IN: The Philharmonia Orchestra is a British orchestra based in London. It was founded in 1945 by Walter Legge, a classical music record producer for EMI. Since 1995, the orchestra has been based in the Royal Festival Hall. The Philharmonia also has residencies at De Montfort Hall, Leicester; the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury; the Corn Exchange, Bedford; and The Anvil, Basingstoke.

The Philharmonia is one of the most recorded orchestras in the world, with over one thousand recordings on such labels as EMI, CBS, Deutsche Grammophon, and Naxos, and more recently several self-produced recordings. One of its earliest recordings was the last concert ever conducted by Richard Strauss in 1947 in a programme which included his youthful work Burleske.  Antal Dorati conducted the orchestra in recordings for Mercury Living Presence (Tchaikovsky Suites for Orchestra, 1966) and EMI (Bartok Violin Concerto No. 1 featuring Yehudi Menuhin, 1965). Esa-Pekka Salonen has conducted several commercial recordings with the Philharmonia, including music of Berlioz and of Schoenberg. The Philharmonia has a partnership with Signum Records, which releases live recordings of the orchestra's concerts, including Lorin Maazel's cycle of Mahler symphonies, Christoph von Dohnanyi's recordings of Brahms's symphonies, and works by Elgar, Bruckner, Berlioz, Bartok, and others.  The Philharmonia has also been heard on the soundtracks of many films, performing the musical scores of such classics as David Lean's film version of Oliver Twist (1948). The Philharmonia recorded two out of the eight pieces in the Walt Disney film Fantasia 2000 ("Rhapsody in Blue" and "The Sorcerer's Apprentice"). More recently, the Philharmonia has recorded soundtracks for such films as Avengers: Age of Ultron, Fury, Thor: The Dark World, and Iron Man 3.  The Philharmonia has recorded many video game soundtracks, including those for all of EA Games' Harry Potter video games, as well as the Fable and Medal of Honor games, Battlefield, Lord of the Rings: War in the North, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and more.

What occurred during the last decade?

OUT: with over one thousand recordings on such labels as EMI, CBS, Deutsche Grammophon, and Naxos, and more recently several self-produced recordings.


IN: Christopher D'Olier Reeve (September 25, 1952 - October 10, 2004) was an American actor. He achieved stardom for his acting achievements. In particular, he is best known for his motion picture portrayal of the classic DC comic book superhero Superman, beginning with the acclaimed Superman (1978), for which he won a BAFTA Award. Reeve appeared in other critically acclaimed films such as The Bostonians (1984), Street Smart (1987) and The Remains of the Day (1993).

Christopher Reeve was born on September 25, 1952, in New York City, the son of Barbara Pitney (Lamb) (1929-2000), a journalist, and Franklin D'Olier Reeve (1928-2013), a teacher, novelist, poet, and scholar. Reeve was of almost entirely English ancestry, with many family lines that had been in America since the early 1600s. His paternal grandfather, Colonel Richard Henry Reeve, had been the CEO of Prudential Financial (when it was called Prudential Life Insurance Company) for over 25 years.  Reeve's father was a Princeton University graduate studying for a master's degree in Russian at Columbia University prior to the birth of his son, Christopher. Despite being born wealthy, Franklin Reeve spent summers working at the docks with longshoremen. Reeve's mother had been a student at Vassar College but transferred to Barnard College to be closer to Franklin, whom she had met through a family connection. They had another son, Benjamin, born on October 6, 1953.  Franklin and Barbara divorced in 1956, and she moved with her two sons to Princeton, New Jersey, where they attended Nassau Street School. Later that year, Franklin Reeve married Helen Schmidinger, a Columbia University graduate student. Barbara Pitney Lamb married Tristam B. Johnson, a stockbroker, in 1959. Johnson enrolled Christopher and his brother, Benjamin, in Princeton Country Day School, which later merged with Miss Fine's School for Girls to become the co-educational Princeton Day School. Reeve excelled academically, athletically, and onstage; he was on the honor roll and played soccer, baseball, tennis, and hockey. The sportsmanship award at Princeton Day School's invitational hockey tournament was named in Reeve's honor. Reeve admitted that he put pressure on himself to act older than he actually was in order to gain his father's approval.  Reeve found his passion in 1962 at age nine when he was cast in an amateur version of the operetta The Yeomen of the Guard; it was the first of many student plays. In mid-1968, at age fifteen, Reeve was accepted as an apprentice at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Williamstown, Massachusetts. The other apprentices were mostly college students, but Reeve's older appearance and maturity helped him fit in with the others. In a workshop, he played a scene from A View from the Bridge that was chosen to be presented in front of an audience. After the performance, actress Olympia Dukakis said to him, "I'm surprised. You've got a lot of talent. Don't mess it up." The next summer, Reeve was hired at the Harvard Summer Repertory Theater Company in Cambridge for $44 per week. He played a Russian sailor in The Hostage and Belyayev in A Month in the Country. Famed theater critic Elliot Norton called his performance as Belyayev "startlingly effective." The 23-year-old lead actress in the play, a Carnegie Mellon graduate, turned out to be Reeve's first romance. She was engaged to a fellow Carnegie Mellon graduate at the time; they mutually ended the relationship when he made a surprise visit to her dorm room at seven in the morning and found Reeve with her. Reeve's romance with the actress fizzled a few months later when the age difference became an issue. Reeve was briefly involved with Scientology but opted out of becoming a member. He subsequently voiced criticism of the organization.

Did anything else significant happen during this time?

OUT:
The 23-year-old lead actress in the play, a Carnegie Mellon graduate, turned out to be Reeve's first romance.