Alfred Publishing

Beethoven started his career as a virtuoso pianist at a time when the piano itself was undergoing various changes, evolving from the relatively light instrument known to Mozart into a much more powerf...

Most Famous Waltzes

Rossini's early studies in music were with his father and mother, and with other teachers through the generosity of rich patrons. In childhood he had already started to show ability as a composer and...

The Concerto for Orchestra is among the composer's last works. It was commissioned by the Koussevitzky Music Foundation in 1943 in memory of the distinguished conductor Sergey Koussevitzky's wife, Nat...

Claude Debussy seems to typify the mood and culture of France at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. His evocative Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune echoes the sultry pagan woodla...

The Czech composer Antonin Dvorák's Symphony from the New World was written in America, where he had been invited in the early 1980s to establish a National Conservatory. Influenced by Longfellow's Hi...

In the 1930s, having experimented by turns with jazz and dissonant abstract works, Aaron Copland recognised that most music-lovers simply did not like the music being written by contemporary 'serious'...

It was during the space of a few weeks that Mozart wrote down his last three symphonies, of which the Symphony in G minor, K. 550, is the penultimate. The first of the group, the Symphony in E flat, i...

Mahler's compositions include a number of songs and ten symphonies, the last incomplete, as well as Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), a symphony in fact, if not in name. He completed his...

Schubert's famous Trout Quintet of 1819 holds a special place in chamber music, loved above all for the variations of its fourth movement based on the composer's song The Trout. It is coupled here wit...

Joaquin Rodrigo wrote two small pieces for guitar solo in 1926 and 1938, but it was in 1939 that he ''struck gold'' with the Concierto de Aranjuez, dedicated to the Spanish virtuoso Regino Sainz de la...

Tchaikovsky's last symphony, called the Pathetique, was first performed in St. Petersburg under Tchaikovsky's direction on 16th October (28th October on the Western calendar), 1893. The programme of t...

Fryderyk Chopin was born in 1810 at Zelazowa Wola, near Warsaw. His father Nicolas Chopin was French by birth but had moved to Poland to work as an accounting clerk, later serving as tutor to the Lacz...

In childhood, Mendelssohn had written thirteen string symphonies between the ages of twelve and fourteen. In what must pass for maturity, starting at the age of fifteen, he wrote five more symphonies...

Vivaldi was prolific, composing vast quantities of instrumental and vocal music and nearly fifty operas. Of the 500 concertos he wrote the most popular in his life-time as today were the four known as...

The first performance of the Symphony in D minor, Opus 125, took place at the Karntnertor Theatre on 7th May, 1824, after a great deal of wrangling over the whole matter, and was a tremendous success...

Franz Liszt's influence on the nineteenth century was overwhelming and through his numerous students, his strong musical presence influenced piano performance and composition into the twentieth centur...

Romeo and Juliet Suite No. 2, Op. 64 includes: Montagues and Capulets * Juliet as a Young Girl * Friar Laurence * Dance * Romeo and Juliet Before Parting * Dance of the Maids with Lillies * Romeo at J...

Beethoven wrote nine symphonies, the first heralding the new century, in 1800, and the last completed in 1824. Although he made few changes to the composition of the orchestra itself, adding, when occ...

Peter and the Wolf, Op. 67 includes: Introduction * The Story Begins * The Cat * Grandpapa * The Wolf * And Now, This is How Things Stood * In The Meantime * The Hunters * The Procession. L'histoire d...

Holst's The Planets received its first public performance in 1919, and with it Holst achieved the first real success of his career. It is a remarkably effective work, very varied and brilliantly score...

Born near Tallinn in Estonia in 1935, Arvo Pärt emigrated in 1980 and settled in Berlin. Soon afteremigrating, Pärt completed the St John Passionwhich he based on his new- found tintinnabuli principle...

One of the leading English composers of his generation, Vaughan Williams' work went some way towards creating a specifically English musical idiom. He was highly influenced by folk-song, as represente...

Erik Satie, born in France in 1866, was a lazy pupil at the Paris Conservatoire, and he only came to public attention after Debussy made orchestrations of two of his piano pieces, Gymnopédies. Satie b...

The TINTNER MEMORIAL EDITION has been produced to celebrate the life and work of the late Georg Tintner (1917-1999). Through his musicianship, Georg Tintner touched audience and musicians on five cont...