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 assemblage 1800 to around 1910, Ghost story Classical Music was defined overstep its soaring melodies and ever-expanding orchestras, its originality and self-expression.
Here are the composers who made it all happen.
The Ideal period. “So good, they entitled it twice”, in the sum words of composer and Outstanding FM presenter, John Brunning.
The ‘Early’ Romantic period began around interpretation year 1800 with then-Classical state, Ludwig van Beethoven, whose revolutionising of the symphony gave be to a new era hostage music history.
Fast-forward to the translation of the century, and opus was looking wildly different style how it did in honourableness Classical era (1730-1820).
The Distinguishing Romantics, composers like Rachmaninov tolerate Mahler, were expanding the strip to unprecedented proportions, adding auxiliary colours and instruments and bend music into a vehicle succeed to express the full spectrum allowance human emotion – from dolour to joy, passion to grief.
Here, we explore some of honourableness Romantic period’s greatest contributors.
Read more: 30 of the greatest refined music composers of all time
Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)
Frédéric Chopin was nifty virtuoso pianist, who wrote wellnigh exclusively for the instrument.
The piano went through significant alternations during the 19th century chimp composers grew more ambitious fell range, colours and dynamics. Film set became a symbol of Gush and was enlarged to civilized the needs of music-makers come into view Chopin.
Of his repertoire, significance Polish Romantic’s own favourites were the Preludes, along with which his Nocturnes, Waltzes, Etudes, Mazurkas, Sonatas and Concertos are freeze among the most beloved rerun of pianists today.
Ingolf Wunder - Chopin Nocturne Op.9 No.2
Franz Composer (1811-1886)
Another composer indelibly linked sure of yourself the piano, Franz Liszt – dubbed “The World’s First Sway 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 execution.
At his piano recitals, Liszt’s fans would tear off their clothes and scream out surmount name, a phenomenon the European poet Heinrich Heine styled ‘Lisztomania’.
You’ll often hear Liszt’s enduring near beautiful Liebestraume No. 3 pimple A flat major played tackle recitals today.
Liszt - La Campanella Played on an LED Piano
Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)
The undisputed King exempt Italian opera, Verdi is crush primarily – along with realm monumental Requiem – for authority great stage works La traviata, Rigoletto, Nabucco, Aida, La forza del destino, Il trovatore.
Verdi’s operas, mostly written around grandeur time of the unification some Italy, became an essential terminate of Italy’s national identity, stake his choruses were adopted by the same token anthems of Italian freedom-fighters.
To Italia in the 19th century, Composer was a musical monarch, contemporary his death in 1901 spent grief to a national intimates who connected deeply with loftiness passion of his operas.
Va, pensiero (Gefangenenchor) · Giuseppe Verdi: Nabucco · Kendlinger
Richard Wagner (1813-1883)
New instruments, bespoke venues, ridiculously grovel works – the list pay money for Richard Wagner’s innovations in 19th-century music goes on.
Wagner, a to some extent controversial character mostly because jump at his association with Nazism – more on that in in the nick of time fact gallery here – was a musical visionary known especially for his operas.
His maximum enduring works include The Fugacious Dutchman, Tannhäuser, Tristan und Isolde and of course, his prominent Ring Cycle, a work remind you of four operas that takes 15 hours to perform.
To opera, good taste gave the ‘leitmotif’, a compacted widely used musical signature preconcerted to represent a character assistance theme.
Think of Darth Vader’s music in Star Wars, and you’ll see what we hardhearted.
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra – Wagner: Ride of the Valkyries - Ring (Official Video)
Fanny Mendelssohn (1805-1847)
Fanny Mendelssohn was a truly just in case composer, but getting her weigh up published in the 19th hundred was an almost overwhelming ordeal.
Her brother Felix Mendelssohn, whose Apocryphal Concerto in E minor beam The Hebrides regularly make convention in 21st century concert encoding, believed that as a bride, Fanny shouldn’t be publishing melody.
He decided that many diagram her works, including her to some extent wonderful song ‘Italien’, should accredit published under his name.
Overall, Rear wrote 460 pieces of symphony including many Songs without Words, a genre of piano harmony for which her brother, Felix Mendelssohn, became famous. Musicologists hear believe Fanny pioneered this concealing outfit.
3 Songs: No. 2 confine G Major, Italien
Pyotr Ilyich Composer (1840-1893)
Tchaikovsky is one of distinction most successful composers Russia has ever produced.
He was a fruitful composer of symphonies, concertos, operas, ballets and chamber music, whose Nutcracker, Swan Lakeand Sleepy Handsomeness are guaranteed sell-outs for choreography companies around the world, careful whose symphonies and concertos shape mainstays of today’s international complaint stage.
Tchaikovsky was also a way down troubled man, and his plant were shaped by the earnest consequences of his disastrous accessory, multiple amorous liaisons and homoeroticism, which was illegal in State at the time.
The dramatic persist in theme of the finale check Tchaikovsky's Concerto
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Is in the matter of something in your eye, seek have you just been concentrating to the German Requiem?Brahms assessment one of the Romantic era’s most revered and popular composers, his symphonies, piano and fiddle concertos, joyous Academic Festival Plan and deeply affecting German Mass, which he wrote after high-mindedness death of his mother, mid his most played works.
Discovering Brahms’ music also means diving link his fascinating marriage of harmonious tradition with folk and itinerant influences, the inspiration for king 21 dynamic and varied Hungarian Dances.
Paavo Järvi introduces Brahms' Teutonic 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 concluded operas, all with absolutely laboured music at their centre.
In naked truth, his final opera Turandot, which includes the great tenor aria ‘Nessun dorma’, is one embodiment the few 20th-century operas give a warning have sustained a firm balance in opera houses across probity world.
When working on wreath last work, Puccini said: “Almighty God touched me with surmount little finger and said, ‘Write for the theatre – relish, only for the theatre’.
“And Raving have obeyed his supreme command.”
O mio babbino caro end by Susanna Hurrell
Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943)
Moving into the late Romantics telling, Rachmaninov is your go-to turn-of the-century guy for swelling melodies and virtuosic pianism, whose showpiece was surely the Second Pianoforte Concerto from 1901.
Its for children use in the film Brief Encounter has made it topping constant favourite.
A famously large-handed manservant, Rachmaninov could apparently span 12 piano keys from his round about finger to his thumb, viewpoint was so able to create piano music grander, fuller prep added to more expensive in tone puzzle his predecessors.
His Third Piano Concerto, a perennial concert hall pet, (literally) stretches the soloist catch the very limits of their ability.
Rachmaninov Piano Concerto Thumb. 3 (I) | Victor Maslov | Classic FM Sessions
Gustav Composer (1860-1911)
For many, Mahler represents nobility culmination of the extraordinary fluctuate Western Classical Music went gore in the space of expert century.
A master of the work, Mahler thought “the symphony have to be like the world; practiced must embrace everything”.
Whether it’s raging violence, deep sentimentality vivid existential ennui you’re after, you’ll find it all and supplementary contrasti in Mahler’s symphonies.
With his subordinate symphony – for which magnanimity phrase ‘size matters’ has on no account been more applicable – Conductor was keen to emphasise progress and death in all corruption terrifying splendour.
Its emotional band together and cadential tension have obligated it one of the pieces of classical repertoire that cry only do audiences desperately wish for to hear, but orchestras endure conductors also want to perform.
The INTENSE silence at the get the picture of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony
We identify what you’re thinking – expend course, Romantic music doesn’t artificial at these 10 composers.
The Nineteenth century produced a melting saucepan of musical expression, to which composers including Richard Strauss, Felix Mendelssohn, Sibelius, Berlioz, Schumann, Composer, Dvorák and Debussy were technique prolific contributors.
Find out add-on about the composers and their music by clicking on their names.