 | | Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was not only one of the greatest composers of the Classical period, but one of the greatest of all time. |
 | | The events of Beethoven's life are the stuff of Romantic legend, evoking images of the solitary creator shaking his fist at Fate and finally overcoming it through a supreme effort of creative will. |
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 | | Johann Sebastian Bach was better known as a virtuoso organist than as a composer in his day. His sacred music, organ and choral works, and other instrumental music had an enthusiasm and seeming freedom that concealed immense rigor. |
 | | The stature of Johannes Brahms among classical composers is well illustrated by his inclusion among the "Three Bs" triumvirate of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. |
 | | Although a few major pianists, notably Glenn Gould, have dismissed his music as excessively ornamental and trivial, Frédéric Chopin has long been recognized as one of the most significant and individual composers of the Romantic age. |
 | | The creator of hundreds of spirited, extroverted instrumental works, Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi is widely recognized as the master of the Baroque instrumental concerto, which he perfected and popularized more than any of his contemporaries. |
 | | The 11th son of J. S. Bach and the youngest to live to maturity, Johann Christian received his early musical training from his father, than whom music has spawned no greater genius. |
 | | Internationally known for his romantic music and his melodic gifts, Peter Tchaikovsky is sometimes regarded as the greatest Russian composer. |
 | | Most music lovers have encountered George Frederick Handel through holiday-time renditions of the Messiah's "Hallelujah" chorus. |
 | | Franz Peter Schubert was among the first of the Romantics, and the composer who, more than any other, brought the art song (lied) to artistic maturity. |
 | | Johann Strauss, Jr. is the first truly well-known composer in those classical genres particular to his hometown, the Viennese waltz and Viennese operetta. |
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 | | Formed in Austria in 1987, soft rock band Schubert quickly rose to become their country’s dominant musical force in that genre. |
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 | | Igor Stravinsky was one of music's truly epochal innovators; no other composer of the twentieth century exerted such a pervasive influence or dominated his art in the way that Stravinsky did during his seven-decade musical career. |
 | | Johann Pachelbel is unfairly viewed as a one-work composer, that work being the popular Canon in D major, for three violins and continuo. |
 | | A renowned and prolific Austrian composer, famous for his many symphonies. Not only are Haydn's works vitally important in the evolution of musical form, they are delightful and inspirational. |
 | | Liszt was the only contemporary whose music Richard Wagner gratefully acknowledged as an influence upon his own. |
 | | Sergey Vasilyevich Rachmaninov, born in Semyonovo, Russia, on April 1, 1873, is today remembered as one of the most formidable pianists of all time and the last truly great composer in the Russian Romantic tradition. |
 | | Richard Wagner was one of the most revolutionary figures in the history of music, a composer who made pivotal contributions to the development of harmony and musical drama that reverberate even today. |
 | | Known in his time as a great conductor, Mendelssohn helped promote the works of Bach, which were largely forgotten by this time. |
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 | | Claude Debussy (born Achille-Claude Debussy) was among the most influential composers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. |
 | | Though the long career of Richard Strauss spanned one of the most chaotic periods in political, social, and cultural history of the world, the composer retained his essentially Romantic aesthetic even into the age of television, jet engines, and atom bombs. |
 | | One of the great composers of the nineteenth century, Schumann was the quintessential artist whose life and work embody the idea of Romanticism in music. |
 | | Formed in 1904 by a group of 46 musicians who had resigned from London's Queen's Hall Orchestra because of change in policy, the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) is an ensemble of "firsts. |
 | | Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner, the two men who dominated and occupied opposite poles in the development of opera in Europe from the 1840s to the 1890s, were both born in the same year. |
 | | Sir Thomas Beecham founded the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 1932 with assistance from arts patrons Robert Mayer and Samuel Courtauld. |
 | | Giacomo Puccini was the most important composer of Italian opera after Verdi. He wrote in the verismo style, a counterpart to the movement of Realism in literature and a trend that favored subjects and characters from everyday life for opera. |
 | | As befits a city that figures so prominently in American history, Boston is also home to one of the oldest surviving orchestras in the United States, and one of the finest in the world. |
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 | | Widely regarded as the most distinguished of Czech composers, Antonin Dvorák (1841-1904) produced attractive and vigorous music possessed of clear formal outlines, melodies that are both memorable and spontaneous-sounding, and a colorful, effective instrumental sense. |
 | | In a city of rich cultural and artistic history, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of Berlin's three excellent orchestras. |
 | | The last orchestra nurtured by famed conductor Thomas Beecham, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is one of five world-class orchestras based in London, a city where concert life in its modern form has roots three centuries deep. |
 | | The great musical border crosser of the twentieth century, George Gershwin excelled in the fields of concert music and popular song alike. |
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 | | A Norwegian composer of folk-inspired works, including incidental music for Peer Gynt (1875). Grieg wrote for orchestra, solo piano, and string quartet and composed the Concerto for Piano & Orchestra in a, op. |
 | | Like the RCA Victor and Columbia Symphony Orchestras stateside, the National Philharmonic Orchestra (sometimes "of London," sometime not) was a nom du disque. |
 | | Yo-Yo Ma is among the finest cellists of his generation, and a musician of unusually broad appeal. His great success is no doubt due to an easygoing, friendly stage personality in addition to his fine, adventurous musicianship. |
 | | An Austrian conductor and composer of symphonies and lieder cycles whose most notable works include Das Lied von der Erde(1909) and Symphony No. |
 | | As composer, conductor, and educator, Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) emerged as one of a handful of figures in the twentieth century who truly changed the face of music. |
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 | | Gioachino Rossini's parents were both working musicians. His father played the horn and taught at the prestigious Accademia Filharmonica in Bologna, and his mother, although not formally trained, was a soprano. |
 | | Founded in 1952 as a radio orchestra for performances of light and popular classics, the BBC Concert Orchestra has become one of Britain's leading orchestras, performing in concert, opera, and broadcasts. |
 | | Maurice Ravel was among the most significant and influential composers of the early twentieth century. |
 | | One of the most successful and admired opera singers of all time, Luciano Pavarotti was king among tenors from the late 1960s through the 1990s. |
 | | The widely recorded Munich Radio Orchestra, founded in 1952, is associated with Bavarian Radio and is directed by Ulf Schirmer. |
![ABachalypse Now [2 CD/DVD][Deluxe Edition] Album Cover](http://images.slacker.com/isv1/album/v1/5442645/aol/1/center/5,0/70.jpg "ABachalypse Now [2 CD/DVD][Deluxe Edition] Album Cover")
