In this Introduction to Classical Music, I present to you live recordings by world-famous musicians of five of history’s greatest classical composers. These composers span the Baroque (ca. 1600-1750), Classical (ca. 1750-1800), and Romantic (ca. 1800-1900) Eras of classical music history. For the sake of narrative, I have chosen to list the pieces in reverse chronological order.

Robert Schumann, Traumerei (Vladimir Horowitz)

Robert Schumann (1810-1856) came of age when the Romantic Era of classical music was getting into full swing. He was an exceptional music critic and piano composer. Traumerei (“Dreamer”) comes from a set of short piano pieces called Kinderscenen (“Scenes from Childhood”). This short little piece is one of the most beautiful melodies ever written.

Vladimir Horowitz (1903-1989) is one of the greatest piano players of all time. He was born in Kiev, Ukraine, of Russian-Jewish heritage. He began his career in Russia, but his family had lost everything in the Revolution, and he fled in 1925 and ended up in the U.S. Amazingly, he was still alive and performing in the 1980s when the Soviet grip finally began to loosen. In 1986, he returned to Russia for the first time in 61 years and gave this concert in Moscow. For an encore, rather than dazzle the audience with a brief and rapid display of technical bravura, as so many do, the elderly maestro played Traumerei, a piece of quiet, reflective, simple beauty. I cannot imagine what it must have meant to these people to hear Horowitz play after so many years of Soviet oppression, but you can see for yourself their faces. This video brings me to tears.

A video of Horowitz playing Schumann’s full version of Kinderscenen is also available on YouTube.

Franz Schubert, Der Erlkönig (Dietrich Fisher-Deskau and Gerald Moore)

Franz Schubert (1797-1828) lived a tragically short life. You may have heard of that genius wunderkind Mozart? Who died so young at 35? Schubert was 31 when sickness claimed his life. But despite this, he composed over 1,500 works, including over 600 songs for voice and piano. This is an astonishing outburst of creativity in such a short time. Frankly, it puts every modern popular music group to shame.

Schubert loved to set poetry to music, and his favorite subject was the great German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Der Erlkönig sets to music a Goethe poem about the Erlking, a mythical fairy lord who would steal children away from their parents. This popular poem has been set to music many times, but Schubert’s version is considered the best. Funnily enough, Goethe actually didn’t like Schubert’s version at first. The poem, you see, has a surprise ending, and Goethe thought that Schubert’s opening attack on the piano keys gave too much away. But even he eventually had to acknowledge Schubert’s genius.

Now, to the performance itself. Dietrich Fisher-Deskau is the great baritone of the 20th century, and in this video, he delivers an acting performance to match his vocal supremacy. The poem has four characters: the narrator, the father, the son, and the Erlking. Fisher-Deskau captures all four with ease, in both his voice and his facial expression. By this great effort he tells a remarkably captivating story. As for the accompanist, Gerald Moore... have you ever heard a quarterback or a baseball pitcher described as having a “cannon” or a “rifle” for an arm? Gerald Moore had a machine gun. Watch that right hand at the beginning! He fires off octaves at a rate of over 400 rounds per minute. Very few pianists can play this song; Moore makes it look easy. At the end of it all, the quiet dignity of their handshake and bow gives this performance an old-fashioned charm that makes my heart yearn for more. It’s a perfect video.

Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 7 - II. Allegretto (Carlos Kleiber and the Royal Concertgebouw)

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) inherited a well-defined Classical tradition from Mozart and Haydn. He was not content with it. Beethoven attacked music with a ferocity and passion to rival Mozart’s effortless grace, pushing the limits of Classical forms to their breaking points. By the end of his life he had single-handedly launched classical music into the Romantic Era. Along the way he went almost completely deaf. He wrote 32 piano sonatas, 5 piano concertos, and 9 symphonies. His 9th Symphony was composed so late in life that it can safely be said he never heard what is perhaps the most famous piece in history.

The second movement of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony was composed in 1811-1812, when Beethoven was aware of, and coping with, his encroaching deafness. This movement is so popular it is frequently performed all on its own. In fact, when this symphony was premiered, the audience loved this movement so much they demanded its immediate encore. It is also featured during the titular moment of the movie “The King’s Speech.”

The conductor, Carlos Kleiber, is a sight to behold. For Romantic music, I consider him to be simply the best ever. And recordings of him at work are tragically rare. Watch him, and you’ll see that he rarely conducts in the “normal” up-and-down, side-to-side fashion, and yet he exerts terrific control over the orchestra with the bare minimum of motion. This is a terrific performance. If you enjoy it, check out the rest of the 7th Symphony on YouTube.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Symphony No. 40 (Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe)

Mozart (1756-1791) composed in the Classical Era. You’ve heard of him. He’s the guy who taught himself to compose and play music at an age before most of us were fully potty-trained, the guy who supposedly wrote down an entire symphony from memory after one hearing, simply because he was annoyed that the composer refused to share a copy. When you hear stories about him that make you say, “that can’t possibly be true,” there’s a good chance they’re true.

In Mozart’s day, it was traditional for a composer to accept a position as court composer to an aristocrat and remain in his loyal service for the rest of his life. Haydn did this. Mozart’s father did this. Mozart’s father arranged for Mozart to do this. Problem was, Mozart couldn’t stand working for someone other than himself. He finally managed to resign from service to the nobility when he was 25. The archbishop of Salzburg was so fed up he ordered Mozart kicked in the butt on his way out the door (literally!). Mozart spent the last ten years of his short life working independently in Vienna and Prague.

The 40th symphony was the second-to-last Mozart ever wrote, composed in rapid succession with the 39th and 41st, at the tender age of 32. It is one of his most popular pieces to this day. Nikolaus Harnoncourt is one of the world’s greatest conductors of early classical music. Enjoy.

Johann Sebastian Bach, “Goldberg Variations” (Glenn Gould)

Bach (1685-1750) is the pinnacle. Beethoven may have had a greater influence. Mozart may have had a greater innate genius. But for sheer musical accomplishment, Bach ascended higher than anyone else in the pursuit of perfection. He wrote hundreds of cantatas, which are choral and orchestral works based on hymns and Biblical texts, for performance in the weekly church services. He was indisputably the greatest organist of his time. He developed the practice of musical counterpoint - voices moving in like fashion but in opposition to one another - to its furthest possible logical ends. Even his simpler arrangements impressed. His four-part hymn chorales are unmatched in history.

Bach spent most of his adult life in service to the four Lutheran churches of the city of Leipzig, Germany. Late in his life, when he was well-established in Leipzig and had fewer weekly responsibilities, he took advantage of his increased freedom to pursue personal musical goals, apparently for no other reason than to try to perfect his art. (This is a tremendous blessing to us, for many of classical music’s greatest composers simply didn’t live long enough to do this.) This led to some of his largest and most ambitious works - the Musical Offering, the Art of the Fugue, the B Minor Mass, and the work chosen here, the Goldberg Variations.

The Goldberg Variations contains a theme, called the Aria, and thirty variations. The principal element of the Aria, around which the variations are built, is actually the bass line, which uses a musical form called the chaconne. The performer, Glenn Gould, was a peculiar man with a unique talent for performing Bach. If you listen closely, you can hear him humming along as he plays. The recording studios never successfully managed to break him of this habit - whenever he stopped humming, he simply couldn’t play as well.