The Romantic Era was a period in music in which there was much change during the 1850s to the 1920s in the theory and compositional practice of music. For inspiration, many Romantic composers turned to visual arts, poetry, drama and literature, and to nature itself. These influences led composers to express emotion in their music. Although Romantic era music contained classical era roots, the instruments used in the Romantic era were changing and brass and woodwind instruments were being improved in the quality of sound, as well as in how they were played.

So how do you become a more successful sleeper? Grab a pillow, curl up and keep listening to find out.

This playlist explores the capabilities and achievements of the king of instruments. Beginning with Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No. 4, the playlist continues with French masterworks by Boëllmann, Saint-Saens, Vierne, Dupré, and Camonin. The playlist concludes with J.S. Bach's Trio Sonata No. 6.

Bach Preludes and Fugues are the fundamental building blocks of the western tradition. Here we have a performance by one of the giants of the Russian tradition, Sviatoslav Richter. Then listen to the performance by new talent, an alumnus of the Royal Academy of Music in London, Adam Repa. The humanity in each is beautifully made available to us in these intimate recordings, building in different ways on the opening trill.

Beethoven wrote a symphony which the musicologists believe is not so important. Wellington's Victory, or, the Battle of Vitoria (Wellingtons Sieg oder die Schlacht bei Vittoria), Op. 91, is a minor 15-minute-long orchestral work composed by Ludwig van Beethoven to commemorate the Duke of Wellington's victory over Joseph Bonaparte at the Battle of Vitoria in Spain on 21 June 1813. It is known sometimes as "The Battle Symphony" or "The Battle of Vitoria", and was dedicated to the Prince Regent, later King George IV. Composition stretched from August to first week of October 1813, and the piece proved to be a substantial moneymaker for Beethoven. In this age of political, cultural, social, economic, power and political contrasts, we thought that Beethoven's view on battles of opposing forces will find a voice. We include Beethoven's work 'The Consecration of the House' to create a feeling of unity and close the period of dissention. We conclude this playlist with Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 26 (Les Adieux / The Farewell) in E♭ Major Op. 81a which ends with the heartwarming movement 'Le Retour' to celebrate the return from a risky journey.

In the cascade mountains of northern California, a cluster of 42 radio telescopes points towards the stars, scanning for signs of life. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (seti) Institute has been listening for a signal here and elsewhere since it was founded in 1984. In that time it has scoured only a minuscule fraction of space, equivalent to a glass of water in all the world’s oceans. But Jill Tarter, its co-founder, is undaunted. A renowned astrophysicist—and the model for Jodie Foster’s character in the alien-encounter film “Contact”—Ms Tarter says the programme’s aim is not just to communicate with remote civilisations. It is also to remind humanity of its own modest, fragile place in the cosmos. Which is why, for the first time, seti is cocking its ear towards Earth.are a common planet “is crucial for our long future,” Ms Tarter says. “We face challenges that have to be solved by co-operating across the globe.” In a small but symbolic way, the Earthling Project is meant to set an example.

Henry James on music. Short Story: The Velvet Glove ... It made, the whole thing together, an enchantment amid which he had in truth, at a given moment, ceased to distinguish parts — so that he was himself certainly at last soaring as high as the singer’s voice and forgetting, in a lost gaze at the splendid ceiling, everything of the occasion but what his intelligence poured into it. This, as happened, was a flight so sublime that by the time he had dropped his eyes again a cluster of persons near the main door had just parted to give way to a belated lady who slipped in, through the gap made for her, and stood for some minutes full in his view. It was a proof of the perfect hush that no one stirred to offer her a seat, and her entrance, in her high grace, had yet been so noiseless that she could remain at once immensely exposed and completely unabashed. For Berridge, once more, if the scenic show before him so melted into the music, here precisely might have been the heroine herself advancing to the footlights at her cue. The interest deepened to a thrill, and everything, at the touch of his recognition of this personage, absolutely the most beautiful woman now present, fell exquisitely together and gave him what he had been wanting from the moment of his taking in his young Englishman.

Ani Palavandishvili has been a featured Perfomer on Music Passion since 2019. Here she is joined by Nana Akhmeteli also a pianist from Tbilisi in Georgia. They have won the first Music Passion Recording Prize in April 2021. They chose to record this exceptional work which Beethoven arranged for piano, four hands. He had originally written it as the final movement of his String Quartet Op. 130. The performance by Ani and Nana on Piano is followed by the original string quartet performance.

Beethoven had well-known fallings out with his one-time teacher, Joseph Haydn, with the piano virtuoso and composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel, the German composer Carl Maria von Weber and the Italian violinist Nicolo Paganini. Conversely, he regarded Franz Schubert positively, praising the latter's compositions on his deathbed. He had never met Schubert, even Schubert lived his whole life in Vienna where Beethoven had moved from Bonn, and Schubert died just a year after Beethoven. Ferdinand Ries was a German composer from Bonn, where he met Beethoven as a boy in his teens. Ries was a friend, pupil and became a secretary of Ludwig van Beethoven. He composed eight symphonies, a violin concerto, eight piano concertos, three operas, and numerous other works in many genres, including 26 string quartets. This playlist begins with his flute sonata. Weber often made use of cyclic techniques (using related thematic material to unify multi-movement works), and the first, second and last movements of this sonata share much in common; the brief and piquant Menuetto capriccioso serves as a delightful interlude. Listen out in particular for the Beethovenian last movement: it possesses the lightness of an 18th century finale and bears a passing resemblance to the Rondo from Beethoven's Spring Sonata.

This Week Our Fans Loved Spiritual Feelings - Mass, Pride and Prejudice, Miserere, Tempest Sonata. Find the tracks listened to the most on this weekly playlist.

Europe during the latter part of the 19th century, much like Europe in the late 20th century, was a complex place, in which there was sometimes a fine line between patriotic movements premised on the idea of the nation as a universal moral conception, and movements that were manipulated by the practitioners of British geopolitics, to the end of destabilizing strategically important regions. Bohemian music coalesced around a movement that represented a nationalism of the best sort, optimistic and morally uplifting. In the case of the land which today is called the Czech Republic, a "People's War" was waged in which the most powerful weapon was music. The movement for Czech independence from the Hapsburg empire is the sole example in history of a war of independence where the generals were composers, and the infantry were orchestras. The area occupied by the modern Czech Republic was, in earlier times, the kingdom of Bohemia. Bohemia was for centuries one of the political, cultural, and religious centers of Europe. But like neighboring Moravia and Slovakia, Bohemia waged a continuing struggle to maintain its independence from its expansion-minded neighbors. After the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, Bohemia was extinguished as a nation and absorbed into the Hapsburg Empire, until the end of the first world war. By the end of the eighteenth century only the peasantry spoke Czech; it had been otherwise superseded by German as the national language. But the music of Bohemia, the most characteristic feature of her national culture, remained alive.

You will be surprised to hear Brahms' Third Symphony included here, and the rationale is that it is one of his greatest creative works; but underplayed. Is that because it is so difficult to conduct? The opening descending figuration in the violins takes great skill to perform. And each movement ends Piano, quietly, with a small diminuendo, so it is intimate and quiet at the end for all the complexity of thought in the main thrust of the musical composition. You will certainly enjoy the second Cello Sonata, and some of his songs which are intimate and sad, but always beautiful. Brahms's fascination with German folk music had a major influence on his work, leaving us with more than 200 songs and making him one of the most prolific 19th-century German Lieder composers.