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Vanessa Mae - Contradanza (Album The Violin Player 1995) "The Red Hot Tour" Live Concert At The Royal Albert Hall London 1995

Top 65 Classical Music Masterpieces Everyone Knows, But Not Everybody Kn...

The most iconic pieces of classical music you definitely have to know. The greatest instrumental songs that everyone knows, but no one knows the name of, even though almost everyday we hear them on TV shows or in commercials. Mozart, Chopin, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and much more. This is real classic! Almost all of these classical music masterpieces (and some extra ones) you can find in full length in my new video, which gives you over 3,5 hours of wonderful music:    • Most Iconic Classical Music Masterpieces E...   I hope you'll enjoy it. Rate, comment and subscribe for more music compilations. Every composition from this video exists as a public domain or creative common content. The fragment of Debussy's "Suite bergamasque" performed by Laurens Goedhart. Dvorak's "Serenade for Strings" performed by the Virtual Philharmonic Orchestra (Reinhold Behringer) with digital samples. Liszt's "Liebesträume" performed by Martha Goldstein. Piano version of Mozart's "Requiem in D minor" performed by Markus Staab. Satie's "Gnossiennes" performed by La Pianista. Richard Wagner's "Also Sprach Zarathustra" performed by Kevin MacLeod. The fragments of Vivaldi's "Spring", "Summer" and "Autumn" performed by John Harrison.

Reading Too Much Into the Story: Lim’s The Seasons

by Maureen Buja  September 15th, 2025

In his new recording of the 12-part piano cycle, by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893), The Seasons, pianist Yunchan Lim sees it as a look back on a life.

Émile Reutling: Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky, ca. 1888

The Seasons was commissioned by Nikolay Bernard, the editor of the St Petersburg music magazine Nuvellist. Each month in 1876 (starting in November 1895), Tchaikovsky had to contribute ‘a season’, and a source of ready and steady music, as an assignment like this was easy. It was so easy, in fact, that Tchaikovsky reminded his staff to tell him when the next one was due, and he would sit down and write something quickly.

Yunchan Lim

The work has a simplicity and charm that speaks to both the lightness of the assignment and to Tchaikovsky’s ability to write for an amateur audience. There are a few technical challenges for his readers to achieve, and the work forms a satisfactory whole. Tchaikovsky referred to them as ‘musical pancakes’, i.e., something to be tossed off and easily consumed.

In his notes for the recording, Lim reads an element of melancholy that was never in the original conception of the work. He sees the first movement (January: By the Fireside) as relatively despairing: the fire is dying out, the old man’s cigarette smoke curls in the remaining light. He’s overwhelmed with memories and sobs about his lost past.

When you contrast this reading with the notes added by the journal editor to each piece, written as a little poetic epigraph, we’ll see that this is far from the original concept for the works:

January: At the Fireside

A little corner of peaceful bliss, the night dressed in twilight; the little fire is dying in the fireplace, and the candle has burned out (quoting Pushkin).

No looks back in regrets, but rather a quiet close of day, sitting in peace as everything around prepares for sleep.

For Lim, the happy movements are happy memories, and the mournful movements are times of anticipated death, rejection, and dejection. Everyone seems to be weeping, or sobbing, or just standing there with tears running down their faces. It’s a rather incomprehensible take on Russian melancholia.

When you consider the commercial nature of the commission, it’s not really possible that Tchaikovsky, in writing for a widespread amateur audience, would deliberately write something that was so fatalistic.

Lim ties the story to yet another of Tchaikovsky’s habits of falling in love with the wrong woman at the wrong time. I think, however, that this highly personal reading is looking at the wrong music. The Seasons does exactly what the label says: it celebrates the life around Tchaikovsky: he goes to the fairs, he sees the flowers come up in the spring, hears the songs of the first, and provides his readers with lovely miniatures of the work of St Petersburg.

This work more often appears in orchestral versions or in single movement, but there have been a number of recordings of the piano version.

Lim’s playing is exquisite, but the overlaying of melancholy goes beyond the composer’s intention to a reading that isn’t really justified by the content.

Tchaikovsky: The Seasons
Yunchan Lim, piano
Decca 0028948710218
Release date: 22 August 2025

Official Website

Musicians’ Worst Nightmares

by Janet Horvath  November 3rd, 2018

A musician’s pre-concert anxieties often show up in our worst nightmares—you are on stage and have no idea what piece you are playing, or you show up for the concert and you are the piano soloist (you don’t play the piano), or no matter how hard you try, you cannot get to the concert hall—your feet drag as you struggle to move and you are quite relieved when you awake in confusion, and in a tangle of sheets. Sometimes your instrument morphs into some nightmarish creature and comes to get you. Certainly, a cellist’s worst nightmare is descending to hell and finding you have to play Pachelbel’s Canon for all eternity! The cellist of the Piano Guys defies that fate in his rendition.  

The funny thing is, strange mishaps happen in a musician’s life. I’ve woken up in horror in the middle of the night realizing that I left my instrument backstage at a concert hall. I’ve gone to the wrong venue, and even left a bow on an airplane. Consider the now famous story when pianist Maria João Pires prepared the wrong Mozart piano concerto and discovered the error onstage when the orchestra began playing a different concerto!  

Just this month, I had an out-of-town performance, which includes a PowerPoint presentation. The presenters assure me that my recital partner, Heather MacLaughlin, would have a wonderful Steinway grand to play in the recital hall. I nervously consult my list of the things I need—two music stands: check; cello and bow: check; computer, adaptor, power cord: check; sheet music and written notes: check; a puck for the pesky endpin that could slip at the most inopportune moment, rosin for the bow, and extra strings should one break during the concert: check; and most important, snacks for the drive, and enough gas in the car: check.

Playing is the easy part. My stomach clenches when I think of the likely technological complications…no projector or screen, or they won’t know how to hook it up, or the PowerPoint won’t work, or the more common problems—no decent chair, inferior lighting, no place to warm up, the hall will be freezing, or we arrive on the wrong date, like the dream I had the previous night.

Despite road construction and traffic jams, we arrive well in advance of the performance. The fine arts building is a huge structure housing not only two concert venues, but also the theater, and the fine arts, and music departments. We hurry inside to set up, wasting precious time lost in the maze of corridors and classrooms. Someone finally leads us to the recital hall and to my delight, a very competent technology person has the projector going, the screen in position, the cords available, and in no time, my computer is hooked up. The piano, concealed under a thick, black quilted cover, has been pushed to the extreme left side of the stage but it’ll be no sweat to remove the cover and put the piano in place, now that the technology is working.

We heave the cover off and muscle the piano to the middle of the stage. As I start unpacking my cello I hear a little squeal of dismay. “The piano is locked!” Heather whispers. She asks the technology person if he has the key. “Just have to track down the building manager,” he says, “Hopefully she hasn’t left for the day.” Several minutes click by but he returns triumphant, with a key. After wiggling it this way and that, he realizes it’s not the right key, and scurries up the aisle, out of the hall, and down the long corridor. It is now 15 minutes prior to concert time. Not a young man, he returns gasping, forgoes the stairs, and leaps onto the stage clutching a key. He tries it. We hear several expletives because this one doesn’t work either. Heather and I exchange a glance verging on panic. The technology person rushes off again. Moments before the program is to begin, he appears wheezing alarmingly, with a third key. It magically releases the ivory keys with just enough time for Heather to play one quick scale before the performance. Who knew the piano would be wearing a chastity belt?


Brazilian pianist, Eliane Rodrigues handled her piano malfunction nightmare with aplomb. She began her program of Chopin’s Preludes, Polonaises, and Piazzolla’s works, with Chopin’s Polonaise Fantasie Op.61 only to discover the sostenuto pedal had a mind of its own. Once she hit a note the tone kept ringing, and ringing—pedal without using a pedal. “Alo?” Rodrigues said attempting to get the stage manager’s attention. The dilemma was conveyed to the staff and one could hear a flurry of activity offstage as they hurried to find a substitute piano. Rodrigues continued to play a few non-programmed tunes while the stagehands rushed onstage. They unlocked the wheels of the piano to position it deeper into the stage. Rodrigues stood and remained standing and playing as they cordoned off the piano and the piano bench. The audience watched as the piano and Rodrigues lowered—down, down, disappearing into the bowels of the stage. She could be heard from the depths. Within a few moments the audience caught sight of the top of Rodrigues’ head, and the piano and the pianist ascended into view, Rodrigues still standing and playing a different piano.  

And can I tell you how many times the sheet music has fallen off the music stand…even into the audience?

My latest nightmares involve keys— missing keys to my cello case, the piano, and the concert hall. Or who hasn’t experienced a locked dressing room or green room door? In my dream for some reason, I am wearing pajamas and my cello and my concert attire are locked inside just before a solo performance. From now on “keys” will be on my checklist. Despite my list, performance problems will plague musicians. What could be more embarrassing?

Elfrida Andrée: The Rebellious First Female Conductor in Sweden

by Emily E. Hogstad

Elfrida Andrée is one of the most remarkable women composers of the nineteenth century.

She campaigned to become the first professional woman organist in Sweden, paving the way for countless women after her.

Elfrida Andrée, 1891

But she didn’t stop there: she also became the country’s first woman conductor, as well as an accomplished composer who loved writing orchestral music.

Today, we’re looking at the life and times of Elfrida Andrée.

Elfrida Andrée’s Family

Elfrida Andrée was born on 19 February 1841. Her hometown was the Swedish city of Visby, on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Latvia.

Her father, Andreas Andrée, trained as a medical man and became a ship’s doctor, traveling to ports in Europe, Africa, and Asia. After he returned to Sweden and settled down, he began pursuing an interest in politics.

He became interested in various ideas that were gaining popularity at the time, such as the labour movement and the women’s movement.

The Musical Andrée Daughters

Elfrida Andrée

In 1836, he and his wife had a daughter named Fredrika. A second daughter, Elfrida, was born five years later.

He and his wife, Lovisa, determined they wanted to raise their daughters with liberal values and educate them. Andreas taught both of them how to play the piano and sing, as well as basic lessons in harmony.

Fredrika proved to be a talented vocalist. In 1851, when she was fifteen, she left the household and traveled to study at the prestigious Leipzig Conservatory.

As for Elfrida, she began to study with two local organists, despite that instrument’s masculine reputation. She also took up the harp, although we don’t know who she studied with.

She performed at the local Musical Society (headed by one of her teachers) and at salon performances given at the Andrée household.

Moving to Stockholm

After Fredrika returned from her studies in 1855, she was hired to sing at the opera in Stockholm. Elfrida joined her, while their parents remained in Visby. Fredrika was nineteen, and Elfrida was fourteen.

While in Stockholm, Elfrida took composition lessons with Niels Wilhelm Gade and Ludvig Norman (who would go on to marry Wilhelmina Norman-Neruda, one of the first great women violinists).

In October 1856, a family friend, organist and composer Gustaf Mankell, submitted a request to the Royal Musical Academy in Stockholm, asking to consider Elfrida for admittance. His request was denied, possibly because of her age.

She studied privately with Mankell until she was finally allowed to take the entrance examination in June 1857.   

Women Organists in Sweden

However, there was a controversy underlying her acceptance: the Swedish government did not allow women to be organists.

Elfrida could earn a degree, but it would be relatively useless without an accompanying job. To maintain an identity as an organ virtuoso necessitated regular access to an organ and a job to go alongside that access.

Unfortunately for Elfrida’s dreams, many countries banned women from playing the organ in church, citing St. Paul’s admonition that women remain quiet during worship.

So after her acceptance to the Conservatory, a sixteen-year-old Elfrida wrote to King Oscar I of Sweden and Norway, matter-of-factly laying the matter out and requesting that the policy be changed:

The fact that it has long been customary abroad, as in England and France, for women to hold the position of organist gives me the courage and hope to make this most humble request to His Royal Majesty.

She didn’t hear back for quite a while.  

Battling with the Government

Elfrida kept studying, and she graduated from the conservatory. But in the spring of 1859, bad news came: a government official had denied her proposal.

One magazine reported:

The government submitted the request to the archbishop, who refused to grant it, mainly because it would constitute a rejection of the order currently in force in the empire, which expressly stipulates that offices and positions should be filled by men who have reached the age of majority. As a result, the government has now also rejected the petitioner.

She continued studying while pondering her next moves. She also began giving piano and organ lessons to help support herself.

In 1859, her parents and younger brother moved to Stockholm. Reunited with Andreas, father and daughter teamed up to try submitting another petition. This one worked.

In March 1861, the Swedish parliament changed the law, opening the profession to unmarried women over the age of twenty-five. (It’s unclear why they granted an age exception to Elfrida, who had just turned 20.)

By May, Elfrida was a professional organist at the Finnish Church in Stockholm: the first in Swedish history.

Telegraph Operator

Elfrida Andrée

Amusingly, at the same time, Elfrida and her father also submitted another envelope-pushing application: for her to become a worker in a telegraph office.

At the time, telegraphy was cutting-edge technology, and women were not allowed to work in the field.

In 1863, her request was approved, but it’s not clear as to what purpose (publicity? activism? or did Elfrida actually seriously consider becoming a telegraphist?). There is no record of her ever working in the field.

Nevertheless, it was an important barrier to break.

Fittingly, around this time she adapted a personal motto: “det kvinnliga släkets höjande”, or “the elevation of womankind.”   

The Gothenburg Cathedral

In 1867, a vacancy for organist opened up at the Gothenburg Cathedral. Her father stepped in, writing to the provost that appointing a woman to the position would signal the city’s open mind and liberal spirit.

Elfrida went to audition on 14 April 1867, the weekend before Easter. Seven men auditioned for the position, too, but the committee unanimously elected her to the post. She became the first professional woman organist in Sweden, and one of the first in Europe.

Her remarkable tenure at the cathedral would last for over sixty years. Her duties in Gothenburg included programming and performing organ music at services, as well as maintaining the organ. In 1907, she also became the choir director.

Concertizing in Germany

Elfrida Andrée

Her fame spread. The Gothenburg Trade Newspaper reported on a November 1867 performance:

Miss Andrée’s performance of her solo part on the organ…justifies the decision that has made her organist at Sweden’s largest church.

However, attitudes were not quite so enlightened outside of Gothenburg.

In 1872, she was set to perform at Leipzig’s St. Thomas Church, where Bach had been music director a few generations ago. But the performance ultimately had to be canceled.

She wrote to her father what the appalled pastor told her:

The board had the same feeling that it was not at all appropriate for a woman to play in a church! She would then be alone on the organ with the whole choir! That is not appropriate at all. We have never heard of a female organist in Germany, and that is not possible here in Germany; it is against German custom.   

Elfrida Andrée’s Compositions

She faced similar resistance when it came to presenting her compositions.

She was deeply attracted by the idea of composing not just chamber music, but large-scale symphonic works. As early as the 1870s, she wrote, “The orchestra, that is my goal!”

She wrote to her sister Fredrika, “If you could conceive of the ideal light in which the orchestra appears to my sight! It is an interpreter of the wondrous surgings of the soul.”

When legendary singer Jenny Lind expressed doubt to her that a woman could write well for orchestra, Elfrida went to the piano and played extracts of her second symphony for her.

Over the course of her career, she wrote an opera, two overtures, a symphonic poem, two organ symphonies, two masses, and two symphonies.

A Disastrous Premiere

In 1869, when she was twenty-eight, her first symphony was premiered by the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra.

A nightmare scenario played out. Elfrida wrote later:

The performance was terrible, and I think the musicians deliberately played wrong notes. Fredrika and I left when the Finale started, and the first violins were continually behind the rest of the orchestra one entire measure.

After the debacle, even her own supportive father expressed reservations about her obsession with writing for orchestra. She wrote to him, quite firmly:

The popularity of all these little ladies with their piano fantasies or pretty songs is not what I want to do.

She composed a second symphony in 1879, but had to wait years to have an opportunity to hear it performed.

The bad performance of her first symphony and the lag between composition and premiere of her second help to explain why even the most talented women composers in nineteenth-century Europe found it difficult to write symphonies and get them performed.

Triumph in Germany

Elfrida Andrée at 22

In 1887, she made another tour of Germany. This time, she was allowed to perform at the Marienkirche in Berlin, but she had to pay a hundred marks for the privilege (she did).

She conducted during this appearance, marking the first time that Dresden had ever seen a woman conducting her own works.

The press praised her: it was a “brilliant success for Miss Andrée, who was celebrated with stormy applause and a fanfare from the orchestra.”

Later Works   

Her second symphony – fourteen years old at this point – was finally premiered in 1893. Happily, this performance went off much better, and the audience demanded the finale be encored.

In 1899, she wrote an opera called the Fritiofs Saga with librettist Selma Lagerlöf, who would go on to become the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The Fritiofs Saga was inspired by Norse mythology. Tragically, despite Andrée’s high-ranking position in Swedish music, she was never able to see it fully staged. Ever persistent, she adapted the music into an orchestral suite.

Working as a Conductor

She continued exploring an interest in orchestral music: specifically, conducting it, as well as writing it. Although it was relatively common at the time for a woman to solo with professional orchestras, it was still rare for them to conduct an orchestra.

In 1897, when Elfrida was fifty-six, she became the head of the Gothenburg Workers’ Institute Concerts. Her responsibilities included conducting, which made her the first Swedish woman to conduct an orchestra in public.

But she also assisted by helping to organise the concerts, alongside her sister. The ticket prices were kept low, and audiences from all classes were encouraged to attend.

She presented around eight hundred of these concerts, making her an invaluable part of the cultural life of Sweden.   

Later Years and Legacy

In 1904, she returned to Germany for a final time, stopping in Dresden. She set up a performance for organ and orchestra. Again, she had to pay, but the concert was a “brilliant success”, according to the press. It had taken a few decades, but she had finally made her point.

In 1911, Elfrida gave the keynote speech at the International Suffragette Conference in Stockholm.

In her remarks, she declared that it was her aim to “give freedom to the bound…and courage to the frightened.”

She died in Gothenburg in January 1929, shortly before her eighty-eighth birthday.

One account claims that one night, toward the end of her career, she performed on the Gothenberg organ late into the night. After a virtuosic flourish, speaking of St. Paul and his admonition against women making noise in church, she remarked, “Paul, old lad – try that for size!”