This selection and its companions were written when the composer returned to his hometown after a few years away. Accompanying this work is a group of corresponding sonnets, likely written by composer. The words that complement this selection describe biting snow, stinging winds and ice, and the music evokes these frosty characteristics.

He premiered the original four-hand version of this work at a private gathering of friends, with the wife of his mentor performing the other part. Famously, they formed a deep emotional involvement after his mentor’s death, and many have speculated that his four-hand music might have purposefully included numerous “romantic” hand-crossings…

During the Enlightenment numerous groups popped up all over Europe where intelligent men could meet and discuss the ups and downs of society. The composer of this selection was a member of one such group. For one of his last works, he got together with his friend and fellow secret society member to create a "fantasy opera" for the stage.

This concerto was begun on one side of the Atlantic and finished on the other. The composer’s trip began when he accepted a teaching position at an American conservatory. He was hired to encourage composers to draw from their own folk music. Eventually homesickness, writers’ block, and his employers’ inability to pay him forced him to return home.

When this composer was a little boy, he and his friends had themselves an adventure by hiking up one of Europe’s most famous mountain range. He worked for eleven years on a work that would reflect his love of nature, resulting in a musical portrait of a hiker who describes what he experiences on own his incredible mountain journey.

This composer was commissioned to write a piece for the graduation ceremonies at a local German university that had given him an honorary doctorate degree the previous year. In this selection, he not only includes academic tunes, but also several student drinking songs. The composer conducted this piece at the university’s graduation ceremony.

This symphonic poem depicts creepy nocturnal happenings and referred to the eve of a traditional religious holiday. When his colleagues disapproved of the work, the composer withdrew it, eventually working parts of it into a comic opera! Appearing in Walt Disney’s “Fantasia,” it has become one of the iconic examples of “scary” classical music.

In 1873, a theater in Moscow was closed for renovations, and so the resident company made the Bolshoi Theater its temporary home. While there, they commissioned one of Russia’s most well-known composers to create the work re-telling of a popular Russian fairy tale about a princess with “wintry” magical powers.

The piece was composed to commemorate victory over the forces of Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon’s older brother. This composer then arranged it for a full orchestra with two on-stage wind bands and full percussion to represent the two battling armies. The fully-orchestrated work was a huge crowd-pleaser at is premiere in 1813.

In this work, two prostitutes petition a biblical king in a child custody dispute, and the wise king saves the day with a crafty solution. This oratorio was the first of two written for the same London theatrical season. While the one we are hearing celebrates the virtue of wisdom, the other, with cuckoldry, is more like a biblical comic opera…