The Sonata in B minor is one unbroken stretch of music, built around a handful of motifs which re-appear in various guises throughout. Traditionally, sonatas have four movements – but Liszt was never one to play by the rules. When he reached a section of the piece of which he was particularly proud, so the story goes, he glanced over at Brahms to see what he thought… only to find his fellow composer snoozing.ĭespite its unfortunate first outing, this sonata has become one of the best-loved and most performed piano works. Liszt took his seat at the piano and began to play. Among the guests was another composer, Johannes Brahms. ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ wasn’t entirely positively received by 1920s critics, yet its melange of classical and jazz style grounded Gershwin’s reputation as a serious composer – and its jazz influences are what gives the landmark piece its sultry and indulgent character.īy 1854, Liszt had put the finishing touches to his monumental Piano Sonata in B minor, and took the music to perform at a private soirée. Every pianist worth their salt has recorded the work – but Leif Ove Andsnes’s is a great recording. After the colossal first movement, the second movement flows directly into the finale, which with a crash and a bang, ends one of the true warhorses of the piano repertoire. The nickname wasn’t given to the piece by the composer himself but apparently by one of Napoleon’s officers who declared it was ‘an emperor of a concerto’. The last of Beethoven’s great piano concertos, the ‘Emperor’ has a strong claim to be the greatest piece ever written for the instrument. The Canadian pianist Glenn Gould recorded what has become the most famous version of the monumental work.īeethoven – Piano Concerto No. The work opens with a simple statement of the theme (the ‘aria’) and the 30 variations get more and more intricate, straying further and further from the original theme. Each of the two books contain 24 Preludes and Fugues (the whole work is sometimes known as ‘The 48’), in each key of the Western scale – and each book opens with a prelude in C major, closing with a fugue in B minor.īach’s 30 variations on a theme were originally written to help a Russian count overcome his insomnia – and they are named after a keyboard player called Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, who may have been the very musician who played the Variations to help the count drift off to sleep. Bach wrote the first of the two books that make up his work in 1722, making this one of the earliest pieces on our list. The Well-Tempered Clavier was completely innovative for its day, and it paved the way for composers writing for keyboard instruments for the next few hundred years. The most famous, ‘Traumerei’ paints a peaceful musical picture of a child’s dreams. Schumann’s Kinderszenen are a bittersweet collection of piano miniatures covering themes like games of chase, night-time terrors, bedtime stories and sleep. And just listen to the power packed into her Piano Trio for piano, cello and violin. Her Viola Sonata is considered one of the greatest pieces ever written for the instrument. Her music is always thrilling, experimental and enormously powerful. Rebecca Clarke was a 20th-century British composer, who trained at the Royal Academy of Music and Royal College of Music in London before crossing the pond and spending the rest of her life in America. The build-up from the main theme and waltz-like accompaniment to the dramatic trill-filled finale makes the Nocturne in E-flat Major a strong contender for the most beautiful piano work ever written. 2)Ĭhopin composed his most well-known nocturne at the tender age of 20, which perhaps accounts for its youthful passion. Get it right, and it allows the most accomplished pianists to shine.Ĭhopin – Nocturne in E flat major (Op. Don’t be fooled by the initial simplicity of ‘Clair de Lune’: it took Debussy 15 years to write the third movement of the Suite Bergamasque, and the result is a work that sounds simple, but demands the very best from its performers. Curiously, ‘Clair de Lune’ also means ‘Moonlight’ – but there’s a stark contrast between Beethoven’s Romantic classicism and Debussy’s Impressionism.
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