Classical music

Composers, conductors, and instrumentalists.

People in Classical music

47 profiles

Composer

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Composing The Magic Flute and The Marriage of Figaro.

Composer

Franz Schubert

Composing Winterreise, the Unfinished Symphony and hundreds of songs.

Composer

Felix Mendelssohn

Composing the Wedding March and reviving Bach’s St Matthew Passion.

Composer

Gioachino Rossini

Composing The Barber of Seville and William Tell.

Composer

Antonio Vivaldi

Composing The Four Seasons.

Composer

Vangelis

Composing the scores for Chariots of Fire and Blade Runner.

Composer

Edvard Grieg

Composing the Piano Concerto and the music for Peer Gynt.

Composer

Igor Stravinsky

Composing The Rite of Spring and reshaping twentieth-century musical rhythm.

Composer

Gustav Mahler

Writing symphonies that combine orchestral drama, song and vast emotional contrasts.

Composer

Claude Debussy

Expanding musical colour through works such as La mer and Clair de lune.

Composer

Leonard Bernstein

Composing West Side Story and bringing orchestral music to television audiences.

Composer

Dmitri Shostakovich

Writing symphonies and quartets under the pressures of Soviet rule.

Singer

Luciano Pavarotti

Bringing an unmistakably bright tenor voice to opera houses, stadiums and the Three Tenors concerts.

Composer

Franz Liszt

Transforming virtuoso piano performance and composing works that stretched the instrument’s expressive possibilities.

Violinist

Niccolò Paganini

Pushing violin technique to spectacular extremes in performances and the 24 Caprices.

Composer

Ennio Morricone

Writing film scores whose whistles, voices and melodies became inseparable from the scenes.

Singer

Maria Callas

Transforming operatic roles into intensely dramatic performances, especially Norma and Tosca.

Pianist

Dave Brubeck

Leading the quartet behind Take Five and the rhythmically adventurous album Time Out.

Composer

Hector Berlioz

Composing Symphonie fantastique and expanding the dramatic possibilities of the orchestra.

Composer

Ludwig van Beethoven

Expanding what a symphony could express, from the Fifth’s four-note opening to the Ninth’s Ode to Joy.

Composer

Johann Sebastian Bach

Writing the Brandenburg Concertos and making intricate musical counterpoint sound expressive and alive.

Composer

George Frideric Handel

Composing Messiah, Water Music and music for British royal occasions.

Composer

Johannes Brahms

Composing symphonies, chamber music and A German Requiem that joined Romantic expression to classical form.

Composer

Joseph Haydn

Helping shape the symphony and string quartet into major classical forms.

Composer

Maurice Ravel

Composing Boléro and creating exceptionally vivid orchestral colours.

Composer

Giacomo Puccini

Composing La bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly, staples of opera stages worldwide.

Composer

Giuseppe Verdi

Writing Rigoletto, La traviata and Aida, which helped define Italian opera.

Composer

Jean Sibelius

Composing Finlandia and seven symphonies that became central to Finnish musical identity.

Composer

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Composing Swan Lake, The Nutcracker and some of classical music’s most familiar orchestral melodies.

Composer

Frédéric Chopin

Transforming piano music through nocturnes, études, ballades and Polish-inspired dances.

Composer

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Composing sweeping piano concertos and performing as one of the great pianists of his era.

Composer

Richard Wagner

Creating The Ring of the Nibelung and reshaping opera through continuous music and recurring themes.

Composer

Robert Schumann

Writing Romantic piano cycles and songs that joined music with literary imagination.

Pianist

Clara Schumann

Sustaining a major concert career while composing and championing Romantic piano music.

Singer

Bülent Ersoy

Becoming a leading voice in Turkish classical music and popular song.

Singer

Bhimsen Joshi

Becoming a leading voice of Hindustani classical music and the Kirana tradition.

Musician

Kumar Gandharva

Reimagining Hindustani singing through distinctive phrasing, folk traditions and Kabir’s devotional poetry.

Singer

Kishori Amonkar

Reinterpreting Hindustani classical singing with an intensely expressive approach.

Composer

Doina Rotaru

Composing Romanian orchestral and chamber music.

Composer

Valerie Rodway

Setting Guyanese national poetry to music.

Composer

Ninón Lapeiretta de Brouwer

Composing Dominican orchestral and chamber music.

Singer

T. M. Krishna

Carnatic singing and efforts to widen access to classical music

Singer

Jasraj

Hindustani classical singing in the Mewati tradition.

Composer

Leopoldine Blahetka

Nineteenth-century piano performance and composition.

Composer

Agnes Tyrrell

Piano, vocal and orchestral music in nineteenth-century Moravia.

Composer

Nina Šenk

Contemporary orchestral and chamber music

Composer

Shafiga Akhundova

Azerbaijani opera, songs and theatre music.