The Paris horn player Louis François Dauprat was professor at the Conservatoire de Paris, thus having a great influence on the French school of horn playing. He wrote his compositions mostly for didac...
'The world famous tale Hansel and Gretel by The Brothers Grimm was set to music in the 1890s by German composer Engelbert Humperdinck. The children's opera is performed regularly at many opera houses....
The 'Mass in b minor' (BWV 232) by Johann Sebastian Bach is a musical setting of the complete Ordinary of the Latin Mass. The work was one of Bach's last compositions, not completed until 1749, the ye...
In 1882 Richard Strauss wrote his 'Horn Concerto No. 1' in E-flat major, Op. 11. The horn concerto has become the most frequently performed horn concerto written in the 19th Century. At the age of 18...
German composer Richard Strauss composed 'Don Juan', Op. 20, in 1888. The work is based on 'Don Juans Ende', a play derived from an unfinished 1844 retelling of the tale by poet Nikolaus Lenau after t...
Capriccio' is the final opera by German composer Richard Strauss. It is subtitled 'A Conversation Piece for Music' and received its premiere performance at the 'Nationaltheater München' on 28 October...
The somewhat wayward French composer Erik Satie was often criticized that his compositions would have no form. So he collected some of his pieces into a kind of 'best of' and put them in the shape of...
Rachmaninov composed the symphonic poem 'The Isle of the Dead' (Die Toteninsel) op. 29 in 1908 in Dresden, inspired by a black and white print of the eponymous painting by Arnold Böcklin that he has s...
'Tarantelle for Flute and Clarinet' was Camille Saint-Saëns the first concertante piece. He wrote it in 1857 for the first flute and first clarinet of the imperial academy, and it was they who premier...
Ignaz Moscheles (1794-1870) was a Bohemian composer and piano virtuoso, whose career after his early years was based initially in London, and later at Leipzig, where he succeeded his friend and someti...
Czech composer Leos Janácek (1854-1928) has been inspired by Moravian and other Slavic folk music to create an original, modern musical style and along with Dvorák and Smetana, he is considered one of...
Reinhold Glière composed the Concerto for Horn and Orchestra in 1950 for the Russian hornist Valery Polekh. Nowadays it's the best known of Glière's acclaimed works and despite being composed in the 1...
Beethoven's only opera 'Fidelio' embodies his ideals of heroism and freedom from political oppression. The opera was first produced in Vienna in 1805, under the title of 'Leonora' with the overture no...
Maurice Ravel's 'Piano Concerto in G major' was composed between 1929 and 1931. The concerto was deeply infused with jazz idioms and harmonies, which, at the time, were highly popular in Paris as well...
The 'Concerto for Orchestra',is a five-movement musical work for orchestra composed by Béla Bartók in 1943. It is one of his best-known, most popular and most accessible works. It is perhaps the best-...
Philip Arnold Heseltine (1894 -1930), known by the pseudonym Peter Warlock, was a British composer and music critic. The name 'Warlock', which reflects Heseltine's interest in occult practices, was us...
The 'Sarabande' is the second movement from 'Pour le piano' (For the piano), L. 95, a suite for solo piano by Claude Debussy. The suite was completed and published in 1901 and premiered in 1902. 'Pour...
'Pavane pour une infante défunte' (Pavane for a Dead Princess) is a well-known piece written for solo piano by Maurice Ravel in 1899 when he was studying composition at the Conservatoire de Paris unde...
'Tarantelle styrienne' was written in 1890 after Claude Debussy returned from Villa Medici, Italy, where he had spent over two years studying as part of the requirements of the Prix de Rome, which he...
Felix Mendelssohn was a skilled organist, and during his visits to Britain he gave a number of well-received organ recitals. It cannot be said that Mendelssohn was the most innovative composer of his...
French composer Émile Waldteufel has written more than 250 dances, which were mostly waltzes. Among his wellknown pieces are España or Estudiantina, and the then Prince of Wales and future King Edward...
The concerto was written for 'Corno pastoriccio' and may be played on a horn, an alphorn or on whatever natural instrument that may sound the notes d, g, b, d (concert pitch). The orchestral version w...
Camille Saint-Saëns composed the 'Cello Concerto No. 1' in A minor, Op. 33, in 1872, when he was 37 years old. The concerto has a unique structure, as it consists of one continuous movement with three...
