Rosario Bourdon

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rosario Bourdon (1923)

Joseph Charles Rosario Bourdon (born March 6, 1885 in Longueuil , † April 24, 1961 in New York City ) was a Canadian cellist, composer, arranger and conductor.

Live and act

Bourdon came from a musical family. His father was an amateur singer and his mother gave him cello lessons from the age of seven. He then took lessons from the cellist Jean-Baptiste Dubois , who later became his stepfather, and in 1897 studied at the Royal Conservatory of Ghent with Joseph Jacob . After just eight months he received the first prize with great honors and went on a concert tour through Europe before returning to Canada in 1899.

From 1902 he lived in the USA, where he worked as a cellist with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (1902–1904), Philadelphia Orchestra (1904–1908) and in Saint Paul, Minnesota (1908–1911). In 1905 he made his first recordings for Victor Records . He was hired there in 1909 as house cellist and in 1920 rose to become co-director alongside Josef Pasternack . Versatile, he worked for Victor as an arranger, accompanied Frances Alda , Enrico Caruso , Mabel Garrison , John McCormack and Alma Gluck on the cello and his cellist colleague Victor Herbert on the piano and conducted the Victor Concert Orchestra, the Victor Symphony Orchestra and the Victor Salon Orchestra and occasionally the Sousa's Band .

In addition, Bourdon was musical director at the NBC radio from 1923 , where he was responsible for the Cities Service Concerts series from 1927 to 1938 . After he left Victor Records in 1931, he worked for Muzak , Brunswick Records and Thesaurus Records, among others . In the field of film, he also pioneered some of the films with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy and Mickey Mouse cartoons from Walt Disney as musical director .

Bourdon's best-known composition is his Poème élégiaque for cello and orchestra, which was premiered in 1943 by Roland Leduc and the orchestra of the Québec Conservatory. Recordings were made of the compositions Is There a Santa Claus ?, Ginger Snaps and Danse bagatelle . As a conductor he found particular recognition with performances of Camille Saint-Saëns organ symphony, Francis Poulenc's Concert champêtre (with the soloist Léo-Pol Morin ), Claude Debussy's Prelude à l'après-midi d'un faune and works by Beethoven , Tchaikovsky and Wagner .

swell

Individual evidence

  1. Today the Hogeschool Gent belonging