The Dolci Show

Dolci Show #14: Cimarosa/Benjamin and Dring

June 27, 2020 Ted Rust and Viva Knight Season 1 Episode 14
The Dolci Show
Dolci Show #14: Cimarosa/Benjamin and Dring
Show Notes

Concerto on Themes of Domenico Cimarosa          Arthur Benjamin (1893-1960)
I.              Introduzione
II.
             Allegro
III.
           Siciliana
IV.
          Allegro giusto
The Australian composer Arthur Benjamin compiled four of Domenico Cimarosa’s  sonatas into this oboe concerto in 1942. Cimarosa, a Neapolitan contemporary of Mozart, was best known for his comic operas. He also wrote hundreds of witty single-movement harpsichord sonatas. But Cimarosa backed the losing side in a revolution against the monarchy of Naples. He was imprisoned and then exiled to Venice, where he died at the age of 51. 

Italian Dance                                                                 Madeleine Dring (1923-1977)
Madeleine Dring was an English actress, pianist and composer. She was fluent in the idioms of jazz, pop and musical theater. She received a privileged education and became a skilled classical composer as a student of Ralph Vaughan Williams. She was influenced by the work of Arthur Benjamin, George Gershwin, Cole Porter and Francis Poulenc. Her father, an amateur pianist, was a skilled improviser who encouraged her use of “wrong-note humour” in which she added unexpected notes to conventional chords. While still a student she met the soon-to-be-famous oboist Roger Lord to accompany him for an audition. They married, she wrote many pieces for him, and he in turn tirelessly promoted the publication and performance of her compositions after her early death.