Scores for Orchestra

Richard Strauss (1864-1949) wrote his VIOLIN CONCERTO IN D MINOR, Op. 8, between 1881 and 1882, and it remained his only foray in that genre. Composed while a teenager and still in school. While still...

Written while still a student of Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Stravinsky was encouraged to begin work on this piece for full orchestra in 1905. The young composer's first composition foray beyond piano, i...

Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) composed Capriccio Italien, Op. 45, in 1880 following a trip to Rome with his brother, Modest. Originally titled Italian Fantasia, the work incorporates the music...

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...

Tchaikovsky's largest symphony both in length and instrumentation, the MANFRED SYMPHONY remained unnumbered, though it was written between his 4th and 5th symphonies.  A programmatic symphony bas...

Marche Slave, Op. 31, ("Slavonic March") was first performed in Moscow in November 1876. It is a rousing patriotic work based on Serbian and Russian folk themes. Tchaikovsky was commissioned to write...

The Nutcracker is a two-act "fairy ballet" written by Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky (1840-1893). Based on E. T. A. Hoffmann's 1816 short story, "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King," the original 1892 produ...

Among the most frequently performed and well-known of P. I. Tchaikovsky's (1840-1893) works, The Year 1812, Solemn Overture, Op. 49 (more commonly known as the 1812 Overture) was written in 1880 to co...

Among the most frequently performed and well-known of P. I. Tchaikovsky's (1840-1893) works, The Year 1812, Solemn Overture, Op. 49 (more commonly known as the 1812 Overture) was written in 1880 to co...

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) first took up the idea of writing an overture to HAMLET in 1876. Twelve years later, the actor Lucien Guitry approached him with a request to write incidental musi...

The Sleeping Beauty ballet in 3 acts, which tells the story of conflicting forces of good and evil, incorporates various fairy-tale characters from the Brothers Grimm and French fairy tales. Tchaikovs...

Peter Iljitsch Tschaikowsky (1840-1893) began work in 1877 and finished it the following year. Begun soon after Tchaikovsky established his relationship with long-time patroness Nadezhda von Mech, SYM...

This Mozart-inspired work, completed in January of 1877, was the first composition by Tchaikovsky for cello and orchestra. This version of Variations on a Rococo Theme, heavily edited by Wilhelm Fitze...

Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) originally dedicated his CONCERTO FOR VIOLIN in D, Op. 35, to Leopold Auer. The Hungarian violinist concluded that it was too difficult. The concerto finally prem...

Captivated by the playing of famed Franz Liszt pupil Eugen d'Albert during the 1883-1884 concert season, Peter Iljitsch Tschaikowsky (1840-1893) began work on Concert Fantasia. After an arduous compos...

SOUVENIR D'UN LIEU CHER (Memory of a dear place) is a set of three pieces originally written for violin and piano written around the same time as Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto. The piece was finished...

SOUVENIR D'UN LIEU CHER (Memory of a dear place) is a set of three pieces originally written for violin and piano written around the same time as Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto. The piece was finished...

The opera LA FORZA DEL DESTINO by Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) was written in 1862 and premiered in the Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre of Saint Petersburg, Russia on November 10 of that same year. Following ma...

L'Estro armonico (The Harmonic Inspiration) is a collection of 12 concerti by Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) for stringed instruments first published in 1711. No. 11 in D minor (RV 565/F.IV.11) is in thr...

Compared to Niccolò Paganini by friend Robert Schumann, Henri Vieuxtemps (1820-1881) was a well-known virtuoso violinist of the Franco-Belgian violin school in the mid-19th century. Aspiring towards b...

Finished in 1848 and premiered in 1950 in Weimar, Germany, Richard Wagner's (1813-1883) LOHENGRIN tells a story of a tragic medieval German romance in the Knight of the Swan tradition. Elsa, a princes...

Richard Wagner (1813-1883) composed the symphonic poem Siegfried Idyll, WWV 103 in 1870 as a birthday present to his second wife, Cosima, following the birth of their son Siegfried in 1869. Originally...

AUFFORDERUNG ZUM TANZE (L'INVITATION A LA VALSE; INVITATION TO THE DANCE), Op. 65/ J. 260, an early example of program music by Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826), was originally heard in its 1819 versi...

Written in 1887 by notable leider composer Hugo Wolf (1860-1903), Italian Serenade was originally written for string quartet and named simply Serenade in G Major. In his ongoing attempt to set the wor...