The Best of Piano Classical Music 🎻🎼 Mozart, Bach, Chopin, Beethoven and more...

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The Best of Piano Classical Music 🎻🎼 Mozart, Bach, Chopin, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky,... ♫ 00:00 Prelude in C Major, BWV 846 ( Bach) ♫ 02:19 Rondo Alla Turca (Mozart) ♫ 06:27 Für Elise (Beethoven) ♫ 09:19 Prelude, Op. 28 No. 4 (Chopin) ♫ 12:15 Minuet in G Minor, BWV Anh. 115 (Bach) ♫ 14:11 Moonlight sonata I. Adagio Sostenuto 14 (Beethoven) ♫ 20:35 Concerto No. 21 in C Major, KV 467 (Moza ) ♫ 36:14 Arabesque No. 1 (Debussy) ♫ 41:08 Waltz in A Minor, B. 150, Op. Posth (Chopin) ♫ 43:46 The Entertainer (Scott Joplin) ♫ 47:15 Mariage d_Amour 7 (Chopin) ♫ 51:50 Minuet (Boccherini)

10 Pieces of Classical Music About Friendship

by Emily Hogstadt, Interlude

Making and having friends is one of the great joys of the human experience. Not surprisingly, many classical composers have been deeply inspired by their friendships with other people, and especially with other creative people.

Today, we’re looking at ten pieces of classical music that reflect on composers’ friendships in some way, whether it’s Beethoven’s dedication of a private string quartet to a friend or Elgar’s extravagant orchestral puzzle dedicated to his friends.

Enjoy!

Ludwig van Beethoven: String Quartet No. 11 (1810-11)

Beethoven’s eleventh quartet was a unique piece from the start: he wrote in a letter to a friend that “The Quartet is written for a small circle of connoisseurs and is never to be performed in public.”

In it, Beethoven allowed himself to experiment and take risks. It was written the year after Napoleon invaded Vienna when the routines of people in the city had been shattered, so there weren’t many audiences interested in coming to performances, anyway.

Nikolaus Zmeskall von Domanovecz © Wikipedia

Beethoven dedicated this work to his friend, Count Nikolaus Zmeskall von Domanovecz. Zmeskall was a civil servant and an amateur cellist who hosted gatherings in his home where chamber music was performed. These house concerts were the first place where much of Beethoven’s later chamber music was first heard.

Frédéric Chopin: Variations on “Là ci darem la mano” (1827) 

Frédéric Chopin had such an intense friendship with political activist Tytus Woyciechowski that some scholars have recently claimed that the two had a romantic relationship.

Tytus Woyciechowski © Wikipedia

Some historians have protested, but regardless of the truth, Chopin certainly did write some very intimate letters to Woyciechowski, including this one in 1830:

I will go and wash. Don‘t kiss me now because I haven‘t yet washed. You? Even if I were to rub myself with Byzantine oils, you still wouldn’t kiss me, unless I compelled you to do so with magnetism. There is some sort of force in nature. Today you will dream that you‘re kissing me. I have to pay you back for the nasty dream you brought me last night…

Three years earlier, Chopin had written a series of variations for piano on an aria from Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni and dedicated it to Woyciechowski.

The two friends eventually drifted apart, but they always remained in each other’s hearts. Woyciechowski eventually named one of his children after Chopin.

Felix Mendelssohn: Allegro Brillant (1841) 

Since he was very young, composer Felix Mendelssohn was a close colleague of prodigy pianist Clara Wieck Schumann (the woman who eventually married composer Robert Schumann).

Felix Mendelssohn © U.S. Public Domain

In 1835, Mendelssohn was named music director of the Gewandhaus orchestra in Leipzig. Wieck, born in 1819, was a popular up-and-coming Leipzig-born piano prodigy, so the two often worked together professionally.

As a token of his admiration, in 1841, the year after her marriage to Robert Schumann, Mendelssohn wrote the dazzling Allegro Brillant for piano four-hands for Clara.

As a token of respect for his friend’s ability, the Allegro Brillant is devilishly difficult.

Johannes Brahms: Violin Concerto (1878) 

Another musician in the Mendelssohn/Schumann social circle was a Hungarian violinist named Joseph Joachim.

In 1844, at the age of twelve, Joachim gave the first performance in decades of Beethoven’s violin concerto. This performance helped to kick off an entire reappraisal of the work. (By the way, the conductor at that concert? None other than Felix Mendelssohn!)

Joseph Joachim, 1853

When they were young, Joseph Joachim became great friends with pianist Johannes Brahms, and tried to help promote Brahms’s career. In fact, Joachim made the introductions between Brahms and the Schumanns, which became one of the most formative experiences of Brahms’s life.

Brahms and Joachim continued to be friends for many years (although their relationship had its ups and downs).

When Brahms wrote his violin concerto, he wrote it for Joachim, consulting extensively with him via mail. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the finale is extremely Hungarian in character. Joachim reciprocated the friendly gesture by writing the cadenza in the concerto, which is still the only one regularly played.

Edward Elgar: Enigma Variations (1898-99) 

When Edward Elgar published his Enigma Variations for orchestra, he included a dedication: “to my friends pictured within.”

Each movement is a portrait of someone in his life, complete with musical puzzles and extra-musical references that have kept musicologists and nerdy listeners debating as to their identities for generations.

In 1911, he expanded on his dedication:

This work, commenced in a spirit of humour & continued in deep seriousness, contains sketches of the composer’s friends. It may be understood that these personages comment or reflect on the original theme & each one attempts a solution of the Enigma, for so the theme is called. The sketches are not ‘portraits’ but each variation contains a distinct idea founded on some particular personality or perhaps on some incident known only to two people. This is the basis of the composition, but the work may be listened to as a ‘piece of music’ apart from any extraneous consideration.

Sergei Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2 (1900-1901) 

Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto may be among his most popular works today, but it only came to life after a lot of blood, sweat, and tears…and one especially helpful friend.

Nikolai Dahl © Wikipedia

To make a long story short, Rachmaninoff was so traumatized by the failure of his first symphony in 1897 that it triggered a mental breakdown. He wasn’t sure if he’d be able to compose again.

After several years of writers’ block, in early 1900, Rachmaninoff finally began going to a neurologist and family friend named Nikolai Dahl. Dahl helped him process the failure of his symphony and feel comfortable composing again. In gratitude, Rachmaninoff dedicated his second concerto to him.

The concerto is lush, deeply emotional, and beautifully paced and proportioned. Rachmaninoff toured the world playing and promoting it, ensuring its spot in the classical music canon.

George Enescu: Violin Sonata No. 3 (1926) 

In 1926, violinist Franz Kneisel died. Kneisel had had a remarkable career. He was born in Bucharest, Romania, and studied music there and in Vienna. He became a concertmaster when he was just a teenager; he was later handpicked to serve in that position with the fledgling Boston Symphony, and he also founded the first professional string quartet in the United States, the Kneisel Quartet, which performed in America for decades.

Violinist Franz Kneisel in 1902 © Wikipedia

So when Kneisel died in 1926, he was very famous. Composer and violinist George Enescu – a fellow Romanian musician – decided to pay homage to Kneisel’s origins by posthumously dedicating a violin sonata “in Romanian Folk Style” to him. It became Enescu’s most popular work.

Karol Szymanowski: Violin Concerto No 2 (1932-33) 

Ukrainian violinist Paweł Kochański became sick with cancer in his forties. Cancer treatments were relatively limited at the time, and he would die at the age of 46 from the disease.

Before he died, however, he commissioned a violin concerto from his friend, Polish composer Karol Szymanowski. Szymanowski was deeply inspired by the request and wrote the concerto in a matter of weeks.

Paweł Kochański © Wikipedia

Happily, Kochański stayed well enough to premiere the work in October 1933 in Warsaw. But his health deteriorated rapidly afterward, and he died a few months later.

Before the score’s publication, Szymanowski edited the dedication to read “A la memoire du Grand Musicien, mon cher et inoubliable Ami, Paweł Kochański” (“In memory of the Great Musician, my dear and unforgettable Friend, Paweł Kochański”).

It ended up being Szymanowski’s last big work, too. He died in 1937 of tuberculosis.

Dmitri Shostakovich: Piano Trio No. 2 (1943-44) 

Composer Dmitri Shostakovich began his second piano trio in late 1943 and finished it in August 1944.

While he was working on the trio, in February 1944, a close friend named Ivan Sollertinsky died in his sleep.

Sollertinsky was a brilliant figure who reportedly spoke twenty-six languages (and no, that’s not a typo). Among other things, he helped introduce Mahler‘s music to the Soviet Union.

Understandably, Shostakovich was devastated at the loss, and he wrote that devastating into his haunting piano trio.

According to Sollertinsky’s sister, the trio’s second movement was a portrait of her late brother. It is followed by a tragic dirge.

Arvo Pärt: Für Alina (1976) 

There’s a deeply bittersweet real-life story behind Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s short piano piece Für Alina (or “For Alina”).

In the 1970s, some family friends broke up. The father of the family left for England, and his teenage daughter Alina chose to go with him to see more of the world beyond Estonia.

The work is Pärt comforting his friend, Alina’s mother, while also recognizing her grief at her little girl leaving home.

Conclusion

Classical musicians can certainly be temperamental, but as this overview proves, sometimes the best friendships are friendships based on music!

What are your favorite friendship stories in the history of classical music? What pieces would you add to our list?

10 Pieces of Classical Music About Freedom

by Emily E. Hogstad

Classical music has been used for political purposes countless times, both in oppressive regimes (like in Stalin’s Soviet Union and Nazi Germany) and in battles for self-determination and freedom (like in the Finnish independence movement). European revolutions have had classical music as their soundtrack for a very long time.

© jewishjournal.com

Today, we’re looking at ten pieces of classical music about freedom, from Beethoven’s opera set in prison to Undine Smith Moore’s defiant piano music about the experience of being Black in America.

Let’s get started:

Ludwig van Beethoven: Leonore Overture No. 3 (1806)

In Beethoven’s opera Fidelio, a Spanish nobleman named Florestan threatens to expose the corruption of a colleague named Pizarro. Pizarro wrongfully imprisons Florestan and tells the rest of the world that he has been killed.

However, Florestan’s wife, Leonore, refuses to believe the news. So she dresses up as a boy, renames herself Fidelio, and gets a job in the prison to find out what really happened to her husband.

By the end of the opera, Leonore ends up in front of her husband just before Pizarro actually goes to kill him. Pizarro, enraged, threatens to murder both husband and wife, but Fidelio/Leonore one-ups him by pulling out a gun, which puts an end to Florestan’s unjust imprisonment.

Beethoven had trouble writing an overture for this opera, and he wrote and discarded several versions. This one – known as the Leonore Overture No. 3 – is sometimes played after Leonore’s rescue of her husband.

Giuseppe Verdi: “Va, pensiero” from Nabucco (1841) 

Verdi’s opera Nabucco tells the Biblical story of the Israelites’ exile in oppressive Babylon.

In the opera, the Israelite slaves sing it as they work, describing how, even in exile, their thoughts are with their homeland.

However, this was not the music’s only potential meaning in mid-nineteenth-century Italy. At that time, a movement for Italian independence and unification was gaining steam, and art and music helped to contribute to national pride and identity.

In 1844, a few years after the premiere of Nabucco, two brothers named Attilio and Emilio Bandiera were working for Italian unification when one of their followers betrayed them. They were taken into custody and died by firing squad, becoming martyrs for the cause.

Verdi did not necessarily endorse such a movement, but whether he liked it or not, his music likely contributed to the atmosphere that ultimately made the revolution possible.

Frédéric Chopin: Heroic Polonaise (1842) 

Chopin was very proud of his Polish ancestry.

However, when he was twenty years old, he chose to leave Warsaw to make a musical career in a bigger city.

No sooner had he left for Vienna with his dear friend, political activist Tytus Woyciechowski, than Warsaw broke out into armed conflict.

The November Uprising in Warsaw lasted from November 1830 until October 1831. (Woyciechowski, for his part, as soon as he heard about the uprising, returned to Warsaw. Chopin stayed behind.)

The Poles fought their occupiers, the Russians, but were ultimately crushed.

Chopin was devastated when he heard about the outcome. He wrote in his journal, “Oh God! … You are there, and yet you do not take vengeance!”

Over the years that followed, he became increasingly obsessed with Polish identity. He began incorporating polonaises – a dance form that originated in Poland – into his piano music.

He also began dating Paris-based authoress George Sand, who backed the Polish cause in her writings. After he wrote the Heroic Polonaise, she drew a direct line between the Polonaise and other countries’ fights for freedom and self-determination, writing, “The inspiration! The force! The vigour! There is no doubt that such a spirit must be present in the [1848] French Revolution. From now on, this Polonaise should be a symbol, a heroic symbol.”

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: 1812 Overture (1880) 

The overture was commissioned to celebrate the completion of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in St. Petersburg.

Construction of the cathedral had started generations earlier as a gesture of thanksgiving to God after Napoleon’s ill-fated attempt to overtake Russia in 1812.

To celebrate the Russians’ preservation of their freedom, Tchaikovsky wrote an overture about the fight, featuring excerpts of the Marsaillaise and Russian folk songs.

He underlined the importance of the victory by writing parts for large orchestra, brass band, church bells, and even cannons.

Jean Sibelius: Finlandia (1899) 

Finlandia is Sibelius’s single most famous work. It was written for the Press Celebrations of 1899, a Finnish event that protested press censorship by the Russian Empire.

In order to sidestep Russian censorship, the piece was initially performed under over-the-top innocuous titles like “Happy Feelings at the Awakening of Finnish Spring.”

However, the piece was not just about happy feelings; it was clearly also a rebellious call to arms against oppression.

Finlandia portrays struggle, then transitions into a serene melody symbolizing the noble spirit of the Finnish people. That serene melody might sound like an old hymn, but it was actually composed by Sibelius specifically for this work. The work ends with rousing energy.

Amy Beach: A Song of Liberty (1902) 

American composer Amy Beach wrote A Song of Liberty for piano and women’s choir. In it, she set lyrics by Frank Lebby Stanton, the first poet laureate of Georgia.

The song traces themes about American national identity and liberty and how, in the narrator’s view, the American penchant for liberty stretches “from sounding sea to sea”, in words that echo Katharine Lee Bates’s lyrics for what later became known as “America the Beautiful.”

Hail to our Country! strong she stands,
Nor fears the war drum’s beat.
The sword of Freedom in her hands,
The tyrant at her feet!

Ethel Smyth: March of the Women (1910) 

Composer Ethel Smyth was born in 1858 in Kent. She was a rebel from childhood, demanding to be allowed to study music in Europe and locking herself in her room until her father let her go.

Not surprisingly, she was a major supporter of the women’s suffrage movement. (She even taught activist Emmeline Pankhurst how to throw stones at windows.)

In 1910, she joined the Women’s Social and Political Union and actually went so far as to give up her musical career for two years to contribute to the movement.

She returned to music briefly in 1911 when she composed the March of the Women. During this time, she was arrested for her activism and imprisoned in Holloway Prison. Her fellow suffragettes would march in the prison yard singing the March while she’d conduct them leaning out the window with a toothbrush.

Undine Smith Moore: Before I’d Be A Slave (1953) 

African-American composer Undine Smith Moore was born in Virginia in 1904 and died in 1989. By the end of her prolific career, she was known as “the Dean of Black Women Composers.” She often wove themes of the Black American experience into her work.

In 1953, she wrote a piece for solo piano called Before I’d Be a Slave. She described the program of the work:

It follows a program which I would hope is evident in the music without verbal explanation – in general:

In frustration and chaos of slaves who wish to be free

In the depths – a slow and ponderous struggle marked by attempts to escape-anyway-being bound-almost successful attempt at flight

Tug of war with the oppressors

A measure of freedom won – some upward movement less lacerating

Continued aspiration-determination-affirmation.

Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony No. 11 (1957) 

In his eleventh symphony, Dmitri Shostakovich turned to the story of the 1905 Russian Revolution for creative inspiration.

This symphony has often been described as a soundtrack without a movie. It’s easy to see why: the work lasts for an hour with no breaks, and every movement contains a program.

Demonstrations before Bloody Sunday © Wikipedia

The first movement is about the quiet in the Palace Square before unarmed protesters marching to the palace were shot by imperial forces. The second movement depicts the forces beginning to attack the crowd, while the third movement is a memorial to those who have just lost their lives. The finale hints at the 1917 revolution – in which the royal family was defeated once and for all.

It is possible – although not certain – that Shostakovich was inspired to write this symphony at least in part because he had sympathy for the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Testimony about his political positions is abundant and often contradictory. But aside from all of that, it is very easy to read a narrative of struggle, liberty, and self-determination into this music.

Frederic Rzewski: The People United Will Never Be Defeated! (1975) 

Some people believe that this is among the greatest sets of themes and variations ever composed! It was written by composer Frederic Rzewski, an American composer who lived between 1938 and 2021.

This work consists of a Chilean protest song, ¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido! (The people united will never be defeated!), and 36 variations on it.

Rzewski wrote the work as a commentary on the popular resistance to oppressive dictator Augusto Pinochet, who came to power with the support of the American government in 1973.

The work is massive, lasting an hour, and is also massively demanding. For one, the score asks the pianist to whistle and slam the piano lid!

Conclusion

Whenever people feel oppressed by any force, it is second nature to create or take comfort in music that expresses the pathos, fury, tragedy, and occasionally triumph that can arise when seeking freedom…and these ten works of classical music about freedom prove it!

What’s your favorite classical music about freedom?

Music for reading / Musik zum Lesen: Chopin, Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Debussy, Liszt, Sch...

Music for reading.Musik zum Lesen.
Enjoy. Viel Spass.