Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)

Frédéric Chopin was a virtuoso pianist, who wrote almost exclusively for the instrument.

The piano went through significant changes during the 19th century as composers grew more ambitious
in range, colours and dynamics. It became a symbol of Romanticism and was enlarged to suit the needs
of music-makers like Chopin.

Of his repertoire, the Polish Romantic’s own favourites were the Preludes, along with which his
Nocturnes, Waltzes, Etudes, Mazurkas, Sonatas and Concertos are still among the most beloved
repertoire of pianists today.

Franz Liszt (1811-1886)

Another composer indelibly linked with the piano, Franz Liszt – dubbed “The World’s First Rock Star” –
took virtuoso pianism to new heights.

The great Hungarian composer, among whose repertoire you’ll recognise the mind-bogglingly fiendish
La Campanella, was a showman who revolutionised the art of performance. At his piano recitals, Liszt’s
fans would tear off their clothes and scream out his name, a phenomenon the German poet Heinrich
Heine styled ‘Lisztomania’.

You’ll often hear Liszt’s enduring and beautiful Liebestraume No. 3 in A flat major played at recitals
today.

Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)

The undisputed King of Italian opera, Verdi is known primarily – along with his monumental Requiem –
for his great stage works La traviata, Rigoletto, Nabucco, Aida, La forza del destino, Il trovatore.

Verdi’s operas, mostly written around the time of the unification of Italy, became an essential part of
Italy’s national identity, and his choruses were adopted as anthems of Italian freedom-fighters.
To Italy in the 19th century, Verdi was a musical monarch, and his death in 1901 brought grief to a
national population who connected deeply with the passion of his operas.

Richard Wagner (1813-1883)

New instruments, bespoke venues, ridiculously long works – the list of Richard Wagner’s innovations in
19th-century music goes on. Wagner, a rather controversial character mostly because of his association
with Nazism – was a musical visionary known primarily for his operas. His most enduring works include
The Flying Dutchman, Tannhäuser, Tristan und Isolde and of course, his monumental Ring Cycle, a work
of four operas that takes 15 hours to perform.

Fanny Mendelssohn (1805-1847)

Fanny Mendelssohn was a truly great composer, but getting her work published in the 19th century was
an almost overwhelming ordeal.

Her brother Felix Mendelssohn, whose Violin Concerto in E minor and The Hebrides regularly make
appearances in 21st century concert programming, believed that as a woman, Fanny shouldn’t be
publishing music. He decided that many of her works, including her rather wonderful song ‘Italien’,
should be published under his name.

Overall, Fanny wrote 460 pieces of music including many Songs without Words, a genre of piano music
for which her brother, Felix Mendelssohn, became famous. Musicologists now believe Fanny pioneered
this form.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

Tchaikovsky is one of the most successful composers Russia has ever produced.
He was a prolific composer of symphonies, concertos, operas, ballets and chamber music, whose
Nutcracker, Swan Lake and Sleepy Beauty are guaranteed sell-outs for ballet companies around the
world, and whose symphonies and concertos are mainstays of today’s international concert stage.

Tchaikovsky was also a deeply troubled man, and his works were shaped by the emotional
consequences of his disastrous marriage, multiple amorous liaisons and homosexuality, which was illegal
in Russia at the time.

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Is there something in your eye, or have you just been listening to the German Requiem? Brahms is one
of the Romantic era’s most revered and popular composers, his symphonies, piano and violin concertos,
joyous Academic Festival Overture and deeply affecting German Requiem, which he wrote after the
death of his mother, among his most played works.

Discovering Brahms’ music also means diving into his fascinating marriage of classical tradition with folk
and gypsy influences, the inspiration for his 21 dynamic and varied Hungarian Dances.

Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924)

You say ‘sob-inducing aria’, we say Puccini. This great Italian composer wrote La bohème, Tosca,
Madame Butterfly, Turandot – all among today’s most performed operas, all with absolutely
heartrending music at their centre.

In fact, his final opera Turandot, which includes the great tenor aria ‘Nessun dorma’, is one of the few
20th-century operas to have sustained a firm foothold in opera houses across the world. When working
on his last work, Puccini said: “Almighty God touched me with his little finger and said, ‘Write for the
theatre – mind, only for the theatre’.

“And I have obeyed his supreme command.”

Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943)

Moving into the late Romantics now, Rachmaninov is your go-to turn-of the-century guy for swelling
melodies and virtuosic pianism, whose masterpiece was surely the Second Piano Concerto from 1901. Its
subsequent use in the film Brief Encounter has made it a constant favourite.

A famously large-handed gentleman, Rachmaninov could apparently span 12 piano keys from his little
finger to his thumb, and was so able to write piano music grander, fuller and more expensive in tone
than his predecessors.

His Third Piano Concerto, a perennial concert hall favourite, (literally) stretches the soloist to the very
limits of their ability.

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)

For many, Mahler represents the culmination of the extraordinary changes Western Classical Music
went through in the space of a century.

A master of the symphony, Mahler thought “the symphony must be like the world; it must embrace
everything”. Whether it’s raging violence, deep sentimentality or existential ennui you’re after, you’ll
find it all and more in Mahler’s symphonies.

With his second symphony – for which the phrase ‘size matters’ has never been more applicable –
Mahler was keen to emphasise life and death in all its terrifying splendour. Its emotional range and
cadential tension have made it one of the pieces of classical repertoire that not only do audiences
desperately want to hear, but orchestras and conductors also want to perform.