Robert Schumann (8 June 1810 – 29 July 1856) was a German composer, pianist, and influential music critic. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career as a virtuoso pianist. His teacher, Friedrich Wieck, a German pianist, had assured him that he could become the finest pianist in Europe, but a hand injury ended this dream. Schumann then focused his musical energies on composing. In 1840, after a long and acrimonious legal battle with Wieck, who opposed the marriage, Schumann married Wieck's daughter Clara. Before their marriage, Clara—also a composer—had substantially supported her father through her considerable career as a pianist. Together, Clara and Robert encouraged, and maintained a close relationship with, German composer Johannes Brahms. Until 1840, Schumann wrote exclusively for the piano. Later, he composed piano and orchestral works, many Lieder (songs for voice and piano). He composed four symphonies, one opera, and other orchestral, choral, and chamber works. His best-known works include Carnaval, Symphonic Studies, Kinderszenen, Kreisleriana, and the Fantasie in C. His writings about music appeared mostly in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (New Journal for Music), a Leipzig-based publication that he co-founded. Schumann suffered from a mental disorder that first manifested in 1833 as a severe melancholic depressive episode—which recurred several times alternating with phases of "exaltation" and increasingly also delusional ideas of being poisoned or threatened with metallic items. After a suicide attempt in 1854, Schumann was admitted at his own request to a mental asylum in Endenich near Bonn. Diagnosed with psychotic melancholia, he died two years later at the age of 46 without recovering from his mental illness. Robert Schumann For more: http://www.melhoresmusicasclassicas.blogspot.com #MusicHistory #ClassicalMusic #Schumann
Johannes Brahms (7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, pianist, and conductor of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria. His reputation and status as a composer are such that he is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the "Three Bs" of music, a comment originally made by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow. Brahms composed for symphony orchestra, chamber ensembles, piano, organ, and voice and chorus. A virtuoso pianist, he premiered many of his own works. He worked with some of the leading performers of his time, including the pianist Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim (the three were close friends). Many of his works have become staples of the modern concert repertoire. An uncompromising perfectionist, Brahms destroyed some of his works and left others unpublished. Brahms has been considered, by his contemporaries and by later writers, as both a traditionalist and an innovator. His music is firmly rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of the Classical masters. While many contemporaries found his music too academic, his contribution and craftsmanship have been admired by subsequent figures as diverse as Arnold Schoenberg and Edward Elgar. The diligent, highly constructed nature of Brahms's works was a starting point and an inspiration for a generation of composers. Embedded within his meticulous structures, however, are deeply romantic motifs. Johannes Brahms Tracklist: Sinfonia n. 2 em ré maior op. 73 1. Allegro non troppo 2. Adagio non troppo 3. Allegretto grazioso (Quasi andantino) 4. Allegro con spirito 5. Abertura para uma festa acadêmica op. 80 Royal Philharmonic Orchestra For more: http://www.melhoresmusicasclassicas.blogspot.com #MusicHistory #ClassicalMusic #Brahms
Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini (22 December 1858 – 29 November 1924) was an Italian opera composer who has been called "the greatest composer of Italian opera after Verdi". Puccini's early work was rooted in traditional late-19th-century romantic Italian opera. Later, he successfully developed his work in the realistic verismo style, of which he became one of the leading exponents. Puccini's most renowned works are La bohème (1896), Tosca (1900), Madama Butterfly (1904), and Turandot (1924), all of which are among the important operas played as standards. Giacomo Puccini Tracklist: LA BOHÈME ATO I 1. Introdução 2. Dueto: "Non sono in vena" 3. Ária: "Che gelida manina!" 4. Ária: "Si. Mi chiamano Mimí" 5. Dueto de amor: "O soave fanciulla" ATO III 6. Dueto: "Mimí" 7. Trio: "Marcello, finalmente!" 8. Ária: "D'onde lieta uscí" ATO IV 9. Dueto "Sono andati?" 10. Final: "Mimí" MADAME BUTTERFLY ATO I 11. Introdução 12. Dueto: "Dovunque al mondo" 13. Dueto: "Amore o grillo"Arrivèe de Madame Butterfly 14. "Quanto cielo, quanto mar!" 15. Dueto de amor: "Bimba dagli occhi pieni di malia" ATO II 16. Ária: "Un bel di vedremo"Scene de la carte 17. "Amico, cercherete quel bel fior di fanciulla" 18. Ária e Final: "Con onor muore" Royal Philharmonic Orchestra For more: http://www.melhoresmusicasclassicas.blogspot.com #MusicHistory #ClassicalMusic #Puccini
César-Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert Franck (10 December 1822 – 8 November 1890) was a composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher who worked in Paris during his adult life. He was born at Liège, in what is now Belgium (though at the time of his birth it was part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands). He gave his first concerts there in 1834 and studied privately in Paris from 1835, where his teachers included Anton Reicha. After a brief return to Belgium, and a disastrous reception for an early oratorio Ruth, he moved to Paris, where he married and embarked on a career as teacher and organist. He gained a reputation as a formidable musical improviser, and travelled widely within France to demonstrate new instruments built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll. In 1858, he became organist at the Basilica of St. Clotilde, Paris, a position he retained for the rest of his life. He became professor at the Paris Conservatoire in 1872; he took French nationality, a requirement of the appointment. His pupils included Vincent d'Indy, Ernest Chausson, Louis Vierne, Charles Tournemire, Guillaume Lekeu and Henri Duparc. After acquiring the professorship, Franck wrote several pieces that have entered the standard classical repertoire, including symphonic, chamber, and keyboard works. César Franck Tracklist: SINFONIA EM RÉ MENOR 1. Lento -- Allegro Non Troppo 2. Allegretto 3. Allegro Non Troppo 4. LES EOLIDES 5. LE CHASSEUR MAUDIT Royal Philharmonic Orchestra For more: http://www.melhoresmusicasclassicas.blogspot.com #MusicHistory #ClassicalMusic #Franck
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (7 May 1840 [O.S. 25 April] – 6 November [O.S. 25 October] 1893) was a Russian composer of the romantic period, whose works are among the most popular music in the classical repertoire. He was the first Russian composer whose music made a lasting impression internationally, bolstered by his appearances as a guest conductor in Europe and the United States. He was honored in 1884 by Emperor Alexander III, and awarded a lifetime pension. Although musically precocious, Tchaikovsky was educated for a career as a civil servant. There was scant opportunity for a musical career in Russia at that time and no system of public music education. When an opportunity for such an education arose, he entered the nascent Saint Petersburg Conservatory, from which he graduated in 1865. The formal Western-oriented teaching he received there set him apart from composers of the contemporary nationalist movement embodied by the Russian composers of The Five, with whom his professional relationship was mixed. Tchaikovsky's training set him on a path to reconcile what he had learned with the native musical practices to which he had been exposed from childhood. From this reconciliation he forged a personal but unmistakably Russian style—a task that did not prove easy. The principles that governed melody, harmony and other fundamentals of Russian music ran completely counter to those that governed Western European music; this seemed to defeat the potential for using Russian music in large-scale Western composition or for forming a composite style, and it caused personal antipathies that dented Tchaikovsky's self-confidence. Russian culture exhibited a split personality, with its native and adopted elements having drifted apart increasingly since the time of Peter the Great. This resulted in uncertainty among the intelligentsia about the country's national identity—an ambiguity mirrored in Tchaikovsky's career. Despite his many popular successes, Tchaikovsky's life was punctuated by personal crises and depression. Contributory factors included his early separation from his mother for boarding school followed by his mother's early death, the death of his close friend and colleague Nikolai Rubinstein, and the collapse of the one enduring relationship of his adult life, which was his 13-year association with the wealthy widow Nadezhda von Meck who was his patron even though they never actually met each other. His homosexuality, which he kept private, has traditionally also been considered a major factor, though some musicologists now downplay its importance. Tchaikovsky's sudden death at the age of 53 is generally ascribed to cholera; there is an ongoing debate as to whether cholera was indeed the cause of death, and whether his death was accidental or self-inflicted. While his music has remained popular among audiences, critical opinions were initially mixed. Some Russians did not feel it was sufficiently representative of native musical values and expressed suspicion that Europeans accepted the music for its Western elements. In an apparent reinforcement of the latter claim, some Europeans lauded Tchaikovsky for offering music more substantive than base exoticism and said he transcended stereotypes of Russian classical music. Others dismissed Tchaikovsky's music as "lacking in elevated thought," according to longtime New York Times music critic Harold C. Schonberg, and derided its formal workings as deficient because they did not stringently follow Western principles. Piotr Ilitch Tchaikovsky Tracklist: O Quebra-Nozes, Suíte Op. 71A 1. Abertura 2. Marcha 3. O Chocolate 4. O Café 5. O Chá 6. Trepak 7. Dança dos Mirlitões 8. A Mãe Cegonha e os Polichinelos 9. Dança da Fada do Açúcar 10. Valsa das Flores 11. Pas-de-Deux 12. Valsa Final e Apoteose O Lago dos Cisnes, Suíte Op. 66A 13. Cena 14. Valsa 15. Dança dos Cisnes 16. Cena 17. Dança Húngara (Czardas) SERENATA PARA CORDAS EM DÓ MAIOR OP.48 1. Pezzo In Forma Di Sonatina 2. Valsa 3. Elegia 4. Final: Tema Russo Royal Philharmonic Orchestra For more: http://www.melhoresmusicasclassicas.blogspot.com #MusicHistory #ClassicalMusic #Tchaikovsky
Clément Philibert Léo Delibes (21 February 1836 – 16 January 1891) was a French composer of the Romantic era (1815–1910), who specialised in ballets, operas, and other works for the stage. His most notable works include the ballets Coppélia (1870) and Sylvia (1876), as well as the operas Le roi l'a dit (1873) and Lakmé (1883). Léo Delibes Tracklist: SYLVIA: SUÍTE DE BALLET PARA ORQUESTRA 1. Prelúdio : "Les Chasseresses" 2. Intermezzo: Valse Lente 3. Pizzicato 4. Cortège De Bacchus LAKMÉ 5. "Viens, Malliká": Duo Das Flores (*) 6. "Où Va La Jeune Hindoue": Ária Das Campainhas(**) LE ROI S'AMUSE 7. Gaillarde 8. Pavane 9. Madrigal 10. Passepied COPPÉLIA, SUÍTE DE BALLET PARA ORQUESTRA 11. Prelúdio E Mazurca 12. Festival Dos Relógios E Dança Das Horas 13. Noturno 14. Música Da Boneca E Valsa 15. Czardas Royal Philharmonic Orchestra For more: http://www.melhoresmusicasclassicas.blogspot.com #MusicHistory #ClassicalMusic #Delibes
Claude Debussy (22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born to a family of modest means and little cultural involvement, Debussy showed enough musical talent to be admitted at the age of ten to France's leading music college, the Conservatoire de Paris. He originally studied the piano, but found his vocation in innovative composition, despite the disapproval of the Conservatoire's conservative professors. He took many years to develop his mature style, and was nearly 40 when he achieved international fame in 1902 with the only opera he completed, Pelléas et Mélisande. Debussy's orchestral works include Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1894), Nocturnes (1897–1899) and Images (1905–1912). His music was to a considerable extent a reaction against Wagner and the German musical tradition. He regarded the classical symphony as obsolete and sought an alternative in his "symphonic sketches", La mer (1903–1905). His piano works include two books of Préludes and two of Études. Throughout his career he wrote mélodies based on a wide variety of poetry, including his own. He was greatly influenced by the Symbolist poetic movement of the later 19th century. A small number of works, including the early La Damoiselle élue and the late Le Martyre de saint Sébastien have important parts for chorus. In his final years, he focused on chamber music, completing three of six planned sonatas for different combinations of instruments. With early influences including Russian and far-eastern music, Debussy developed his own style of harmony and orchestral colouring, derided – and unsuccessfully resisted – by much of the musical establishment of the day. His works have strongly influenced a wide range of composers including Béla Bartók, Olivier Messiaen, George Benjamin, and the jazz pianist and composer Bill Evans. Debussy died from cancer at his home in Paris at the age of 55 after a composing career of a little more than 30 years. Claude Debussy Tracklist OBRAS PARA PIANO 1. Arabesque Nº1 2. Arabesque Nº2 3. Clair De Lune 4. Passepied 5. Rêverie 6. Hommage A Rameau 7. Voiles 8. Les Sons Et Les Parfums Tournent Dans L'air Du Soir 9. La Fille Aux Cheveux De Lin 10. La Cathédral Engloutie 11. Musiciens 12. Le Petit Berger 13. Golliwogg's Cakewalk 14. L'isle Joyeuse 15. Prelúdio para a tarde de um fauno For more: http://www.melhoresmusicasclassicas.blogspot.com #MusicHistory #ClassicalMusic #Debussy
Franz Peter Schubert (31 January 1797 – 19 November 1828) was an Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. Despite his short lifetime, Schubert left behind a vast oeuvre, including more than 600 secular vocal works (mainly Lieder), seven complete symphonies, sacred music, operas, incidental music and a large body of piano and chamber music. His major works include the Piano Quintet in A major, D. 667 (Trout Quintet), the Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D. 759 (Unfinished Symphony), the three last piano sonatas (D. 958–960), the opera Fierrabras (D. 796), the incidental music to the play Rosamunde (D. 797), and the song cycles Die schöne Müllerin (D. 795) and Winterreise (D. 911). Born in the Himmelpfortgrund suburb of Vienna, Schubert's uncommon gifts for music were evident from an early age. His father gave him his first violin lessons and his older brother gave him piano lessons, but Schubert soon exceeded their abilities. In 1808, at the age of eleven, he became a pupil at the Stadtkonvikt school, where he became acquainted with the orchestral music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. He left the Stadtkonvikt at the end of 1813, and returned home to live with his father, where he began studying to become a schoolteacher; despite this, he continued his studies in composition with Antonio Salieri and still composed prolifically. In 1821, Schubert was granted admission to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde as a performing member, which helped establish his name among the Viennese citizenry. He gave a concert of his own works to critical acclaim in March 1828, the only time he did so in his career. He died eight months later at the age of 31, the cause officially attributed to typhoid fever, but believed by some historians to be syphilis. Appreciation of Schubert's music while he was alive was limited to a relatively small circle of admirers in Vienna, but interest in his work increased significantly in the decades following his death. Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, Johannes Brahms and other 19th-century composers discovered and championed his works. Today, Schubert is ranked among the greatest composers of the 19th century, and his music continues to be popular. Franz Schubert Tracklist: Quinteto para piano em lá maior op. 114 "A Truta" 1. Allegro vivace 2. Andante 3. Scherzo: Presto 4. Tema con variazioni: Andantino 5. Finale: Allegro giusto Quarteto de cordas em lá menor op. 29 6. Allegro ma non troppo 7. Andante 8. Menuetto: Allegretto 9. Allegro moderato SINFONIA Nº 3 EM RÉ MAIOR D 200 1. Adagio Maestoso-Allegro Con Brio 2. Allegretto 3. Menuetto Vivace 4. Presto Vivace SINFONIA Nº 5 EM SI BEMOL MAIOR D 485 5. Allegro 6. Andante Con Moto 7. Menuet. Allegro Molto 8. Allegro Vivace Royal Philharmonic Orchestra For more: http://www.melhoresmusicasclassicas.blogspot.com #MusicHistory #ClassicalMusic #Schubert
Franz Joseph Haydn (31 March 1732 – 31 May 1809) was an Austrian composer of the Classical period. He was instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the piano trio. His contributions to musical form have earned him the epithets "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet". Haydn spent much of his career as a court musician for the wealthy Esterházy family at their remote estate. Until the later part of his life, this isolated him from other composers and trends in music so that he was, as he put it, "forced to become original".[c] Yet his music circulated widely, and for much of his career he was the most celebrated composer in Europe. He was a friend and mentor of Mozart, a tutor of Beethoven, and the older brother of composer Michael Haydn. Tracklist: Sinfonia n. 100 em sol maior "Militar" 1. Adagio. Allegro 2. Allegretto 3. Menuet: Moderato 4. Finale: Presto Sinfonia n. 94 em sol maior "A Surpresa" 5. Adagio. Vivace assai 6. Andante 7. Menuetto: Allegro molto 8. Finale: Allegro di molto 9. Abertura" de La fedeltà premiata QUARTETO DE CORDAS OP.76 Nº 3 EM DÓ MAIOR "IMPERADOR" 1. Allegro 2. Poco Adagio Cantabile 3. Menuetto: Allegro 4. Finale: Presto QUARTETO DE CORDAS OP.64 Nº 5 EM RÉ MAIOR "A COTOVIA" 5. Allegro Moderato 6. Adagio Cantabile 7. Menuetto: Allegretto 8. Finale: Vivace QUARTETO DE CORDAS OP.1 Nº 1 EM SI BEMOL MAIOR "A CAÇA" 9. Presto 10. Menuetto 11. Adagio 12. Menuetto 13. Presto Royal Philharmonic Orchestra For more: http://www.melhoresmusicasclassicas.blogspot.com #MusicHistory #ClassicalMusic #Haydn
Leonard Bernstein (August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the US to receive worldwide acclaim. According to music critic Donal Henahan, he was "one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history." His fame derived from his long tenure as the music director of the New York Philharmonic, from his conducting of concerts with most of the world's leading orchestras, and from his music for West Side Story, Peter Pan,[3] Candide, Wonderful Town, On the Town, On the Waterfront, his Mass, and a range of other compositions, including three symphonies and many shorter chamber and solo works. Bernstein was the first conductor to give a series of television lectures on classical music, starting in 1954 and continuing until his death. He was a skilled pianist,[4] often conducting piano concertos from the keyboard. He was also a critical figure in the modern revival of the music of Gustav Mahler, the composer he was most passionately interested in.[5] As a composer he wrote in many styles encompassing symphonic and orchestral music, ballet, film and theatre music, choral works, opera, chamber music and pieces for the piano. Many of his works are regularly performed around the world, although none has matched the tremendous popular and critical success of West Side Story. Leonard Bernstein Tracklist: Candide 1. Abertura Três variações do Balé "Fancy Free" 2. Variação I: Galop 3. Variação II: Waltz 4. Variação III: Danzon Danças Sinfônicas de "West Side Story" (Amor, Sublime Amor) 5. Prólogo (Allegro moderato) 6. Somewhere (Adagio) 7. Scherzo (Vivace e leggiero) 8. Mambo (Meno presto) 9. Cha-Cha (Andantino con grazia) 10. Meeting Scene (Meno mosso) 11. Cool Fugue (Allegretto) 12. Rumble (Molto allegro) 13. Finale (Adagio) Três episódios de dança "On The Town" (Um dia em Nova York) 14. I. The Great Lover 15. II. Lonely Town: Pas de deux 16. III. Times Square: 1944 17. Suíte sinfônica de "On the Waterfront" (Sindicato dos Ladrões) Royal Philharmonic Orchestra For more: http://www.melhoresmusicasclassicas.blogspot.com #MusicHistory #ClassicalMusic #Bernstein