony Orchestra under the conductor Charles Dutoit.

Composition

The symphony has a duration of roughly 36 minutes and is composed in one continuous movement. The title of the piece comes from the 1966 novel Silence by the Japanese author Shūsaku Endō. MacMillan described this inspiration in the score program notes, writing:

For Endo, though, this silence is not absence but presence. It is the silence of accompaniment rather than "nihil". This is a notion that has many musical analogies. Music itself grows out of silence. The emptiness and solitude of a composer's silence is nevertheless pregnant with the promise of possibility and potency. The immateriality of music points to the reality of different types of existence. Music is not a physical reality in the sense that we are, or any other thing is. You cannot see, touch or taste music, but its powerful presence always makes itself felt.

Symphony No. 3 (Popov)

Gavriil Popov composed his Symphony No. 3 for string orchestra, subtitled Heroic Symphony but also known as the Spanish, between 1939 and 1946. At ca. 55 minutes it is Popov's longest symphony. It consists of five movements, four highly dynamic movements drawing on Spanish dances framing a twenty minutes long memorial on the Spanish Civil War.

Following the ban of his Symphony No. 1 and the subsequent official condemnation of him being a formalist composer Popov focused on composing film music. In 1939 he arranged a suite from his soundtrack for Esfir Shub's documentary on the Spanish Civil War Spain and conceived in parallel a Concerto grosso for string orchestra (on the basis of the string episodes from Spain), as it can be read in the composer's diary on September 17. Work in the project was halted soon after completing the first movement, but Popov resumed it five years later, changing the work's title from Concerto grosso to his third Symphony. After two years of work, it was finished on September 1946. The premiere took place in Moscow on January 31, 1947. Popov's Symphony No. 2, which had earned the composer a Stalin Prize the previous year, marked his provisional rehabilitation, and the third symphony met a favorable reception. In his diary Popov notes his former teacher Vladimir Shcherbachov believes Symphony No. 3 is my best achievement. A meeting to discuss its nomination for the Stalin Prizes was arranged, but it was subsequently cancelled and the next year Popov was instead blacklisted in the resolution of the infamous First Congress of the Union of Soviet Composers.