Kalmus Oversized Score Library

From the end of Act 2 from Borodin's opera Prince Igor, which remained unfinished at the time of the composer's death in 1887, this most famous version of the Polovtsian Dances (or Polevetsian Dances)...

In 1945 Strauss allowed an orchestral Rosenkavalier Suite to be published, but he was apparently not involved in creating it. It is likely that conductor Artur Rodzinski arranged it, as he had conduct...

Maurice Ravel's (1875-1937) Boléro, M. 81/ IMR 4, is a piece that grew out of an orchestration exercise based on a rhythm common in the title Spanish dance. Today, it's usually performed as an orchest...

This charming work in four movements was requested of Charles Gounod by a Parisian wind ensemble called Societe de Musique Pout Instruments a Vent, led by famed flautist Paul Taffanel. Written for flu...

Russian composer and chemist Alexander Borodin (1833-1887) wrote the symphonic poem In the Steppes of Central Asia in 1880, with it premiering at the Russian Opera Orchestra in St. Petersburg under Ni...

Written by Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) in 1934, this set of variations for piano solo and orchestra on Niccolò Paganini's Caprice No. 24 for solo violin is much like a concerto, though it consists...

The BALLADE in A minor, Op. 33 is an early composition by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) . Written only a year after completing his education at the Royal College of Music, this one-movement work...

The Serenade for Strings in E minor, Op. 20, is a piece for string orchestra in three short movements, by Edward Elgar. It was written in March 1892 and first performed in private in that year, by the...

Czech composer and folklorist Leos Janácek's (1854-1928) IDYLL for string orchestra is his second surviving large-scale instrumental work, written by the then 24-year-old composer in the summer 1878 a...

Souvenir de Florence, a romantic masterwork full of virtuosity and melodic invention, was originally composed in 1890 as a string sextet, dedicated to the Saint Petersburg Chamber Society. Tchaikovsky...

Spanish Dance is an excerpt from Shostakovich's 1955 film score for "The Gadfly." The Soviet movie was based on the eponymous novel by Irish novelist Ethel Lilian Voynich. This arrangement for string...

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) wrote the music to COSI FAN TUTTE (So do they all), his third collaboration with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte, only after his contemporaty Antonio Salieri rejected t...

Charles Gounod (1818-1893) completed the five-act opera Roméo et Juliette (Romeo and Juliet) in 1867. With a libretto by Jules Barbier and Michael Carré, the opera tells the tragic story of Shakespear...

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) wrote his Oratorio de Noël in a matter of weeks, completing the work ten days before it premiered on Christmas in 1858 in Paris. Written and structured in a style that...

Edward Elgar (1857-1934) began work on The Music Makers, Op. 69, a work for solo contralto, mixed chorus, and orchestra, in 1903 and completing it in 1912. It sets the entirety of Ode by Arthur O'Shau...

Originally written in 1915 by Béla Bartók (1881-1945) as a piano suite (Sz. 56) of six short movements, borrowing from the work he did with Kodály collecting and classifying thousands of folk tunes du...

Left unfinished at the time of his death, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's (1756-1791) REQUIEM MASS in D minor, K. 626 remains among the composer's most recognizable works and is a major part of the choral r...

Written in 1881, this Serenade for 13 wind instruments was written by Richard Strauss when he was only 17 years old. His father, the principal horn player with Munich's court orchestra, had a select l...

Bruce Broughton's Concerto for Tuba was originally written as a Tuba Sonata (M158791). Each movement presents the soloist with a different technical challenge, ranging from facility to the upper regis...

The most famous of several Vivaldi works entitled Gloria (RV 589), this edition by Clayton Westermann includes a short preface to explain performance practice. Of the three recorded Glorias Vivaldi wr...

AIDA, with music by Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) and a libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni, is a staple of the operatic repertoire. The story, set in the Old Kingdom of Egypt, tells of tragic love challenge...

NABUCCO is the four-act Italian-language opera by Giuseppe Verdi that permanently established Verdi's reputation as a composer. The opera, borrowed from the Bible, follows the plight of the Jews as th...

Hans von Bülow commissioned the Suite in Bb for thirteen instruments, Op. 4, from Richard Strauss (1864-1949) and the work premiered on November 18, 1884 in Munich, with the composer conducting the Me...

EUGENE ONEGIN, based on a verse-novel by Alexander Pushkin, is Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky's (1840-1893) best-known opera. The story depicts the life of the titular Onegin, a Russian dandy who does not...

Honoring Mozart and Haydn, Beethoven's First Symphony is a relatively conservative work from an otherwise bold composer. Despite its classical scoring and form, the symphony is uniquely Beethoven, wit...