Scores for Orchestra

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...

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...

Les Sylphides is a ballet blanc set to the music of Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) by Russian composer, teacher, and conductor Alexander Glazunov. Described as a “romantic reverie” by dance historian and...

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...

The Ride of the Valkyries refers to the beginning of act 3 of Die Walküre, the second of the four operas constituting Richard Wagner's (1813-1883) Der Ring des Nibelungen. As a separate piece, the "Ri...

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...

The great composer of DER FREISCHÜTZ, Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826), wrote two symphonies early in his career that showcase the melody-writing ability that would serve him so well in his later care...

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...

Claude Debussy's (1862-1918) Pelléas et Mélisande adapted Maurice Maeterlinck's play of the same name in which Prince Golaud marries a mysterious young woman, Mélisande, but becomes jealous of his hal...

Tosca is a melodramatic opera in three acts set in Rome in June, 1800, with the Kingdom of Naple's control of Rome threatened by Napoleon's invasion of Italy. It contains depictions of torture, murder...

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...

DER FLIEGENDE HOLLÄNDER (THE FLYING DUTCHMAN), WWV 63, had two sources of inspiration for Richard Wagner (1813-1883). The first was a short story by Heinrich Heine, based on the folk legend of a sea-c...

Romanian composer, violinist, and conductor George Enescu (1881-1955) (Fr. Georges Enesco) wrote the two Roumanian (Romanian) Rhapsodies, Op. 11, in 1901. Much like Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies, both...

Returning to the 4-movement symphonic form, Alexander Glasunow (1865-1936) completed his SYMPHONY No. 5 in B-flat major, Op. 55, in 1895. He premiered the work at the Hall of the Nobility in St. Peter...

Originally completed in 1888, the original version of this large work differed significantly from the revised and final version offered here. Initially in two parts with five movements, it was describ...

While less known today, German composer Moritz Moszkowski (1854-1925) was a popular and respected composer during his life. Known best for his piano compositions, his most popular work is his Spanish...

While less known today, German composer Moritz Moszkowski (1854-1925) was a popular and respected composer during his life. Known best for his piano compositions, his most popular work is his Spanish...

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) dedicated his CONCERTO for Piano No. 1 in D-flat, Op. 10, to his teacher Nikolai Tcherepnin. Composing it in the years 1911 and 1912, he gave the premiere in Moscow on May...