Scores for Orchestra

Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov's (1844-1908) four-act opera-ballet Mlada was originally conceived as a collaborative project with music provided by five composers: César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nicolai Rimsk...

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) wrote music for William Shakespeare's play A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM on two separate occasions. He first wrote the concert overture in E Major, Op. 21 in 1826 at the age...

The Nutcracker is a two-act “fairy ballet” written by Peter Iljitsch Tschaikowsky (1840-1893). Based on E. T. A. Hoffmann’s 1816 short story, “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King,” the original 1892 pro...

Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball) is an 1859 three act opera by Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) with a libretto by Antonio Somma. Initially based on Eugène Scribe's libretto for Daniel Auber's 1833 five...

These Three Marches, K. 408 (K. 383e [No. 1], K. 385a [No. 2], K. 383f [No. 3]) were composed for orchestra by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) in 1782. Instrumentation: 2.2.0.2: 2.2.0.0: Timp: Str...

Danish composer, Carl Nielsen (1865-1931), was commissioned by the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, to write incidental music to a new production of Adam Oehlenschläger's "dramatic fairy tale" Aladdin, or...

Maurice Ravel’s (1875-1937) Ma mère l’Oye (“Mother Goose”) draws its inspiration from the fairy tales of Charles Perrault, Madame d’Aulnoy, and Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont. Ravel composed the fi...

Maurice Ravel's (1875-1937) Ma mère l'Oye (Mother Goose) draws its inspiration from the fairy tales of Charles Perrault, Madame d'Aulnoy, and Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont. Ravel composed the firs...

While on his Italian honeymoon in 1891, Carl Nielsen (1865-1931) came across Titian's painting The Miracle of a Jealous Husband in Padua. The result was his first choral work, HYMNUS AMORIS, OP. 12, s...

VALSES NOBLES ET SENTIMENTALES is one of several works by Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) which reflect his fascination with the infectious simplicity of the waltz. Using Franz Schubert's collections of wal...

The Cuban composer and pianist Ernesto Lecuona (1896-1963) wrote many works labelled as "Afro-Cuban," and sorting them all can be difficult. While some are lost and others are scattered about, the 193...

VESTAS FEUER (THE VESTAL FLAME) for vocal quartet and orchestra is the only surviving fragment from a planned opera by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), set to a libretto by the dramatist and impresar...

Originally composed for piano, this orchestration from Lecuona's celebrated Andalucia Suite by Morton Gould is a sure crowd-pleaser! Instrumentation: 2(1dPicc).2.2+BCl..1: 4Sax(opt.): 2.3.3.1: Perc(2)...

The Cuban composer and pianist Ernesto Lecuona (1896-1963) wrote many works labelled as "Afro-Cuban," and sorting them all can be difficult. While some are lost and others are scattered about, the 193...

The melody we know today for "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing" was originally written by Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) in 1840 as secular music for his Festgesang or Gutenberg Cantata to honor the creati...

Fresh from the loss of his oldest daughter Maria Mahler, and knowing he had a serious heart condition, Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) crafted Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth) in the years 1908...

Claude Debussy (1862-1918) had originally intended for Images pour orchestre to be a sequel to the first set of Images for solo piano. However, around 1905, he had decided to orchestrate the compositi...

Ravel's longest work at almost an hour, the complete one-act ballet Daphnis et Chloe was described by the composer as a "symphonie choregraphique" (choreographic symphony). Ravel began the work, a rom...

Hilding Rosenberg (1892-1985) has been described as the first Swedish modernist composer. Influenced by Sibelius in his early years, he later absorbed the work of Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Hindemith...

While his Symphony No. 9 is better known, Antonín Dvorák's (1841-1904) Symphony No. 7 is argued by many to be his best symphonic work. Inspired in part by his friend Johannes Brahms' new Symphony No....

The first of a few works that Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1921) wrote for wind band, ORIENT AND OCCIDENT, subtitled "grand march," better resembles a tone poem. Inspired by the world travels he undertoo...

Carl Emil Paul Lincke (1866-1946) served as a composer and theater conductor. Thought of as the "father" of the Berlin operetta, he was best known for his operetta Frau Luna, though his Berliner Luft...

Carmen-Quadrille nach Motiven der gleichnamigen Oper von G. Bizet (Carmen quadrille based on motifs from the opera of the same name by G. Bizet), Op. 134, was written by Eduard "Edi" Strauss (1835-191...

The piano trio version of La muse et le poète, Op. 132 was written by Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) in 1910 during a vacation to North Africa, and that version premiered at Queen's Hall on June 7, 1...

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...