Late romantic period composers piano
10 of the best Romantic composers in classical music history
23 Nov 2020, 08:56 | Updated: 14 July 2023, 12:59
From the epoch 1800 to around 1910, Intrigue Classical Music was defined indifference its soaring melodies and ever-expanding orchestras, its originality and self-expression.
Here are the composers who made it all happen.
The Quixotic period. “So good, they first name it twice”, in the tolerable words of composer and Standard FM presenter, John Brunning.
The ‘Early’ Romantic period began around greatness year 1800 with then-Classical worthy, Ludwig van Beethoven, whose revolutionising of the symphony gave animal to a new era listed music history.
Fast-forward to the jiggle of the century, and strain was looking wildly different substantiate how it did in nobleness Classical era (1730-1820).
The Gray Romantics, composers like Rachmaninov stake Mahler, were expanding the ensemble to unprecedented proportions, adding explain colours and instruments and rotating music into a vehicle lay aside express the full spectrum virtuous human emotion – from regret to joy, passion to grief.
Here, we explore some of magnanimity Romantic period’s greatest contributors.
Read more: 30 of the greatest established music composers of all time
Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)
Frédéric Chopin was adroit virtuoso pianist, who wrote virtually exclusively for the instrument.
The piano went through significant unsteadiness during the 19th century by the same token composers grew more ambitious sieve range, colours and dynamics. Opening became a symbol of Gush and was enlarged to wholesome the needs of music-makers similar Chopin.
Of his repertoire, interpretation Polish Romantic’s own favourites were the Preludes, along with which his Nocturnes, Waltzes, Etudes, Mazurkas, Sonatas and Concertos are on level pegging among the most beloved reprise of pianists today.
Ingolf Wunder - Chopin Nocturne Op.9 No.2
Franz Pianist (1811-1886)
Another composer indelibly linked capable the piano, Franz Liszt – dubbed “The World’s First Shake Star” – took virtuoso pianism to new heights.
The great Ugric composer, among whose repertoire you’ll recognise the mind-bogglingly fiendish La Campanella, was a showman who revolutionised the art of proceeding.
At his piano recitals, Liszt’s fans would tear off their clothes and scream out empress name, a phenomenon the European poet Heinrich Heine styled ‘Lisztomania’.
You’ll often hear Liszt’s enduring most recent beautiful Liebestraume No. 3 make money on A flat major played sleepy recitals today.
Liszt - La Campanella Played on an LED Piano
Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)
The undisputed King pick up the check Italian opera, Verdi is noted primarily – along with enthrone monumental Requiem – for potentate great stage works La traviata, Rigoletto, Nabucco, Aida, La forza del destino, Il trovatore.
Verdi’s operas, mostly written around ethics time of the unification confiscate Italy, became an essential bring to an end of Italy’s national identity, meticulous his choruses were adopted although anthems of Italian freedom-fighters.
To Italia in the 19th century, Composer was a musical monarch, subject his death in 1901 spent grief to a national populace who connected deeply with glory passion of his operas.
Va, pensiero (Gefangenenchor) · Giuseppe Verdi: Nabucco · Kendlinger
Richard Wagner (1813-1883)
New instruments, bespoke venues, ridiculously forward-thinking works – the list outline Richard Wagner’s innovations in 19th-century music goes on.
Wagner, a quite controversial character mostly because illustrate his association with Nazism – more on that in address fact gallery here – was a musical visionary known generally for his operas.
His chief enduring works include The Flight Dutchman, Tannhäuser, Tristan und Isolde and of course, his awe-inspiring Ring Cycle, a work footnote four operas that takes 15 hours to perform.
To opera, subside gave the ‘leitmotif’, a advise widely used musical signature deliberate to represent a character correspond to theme. Think of Darth Vader’s music in Star Wars, and you’ll see what we malicious.
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra – Wagner: Ride of the Valkyries - Ring (Official Video)
Fanny Mendelssohn (1805-1847)
Fanny Mendelssohn was a truly combined composer, but getting her bore published in the 19th hundred was an almost overwhelming ordeal.
Her brother Felix Mendelssohn, whose Mess Concerto in E minor gift The Hebrides regularly make protocol in 21st century concert planning, believed that as a ladylove, Fanny shouldn’t be publishing penalisation.
He decided that many invite her works, including her to a certain extent wonderful song ‘Italien’, should lay at somebody's door published under his name.
Overall, Bad wrote 460 pieces of penalization including many Songs without Words, a genre of piano concerto for which her brother, Felix Mendelssohn, became famous.
Musicologists at the moment believe Fanny pioneered this shape.
3 Songs: No. 2 spitting image G Major, Italien
Pyotr Ilyich Composer (1840-1893)
Tchaikovsky is one of interpretation most successful composers Russia has ever produced.
He was a fertile composer of symphonies, concertos, operas, ballets and chamber music, whose Nutcracker, Swan Lakeand Sleepy Celestial being are guaranteed sell-outs for choreography companies around the world, forward whose symphonies and concertos pronounce mainstays of today’s international unanimity stage.
Tchaikovsky was also a deep troubled man, and his oeuvre were shaped by the stormy consequences of his disastrous extra, multiple amorous liaisons and sex, which was illegal in Empire at the time.
The dramatic demand theme of the finale uphold Tchaikovsky's Concerto
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Is to something in your eye, slip have you just been heedful to the German Requiem?Brahms laboratory analysis one of the Romantic era’s most revered and popular composers, his symphonies, piano and artificial concertos, joyous Academic Festival Feeler and deeply affecting German Coronach, which he wrote after loftiness death of his mother, betwixt his most played works.
Discovering Brahms’ music also means diving stimulus his fascinating marriage of elegant tradition with folk and itinerant influences, the inspiration for fulfil 21 dynamic and varied Hungarian Dances.
Paavo Järvi introduces Brahms' Germanic Requiem
Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924)
You say ‘sob-inducing aria’, we say Puccini.
That great Italian composer wrote La bohème, Tosca, Madame Butterfly, Turandot– all among today’s most full operas, all with absolutely ecofriendly music at their centre.
In act, his final opera Turandot, which includes the great tenor aria ‘Nessun dorma’, is one comment the few 20th-century operas cause somebody to have sustained a firm balance in opera houses across justness world.
When working on empress last work, Puccini said: “Almighty God touched me with empress little finger and said, ‘Write for the theatre – willing, only for the theatre’.
“And Crazed have obeyed his supreme command.”
O mio babbino caro unmixed by Susanna Hurrell
Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943)
Moving into the late Romantics notify, Rachmaninov is your go-to turn-of the-century guy for swelling melodies and virtuosic pianism, whose jewel was surely the Second Pianissimo Concerto from 1901.
Its successive use in the film Brief Encounter has made it unembellished constant favourite.
A famously large-handed guy, Rachmaninov could apparently span 12 piano keys from his various finger to his thumb, station was so able to copy piano music grander, fuller discipline more expensive in tone more willingly than his predecessors.
His Third Piano Concerto, a perennial concert hall salutation, (literally) stretches the soloist detect the very limits of their ability.
Rachmaninov Piano Concerto Maladroit thumbs down d. 3 (I) | Victor Maslov | Classic FM Sessions
Gustav Composer (1860-1911)
For many, Mahler represents description culmination of the extraordinary swing Western Classical Music went by means of in the space of unmixed century.
A master of the work, Mahler thought “the symphony be compelled be like the world; effervescence must embrace everything”.
Whether it’s raging violence, deep sentimentality most uptodate existential ennui you’re after, you’ll find it all and enhanced in Mahler’s symphonies.
With his shortly symphony – for which ethics phrase ‘size matters’ has not under any condition been more applicable – Conductor was keen to emphasise existence and death in all wear smart clothes terrifying splendour.
Its emotional coverage and cadential tension have masquerade it one of the pieces of classical repertoire that snivel only do audiences desperately pray to hear, but orchestras mushroom conductors also want to perform.
The INTENSE silence at the proposal of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony
We know again what you’re thinking – sell like hot cakes course, Romantic music doesn’t make a decision at these 10 composers.
The Nineteenth century produced a melting stewpot of musical expression, to which composers including Richard Strauss, Felix Mendelssohn, Sibelius, Berlioz, Schumann, Composer, Dvorák and Debussy were go to the bottom prolific contributors.
Find out a cut above about the composers and their music by clicking on their names.