Thomas Rajna

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name = Thomas Rajna
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birth_date = birth date and age|1928|12|21
birth_place = flagicon|Hungary Budapest, Hungary
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Dr. Thomas Rajna (born 21 December, 1928, Budapest, Hungary) is a South African composer and pianist. He started to play the piano and compose at an early age and studied at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music where he won the Liszt Prize in 1947. That year he left Hungary to settle in London and enrolled at the Royal College of Music. He soon appeared at the Proms under such conductors as Carlo Maria Giulini, Colin Davis and Pritchard, also becoming a frequent broadcaster at the BBC. In 1963 he was appointed the Professor of Piano at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

His first commercial recording was the complete piano solo works of Igor Stravinsky. Since then he has recorded music by Alexander Scriabin, Robert Schumann and Olivier Messiaen, the piano part of Stravinsky's "Petrouchka" with the New Philharmonia under Erich Leinsdorf, and Bartók's "Music for Strings", "Celeste and Percussion" with Sir Georg Solti and the London Symphony Orchestra. He has completed a cycle of recordings devoted to the entire piano music of Enrique Granados, while a more recent undertaking was the recording of Liszt's 12 Transcendental Studies and 12 Etudes, Op.1, and he has often performed his own two Piano Concertos.

He settled with his family in Cape Town, South Africa in 1970 to take up an appointment at the Faculty of Music of the University of Cape Town, where he became Associate Professor of Piano in 1989. In January 1981 he was a awarded a University Fellowship by UCT and the same year received an Artes Award from the SABC for his series of radio programmes on Franz Liszt. He completed his Piano Concerto No. 2 in 1984. The following year he received a doctorate in music from UCT in recognition of his body of compositions. During a 1990 visit to England he recorded the Schumann Piano Concerto with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and gave a recital of works by Ernő Dohnányi and himself. His 1990 Harp Concerto had its European première in Copenhagen at the Fifth World Harp Congress in Junly 1993. This work and his Second Piano Concerto (with Rajna as soloist) was recorded by the National Symphony Orchestra and released on CD in 1993. 1994 saw the completion of "Video Games for Orchestra" and his opera "Amarantha". The Foundation for the Creative Arts commissioned these works as well as the Rhapsody for Clarinet and Orchestra (1995), premièred by Robert Pickup, the NSO and Richard Cock in 1996.

In the same year Dr. Rajna was a recipient of the UCT Book Award for his Harp Concerto. This annual award is given in recognition of outstanding contribution to any branch of learning and it was the first time that a musical composition was thus honoured.

Rajna's "Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra" (1996), commissioned by the Natal Philharmonic Orchestra, was premièred in Durban in 1998. Lyon and Healy Harps of Chicago commissioned his "Suite for Violin and Harp" for presentation at the Seventh World Harp Congress in Prague in July 1999. Dr. Rajna received an Award of Merit by the Cape Tercentenary Foundation in 1997. He retired as an Associate Professor from the UCT College of Music in 1993. On 14 October 2008, a concert will be held at the Baxter Theatre Concert Hall to celebrate his 80th birthday. Brad Liebl (baritone), Golda Schultz (soprano), Marc Uys (violin), Jacqueline Kerrod (harp) and the UCT Choir will perform works by Rajna, Granados and Ravel with him. [cite web |url = http://www.humanities.uct.ac.za/calendar/events/?month=10|title = Humanities Calendar: October|accessdate = 2008-06-10]

He married Ann Campion, the daughter of English actor Gerald Campion. He has two sons, David and Daniel, and two daughters, Jessica and Trilby.

Compositions

Ballet

* "Girl in a Mask", 1958 for the Western Theatre Ballet

Operas

* Amarantha, 2000
* Valley Song, based on the play by Athol Fugard, 2005

Filmography

* Seven Years in Tibet, 1956
* Jet Storm, 1959

Orchestral works

* Rhapsody for clarinet and orchestra, 1948-1950
* Serenade for ten wind instruments, percussion, cimbalom and piano, 1958
* "Divertimento", 1958
* Movements for Strings, 1962
* "Cantilenas and Interludes", 1968
* Three Hebrew Choruses, 1972-1973
* Four Traditional African Lyrics, 1976
* "Divertimento Piccolo", 1987
* Video Games for orchestra, 1994
* Rhapsody for clarinet and orchestra, 1995
* Fantasy for violin and orchestra, 1996

Concertante

* Dance for Orchestra, 1951
* Suite for Strings, 1952-1954
* Piano Concerto No.1, 1960-1962
* Piano Concerto No.2, 1983-1984
* Concerto for harp and orchestra, 1990

Chamber

Two players

* Music for clarinet and piano, 1947
* Music for cello and piano, 1950
* Music for violin and piano, 1956-1957
* Suite for violin and harp, 1997-1998

Four players

* String Quartet, 1948

Piano

* Preludes for piano, 1947-1950
* Four Early Songs
** Cradle Song (William Blake), 1948
** Piping Down the Valleys Wild (William Blake), 1948
** Meeting at Night (Robert Browning), 1948
** Solfeggio, 1949
* Capriccio for piano (or harpsichord), 1960
* Four Songs on poems by W. H. Auden, 1998
** Stop all the Clocks
** The Composer
** Their Lonely Betters
** Refugee Blues

References

*
* [http://www.chico.mweb.co.za/art/2003/2003feb/030221-valley.html Athol Fugard's Valley Song has been set to music by composer Thomas Rajna, writes Guy Willoughby, the instigator of the project]
* [http://www.musicweb-international.com/classRev/2001/Aug01/Chisholm.htm Songs for a Year and a Day by Erik Chisholm, Thomas Rajna and Victor Hely-Hutchinson]
* [http://web.uct.ac.za/depts/dpa/monpaper/98-no34/rajna.htm Rajna going strong as he approaches 70]