Greatest classical music about love

Josef Suk – Píseň Lásky (Love Tune) Op. 7 No. 1

This passionate declaration of affection by a younger composer in his late teenagers has been a agency favorite of mine since I found the rating in a secondhand music store in Prague within the mid-Nineteen Eighties.

Immensely common in Suk’s personal lifetime, it has loved many alternative preparations, and is now extra usually heard in a model for violin and piano than in its unique type as a solo piano piece.

Its carefree romanticism is all of the extra poignant within the gentle of the darkness that entered Suk’s music after the loss of life of his spouse Otilie, Dvořák’s daughter, aged solely 27.

Zdeněokay Fibich – Lento (Poème) from Moods, Impressions and Souvenirs (No. 139 Op. 41/IV)

Whereas Suk was composing his six early piano items, the musical world in Prague was scandalised by an affair that his compatriot, Fibich, was conducting with a phenomenal and gifted pupil, Anežka Schulzová, who was 18 years his junior.

The romance gave delivery to some of the extraordinary collections of piano items ever written. Fibich’s Moods, Impressions and Souvenirs consists of just about 400 quick piano items written as a sort love diary, together with expressions of feeling, recollections of occasions that they shared and tributes to nearly each a part of Anežka’s physique. By far one of the best identified of all these items is the nice and cozy and nostalgic Poème, which has lived on in many alternative sorts of preparations, and have become a smash hit in 1933 with the title My Moonlight Madonna. This is a beautiful model of this sung by John McCormack.

Robert Schumann arr. Liszt –Widmung (Dedication)

I’ll get into bother for together with one in all Schumann’s best-loved lieder in a listing of piano love music, however lots of Liszt’s preparations of different composers’ works are classics of the piano repertoire and works of genius in their very own proper.

The breathless rapture of Schumann’s Widmung, written as a marriage current for his beloved Clara, has an inward high quality that intensifies the fervour of the track. Liszt, in his piano transcription, brings this latent ardour into the foreground and ornaments the melodic line with dramatic, swirling arpeggios and large, triumphant chords overlaying the whole span of the piano. It’s arduous to think about that the Schumanns would have permitted of Liszt’s remedy of the track, however as a pianist I can’t resist this outrageous and superb transforming.

Franz Liszt – Liebestraum (Love’s Dream) No.3

Liszt took comparable liberties in his piano association of a track, ‘O Lieb, so lang du lieben kannst’, however on this event the unique was his personal. This impassioned piano piece, revealed as Liebestraum No. 3, has change into Liszt’s best-known work and has far outstripped the track in reputation.

The poem that he set within the unique track is an exhortation to like unconditionally, till separated by loss of life (a sentiment echoed in Elvis Presley’s At this time, Tomorrow and Perpetually!, his 1963 model of the Liszt). A comparability of the piano and voice variations gives an perception into Liszt’s extraordinary creativeness for the expressive potentialities of the piano as a solo instrument.

Enrique Granados – Quejas ó la Maja y el Ruiseñor (Laments, or The Maiden and the Nightingale) from Goyescas

The haunting environment of The Maiden and the Nightingale hovers between bleak despair and nearly offended ardour. The plaintive melody, primarily based on a Valencian folks track, is colored by piano writing of outstanding subtlety and originality, and a few of the most evocative birdsong results within the Romantic piano literature. Granados instructed that this piece needs to be performed ‘not with the grief of a widow however with the jealousy of a spouse’, an intriguing suggestion provided that he devoted the piece to his personal spouse Amparo.

Fritz Kreisler arr. Rachmaninov – Liebesleid (Love’s Sorrow)

Anybody who hasn’t heard Kreisler’s personal efficiency of his well-known encore piece ought to rush to listen to it directly (under). The irresistible sweetness of his violin sound and his schmaltzy portamentos may trigger pianists to despair of the constraints of their very own instrument, however assistance is at hand with Rachmaninov’s reinterpretation of his buddy’s piece, which brings an entire totally different flavour to the Liebesleid.

The sugary melody remains to be current, however Rachmaninov provides an acerbic wit and a blinding show of pianistic prospers which are inimitably his personal. His efficiency of Liebesleid shouldn’t be missed both.