Victoria de los Angeles was one of the finest lyric sopranos in the decades after World War II. She was born Victoria Gómez Cima. She learned to sing and play piano and guitar while still in school. She entered the Conservatorio de Liceo in Barcelona to study piano and singing, completing the six-year program in three, and graduating with full honors at the age of 18. Her membership in the Conservatory's Ars Musicae gave her wide exposure to the art song repertory and Baroque and Renaissance music.

De los Angeles debuted in a song recital at the Palau de la Música Catalana. Her operatic debut was also in Barcelona, at the Gran Teatro del Liceo, singing the Countess in Mozart's Marriage of Figaro.

Her national and international breakthroughs occurred after she won the Geneva International Singing Competition in 1947. She was immediately booked for performances in Madrid, singing in Manon and La Bohème opposite Beniamino Gigli before returning to Barcelona. There she moved into Germanic roles, adding Freischütz, Lohengrin, and Tannhäuser to her portrayals. The Geneva Competition had also brought her to the attention of the BBC, which brought her to London to sing the part of Salud in Manuel de Falla's La Vida Breve in 1948, when she signed an exclusive contract with EMI. This association lasted 30 years and included at least 21 full-length opera recordings, 25 solo recitals, and appearances on 40 other EMI releases.

Her first Paris appearance was in 1949, as Marguerite in Gounod's Faust, a role she repeated as her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1951. She debuted in Covent Garden in 1950, once again singing Mimì in La Bohème, which was one of the roles most closely associated with her. She sang regularly at both the Met and Covent Garden. Wieland Wagner asked her to sing in a new production of Tannhäuser opening the Bayreuth Festival for 1961.

She sang in most of the major houses of the world, touring in South Africa, the Middle East, Australia, East Asia, and Latin America (where she was a frequent guest artist at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires). She performed with such great conductors as Thomas Beecham, Herbert von Karajan, Georg Solti, Pierre Monteux, Carlo Maria Giulini, Charles Münch, Zubin Mehta, and Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos.

She had a wide vocal and dramatic range, singing in operas as diverse as Carmen, The Barber of Seville, Acis and Galatea, Pelléas et Mélisande, Die Meistersinger, Simon Boccanegra, Dido and Aeneas, La Traviata, and Madama Butterfly. In one evening, she sang both the roles of Nedda in I pagliacci and Santuzza in Cavalleria rusticana. As a recitalist, her vast and wide repertory embraced not only the central German and French Romantic and 20th century eras, but had a strong representation of early music. In addition, she often added Spanish and Catalan folk songs to her solo recitals.

Besides having a lovely, warm, and dark tone, she was always noted for the intelligence of her portrayals and musical choices. She closely monitored her own singing. She retired from the operatic stage in 1969, after an exceptionally successful portrayal of Verdi's Desdemona in Dallas, though she returned to Covent Garden as Carmen in 1978.

However, she continued singing recitals. As time passed, she lowered the number of her appearances, yet reviews continued to stress the purity of her voice. She was heard to say that the moment she heard a wobble in her voice she would "shut up the shop." One of her last appearances was in connection with the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, where she still exhibited characteristic vocal purity.

Alicia de Larrocha's greatest contribution as a musician was her unrivaled advocacy of Spanish and Catalonian piano music. Her interpretations of the music of Albéniz, Granados, Falla, Mompou (a lifelong friend who dedicated several works to her), and Montsalvatge were universally described as brilliant, authentic, and masterful in tonal color, texture, and rhythm. She was also highly regarded for her recordings of Mozart and French Impressionist music. She began her career before the age of six with a solo recital, followed by her orchestral debut at the age of 11 performing Mozart's "Coronation" Concerto (K. 537) with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid. She studied with Frank Marshall at his Academia Marshall and also studied music theory with Ricardo Lamote de Gignon. Her adult career began in 1940, but she did not make any international tours until 1947, when she first toured Europe. In 1953, she premiered Montsalvatge's Concierto breve, which is dedicated to her, and also made her first visit to England. Her first appearance in the U.S. was in 1955 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. After that, she began performing around the world, working with such artists as Victoria de Los Angeles, Montserrat Caballé, the Guarneri and Tokyo String Quartets, Sir Colin Davis, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Kent Nagano, and Gerard Schwarz. She even performed Poulenc's Concerto for two pianos with the composer at the second piano. In addition to her performing, she took on the directorship of the Academia Marshall in 1959. Her recordings, particularly of Albéniz and Granados, have received numerous prizes, including Grammys, the Edison Prize, the Grand Prix du Disques, and the Deutsche Schallplatten Prize. She herself was awarded the Paderewski Memorial Medal and the Principe de Asturias prize, among others, and was recognized for her talents by the city of Barcelona, the Spanish and French governments, and UNESCO. She continued to perform until her 80th year. After breaking her hip in 2007, she suffered an overall decline in health, and died in 2009.

For 50 years he directed an orchestra that was second-rate in tone and technique, yet Ernest Ansermet drew performances from it that cut right to the heart of the music. A musician of catholic taste, Ansermet was a reliable, insightful interpreter of composers from Mozart to Martin. His recordings in the 1950s and 1960s with the Suisse Romande Orchestra, which he founded, retain strong interest for collectors who value nuance over tonal sheen. These recordings are of especial interest as they provide a link to composers active in Paris in the early twentieth century, with whom Ansermet was closely associated.

As a child, he studied math with his father, a teacher, and music with his mother. Ansermet's early training seemed to add up to a career in mathematics; he specialized in that subject at Lausanne University, graduating in 1903. Ansermet served as a professor of mathematics from 1905-1909. But during this time his interest in music only increased; he kept an eye trained on the technique of local conductors, and took courses in music with Alexandre Denéréaz, Otto Barblan, and Ernest Bloch. Ansermet sought further advice on conducting from Felix Mottl in Munich and Artur Nikisch in Berlin, then concentrated mainly on teaching himself the art of the baton.

His first professional efforts were leading the summer Kursaal concerts in Montreux (1912-1914), and conducting symphonic concerts in Geneva (1915-1918). In 1918 he organized the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in Geneva, from the start performing a substantial amount of contemporary French and Russian music. Ansermet befriended many of the great progressive composers of the time, especially Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and Igor Stravinsky. Through Stravinsky, Ansermet met Serge Diaghilev and was appointed principal conductor of the latter's Ballets Russes, touring with the company to Paris, London, Italy, Spain, South America, and the United States. During a 1916 tour Ansermet made his first recordings with the Ballets Russes orchestra -- the beginning of a half century of making intriguing records with less-than-stellar ensembles. Through his association with the Ballets Russes, Ansermet was able to premiere many of the period's most important dance scores, including Falla's Three-Cornered Hat, Prokofiev's The Buffoon, Satie's Parade, and Stravinsky's Pulcinella. As an extra-curricular wartime diversion, on September 28, 1918, Ansermet premiered Stravinsky's L'Histoire du soldat in Geneva.

He developed the reputation of -- in the words of Nicholas Slonimsky -- "a scholarly and progressive musician capable of fine interpretations of both classical and modern works." Although the Suisse Romande Orchestra, with which he recorded for Decca in the 1950s and 1960s, could be criticized for its wiry strings and sour woodwinds, the group delivered to Ansermet highly accurate performances notable for their clear textures and delicate timbral balances.

Ansermet was, not surprisingly, a gifted conductor of Classical-era music, but he had little opportunity to record it. He is best remembered for his sui generis recordings of the music of his French contemporaries Debussy, Ravel, and Roussel, and his Swiss compatriots Honegger and Martin. But Ansermet was also a strong champion of such other contemporary composers as Bartók and Britten, premiering the latter's opera The Rape of Lucretia. He retired from conducting in 1967, to the end performing and committing to disc such rarities as Magnard's Symphony No. 4.

Ansermet's compositions include a symphonic poem, Feuilles de printemps; he also orchestrated Debussy's Six épigraphes antiques, among other pieces. His publications include Le Geste du chef d'orchestre (1943) and Les Fondements de la musique dans la conscience humaine (1961), in which he used mathematics to discredit 12-tone and other advanced compositional techniques.