Ravel's Piano Concerto in G major

During a wildly successful tour of the United States in 1928, Maurice Ravel met American composer George Gershwin, and listened to jazz in Harlem and New Orleans.  These influences plus his Basque heritage (already exhibited in his Rapsodie espagnole and Boléro) are easily heard in his Piano Concerto in G major. Ravel modeled it after the light, divertimento-like concertos of Mozart and Saint‑Saëns. The Spanish-tinged jazz riffs of the first movement are followed by a gentle and delicate Adagio, and the concerto closes with a bang in its irresistible finale.

Orff's 'Carmina burana'

With a libretto based on a collection of poems discovered in a Benedictine monastery, Carl Orff’s Carmina burana (“Bavarian Songs”) elaborates on many topics familiar to both 13th century and current listeners:  springtime beauty, going out for a night on the town, and girls in red dresses and the boys who chase them.   Ever popular with audiences, Orff considered this cantata his best work.

Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 1

Franz Liszt may have been one of the nineteenth century’s most exasperating underachievers, to say nothing of committing the unforgivable sin of success on a staggering scale. But he was a genius, as this concerto can remind us. It was begun in 1835 at the ripe old age of 24, but Liszt did not complete his first piano concerto until nearly twenty years later. A final draft appeared in 1849, which was revised before the 1855 premiere (conducted by Hector Berlioz), and then revised yet again before its publication in 1856. Béla Bartók called the concerto "the first perfect realization of cyclic sonata form, with common themes being treated on the variation principle."

Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1

After advocating for Beethoven's concerto, advising on the composition of Brahms', and performing Mendelssohn's more than two hundred times, celebrated violinist Joseph Joachim lent his musical talents to a fourth great German violin concerto: Max Bruch's.  Described by Joachim as the "richest and most seductive" of the four works, this emotional, sensual music is Bruch’s most popular composition.

Walton's Symphony No. 1

The tumult and melancholy in William Walton’s first symphony have roots in perhaps the most familiar of all artistic inspirations: unrequited love.  He wrote the first three movements after his girlfriend left him (including markings such as con malizia and con malinconia). Finally, Walton could compose no further, and the work was performed several times in its incomplete state. Luckily for several conductors who were anxiously awaiting a completed symphony, Walton soon was romancing a new lady, and he finished the finale in a tone markedly different from the heartbroken opening.

Beethoven's Symphony No. 7

The premiere of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 was perhaps his greatest rock-star moment. Buoyed by the excited troops in whose honor the concert was being performed, Beethoven “tore his arms with a great vehemence asunder ... at the entrance of a forte he jumped in the air” (according to orchestra violinist and composer Louis Spohr).  The work’s explosive energy and Beethoven’s expansion of symphonic structures to emphasize certain key areas make Symphony No. 7 an important stepping stone on his path towards Romanticism.

Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4

Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony is a musical diary of his emotional life during a period of intense personal crisis.  “I was down in the dumps last winter when the symphony was in the writing, and it is a faithful echo of what I was going through at that time,” he wrote to the work’s dedicatee, Nadezhda von Meck. Though his external life was not extraordinarily tumultuous, Tchaikovsky’s hypersensitive nature made him feel every event keenly, and this intensity of experience forms his first orchestral masterpiece from beginning to end.