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Paul Dukas is best remembered for his tone poem The Sorcerer's Apprentice, indelibly etched in popular visual memory as Mickey Mouse in a star-spangled robe and wizard's hat, waving a wand at an army of brooms. Dukas worked hard at being a composer, critic, and teacher because music did not come to him as naturally as to others. His self-doubt led him to destroy many of his works, but the radiant sound and strength of technique mark what remains. Among those are his opera Ariane et Barbe-bleue, the ballet La Péri, and his Symphony in C.

Born in Paris on October 1, 1865, into a prosperous banking family of Jewish ancestry, Dukas revealed average musical gifts as a child. He received his earliest training from his mother, a fine pianist, who died during his fifth year. At 16, having made music his chosen vocation, Dukas entered the Paris Conservatoire, studying harmony, piano, conducting, and orchestration. At 17, he wrote his first two adult compositions, overtures to Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen and Shakespeare's King Lear. He formally studied composition with Ernest Guiraud, but his submissions for the Prix de Rome competition in the years 1886 to 1889 were unsuccessful. This was the beginning of his pathological self-doubt that led to the destruction of almost half the total output of his creative maturity. Partly due to these disappointments, he left the school to fulfill his military service, which he completed in 1891.

Dukas then began writing music criticism and resumed composition, entering his most productive compositional phase with the overture Polyeucte, introduced to widespread acclaim on January 23, 1892. During the following year, he abandoned his first projected opera, Horn et Rimenhild, and collaborated with Saint-Saëns in completing and orchestrating the opera Frédégonde by Guiraud. Dukas' Symphony in C, commenced in 1895, recalls the symphonies of Franck, d'Indy, and Chausson, the leading lights in the Societé Nationale de Musique formed to promote French composers, and also emulates those more extroverted French symphonists: Lalo, Bizet, and Saint-Saëns. The most famous work by Dukas, the "symphonic scherzo after Goethe," The Sorcerer's Apprentice, was written in the immediate aftermath of the Symphony, between January and May of 1897. For the next decade, he devoted himself to an opera, Ariane et Barbe-bleue, based on the work of Maurice Maeterlinck, while completing his Sonata for piano in E flat minor (1900). The ballet score La Péri (1911-1912), was originally intended as a one-act tableau for Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. It was the last work Dukas allowed to be submitted for publication and was saved from the ashes only after vigorous protests from the composer's closest associates.

Even as he gained recognition as composer, Dukas became one of the foremost Parisian music critics of his generation, contributing articles and reviews to many of France's leading newspapers and journals. He was also a dedicated musicological researcher, editing authoritative critical editions of keyboard music by Rameau, Couperin, Scarlatti, and Beethoven, and served as a member of the composition faculty at the Paris Conservatoire from 1910 to 1913. Dukas died in Paris on May 17, 1935, without living to see his universal fame established as The Sorcerer's Apprentice became enshrined in American popular culture a mere five years later through the use of the work in the Walt Disney movie Fantasia. ~ TiVo Staff

Christian Lindberg is perhaps the first classical trombonist to maintain a successful full-time performing career as a soloist, now considered among the instrument's foremost exponents. Lindberg has also established himself as a conductor and composer.

Lindberg was born in Djursholm, Sweden, on February 15, 1958. He actually took up the trombone fairly late, starting at age 17, after hearing recordings by the great jazz trombonist Jack Teagarden. He studied at the Royal Stockholm Academy of Music, with Sven Erik Eriksson as one of his teachers. At 19, Lindberg became the principal trombonist of the Royal Opera Orchestra in Stockholm. He left that position after just a year, saying he was bored playing in an orchestra. After further studies in Stockholm, he moved to London, where he studied at the Royal College of Music with John Iverson. He continued his studies later in Los Angeles with Ralph Sauer and Roger Bobo. He established himself very quickly in his solo career, beginning with a win at the Nordic Soloists' Biennale competition in 1981. Lindberg made his concert debut in 1984, performing the Henri Tomasi Trombone Concerto. By that time, he had already released his debut album, The Virtuoso Trombone (1983), on the BIS label, with which he has continued to be associated over his long career.

Lindberg regularly plays dozens of concerts a year all over the world, has won many major competitions, gives frequent lectures and masterclasses, and holds the honorary title of Prince Consort Composer at London's Royal College of Music. He has been very active in expanding the repertoire for his instrument. He has premiered over 300 works for trombone, over 90 of which are concertos, and has arranged or transcribed over 100 other works for the trombone. Composers who have written works for him include Alfred Schnittke, Michael Nyman, and Arvo Pärt, among many others. One of his most frequent collaborators has been composer Jan Sandström, who wrote his Motorbike Concerto for Lindberg (which Lindberg performs in costume, as he does other pieces).

With encouragement from Sandström, Lindberg began to compose his own works. His first major composition, Arabenne, for trombone and strings, was completed in 1997 and received its world premiere in 1998. Since then, he has completed over 50 pieces on commission from orchestras all over the world. Lindberg has worked extensively as a conductor with orchestras and ensembles from all over Europe (especially in the Scandinavian countries), China, Japan, and the Americas. He served as principal conductor of the Nordic Chamber Orchestra from 2004 to 2011, the Swedish Wind Ensemble from 2005 to 2012, and, beginning in 2009, the Norwegian Artic Philharmonic Orchestra. One of his major projects, outside of his duties as principal conductor, is a collaboration with the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra on the Allan Pettersson Project, with the goal of recording all of Pettersson's 17 symphonies. In 2022, the cycle reached Pettersson's Symphony No. 15. ~ Keith Finke & Chris Morrison