An American in Paris is a jazz-influenced symphonic poem for orchestra by American composer George Gershwin first performed in 1928. It was inspired by the time that Gershwin had spent in Paris and evokes the sights and energy of the French capital during the Années folles.
Ernest Alexandre Ansermet was a Swiss conductor.
A rhapsody in music is a one-movement work that is episodic yet integrated, free-flowing in structure, featuring a range of highly contrasted moods, colour, and tonality. An air of spontaneous inspiration and a sense of improvisation make it freer in form than a set of variations.
Esa-Pekka Salonen is a Finnish conductor and composer. He is the music director of the San Francisco Symphony and conductor laureate of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra in London and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. In 2024, he announced his resignation from the San Francisco Symphony upon the expiration of his contract in 2025.
André Caplet was a French composer and conductor of classical music. He was a friend of Claude Debussy and completed the orchestration of several of Debussy's compositions as well as arrangements of several of them for different instruments.
Concerto in F is a composition by George Gershwin for solo piano and orchestra which is closer in form to a traditional concerto than his earlier jazz-influenced Rhapsody in Blue. It was written in 1925 on a commission from the conductor and director Walter Damrosch. A full performance lasts around half an hour.
Children's Corner, L. 113, is a six-movement suite for solo piano by Claude Debussy. It was published by Durand in 1908, and was first performed by Harold Bauer in Paris on 18 December that year. In 1911, an orchestration by André Caplet was premiered and subsequently published.
Suite bergamasque is a piano suite by Claude Debussy. He began composing it around 1890, at the age of 28, but significantly revised it just before its 1905 publication. The popularity of the third movement, Clair de lune, has made it one of the composer's most famous works for piano, as well as one of the most famous musical pieces of all time.
Charles-Louis-Eugène Koechlin, commonly known as Charles Koechlin, was a French composer, teacher and musicologist. Among his better known works is Les Heures persanes, a set of piano pieces based on the novel Vers Ispahan by Pierre Loti and The Seven Stars Symphony, a 7 movement symphony where each movement is themed around a different film star who were popular at the time of the piece's writing (1933).
Rapsodie espagnole is an orchestral rhapsody written by Maurice Ravel. Composed between 1907 and 1908, the Rapsodie is one of Ravel's first major works for orchestra. It was first performed in Paris in 1908 and quickly entered the international repertoire. The piece draws on the composer's Spanish heritage and is one of several of his works set in or reflecting Spain.
Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, known in English as Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, is a symphonic poem for orchestra by Claude Debussy, approximately 10 minutes in duration. It was composed in 1894 and first performed in Paris on 22 December 1894, conducted by Gustave Doret. The flute solo was played by Georges Barrère.
Nocturnes, L 98 is an Impressionist orchestral composition in three movements by the French composer Claude Debussy, who wrote it between 1892 and 1899. It is based on poems from Poèmes anciens et romanesques.
Paul Henri Büsser was a French classical composer, organist, conductor and teacher. Among his teachers were César Franck, Charles Gounod and Jules Massenet. In addition to his own compositions Büsser edited and orchestrated a wide range of music – mostly but not exclusively French – dating from the 17th to the 20th centuries. He was at various times in his career the conductor of the Paris Opéra and the Opéra-Comique, and professor of composition at the Conservatoire de Paris.
Images pour orchestre, L. 122, is an orchestral composition in three sections by Claude Debussy, written between 1905 and 1912. Debussy had originally intended this set of Images as a two-piano sequel to the first set of Images for solo piano, as described in a letter to his publisher Durand as of September 1905. However, by March 1906, in another letter to Durand, he had begun to think of arranging the work for orchestra rather than two pianos.
Symphonic Dances, Op. 45, is an orchestral suite in three movements completed in October 1940 by Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff. It is his final major composition, and his only piece written in its entirety while living in the United States.
Le Martyre de saint Sébastien is a five-act musical mystery play on the subject of Saint Sebastian, with a text written in 1911 by the Italian author Gabriele D'Annunzio and incidental music by the French composer Claude Debussy (L.124).
Frédéric Chopin's Allegro de concert, Op. 46, is a piece for piano, published in November 1841. It is in one movement and takes between 11 and 15 minutes to play. The principal themes are bold and expressive. It has a curious place in the Chopin canon, and while its history is obscure, the evidence supports the view, shared by Robert Schumann and others, that it started out as the first movement of a projected third piano concerto, of which the orchestral parts are either now non-existent or were never scored at all. There is no evidence that Chopin ever even started work on the latter movements of this concerto.
The Première rhapsodie, L. 116, CD. 124, by Claude Debussy is a piece for accompanied clarinet. Composed between December 1909 and January 1910, it was dedicated to the French clarinet professor Prosper Mimart.
The Fantaisie for piano and orchestra, Op. 111, is a concertante composition written by Gabriel Fauré in 1918.
William Walton's Sinfonia Concertante is a three-movement piece for piano and orchestra, first performed in 1928. The composer revised it extensively in 1943. It is an early work, in the anti-romantic style favoured by Walton before the 1930s. There have been several recordings of the piece, featuring both the original and the revised versions.
