Top 10 Romantic composers

Gramophone
Thursday, January 2, 2025

The Romantic period was one of the most innovative in music history, characterised by lyrical melodies, rich harmonies, and emotive expression. Here's our beginner's guide to the greatest composers of the Romantic period

Hector Berlioz (1803-69)

The arch-Romantic composer, Hector Berlioz’s life was all you’d expect – by turn turbulent and passionate, ecstatic and melancholic.

Key recording:

Les Troyens 

Sols incl DiDonato, Spyres, Lemieux; Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra / John Nelson (Gramophone's 2018 Recording of the Year) Read the review

Explore Berlioz:

Top 10 Berlioz albums – 10 great Berlioz recordings by Sir Colin Davis, John Nelson, Régine Crespin, Robin Ticciati and more

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● Top 10 Baroque composers

● Top 10 Classical era composers

● Top 10 Renaissance composers

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Fryderyck Chopin (1810-49)

Few composers command such universal love as Fryderyck Chopin; even fewer still have such a high proportion of all their music in the active repertoire. Yet he is the only great composer who wrote no symphonies, operas, ballets or choral works. His chief claim to immortality relies not on large scale works but on miniature forms.

Key recording:

Piano Concertos No 1 & 2 

Martha Argerich pf Montreal Symphony Orchestra / Charles Dutoit (winner of the Gramophone Concerto Award in 1999) Read the review

Explore Chopin:

The 10 greatest Chopin pianists – Stephen Plaistow recalls the illustrious recorded history of Chopin's oeuvre and offers a personal view of great Chopin interpreters.

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Robert Schumann (1810-56)

Robert Schumann is a key figure in the Romantic movement; none investigated the Romantic’s obsession with feeling and passion quite so thoroughly as him. Schumann died insane, but then some psychologists argue that madness is a necessary attribute of genius.

Key recording:

Symphonies Nos 1-4 

Chamber Orchestra of Europe / Yannick Nézet‑Séguin (Editor's Choice, May 2014) Read the review

Explore Schumann:

Robert Schumann: the story of his prolific ‘year of song’ – Richard Wigmore explores the music of and biography behind Robert Schumann’s miraculous year of song, 1840

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Franz Liszt (1811-86)

Composer, teacher, Abbé, Casanova, writer, sage, pioneer and champion of new music, philanthropist, philosopher and one of the greatest pianists in history, Franz Liszt was the very embodiment of the Romantic spirit. He worked in every field of music except ballet and opera and to each field he contributed a significant development.

Key recording:

'Transcendental: Daniil Trifonov plays Franz Liszt'

Daniil Trifonov pf (Recording of the Month, October 2016; shortlisted for Instrumental Award 2017) Read the review

Explore Liszt:

Podcast: exploring the music of Liszt – Editor Martin Cullingford is joined by Gramophone writer and expert on both Liszt and the piano, Jeremy Nicholas to discuss the composers's greatest works, and the greatest recordings of his music. 

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Richard Wagner (1813-83)

No composer has had so deep an influence on the course of his art, before or since. Entrepreneur, philosopher, poet, conductor, one of the key composers in history and most remarkable men of the 19th century, Richard Wagner knew he was a genius. He was also an unpleasant, egocentric and unscrupulous human being.

Key recording:

Parsifal

Sols incl Jess Thomas, George London, Hans Hotter; Bayreuth Festival Chorus & Orchestra / Hans Knappertsbusch Read the review

Explore Wagner:

The Gramophone Collection: Wagner's Ring – Mike Ashman visits the musical immortals and the younger gods of today to deliver his verdict on the complete Ring on record.

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Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)

Giuseppe Verdi was never a theoretician or academic, though he was quite able to write a perfectly poised fugue if he felt inclined. What makes him, with Puccini, the most popular of all opera composers is the ability to dream up glorious melodies with an innate understanding of the human voice, to express himself directly, to understand how the theatre works, and to score with technical brilliance, colour and originality.

Key recording:

Aida

Sols incl Anja Harteros, Jonas Kaufmann, Ekaterina Semenchuk; Coro dell'Accademia Nazionale Di Santa Cecilia, Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia / Antonio Pappano (winner of the 2016 Gramophone Opera Award; Recording of the Month, Awards issue 2015) Read the review

Explore Verdi:

Verdi's Otello: a guide to the best recordings – Richard Lawrence finds at least three very special Otellos, and some electric conducting.

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Anton Bruckner (1824-96)

Anton Bruckner’s reputation rests almost entirely with his symphonies – the symphonies, someone said, that Wagner never wrote.

Key recording:

Symphony No 9

Lucerne Festival Orchestra / Claudio Abbado (Gramophone's 2015 Recording of the Year) Read the review

Explore Bruckner:

Top 10 Bruckner recordings – A beginner's guide to the music of one of the great symphonic composers.

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Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924)

Whatever the atmosphere he wanted to create, Giacomo Puccini’s sound world is unique and unmistakeable with its opulent yet clear-cut orchestration and a miraculous fund of melodies with their bittersweet, tender lyricism. His masterly writing for the voice guarantees the survival of his music for many years to come.

Key recording:

Tosca

Sols incl Maria Callas, Giuseppe di Stefano, Tito Gobbi; Orchestra and Chorus of La Scala Milan / Victor de Sabata Read the review

Explore Puccini:

Maria Callas: the Tosca sessions – Maria Callas’s famous 1953 Tosca, as Christopher Cook reveals for the first time, was riven by tension and driven by a relentless quest for perfection.

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Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky (1840-93)

Tchaikovsky is the most popular of all Russian composers, his music combining some nationalist elements with a more cosmopolitan view, but it is music that could only have been written by a Russian. In every genre he shows himself to be one of the greatest melodic fountains who ever lived.

Key recording:

Symphony No 6, Pathétique

MusicAeterna / Teodor Currentzis (Recording of the Month, January 2018) Read the review

Explore Tchaikovsky:

Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture: the complete guide – How audiences, performers and the composer himself have responded to this iconic and surprisingly controversial work, by Geoffrey Norris.

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Johannes Brahms (1833-97)

One of the giants of classical music, Johannes Brahms appeared to arrive fully armed, found a style in which he was comfortable – traditional structures and tonality in the German idiom – and stuck to it throughout his life. He was no innovator, preferring the logic of the symphony, sonata, fugue and variation forms.

Key recording:

Symphonies (Complete)

Gewandhaus Orchestra / Riccardo Chailly (Gramophone's 2014 Recording of the Year) Read the review

Explore Brahms:

Brahms's Symphony No 3: a guide to the best recordings – Richard Osborne surveys the finest recordings of the Third Symphony

Seven Works Dedicated to Robert Schumann

 by Emily E. Hogstad  January 8th, 2025

Robert Schumann was one of the leading figures of classical music’s Romantic Era. His music – by turns tempestuous and ecstatic and always heartfelt – made a huge impression not only on audiences but on his fellow composers, too.

Today, we’re looking at seven works that Robert Schumann’s friends and colleagues wrote as tributes to him and his genius.

Josef Kriehuber: Robert Schumann, 1839

Frédéric Chopin: Ballade No. 2 (1836-39) 

Frédéric Chopin and Robert Schumann had a bit of an awkward relationship. Schumann raved about Chopin’s music in his music journalism, but Chopin seems to have had a cooler opinion about Schumann’s work.

They met twice. The first time was in 1835 when Chopin was passing through Leipzig after visiting his parents. Schumann wrote about the encounter with great enthusiasm in his diary, but if Chopin ever recorded his impressions of the meeting, such an account hasn’t survived.

Frédéric Chopin

The second and final time was in 1836. Schumann tried initiating the meeting via letter but got no response. Then, one day, he arrived home to find Chopin waiting at his doorstep! They played music for one another, and Robert’s soon-to-be-wife Clara Wieck joined them.

After the visit, Schumann dedicated his Kreisleriana to Chopin, calling him “my friend” on the dedication page. Chopin reciprocated by dedicating this Ballade to Schumann…but was much more formal, dedicating it to “Mr. Robert Schumann,” and (perhaps pointedly) making no mention of friendship.

William Sterndale Bennett: Fantaisie, Op.16 (1837) 

William Sterndale Bennett was a British pianist, composer, and conductor who was born in 1816.

He began composing at an early age, and several big names in European music were very impressed by him. Felix Mendelssohn invited the young man to Leipzig, where he met Robert Schumann. All three men deeply admired each other’s work.

William Sterndale Bennett

In 1837, the year he turned twenty-one, Bennett began teaching at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He also wrote this four-movement “Fantaisie” for solo piano and dedicated it to his friend and mentor Robert Schumann.

Clara Wieck Schumann: 3 Romances, Op.11 (1839) 

Robert Schumann admired many composers, but the one he loved the most was his girlfriend and later wife, Clara Wieck Schumann, who he married in September 1840, a day before her twenty-first birthday.

Andreas Staub: Clara Wieck, 1839

Their courtship was stormy. Her father disapproved of the match and went to court to try to prevent it. There were periods of time when the two were separated against their wills or when Clara was away concertising in the capitals of Europe. But they always found their way back to each other.

It is tempting to read her longing for Robert into these three-yearning works for solo piano that she dedicated to him in 1839, the year before their marriage.

Ignaz Moscheles: Cello Sonata No. 2 (1850-51) 

Ignaz Moscheles was born in 1794 in Prague. He was a talented pianist and composer, and was one of the earliest champions of the music of Beethoven.

As a young man, he made sensational impressions on audiences touring through Europe. One of the listeners particularly affected by his piano playing was none other than Robert Schumann.

Ignaz Moscheles

Moscheles enjoyed a great friendship with the Mendelssohn family due to their Jewish heritage, passion for music, and Moscheles’s acknowledgement of Mendelssohn’s genius. Moscheles and the Mendelssohns were also friends with the Schumanns. (Moscheles even played a three-harpsichord concerto with Clara Schumann once – an unusual sight in the mid-nineteenth century!)

Given their overlapping friendships, it makes sense that Moscheles dedicated this charming Romantic cello sonata to Robert Schumann.

Woldemar Bargiel: Piano Trio No. 1 (1851) 

German composer Woldemar Bargiel’s origin story was complicated.

Bargiel’s mother Mariane Tromlitz was a professional singer. In 1816, she married a demanding piano teacher named Friederich Wieck and had five children with him, among them a prodigy pianist named Clara.

In 1824, unable to endure her marriage any longer, Mariane divorced Wieck and (awkwardly) married Wieck’s best friend Adolphe Bargiel instead. She eventually had three more children with Adolphe, including Woldemar.

Woldemar Bargiel

It worked out well for the young and musical Woldemar to have a brilliant half-sister pianist nine years his senior. She gave career advice and provided him introductions to giants like Mendelssohn and Schumann. Their social circle suggested that he study at the Leipzig Conservatory, which he did between the ages of eighteen and twenty.

In 1848, he moved to Berlin to pursue his career there. This piano trio was written in 1851 and was unpublished for five years until Robert and Clara Schumann worked their connections so that it could be printed. In gratitude, he dedicated it to Robert.

Franz Liszt: Piano Sonata in B-minor (1852-53) 

Clara Wieck Schumann and Franz Liszt had a rocky professional relationship. It started out positively. When she was a young girl, she was awed by his virtuosity, and for his part, Liszt found her compositions impressive, “especially for a woman,” as he reported to his partner, Marie d’Agoult.

Franz Hanfstaengl: Franz Liszt, 1858

But as the years went on, Clara became more and more leery of his brash style and willingness to depart from the score.

An all-out feud erupted in 1848 when Liszt called Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet “typically Leipzig”, which insulted Clara. But Robert smoothed things over, to Clara’s irritation; in her artistic maturity, she didn’t want anything to do with Liszt’s style of music-making.

In 1854, Liszt published this piano sonata and dedicated it to Robert Schumann. Not surprisingly, Clara had a strong reaction, writing in her journal:

Today, Liszt sent me a Sonata dedicated to Robert and some more pieces, together with a polite note. But those pieces are so creepy! Brahms played them to me and I felt really miserable … This is only blind noise – no more healthy thoughts, everything is confused, one cannot see any clear harmonies! And, what is more, I still have to thank him now – this is really awful.

Despite her disgust, Liszt cheerfully retained his admiration for her music and her playing.

Clara Wieck Schumann: Variationen über ein Thema von Robert Schumann, Op.20 (1853) 

It’s fitting that the final work on this list is another one of Clara’s.

This set of variations on a theme originally composed by Robert was written as his 41st birthday present. She wrote it in less than a week.

In this work, Clara includes references to multiple pieces of music by her husband, herself, and Felix Mendelssohn (who had died young and unexpectedly a few years before).

Eduard Magnus: Mendelssohn, 1846

It was one of the last musical projects they shared. Over the winter, Robert’s mental health deteriorated. In February 1854, he nearly died by suicide after jumping off a bridge into the Rhine River. It was determined that he needed to go to an asylum for his own safety. He died in the asylum in 1856. Clara would only be allowed to see him once more, shortly before his passing.

To comfort her, Johannes Brahms wrote his own variations for Clara based on this work after Robert had been institutionalised. It may not be dedicated to Robert officially, but it certainly was dedicated to him in spirit, so here it is as a bonus. We wrote about it here.

Franz Schubert (1797-1828): A Piano Duet Tribute

by Georg Predota, Interlude

It might come as a surprise, but Franz Schubert wrote almost as much piano music for four hands as for two. His thirty-four compositions in this medium range from his earliest surviving music, the Fantasie D. 48, to his Rondo in A Major finished in the summer of 1828. A scholar writes, “no composer ever approached the piano duet with the seriousness Schubert did, and his corpus of four-hand pieces stands as the apex of the genre.”

Franz Schubert

Throughout the 19th century, piano music for four hands played an important role in the home. Since larger ensembles could only be afforded by the upper classes and the aristocracy, salons everywhere sounded with music for four hands, be it arrangements of works written for larger ensembles, the operatic stage, or original compositions.

For Schubert, the four-hand set-up seemed ideally suited to his temperament as “it was a congenial form of music-making that was emblematic in Biedermeier culture as an activity of friendship and sociability.” These works were a staple in Schubertiade’s gatherings, and they ranked among his most successful publications during his lifetime. As we commemorate Schubert’s passing on 19 November at the age of 31, let us celebrate his genius by exploring some of his genial and charming original works for piano 4-hands.

Franz Schubert wrote to a friend, “Every night when I go to bed, I hope that I may never wake again, and every morning renews my grief.” Yet, it was music that gave him purpose. As he wrote, “I compose every morning, and when one piece is done, I begin another.” In May and June 1828, Schubert composed the Allegro in A Minor, D 947 and the Rondo in A Major, D 951, as a possible two-movement sonata.

The Rondo was published in December 1828, a month after his death, but the Allegro only appeared in print in 1840. Anton Diabelli added the heading “Lebensstürme” (The storms of life), presumably with an eye on prospective customers. This trite sobriquet does not prepare us for the depth of Schubert’s music, as harmonic and structural shifts create subtleties of light and shade. Schubert was the undisputed master of compressing emotional complexity, joy, sorrow, friendship, and solace into a simple change of key.

Turbulent minor chords prepare for an opening statement that emerges from within a deep silence. An introspective melody murmurs in the unsmiling minor key, but the serenity of the second theme, sounding a distant chorale, leaves all storms far behind. However, Schubert has led the music into a highly remote territory, with the harmonic ground shifting restlessly. Suddenly, the music breaks off mid-stream, and an unceremonious plunge takes us to the central development stage. And while the radiant chorale takes centre stage in the recapitulation, the movement ends in the stormy minor key. 

With the “Lebensstürme” Allegro and the “Grand Rondeau,” Schubert completely transcended the confines of the salon and, in the process, wrote highly original and wonderful music for piano duet. The Schubert biographer Christopher H. Gibbs writes, “Such innovations may explain why his attraction to the medium continued even after his energies shifted increasingly to large-scale instrumental works. Indeed, the audacious harmonic and structural adventures in his finest keyboard duets may have pointed the way to orchestral projects that he did not live to realise…The late piano duets exquisitely merge Schubert’s lyrical gifts with daring formal structures.”

Franz Liszt called Schubert “the most poetic musician who had ever lived,” and musicologist Alfred Einstein called the A-Major Rondo D. 951 “the apotheosis of all Schubert compositions for four hands.” The piece is modelled on the lyrical second movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in E minor, Op. 90. It mirrors the tranquillity of mood, the layout, and the harmonic pattern.

The Rondo theme is quietly accompanied by running 16th notes and immediately sounds an octave higher. This theme appears in various keys and registers throughout, and it is interspersed with episodes and subsidiary themes derived from it. A slightly stormy section in C Major is quickly cast aside, and the Rondo theme returns in the cello register to conclude the movement in a warm and quiet manner.

Variations in B-flat Major, D. 968a

Caroline Esterhazy

For Schubert and his friends, four-hand piano music was a natural part of convivial evenings. This repertoire was almost exclusively destined for the private amateur salon market, and the prospects for having such pieces published were higher than they were for solo piano music, specifically when it came to works of the ambitious scope Schubert wanted to write.

Presumably written in 1818 or 1824, Schubert’s Variations D. 968a for piano four hands is one of series of compositions written for the two daughters of Count Johann Karl Esterházy. Schubert was engaged as a music tutor to the two girls and spent two summers at the Count’s estate at Zseliz in Hungary. Schubert wrote to his friend Moritz von Schwind, “I have composed a big sonata and variations for four hands; the latter is enjoying great applause here, but since I don’t quite trust the taste of the Hungarians, I’ll let you and the Viennese decide about them.”

A curiously pompous introduction terminates in a short cadenza for the primo pianist, and it is followed by a simple theme of Schubertian charm. The variations get progressively more brilliant, with Schubert accelerating the rhythms and adding rapid figuration. The third variation is aptly marked “Brilliante,” and it is followed by the mock solemnity of a slower variation. The merry finale features folk-like elements, including a yodelling call. It has been called “one of Schubert’s most jovial and overtly entertaining pieces.”

Sonata for Piano 4-hands in C Major, D. 812 “Grand Duo”

The big sonata Schubert mentioned to Moritz von Schwind turned out to be one of the most monumental and powerful achievements of the composer. Generally known as the “Grand Duo,” the work caused a bit of confusion. As Robert Schumann wrote in 1838, “I thought at first it was a symphony transcribed for piano, but the original manuscript on which Schubert has written Sonata for four hands would suggest I was wrong.”

Schumann continues, “I say I would suggest, for I am still not convinced of my error. A composer as prolific as Schubert may well, in haste, have written Sonata when what he really had in mind was a symphony. Knowing his style and his manner of writing for the piano and comparing this work with his other sonatas where the purest pianistic character is evident, I cannot but think that it was composed for the orchestra. You can hear the strings, the woodwind, the tutti, some solos, the drum roll; the symphonic form in all its breadth and depth.”

Joachim’s orchestration of Schubert’s Grand Duo

Joseph Joachim went ahead and orchestrated the “Grand Duo” in 1855, and the musicologist and composer Donald Francis Tovey included this orchestration in his book analysing symphonies. He wrote, “there is not a trace of piano style in the work.” More recently, the Sonata has been more readily appreciated as a piano work with orchestral effects, one of many other piano works by Schubert that have been called “symphonies in disguise.” 

Actually, Schubert wrote two sonatas for piano 4-hands. While the “Grand Duo” dates from 1824, the “Grande Sonata” originated in 1818. The two works couldn’t be more different, as the “Grande Sonata” seems very close to the world of Mozart, “the unique combination of purity, subtlety and emotional richness of whose music was an abiding source of wonder to Schubert.”

A grand opening gesture, a wonderful curtain-raiser, proceeds to an easy-going theme. The contrasting second subject sounds in a remote key, but it cheekily meanders back to the correct key just in time to close the exposition. Schubert also introduces a charming new melody in the middle of the development, which will be echoed in the beautiful slow movement. The Rondo finale takes a renewed look at Mozart with a dramatic, almost operatic middle section and replaces the development.

The work stems from Schubert’s time at the Esterházy’s estate at Zseliz in Hungary, and it found the composer in a jovial mood. He writes, “I am in the best of health. I live and compose like a god, as though indeed nothing else in the world were possible… I am really alive at last, thank God!”

Polonaises, D. 599

Schubert’s Polonaise

Schubert published a couple of sets of Polonaises in 1826 and 1827. The young Robert Schumann, not yet seventeen, was already reviewing for a Frankfurt publication and wrote of “most original and very richly melodious little movements… The execution is difficult at times on account of the sometimes surprising and sometimes far-fetched modulations. Thoroughly recommended.”

Schumann called them “romantic rainbows over a sublimely slumbering universe,” as Schubert turned the Polish courtly ceremonial style of music into his own delightful and sparkling character pieces. The Polonaises for piano 4-hands range from light and airy to robust and balletic, but all unfold in three-part form and venture into unexpected keys.

Fugue in E minor of Piano 4-hands, D. 952

Schubert’s Fugue in E minor

In 1828, Schubert and his friend Franz Lachner were invited by Johann Schikh, the editor of a Viennese magazine for art, literature, theatre, and fashion, for a country outing to Baden, near Vienna. Apparently, Schikh told Schubert, “Tomorrow morning, we shall go to Heiligenkreuz to hear the famous organ there. Perhaps you could both compose a small piece and perform it there?” Schubert suggested the composition of a four-hand fugue, which was completed by midnight.As Lachner reports, “on the next day, at 6 in the morning, we travelled to Heiligenkreuz where the fugues were performed in the presence of several monks.” The fugue subject had already appeared in Schubert’s counterpoint lesson with Simon Sechter, and it might well have been his very last completed composition. As he wrote to a friend eight days later, “I am ill. I have had nothing to eat or drink for eleven days now and can only wander feebly and uncertainly between armchair and bed.”

Fantasie in F minor, D 940

Schubert composed a number of Fantasies, but the one in F minor, D 940, is surely one of the best-loved works in the piano duet literature. But what is more, it is widely considered one of Schubert’s greatest masterpieces. Dedicated to Countess Caroline Esterházy, this work completely leaves the sphere of informal social gatherings. During the first months of his last year of life, Schubert created a work of almost symphonic form, whose elegiac atmosphere at the beginning sets the tone for the entire work. Schubert scholar John Reed called it “a work which in its structural organisation, economy of form, and emotional depth represents Schubert’s art at its peak.”

Although Schubert called it a Fantasie and the work unfolds in one continuous flow of music, it might well be structured in the manner of a sonata in four movements. The opening “Allegretto molto moderato” evolves from a murmuring accompaniment that features a theme of halting rhythms and chirping grace notes. When Schubert almost hypnotically repeats the theme, the music has effortlessly shifted from F minor to F Major. The rhythmically conceived second subject drives directly into a powerful “Largo.” We move directly into the “Allegro vivace,” a sparkling scherzo of nostalgia followed by a delicate trio. The trio breaks suddenly, and the music eventually plunges into a complex fugue, which takes us to the point of despair. The concluding section brings back the music from the very beginning, and contrapuntal complexity drives the Fantasie to its climax. It all ends with some heart-rendering chords that bring this masterwork to a quiet close.

A scholar writes, “that a legacy of such beauty should have been bequeathed to all humanity as a result of Schubert’s pain and suffering is a miracle in itself.” And Schubert himself commented in the final moments of his life, “the product of my genius and my misery, and that which I have written in my greatest distress, is that which the world seems to like best.”

Franz Schubert died in Vienna on November 19, 1828, and he was buried at his own request near Beethoven. Schubert had carried the torch at Beethoven’s funeral a year before his own death.