Classical music

Composers, conductors, and instrumentalists.

People in Classical music

20 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.