Works
Jingle Hell! The famous Christmas music guaranteed to ruin the holiday season
As the Christmas season approaches, the BBC Music Magazine team share the festive tunes that make our hearts sink
Best Christmas carols: the 37 greatest festive hymns of all time
Here's a list of the best-ever Christmas carols for the festive season, as voted for by 50 top choral experts from across the UK and US. Do you agree with their choices?
Peer Gynt: a guide to Edvard Grieg's popular masterpiece
When asked to write music for Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt, Grieg thought he was facing an impossible challenge. But, as Terry Blain relates, the composer’s perseverance resulted in a masterpiece
of matchless character and colour
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Greatest symphonies: the 21 best orchestral masterpieces, ranked
Which is the best-ever symphony? 151 of the world's leading conductors voted for what they thought to be the greatest symphonies ever written
'The famous bit': 15 popular classical music moments… But can you identify them?
We take a look at the arias, movements, songs and dances whose fame has outshone the larger works in which they first appeared
7 neglected piano concertos that we all should know better
Pianist Clare Hammond selects unfairly overlooked piano concertos that deserve to be performed more often
Music has the power to save the planet. Here’s how
As he relives a memorable evening at the BBC Proms, Tom Service ponders how music might make us reconsider our relationship with the world around us
These are the 7 greatest British works for orchestra
Scottish conductor Donald Runnicles selects some of the best examples of British orchestral repertoire
Music to help us through difficult times
Multiple studies show that music can do wonders for our mental health. So which pieces do we turn to when times are tough?
The bizarre classical music work where one player sits in the other's lap
Step forward Ligeti, Stockhausen and, er, Mozart: here are classical music's strangest, craziest and weirdest compositions
Ranked: the 15 greatest piano music pieces of all time
From Bach’s sacred architecture to Debussy’s shimmering dreamscapes, these 15 masterpieces trace the piano’s evolution — a story of intellect, emotion, and invention that spans three centuries and every shade of the human soul
The most terrifying jump scares in classical music
Who needs visuals? The great composers are masters at getting us jumping out of our skins with just the terrifying force of music,
as Tom Service explains
Don't like classical music? This work will change your mind
Think you don’t like classical music? Think again. Fifteen instantly recognisable, wildly enjoyable pieces that prove classical can be thrilling, funny, romantic – and unforgettable
The 7 greatest baritone roles in opera
British singer and composer Roderick Williams shares his most enjoyable operatic baritone roles
The work that got Beethoven labelled 'ripe for the madhouse'
Beethoven’s Seventh is pure rhythm and motion: a symphony of dance, drive, and ecstatic energy that feels eternally alive
Dvořák Cello Concerto: how a heartbroken composer’s lost love inspired his greatest work
A yearning for his homeland and the devastating loss of a beloved friend give the Czech’s work an almost unbearable pathos, explains Jo Talbot
A beginner's guide to the concertos of British composer Malcolm Arnold
Thomas Hardy's capture a lost musical landscape
Cheers! Ten brilliantly boisterous drinking songs
We discover which composers were partial to a drinking song or two...
Ranked: classical music's 12 most unforgettable pop-culture 'moments'
From cartoons to war films and wedding aisles, classical music’s greatest themes have leapt into pop culture, unforgettable and transformative
Ranked: the 11 best cello concertos of all time
Here is our selection of the greatest pieces ever written for cello and orchestra. Do you agree?
'She pulled her by the hair, slapping and biting' – why two famous opera divas came to blows on stage
The 7 best symphonies by Joseph Haydn
Haydn wrote 104 symphonies. Oboist and conductor François Leleux selects the seven you must hear
Ranked: the 11 most heartbreaking pieces in all of classical music
Classical music is one of the richest art forms for conveying emotion. And sadness and melancholy is right in its wheelhouse. Here is some of the most overwhelmingly sorrowful music in the classical repertoire