Sergei Prokofiev: The Love for Three Oranges Suite, Op. 33a
While sailing to America, Prokofiev wrote the libretto for The Love for Three Oranges, an opera based on a Russian comedy based on an 18th-century Italian commedia dell’arte play.
Category: Composers
Frédéric Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor, Op. 21
In 1829 Frédéric Chopin was still Fryderyk—a 19-year-old Polish pianist of some acclaim. His piano concertos became passports to success in Western Europe.
Samuel Barber: Second Essay for Orchestra
Samuel Barber is perhaps our only orchestral essayist: he wrote three between 1937 and 1978. The Second Essay is his peak Jimmy Stewart-era entry, written in 1942. It develops personal convictions into a common-sense argument, and then an impassioned speech. It suggests a kind of civic-minded idealism without an ounce of jingoism.
Edward Elgar: Enigma Variations, Op. 36
It’s not the Enigma that has made Edward Elgar’s Variations endure for more than a century. It’s the warmth and sincerity with which he portrays real people who were important to him.
Sergei Rachmaninoff: Symphonic Dances, Op. 45
Sergei Rachmaninoff was always a composer of the long 19th century, but he had become a man of the 20th, interested in cars, speedboats, and airplanes. In these dances, he allowed some of that streamlined luxury into his plush Romanticism.
Edvard Grieg: Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16
“Why not begin by remembering the strangely mystical satisfaction of stretching my arms over the piano keyboard and bringing forth—not a melody. Far from it! No, it had to be a chord…”
Bohuslav Martinů: Symphony No. 1
Bohuslav Martinů didn’t appear to have any particular interest in writing a symphony until the Second World War, when he was forced to move to the United States and restart his career in a country where he was hardly known. A large commission from the Boston Symphony Orchestra was a good beginning.
Leonard Bernstein: Serenade (after Plato’s Symposium)
Long before a symposium was a dry, academic conference, it was an after-dinner party with a lot of wine. Plato’s Symposium, written around 360 BCE, imagines such a party, and it became the framework for Bernstein’s multi-movement work for solo violin and an orchestra of strings and percussion.
Jean Sibelius: Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 43
Sibelius’s Second Symphony is tightly composed with a compelling yet abstract trajectory. The rippling opening bars propel everything that follows, unfurling into a first movement that is inevitably called brisk or bracing.
Johannes Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15
If you think Beethoven looms large over classical music today, imagine being a young composer in 1853—just 26 years after his death—and being declared his second coming.