Scores for Orchestra

Italian composer and cellist Ridolfo Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805) wrote during the Classical era and predominantly in the galante style. Over his career, he composed twelve concertos for the cello, an...

Although it has a four movement formal structure like the German symphonies, Borodin's Second Symphony is purely Russian. No listener can fail to identify its nationality as Russian - for all purposes...

Russian composer and chemist Alexander Borodin (1833-1887) wrote the symphonic poem In the Steppes of Central Asia in 1880, with it premiering at the Russian Opera Orchestra in St. Petersburg under Ni...

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) wrote his Symphony in C minor, Op. 68 between 1854 and 1876. The long period of composition resulted from Brahms' self-criticism, with the composer destroying much of his e...

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) composed his Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73 while on a retreat in Pörtschach am Wörthersee in the summer of 1877. With his first efforts in the symphonic form finally co...

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) started work on his Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98 in 1884, a year after finishing the third. It brings a stern, yet majestic conclusion to the cycle, admired for its ri...

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) composed his Piano Concerto No. 2 between 1878-1881 and performed the work's debut at the piano with the Budapest Philharmonic, on November 9th, 1881, Alexander Erkel, cond...

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) wrote his Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77, in 1878. He composed the work for his longtime friend, famed violinist Joseph Joachim, who premiered it in Leipzig with the Ge...

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) composed the Double Concerto in A minor for Violin and Cello, Op. 102 in 1887, marking his final work for orchestra. Written for cellist Robert Hausmann and estranged frien...

Originally written for piano four hands in 1879, this set of 21 lively dance tunes, mostly on Hungarian themes, are among Johannes Brahms' most popular works today, and they were the most profitable f...

Originally written for piano four hands in 1879, this set of 21 lively dance tunes, mostly on Hungarian themes, are among Johannes Brahms' most popular works today, and they were the most profitable f...

Originally written for piano four hands in 1879, this set of 21 lively dance tunes, mostly on Hungarian themes, are among Johannes Brahms' (1833-1897) most popular works today, and they were the most...

Max Bruch (1838-1920) composed his VIOLIN CONCERTO No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26 in 1866, premiering on April 24, 1866, by Otto von Königslow on violin, with Max Bruch conducting. Following, the violin vir...

Written in 1880 and premiered on February 22, 1881, by the Liverpool Philharmonic Society under the direction of the composer, with Joseph Joachim performing the solo violin, the SCHOTTISCHE FANTASIE...

Performed only three times during Anton Bruckner's (1824-1896) lifetime, the immense Symphony No. 8, considered the composer's most awesome and sweeping symphony, took over five years to write and rev...

LE ROI MALGRÉ LUI (THE RELUCTANT KING) is a comic opera by Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894), based on a 1836 vaudeville play by Virginie Ancelot. The stage work depicts the brief reign of Henri, Duke of...

After España, the short work Joyeuse Marche is French composer Emmanuel Chabrier's (1841-1894) second most popular composition. The joyous and at times comical piece was originally written for piano,...

Habanera, composed for piano in October 1885, explores a folk tune that Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894) collected on his five-month trip to Spain. The habanera derives its name from Havana, Cuba, charac...

Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) composed the Andante Spianto and Grande Polonaise Brillante in E-flat Major, Op. 22, between 1830 and 1834. The polonaise, originally composed for solo piano and later scor...

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...

Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, L. 86) was composed by Claude Debussy (1862-1918) in 1894. A symphonic poem based on Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem L’après-midi d’un f...

LA MER was the second of Claude Debussy's (1862-1918) three orchestral works in three sections. Although the composition of LA MER took him more than a year and a half, this was unusually quick progre...

Léo Delibes' (1836-1891) Coppélia (1870) is a comic ballet that tells the story of a sinister doctor who has made a beautiful, life-sized dancing doll (the title character) and the young man who becom...

Léo Delibes (1836-1891) looked to a play of the Italian Renaissance, Torquato Tasso's AMINTA, for narrative material when composing his full-length ballet SYLVIA. Choreographed by Louis Mérante, with...

Don Pasquale, regarded as one of the crowning gems of comic opera, had its first performance on January 3, 1843 by the Theatre-Italien at the Salle Ventadour in Paris. Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848) co...