Welcome, the website displays popular classical music through HQ videos. There are 200+ items and hundreds of videos, you can find items by press Ctrl+F.
The Turkish March (Marcia alla turca) is a well-known classical march theme by Ludwig van Beethoven. It was written in the Turkish style popular in music of the time.
The theme was first used in Beethoven's "6 Variations on an Original Theme", Op. 76, of 1809. In 1811 Beethoven wrote an overture and incidental music to a play by August von Kotzebue called The Ruins of Athens (Op. 113), which premiered in Pest in 1812. The Turkish March appears as item No. 4 of the incidental music. Many music lovers associate the theme with The Ruins of Athens, although that was not its original appearance.
The march is in B flat major, tempo vivace and 2/4 time. Its dynamic scheme is highly suggestive of a procession passing by, starting out pianissimo, poco a poco rising to a fortissimo climax and then receding back to pianissimo by the coda.
Derivative works
Franz Liszt wrote a piano transcription in 1846, "Capriccio alla turca sur des motifs de Beethoven" (S. 388).
Anton Rubinstein arranged a popular piano version of the march in B flat major, tempo Allegretto. Sergei Rachmaninoff further arranged Rubinstein's version, heard on piano roll (1928).
The twin Op. 40 Polonaises of the Polonaise in A major, Op. 40, No. 1, nicknamed the Military Polonaise, and the Polonaise in C minor, Op. 40, No. 2 were composed by Frédéric Chopin in 1838. The first polonaise is better known than the second.
Anton Rubinstein remarked that the Polonaise in A major is the symbol of Polish glory, whilst the Polonaise in C minor is the symbol of Polish tragedy.
Polonaise in A major, Op. 40, No. 1
The beginning opens with an A major chord and continues in a typical polonaise rhythm. The key then changes into D major in the middle of the polonaise for a trio section, after which the opening is repeated.
During the September 1939 German invasion of Poland at the outset of World War II, Polskie Radio broadcast this piece daily as nationalistic protest, and to rally the Polish people. The Nazis later banned public performances of Chopin and destroyed Warsaw's main monument to the composer, a sculpture of a windswept Chopin seated under a tree, which was erected in 1926 at the entrance to Lazienki Park.
The Flower Duet (Sous le dôme épais) is a famous duet for sopranos from Léo Delibes' opera Lakmé, first performed in Paris in 1883. The duet takes place in Act 1 of the three act opera, between characters Lakmé, the daughter of a Brahmin priest, and her servant Mallika, as they go to gather flowers by a river. Its ubiquitous presence in films and popular music since the mid-1980s was inaugurated by its usage in the 1983 horror film The Hunger.
Puccini's Madama Butterfly also contains a number (Il Cannone Del Porto) often known as the Flower Duet.
French
Sous le dôme épais Où le blanc jasmin À la rose s’assemble Sur la rive en fleurs, Riant au matin Viens, descendons ensemble.
Doucement glissons de son flot charmant Suivons le courant fuyant Dans l’onde frémissante D’une main nonchalante Viens, gagnons le bord, Où la source dort et L’oiseau, l’oiseau chante.
Sous le dôme épais Où le blanc jasmin, Ah! descendons ensemble!
English Translation
Under the dense canopy Where the white jasmine Blends with the rose On the flowering bank Laughing at the morning Come, let us drift down together
Let us gently glide along With the enchanting flow Of the fleeing current On the rippling surface With a lazy hand Let us reach the shore Where the source sleeps And the bird sings
Under the dense canopy Under the white jasmine Let us drift down together
The Four Seasons (Italian: Le quattro stagioni) is a set of four violin concertos by Antonio Vivaldi. Composed in 1723, The Four Seasons is Vivaldi's best-known work, and is among the most popular pieces of Baroque music. The texture of each concerto is varied, each resembling its respective season. For example, "Winter" is peppered with silvery pizzicato notes from the high strings, calling to mind icy rain, whereas "Summer" evokes a thunderstorm in its final movement, which is why the movement is often dubbed "Storm."
The concertos were first published in 1725 as part of a set of twelve concerti, Vivaldi's Op. 8, entitled Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione (The Contest between Harmony and Invention). The first four concertos were designated Le quattro stagioni, each being named after a season. Each one is in three movements, with a slow movement between two faster ones. At the time of writing The Four Seasons, the modern solo form of the concerto had not yet been defined (typically a solo instrument and accompanying orchestra). Vivaldi's original arrangement for solo violin with string quartet and basso continuo helped to define the form.
Sonnets and allusions
The four concertos were written to accompany four sonnets. Though it is not known who wrote these sonnets, there is a theory that Vivaldi wrote them himself, given that each sonnet is broken down into three sections, neatly corresponding to a movement in the concerto. If Vivaldi in fact wrote the sonnets, The Four Seasons may be classified as program music, music that intends to evoke something extra-musical.
In addition to these sonnets, Vivaldi provided instructions such as "The barking dog" (in the second movement of "Spring"), "Languor caused by the heat" (in the first movement of "Summer"), and "the drunkards have fallen asleep" (in the second movement of "Autumn"). The Four Seasons is used in the 1981 film The Four Seasons along with other Vivaldi concertos for flute.
The Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello by Johann Sebastian Bach are some of the most performed and recognizable solo compositions ever written for cello. They were most likely composed during the period 1717–1723, when Bach served as a Kapellmeister in Cöthen.
The suites contain a great variety of technical devices, a wide emotional range, and some of Bach's most compelling voice interactions and conversations. It is their intimacy, however, that has made the suites amongst Bach's most popular works today, resulting in their different recorded interpretations being fiercely defended by their respective advocates.
The suites have been transcribed for numerous instruments, including the violin, viola, double bass, viola da gamba, mandolin, piano, marimba, classical guitar, recorder, electric bass, horn, saxophone, bass clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, euphonium, tuba, ukulele, and charango.
The Suites
The suites are in six movements each, and have the following structure and order of movements.
1.Prelude / 2. Allemande / 3. Courante / 4. Sarabande / 5. Galanteries – (Minuets for Suites 1 and 2, Bourrées for 3 and 4, Gavottes for 5 and 6) / 6. Gigue
The Suites have been performed and recorded by many renowned cellists such as Pablo Casals, Janos Starker, Mstislav Rostropovich, Yo-Yo Ma and Mischa Maisky. Ma won the 1985 Best Instrumental Soloist Grammy Award for his best selling album "Six Unaccompanied Cello Suites".Suite No. 1 in G major, BWV 1007
The Prelude, mainly consisting of arpeggiated chords, is probably the best known movement from the entire set of suites and is regularly heard on television and in films. Most students begin with this suite as it is assumed to be easier to play than the others in terms of the technique required.
Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka op. 214 (also known as "Trish Trash Polka") is a polka written by Johann Strauss II in 1858 after a successful tour of Russia where he performed in the summer concert season at Pavlovsk, Saint Petersburg.
The title may be interpreted as "Chit-chat" and may refer to the Viennese passion for gossip. Strauss may also have been referencing the single act burlesque 'Der Tritsch-tratsch' (with music by Adolf Müller, Sr.) by the famous Austrian dramatist and actor Johann Nepomuk Nestroy, which premiered in 1833 and was still in the stage repertoire at the same time the polka was written. Many point out that the title may also have meant his first wife's (Henrietta Treffz) poodle, also named Tritsch-tratsch, but this etymology remains unsubstantiated as well.
The mood of the piece is jaunty and high-spirited, as were many of Strauss' polkas.
The Keyboard suite in D minor (HWV 437) was composed by George Frideric Handel, for solo keyboard (harpsichord), between 1703 and 1706. It is also referred to as Suite de pièce Vol. 2 No. 4. It was first published in 1733.
Movement
1. Prelude - Partly used in the prelude from HWV 428. HWV 561 is another version of the prelude.
2.Allemande
3.Courante
4.Sarabande (with two variations)- This piece is featured prominently in Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon and Brian De Palma's Redacted.
The Symphony No. 9 in E Minor "From the New World", Op. 95, B. 178 (Czech: Symfonie č. 9 e moll „Z nového světa“), popularly known as the New World Symphony, was composed by Antonín Dvořák in 1893 during his visit to the United States from 1892 to 1895. It is by far his most popular symphony, and one of the most popular in the modern repertoire. In older literature and recordings this symphony is often indicated as Symphony No. 5.
Movements
The piece has four movements:
I. Adagio, 4/8 — Allegro molto, 2/4, E minor
II. Largo, common time, D-flat major, then later C-sharp minor
III. Scherzo: Molto vivace — Poco sostenuto, 3/4, E minor
IV. Allegro con fuoco, common time, E minor, ends in E major
Influences
Dvořák was interested in the Native American music and African-American spirituals he heard in America. Upon his arrival in America, he stated:
"I am convinced that the future music of this country must be founded on what are called Negro melodies. These can be the foundation of a serious and original school of composition, to be developed in the United States. These beautiful and varied themes are the product of the soil. They are the folk songs of America and your composers must turn to them."
The symphony was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, and premiered on December 16, 1893 at Carnegie Hall conducted by Anton Seidl. A day earlier, in an article published in the New York Herald on December 15, 1893, Dvořák further explained how Native American music had been an influence on this symphony:
"I have not actually used any of the [Native American] melodies. I have simply written original themes embodying the peculiarities of the Indian music, and, using these themes as subjects, have developed them with all the resources of modern rhythms, counterpoint, and orchestral colour."
In a 2008 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, prominent musicologist Joseph Horowitz asserts that African-american spirituals were a major influence on the 9th symphony, quoting Dvořák from an 1893 interview in the New York Herald as saying, "In the negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music."
Despite all this, it is generally considered that, like other Dvořák pieces, the work has more in common with folk music of his native Bohemia than with that of the United States. Leonard Bernstein averred that the work was truly multinational in its foundations.
The Anthem of the Bureau of International Expositions was extracted from the starting part of the 4th Movement of the symphony.
The Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467, was completed on March 9, 1785 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, four weeks after the completion of the previous D minor concerto.
Nickname
The second movement was featured in the 1967 Swedish film Elvira Madigan. The imagery used in the movie was of a lazy boat ride on a placid lake, and the limpid sound of this movement likely motivated its choice here. This has led to an anachronistic nickname of Elvira Madigan for the concerto.
Recordings
This work has been recorded numerous times by many famous pianists including Geza Anda, Piotr Anderszewski, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Daniel Barenboim, Malcolm Bilson, Alfred Brendel, Robert Casadesus, Annie Fischer, Walter Gieseking, Friedrich Gulda, Stephen Hough, Keith Jarrett, Wilhelm Kempff, Walter Klien, Alicia de Larrocha, Rosina Lhevinne, Dinu Lipatti, Radu Lupu, Murray Perahia, Maria João Pires, Maurizio Pollini, Arthur Rubinstein, Fazil Say, András Schiff, Artur Schnabel, Rudolf Serkin, Howard Shelley, Mitsuko Uchida, and Christian Zacharias.
Boléro is a one-movement orchestral piece by Maurice Ravel (1875–1937). Originally composed as a ballet commissioned by Russian ballerina Ida Rubinstein, the piece, which premiered in 1928, is Ravel's most famous musical composition. Before Boléro, Ravel had composed large scale ballets (such as Daphnis et Chloé, composed for the Ballets Russes 1909–1912), suites for the ballet (such as the second orchestral version of Ma Mère l'Oye, 1912), and one-movement dance pieces (such as La Valse, 1906–1920). Apart from such compositions intended for a staged dance performance, Ravel had demonstrated an interest in composing re-styled dances, from his earliest successes (the 1895 Menuet and the 1899 Pavane) to his more mature works like Le tombeau de Couperin (which takes the format of a dance suite).
Boléro epitomises Ravel's preoccupation with restyling and reinventing dance movements. It was also one of the last pieces he composed before illness forced him into retirement: the two piano concertos and the Don Quichotte à Dulcinée song cycle were the only compositions that followed Boléro.
The Symphony No. 1 in E flat major, K. 16, was written in 1764 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at the age of just eight years. By this time, he was already notable in Europe as a wunderkind performer, but had composed little music.
The autograph score of the symphony is today preserved in the Biblioteka Jagiellońska in Kraków.
Background
The piece was written on the Mozart family's Grand Tour of Europe in London when they had to move to Chelsea during the summer of 1764 due to Mozart's father Leopold's illness (throat infection). The house at 180 Ebury Street, now in the borough of Westminster, where this symphony was written, is marked with a plaque. The symphony was first performed on 21 February 1765. The work shows the influence of several composers, including his father and the sons of Johann Sebastian Bach, especially Johann Christian Bach, an important early symphonist working in London whom Mozart had met during his time there.
What's notably interesting is the symphony's second movement, in which the young eight year-old Mozart makes use of the famous four note motif that appears in the Finale of his Jupiter symphony. The four notes, Do, Re, Fa, Me, were used considerably by Mozart, and they make an appearance in several of his works, including his Symphony No. 33 and the Symphony No. 41. This particular theme is stated by the horns in his first symphony.
Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 1 in C major, Op. 21, was dedicated to Baron Gottfried van Swieten, an early patron of the composer. The piece was published in 1801 by Hoffmeister & Kühnel of Leipzig. It is unknown exactly when Beethoven finished writing this work, but sketches of the finale were found from 1795.
Historical Background
The symphony is clearly indebted to Beethoven's predecessors, particularly his teacher Joseph Haydn as well as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but nonetheless has characteristics that mark it uniquely as Beethoven's work, notably the frequent use of sforzandi and the prominent, more independent use of wind instruments. Sketches for the finale are found among the exercises Beethoven wrote while studying counterpoint under Johann Georg Albrechtsberger in the spring of 1795.
The premiere took place on 2 April 1800 at the K.K. Hoftheater nächst der Burg in Vienna. The concert program also included his Septet and Piano Concerto No. 2, as well as a symphony by Mozart, and an aria and a duet from Haydn's oratorio The Creation. This concert effectively served to announce Beethoven's talents to Vienna.
Mozart's Clarinet concerto in A major, K. 622 was written in 1791 for the clarinetist Anton Stadler.
It was also one of Mozart's final completed works, and his final purely instrumental work (he died in the December following its completion). The concerto is notable for its delicate interplay between soloist and orchestra, and for the lack of overly extroverted display on the part of the soloist (no cadenzas are written out in the solo part).
Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 2 in D major (Op. 36) was written between 1801 and 1802 and is dedicated to Prince Lichnowsky.
Background
Beethoven's Second Symphony was mostly written during Beethoven's stay at Heiligenstadt in 1802, at which time his deafness was becoming more apparent and he began to realize that it might be incurable. The work was premiered in the Theater an der Wien in Vienna on 5 April 1803, and was conducted by the composer. During that same concert, the Third Piano Concerto and the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives were also debuted. It is one of the last works of Beethoven's so-called "early period".
Beethoven wrote the Second Symphony without a standard minuet; instead, a scherzo took its place, giving the composition even greater scope and energy. The scherzo and the finale are filled with vulgar Beethovenian musical jokes, which shocked the sensibilities of many contemporary critics. One Viennese critic for the Zeitung fuer die elegante Welt (Newspaper for the Elegant World) famously wrote of the Symphony that it was "a hideously writhing, wounded dragon that refuses to die, but writhing in its last agonies and, in the fourth movement, bleeding to death."
Instrumentation
The symphony is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets in A, two bassoons, two horns in D and E, two trumpets in D, timpani and strings. The composer also made a transcription of the entire symphony for piano trio which bears the same opus number.
Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 8 in C minor, Op. 13, commonly known as Sonata Pathétique, was written in 1798 when the composer was 27 years old, and was published in 1799. Beethoven dedicated the work to his friend Prince Karl von Lichnowsky. Although commonly thought to be one of the few works to be named by the composer himself, it was actually named Grande sonate pathétique (to Beethoven's liking) by the publisher, who was impressed by the sonata's tragic sonorities.
Prominent musicologists debate whether or not the Pathétique may have been inspired by Mozart's piano sonata K. 457, since both compositions are in C minor and have three very similar movements. The second movement, "Adagio cantabile", especially, makes use of a theme remarkably similar to that of the spacious second movement of Mozart's sonata. However, Beethoven's sonata uses a unique motif line throughout, a major difference from Haydn or Mozart’s creation.
Movements
In its entirety, encompassing all three movements, the work takes approximately 19 minutes to perform.The sonata has three movements:
1. Grave (Slowly, with solemnity) – Allegro di molto e con brio (Quickly, with much vigour) 2. Adagio cantabile (Slowly, in a singing style) 3. Rondo: Allegro (Quickly)
The Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K. 183/173dB, was written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in October 1773, shortly after the success of his opera seria Lucio Silla. It was supposedly completed October 5, a mere two days after the completion of his Symphony No. 24, although this remains unsubstantiated. Its first movement is widely known as the opening music in Miloš Forman's film Amadeus.
I & II - 1st movement (Allegro) / III - 2nd movement (Romanze) / IV - 3rd movement (Allegro assai ) / Piano - Ivan Klánský / Conductor - Virtuosi Di Praga, Jiri Belohlavek Home
The Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466, was written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1785. The first performance took place at the Mehlgrube Casino in Vienna on February 11, 1785, with the composer as the soloist.
Background
A few days after the first performance, the composer's father, Leopold, visiting in Vienna, wrote to his daughter Nannerl about her brother's recent success: "[I heard] an excellent new piano concerto by Wolfgang, on which the copyist was still at work when we got there, and your brother didn't even have time to play through the rondo because he had to oversee the copying operation."
It is written in the key of D minor. Other works by the composer in that key include the Fantasia K. 397 for piano, Requiem, a Kyrie, and parts of the dark opera Don Giovanni. It is the first of two concertos written in a minor key (No. 24 being the other).
The young Ludwig van Beethoven admired this concerto and kept it in his repertoire. Famed conductor Daniel Barenboim contends that this concerto was Joseph Stalin's favorite piece of music. Cadenzas for this popular concerto written by famous composers include Beethoven (WoO 58), Johannes Brahms (WoO 16), Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Feruccio Busoni and Clara Schumann.
