Orchestra Study Scores

Very few musicians are aware of the fact that Beethoven arranged his violin concerto also as a piano concerto. It is only recently that some pianists have discovered this truly rewarding work. Clement...

All music lovers are familiar with Haydn's great late oratorios - but who also knows the first one that he wrote about 25 years earlier? Although the Biblical story of young Tobias who is able to cure...

Spurred on by the tremendos success of the 'Creation', van Swieten, who had written the libretto and comissioned the work, prompted Haydn to compose a further large-scale oratorio. At first, the compo...

Brahms struggled for years with composition of his First Symphony -- the feeling of impotence in the face of Beethoven's works seemed overwhelming. He wrote to his friend, the conductor Hermann Levi:...

Between 1859 and 1885 Johannes Brahms, with his four symphonies, two piano concertos, violin concerto, dances, variations and overtures, became the representative of large-scale orchestral music. In 1...

During composition of his First Symphony, Brahms was still very much under Beethoven's influence; in his Second Symphony he loosened the ties considerably. The principle of motivic embellishment now i...

On the premiere of the 3rd Symphony in the Musikvereinssaal in Vienna in 1883, the Wagnerites, who disliked Brahms, hissed after every movement. Yet Brahms' biographer Max Kalbeck said, 'The audience...