Peter Jost

The Romance for a melodic instrument and piano was a very popular genre in French salon music of the nineteenth century. Saint-Saëns also wrote several such pieces for violin, cello, and horn. His onl...

In June 1905, Ravel told a friend shortly before setting off on a long holiday: 'I was terribly busy because of a piece for harp commissioned by the Érard company. I was able to finish it after a fash...

With hardly any other chamber music work did Dvorák occupy himself as long and intensively as with this trio. After his first successes with works inspired by Czech folk music, namely the popular Slav...

After early elimination from the competition for the "Prix de Rome," the coveted award for composition students at the Paris Conservatoire, Chausson withdrew to the countryside in the summer of 1881 a...

Completed on 1 January 1885, the Piano Quartet is, alongside the Cello Sonata op. 6 and the Violin Sonata op. 18, one of the most substantial chamber music works by the young Strauss. The four-movemen...

For several years following composition of his first piano quartet, Dvořák's publisher Simrock pushed him to compose a follow-up piece in the genre. The work, written during a few short weeks in summe...

First Urtext edition Fingering: Klaus Schilde The septet was composed in 1879/80, commissioned for the Parisian Chamber Music Society 'La Trompette'. Saint-Saëns had, however, hesitated for several ye...

Debussy wrote these two short dances to a commission from the instrument-making firm of Pleyel, which was keen to use famous names in the marketing of its newly-developed chromatic harp. The dances ar...

Since the 1830s, numerous composers have experimented with hybrid forms combining elements of the symphony, concerto and free fantasia. With his Second Piano Concerto, Liszt succeeded in finding an or...

Many well-known violinists such as the dedicatee Pablo de Sarasate, together later with Eugène Ysaye and Jacques Thibaud, included in their repertoires Camille Saint-Saëns' concert piece composed in 1...

Schumann's 'Sinfonietta' in the Urtext The intensity with which Schumann dealt with the symphony is shown not only by the four known works themselves, but also by compositions that stand between the g...

'Die Feen' is Richard Wagner's first complete opera; Beethoven, but especially Weber and Marschner are the models Wagner cited as his musical influences. Although Die Feen as a whole seems like a conc...

When Dvořák suddenly became internationally famous in 1878 with his Slavonic Dances, he received, among other things, a request for a new string quartet from Jean Becker, the first violinist of the re...

In autumn 1895, after returning from New York once and for all, Dvorák took up his former position as teacher at the Prague Conservatory. This clearly had an inspiring impact on him because in the spa...

Although Dvorak's stay in America (1892-95) was very successful, the composer suffered a good deal from homesickness. He had begun the string quartet in A flat major in New York, but continued with it...

Composed in autumn of 1881, Opus 61 is the last of Dvořák's 'middle' quartets by chronology for which Beethoven and Schubert served as the most significant models. Beethoven's influence, from thematic...

The immediate model for this first important chamber music work by Ravel was Debussy’s String Quartet from 1892/93. Nevertheless, the composition, written in 1902/03, already contains unmistakable fea...

The serenade flourished in Mozart’s era, but with Brahms the genre experienced a new surge in popularity in the 19th century. Dvořák’s cheerful and relaxed op. 22 came into being in 1875, during a ver...

Debussy wrote these two short dances to a commission from the instrument-making firm of Pleyel, which was keen to use famous names in the marketing of its newly-developed chromatic harp. The dances ar...

Debussy wrote these two short dances to a commission from the instrument-making firm of Pleyel, which was keen to use famous names in the marketing of its newly-developed chromatic harp. The dances ar...

For the elaboration of his eight Spanish Dances (HN1370), Sarasate employed extant material - folk melodies or songs by well-known composers - which he then blended with his own delightful brand of to...

Elements of Spanish folklore dominate in Sarasate's compositions, but several prominent works also use typical melodies and dances of other countries. Alongside the 'Zigeunerweisen', the 'Introduction...

Dvořák composed this concerto at his publisher's suggestion. He drafted it relatively swiftly in summer 1879, but completing it was a more drawn-out process that lasted until 1882. He had the famous v...

Once again, Henle can boast of an important new addition to its Pantheon of great composers: Ernest Chausson. Based on a novella by the Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev, the Poème for violin and orchest...

The Richard Wagner Complete Edition presents the composer's entire output for the first time in a reliable form. The conductor Michael Balling, in the early years of the 20th century, attempted to mak...