The 50 Greatest Pieces of Classical Music is a compilation of classical works recorded by the London Philharmonic Orchestra with conductor David Parry. Recorded at Abbey Road Studios, Royal Festival Hall and Henry Wood Hall in London, the compilation was released in digital formats in November, 2009 and as a 4-CD set in 2011. The 50 Greatest Pieces of Classical Music has sold over 200,000 copies and spent over three days as one of the top 10 classical albums on iTunes.

Johannes Brahms (; German: [joˈhanəs ˈbʁaːms] ; 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor of the mid-Romantic period. His music is noted for its rhythmic vitality and freer treatment of dissonance, often set within studied yet expressive contrapuntal textures. He adapted the traditional structures and techniques of a wide historical range of earlier composers. His œuvre includes four symphonies, four concertos, a Requiem, much chamber music, and hundreds of folk-song arrangements and Lieder, among other works for symphony orchestra, piano, organ, and choir. Born to a musical family in Hamburg, Brahms began composing and concertizing locally in his youth. He toured Central Europe as a pianist in his adulthood, premiering many of his own works and meeting Franz Liszt in Weimar. Brahms worked with Ede Reményi and Joseph Joachim, seeking Robert Schumann's approval through Joachim. He gained both Robert and Clara Schumann's support and guidance. Brahms stayed with Clara in Düsseldorf, becoming devoted to her amid Robert's insanity and institutionalization. The two remained close, lifelong friends after Robert's death. Brahms never married, perhaps in an effort to focus on his work as a musician and scholar. He was a self-conscious, sometimes severely self-critical composer. Though innovative, his music was considered relatively conservative within the polarized context of the War of the Romantics, an affair in which Brahms regretted his public involvement. His compositions were largely successful, attracting a growing circle of supporters, friends, and musicians. Eduard Hanslick celebrated them polemically as absolute music, and Hans von Bülow even cast Brahms as the successor of Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven, an idea Richard Wagner mocked. Settling in Vienna, Brahms conducted the Singakademie and Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, programming the early and often "serious" music of his personal studies. He considered retiring from composition late in life but continued to write chamber music, especially for Richard Mühlfeld. Brahms's contributions and craftsmanship were admired by his contemporaries like Antonín Dvořák, whose music he enthusiastically supported, and a variety of later composers. Max Reger and Alexander Zemlinsky reconciled Brahms's and Wagner's often contrasted styles. So did Arnold Schoenberg, who emphasized Brahms's "progressive" side. He and Anton Webern were inspired by the intricate structural coherence of Brahms's music, including what Schoenberg termed its developing variation. It remains a staple of the concert repertoire, continuing to influence composers into the 21st century.

The 50 Greatest Pieces of Classical Music is a compilation of classical works recorded by the London Philharmonic Orchestra with conductor David Parry. Recorded at Abbey Road Studios, Royal Festival Hall and Henry Wood Hall in London, the compilation was released in digital formats in November, 2009 and as a 4-CD set in 2011. The 50 Greatest Pieces of Classical Music has sold over 200,000 copies and spent over three days as one of the top 10 classical albums on iTunes.

Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, ( ; 2 June 1857 – 23 February 1934) was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos for violin and cello, and two symphonies. He also composed choral works, including The Dream of Gerontius, chamber music and songs. He was appointed Master of the King's Musick in 1924. Although Elgar is often regarded as a typically English composer, most of his musical influences were not from England but from continental Europe. He felt himself to be an outsider, not only musically, but socially. In musical circles dominated by academics, he was a self-taught composer; in Protestant Britain, his Roman Catholicism was regarded with suspicion in some quarters; and in the class-conscious society of Victorian and Edwardian Britain, he was acutely sensitive about his humble origins even after he achieved recognition. He nevertheless married the daughter of a senior British Army officer. She inspired him both musically and socially, but he struggled to achieve success until his forties, when after a series of moderately successful works his Enigma Variations (1899) became immediately popular in Britain and overseas. He followed the Variations with a choral work, The Dream of Gerontius (1900), based on a Roman Catholic text that caused some disquiet in the Anglican establishment in Britain, but it became, and has remained, a core repertory work in Britain and elsewhere. His later full-length religious choral works were well received but have not entered the regular repertory. In his fifties, Elgar composed a symphony and a violin concerto that were immensely successful. His second symphony and his cello concerto did not gain immediate public popularity and took many years to achieve a regular place in the concert repertory of British orchestras. Elgar's music came, in his later years, to be seen as appealing chiefly to British audiences. His stock remained low for a generation after his death. It began to revive significantly in the 1960s, helped by new recordings of his works. Some of his works have, in recent years, been taken up again internationally, but the music continues to be played more in Britain than elsewhere. Elgar has been described as the first composer to take the gramophone seriously. Between 1914 and 1925, he conducted a series of acoustic recordings of his works. The introduction of the moving-coil microphone in 1923 made far more accurate sound reproduction possible, and Elgar made new recordings of most of his major orchestral works and excerpts from The Dream of Gerontius.

The table below shows all known compositions by Edward Elgar.

Edward Elgar composed his Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 36, popularly known as the Enigma Variations, between October 1898 and February 1899. It is an orchestral work comprising fourteen variations on an original theme. After its 1899 premiere in London, the variations quickly achieved popularity and helped establish Elgar's growing reputation in Britain and internationally. It is now a staple of the orchestral repertoire globally. Elgar dedicated the work "to my friends pictured within", each variation being a musical sketch of – or a musical idea related to – one of his circle. Those musically sketched include Elgar's wife Alice, his friend and publisher August Jaeger and, in the final variation, Elgar himself. In addition to the miniature depictions of his friends, Elgar said that the main theme, which he called "Enigma", referred in some way to a larger, unspecified theme. By doing so he posed a challenge that has generated much speculation but has never been conclusively answered. The Enigma theme is widely believed to involve a hidden melody, although some commentators have taken it to represent an abstract idea rather than a musical theme.

The table below shows all known compositions by Edward Elgar.

The table below shows all known compositions by Edward Elgar.

The table below shows all known compositions by Edward Elgar.

The table below shows all known compositions by Edward Elgar.

Duett for trombone and double bass is a musical work by the English composer Edward Elgar. The duet was composed as wedding gift to Frank Weaver, a brother of Helen Weaver to whom the composer had been engaged some four years earlier, and presented to him on 1 August 1887 when he married Fannie Jones. Weaver was about a year older than Elgar; he was a shoemaker and an amateur double bass player, and Elgar played the trombone. Frank and Helen Weaver were among the children of William Weaver, a shoe merchant whose shop was in Worcester High Street, opposite Elgar's father's music shop. The manuscript was inherited by one of Frank Weaver's sons, and was eventually published by Rodney Slatford (Yorke Edition) in 1970.

E minor is a minor scale based on E, consisting of the pitches E, F♯, G, A, B, C, and D. Its key signature has one sharp, on the F. Its relative major is G major and its parallel major is E major. The E natural minor scale is: Changes needed for the melodic and harmonic versions of the scale are written in with accidentals as necessary. The E harmonic minor and melodic minor scales are: Much of the classical guitar repertoire is in E minor, as this is a very natural key for the instrument. In standard tuning (E A D G B E), four of the instrument's six open (unfretted) strings are part of the tonic chord. The key of E minor is also popular in heavy metal music, as its tonic is the lowest note on a standard-tuned guitar.

The table below shows all known compositions by Edward Elgar.

The Overture in D minor (Handel, arr. Elgar) is a transcription made in 1923 by Sir Edward Elgar of a musical work by George Frideric Handel composed in 1717-18. The transcription is an arrangement for full orchestra of the overture to Chandos Anthem No. 2 (HWV247) "In the Lord put I my Trust", which Handel wrote when he was resident composer for the Duke of Chandos at Cannons house. Handel also used this music in his concerto grosso in D minor Op. 3 No.5 HWV 316 I. & II. The conductor Leopold Stokowski also made a transcription of the same overture.

The table below shows all known compositions by Edward Elgar.

The table below shows all known compositions by Edward Elgar.

The table below shows all known compositions by Edward Elgar.

The table below shows all known compositions by Edward Elgar.

The table below shows all known compositions by Edward Elgar.

The table below shows all known compositions by Edward Elgar.

The table below shows all known compositions by Edward Elgar.

La Capricieuse Op.17, is a showpiece by the English composer Edward Elgar written in 1891 for solo violin and piano accompaniment. It has been recorded by notable violinists including Jascha Heifetz, Ivry Gitlis, and Itzhak Perlman, among others.

The table below shows all known compositions by Edward Elgar.

The table below shows all known compositions by Edward Elgar.

In classical music, a piano quintet is a work of chamber music written for piano and four other instruments, most commonly (since 1842) a string quartet (i.e., two violins, viola, and cello). The term also refers to the group of musicians that plays a piano quintet. The genre flourished during the nineteenth century. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, most piano quintets were scored for piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass. Following the success of Robert Schumann's Piano Quintet in E♭ major, Op. 44 in 1842, which paired the piano with a string quartet, composers increasingly adopted Schumann's instrumentation, and it was this form of the piano quintet that dominated during the second half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century. Among the best known and most frequently performed piano quintets, aside from Schumann's, are Schubert's Trout quintet and the piano quintets of Johannes Brahms, César Franck, Antonín Dvořák and Dmitri Shostakovich.

Frédéric François Chopin (born Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin; 1 March 1810 – 17 October 1849) was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic period who wrote primarily for solo piano. He has maintained worldwide renown as a leading composer of his era whose "poetic genius was based on a professional technique that was without equal in his generation". Chopin was born in Żelazowa Wola and grew up in Warsaw, which in 1815 became part of Congress Poland. A child prodigy, he completed his musical education and composed his early works in Warsaw before leaving Poland at age 20, less than a month before the outbreak of the November 1830 Uprising; at 21, he settled in Paris. Thereafter he gave only 30 public performances, preferring the more intimate atmosphere of the salon. He supported himself by selling his compositions and giving piano lessons, for which he was in high demand. Chopin formed a friendship with Franz Liszt and was admired by many musical contemporaries, including Robert Schumann. After a failed engagement to Maria Wodzińska from 1836 to 1837, he maintained an often troubled relationship with the French writer Aurore Dupin (known by her pen name George Sand). A brief and unhappy visit to Mallorca with Sand in 1838–39 proved one of his most productive periods of composition. In his final years he was supported financially by his admirer Jane Stirling. In poor health most of his life, Chopin died in Paris in 1849 at age 39. All of Chopin's compositions feature the piano. Most are for solo piano, though he also wrote two piano concertos before leaving Warsaw, some chamber music, and 19 songs set to Polish lyrics. His piano pieces are technically demanding and expanded the limits of the instrument; his own performances were noted for their nuance and sensitivity. Chopin's major piano works include mazurkas, waltzes, nocturnes, polonaises, the instrumental ballade (which Chopin created as an instrumental genre), études, impromptus, scherzi, preludes, and sonatas, some published only posthumously. Among the influences on his style of composition were Polish folk music, the classical tradition of Mozart and Schubert, and the atmosphere of the Paris salons, of which he was a frequent guest. His innovations in style, harmony, and musical form, and his association of music with nationalism, were influential throughout and after the late Romantic period. Chopin's music, his status as one of music's earliest celebrities, his indirect association with political insurrection, his high-profile love life, and his early death have made him a leading symbol of the Romantic era. His works remain popular, and he has been the subject of numerous films and biographies of varying historical fidelity. Among his many memorials is the Fryderyk Chopin Institute, which was created by the Polish parliament to research and promote his life and works, and which hosts the prestigious International Chopin Piano Competition, devoted entirely to his works.

Sir Edward Elgar's Symphony No. 1 in A♭ major, Op. 55 is one of his two completed symphonies. The first performance was given by the Hallé Orchestra conducted by Hans Richter in Manchester, England, on 3 December 1908. It was widely known that Elgar had been planning a symphony for more than ten years, and the announcement that he had finally completed it aroused enormous interest. The critical reception was enthusiastic, and the public response unprecedented. The symphony achieved what The Musical Times described as "immediate and phenomenal success", with a hundred performances in Britain, continental Europe and America within just over a year of its première. The symphony is frequently programmed by British orchestras, and features occasionally in concert programmes in North America and continental Europe. It is well represented on record, with recordings ranging from the composer's 1931 version with the London Symphony Orchestra to modern digital recordings, of which more than 40 have been issued since the mid-1980s.

The Serenade for String Orchestra in E minor, Op. 20, is an early piece in three short movements, by Edward Elgar. It was written in March 1892 as a present to his wife, Alice on the occasion of their third wedding anniversary that year and first performed privately in that year; its public premiere was in 1896. It became one of Elgar's most popular compositions, and has been recorded many times.

Salut d'Amour (Liebesgruß), Op. 12, is a musical work composed by Edward Elgar in 1888, originally written for violin and piano.

The table below shows all known compositions by Edward Elgar.

The table below shows all known compositions by Edward Elgar.

The String Quartet in E minor, Op. 83, was one of three major chamber music works composed by Sir Edward Elgar in 1918. The others were the Violin Sonata in E minor, Op. 82, and the Piano Quintet in A minor, Op. 84. Along with the Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85 of 1919, these were to be his last major completed works prior to his death in 1934.

Sir Edward Elgar wrote his Violin Sonata in E minor, Op. 82, in 1918, at the same time as he wrote his String Quartet in E minor and his Piano Quintet in A minor. These three chamber music works were all written at "Brinkwells", the country house near Fittleworth in West Sussex that Lady Elgar had acquired for her husband to recuperate and compose in, and they mark his major contribution to the chamber music genre. His Cello Concerto in E minor of 1919 completed the quartet of introspective and melancholy works that comprised Elgar's last major creative spurt before his death in 1934. The violin sonata is scored for the usual combination of violin and piano, and has three movements: Elgar's wife noted that the slow movement seemed to be influenced by the 'wood magic' or genii loci of the Fittleworth woods. When the sonata was close to completion, Elgar offered to dedicate it to a family friend, Marie Joshua, and wrote to her: "I fear it does not carry us any further but it is full of golden sounds and I like it, but you must not expect anything violently chromatic or cubist". Marie Joshua died four days after receiving the letter, before she had had an opportunity to reply. As a tribute to her memory, Elgar quoted the dolcissimo melody from the slow movement just before the coda of the final movement. The Violin Sonata in E minor was completed on 15 September 1918, and first performed on 13 March 1919 at a semi-public meeting of the British Music Society by Elgar's friend W. H. Reed with Anthony Bernard on piano. With Elgar present, it received its first public performance on 21 March 1919 in Aeolian Hall, with Reed and Landon Ronald. Albert Sammons and William Murdoch were the sonata's greatest champions in the early years, and they made a recording on 2 February 1935. (It was also Sammons who made the first complete recording of Elgar's Violin Concerto in B minor.) Earlier, in 1919, a recording was made by Marjorie Hayward and Una Bourne. The Violin Sonata has never had a reputation as one of Elgar's great works, and it features irregularly on concert programs. In recent years, however, it has been recorded a number of times, and there are now over 20 recordings in the catalogue. Those who have recorded it include Hugh Bean, Yehudi Menuhin, Max Rostal, Lydia Mordkovitch, Nigel Kennedy, Midori, Maxim Vengerov, Tasmin Little, Jonathan Crow, Daniel Hope and Jennifer Pike. It was also included in the soundtrack of the anime Nodame Cantabile.