Scores for Orchestra

Charles Hubert Hastings Parry (1848-1918) composed the Symphonic Variations in E minor only two years prior to the completion of the Enigma Variations by his well-known student, Edward Elgar. It premi...

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...

Morton Gould (1913-1996), equally comfortable in the worlds of both "serious" and "light" music, presented his symphonettes (an Americanization of the term "sinfonietta," much like kitchenette and din...

Dark Eyes is a well-known Russian romance song. The lyrics, written by Ukrainian poet Yevhen Hrebinka, were first published in 1843. The melody, to which the lyrics are set is by German-Polish compose...

The Guaracha is the Third Movement from Mr. Gould's fourth Symphonette, LATIN AMERICAN SYMPHONETTE, which is in four movements - Rhumba, Tango, Guaracha, and Conga.  The Guaracha, relatively spea...

Leroy Anderson completed four works in 1953: "Song of the Bells," "Summer Skies," "The Girl in Satin," and "Concerto in C for Piano and Orchestra." He commisioned a modern home for himself and his fam...

Programme Note from original publication - This work was first played in America by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in June, 1910, and was the result of a commission from Mr. Carl Stoeckel, to who...

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...

AUX ÉTOILES (TO THE STARS), composed in 1874, is a short poem for orchestra by French composer Henri Duparc (1848-1933). He originally intended it for a three-movement work titled Poéme nocturne. High...

Alexander Glazunov (1865-1936) composed the beautiful Serenade No. 2 in F Major, Op. 11 in 1884, before his "creative crisis" of 1890. For a small orchestra, it was premiered in 1885, his friend and m...

Sir Edward Elgar's Symphony No. 2 in E-flat Major, Op. 63, was composed in 1911, with the premiere taking place at the London Musical Festival by the Queen's Hall Orchestra, Elgar conducting, on May 2...

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) set four poems from George Herbert's (1593-1633) collection The Temple: Sacred Poems in 1911 to music for solo baritone in a work titled Five Mystical Songs. The sol...

Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) began work on his SYMPHONY No. 4, Op. 36 in 1877 and finished it the following year. Begun soon after Tchaikovsky established his relationship with long-time patr...

Written three years after his Manfred Symphony, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's (1840-1893) Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64 was composed in 1888. Although it has been surpassed in popularity a bit over t...

Gabriel Fauré, then director of the Conservatoire de Paris, named Claude Debussy (1862-1918) to the Conservatoire's board of directors in 1909, and promptly commissioned two works from Debussy for the...

Madama Butterfly, one of the most popular operas of Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924), is the story of the conflicting expectations of Lieutenant Pinkerton, an American naval officer, and Madame Butterfly (...

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...

French composer Florent Schmitt (1870-1958) originally composed the ballet La tragédie de Salomé in 1907 for a commission from Jacques Rouché for American dancer Loie Fuller and the Théâtre des Arts,...

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...