Advanced Classical Music (Romantic) Sheet Music

Brahms' vivacious 'Rhapsodies' op. 79 of 1879 are among his most frequently played works. He had a hard time finding a suitable title for them, vacillating between 'Piano Piece', 'Capriccio' (No. 1) a...

The piano cycle 'The Year” - quite an obvious subject but still without example in the history of music when it was composed in 1841 - was published for the first time in 1989 and is probably Fanny He...

Liszt's piano rhapsodies are in the same tradition as his transcriptions of opera or song themes, but in this case the point of departure is folk dances and songs. Liszt described no. 2 of his Hungari...

Frédéric Chopin's 4 Scherzi are high points in the Romantic piano repertoire. Chopin here takes a traditional genre and fills it with radically new content. They are wild, demonic in tone, and there i...

Very few really important works have been written for piano quintet - alongside the famous works by Schubert, Schumann und Brahms, the quintet that Antonín Dvorák composed in 1887 certainly numbers am...

When Smetana composed his Piano trio in the autumn of 1855, it was an act of catharsis to recover from the death of his four-year-old daughter Friederike. This highly emotional work was also his first...

Mendelssohn is considered a self-critical composer, who repeatedly reworked a number of his pieces until he deemed them worthy to be published. The path to his first Piano Trio was particularly rocky:...

Brahms's First String Sextet became very popular after its publication in 1861, yet his publisher Simrock still hesitated when the composer offered him a second such work in 1865, 'in the same cheerfu...

As with its companion work op. 88 from 1882, Brahms's second string quintet was supposed to be completed in the relaxed atmosphere of a summer in Bad Ischl, but eight years later. The work's first tec...

Two copies needed for performance This was the last concerto that Saint-Saëns wrote for his own instrument, the piano. Its subtitle has a dual meaning. Firstly, it was composed quickly in Luxor and Ca...

Rachmaninov's well-known piano cycle was composed in 1931, at a time when his great works for solo piano and the piano concertos had already brought him great fame. However, this is by no means an 'ol...

Johannes Brahms's piano sonatas were among the 20-year-old composer's first publications. They were written in 1852-53, with the slow movement of this C major Sonata, which uses the song 'Verstohlen g...

Johannes Brahms's Piano Sonatas opp. 1, 2 and 5 were among the first works that the 20-year-old composer published. They were composed in 1852/53, although the Sonata in f-sharp minor was apparently t...

Liszt's piano rhapsodies stand in the tradition of his transcriptions of operatic or song melodies, yet employ folk dances and songs as their source material. Completed in 1864, Rhapsodie espagnole is...

Just like the third, the Fourth Hungarian Rhapsody, also issued in 1853, is based on a piano piece previously published as a Hungarian National Melody. In the course of his editing, Liszt intensified...

Experience the enchanting winter spirit of Sergei Prokofiev's iconic music with this lively arrangement of the famous "Troika" from the "Lieutenant Kijé" suite. Published by Wonderful Winds, this deli...

Italian composer Pietro Mascagni (1863-1945), the son of a baker, wrote his first opera at the age of thirteen. In 1882, aged nineteen, he was admitted to the Milan Conservatory, where he studied for...

For many listeners, the French composer Jules Massenet (1842-1912) is best known for the exquisite Méditation from his opera Thaïs (1894; revised 1898). While the opera itself is now performed only o...

The Russian composer, pianist and conductor Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) is considered one of the most versatile music makers of his time. He wrote symphonies, piano concertos, chamber music, tone...

This Passion oratorio Gethsemane und Golgatha was composed in the astonishingly short period from 22 to 28 July 1838 on a text by the evangelist Wilhelm Schuber, a close friend of Friedrich Schneider'...

Bruckner's great "Mass in F minor" is one of the composer's most important works – and of 19th-century choral music in general. In a unique way, the composer succeeds here in musically penetrating the...

Bruckner’s mighty "Mass in F minor" is one of his most significant creations and one of the great 19th-century choral works. The composer uniquely succeeds in exploring faith through the lens of music...

Bruckner’s mighty "Mass in F" minor is one of his most significant creations and one of the great 19th-century choral works. The composer uniquely succeeds in exploring faith through the lens of music...

The Concert Fantasia on Motives from Verdi's Opera "Rigoletto" by Luigi Bassi, arranged for clarinet and wind orchestra by John Glenesk Mortimer, is a brilliant and virtuosic work that brings out the...