Read on to discover these 7 toe-tapping, rhythmic classical works, full of energy and swing...
Florence Price Symphony No. 3
Despite being composed during the Great Depression, this piece by Florence Price is full of life and energy. The third movement is a Juba – a dance that was popular among enslaved people forced to work on plantations and involved a lot of clapping and stamping. Price takes an African American melody and sets it in a very rhythmical way. The result is quite different from the music of other composers of that period.
John Adams Short Ride in a Fast Machine
This a lot easier than some of John Adams’s other works, such as the Harmonielehre, but it takes endurance: you start at a very fast pace that never lets up. Adams wrote it to evoke the feeling of being in a fast car at night: it’s short and sharp. The whole thing is over in less than five minutes, but it grabs you and takes you with it. It’s so exciting.
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Heitor Villa-Lobos Bachianas Brasileiras No. 9
When I was preparing for this article, I first thought of JS Bach and his use of counterpoint. Then I thought, ‘No. Everybody would speak about Bach. I’m going to avoid him.’ But the nearest thing to Bach, for me, is Villa-Lobos. The Bachianas Brasileiras No. 9 for chorus and strings is a very short prelude and fugue, combining Brazilian folk and popular music with an intense rhythmic complexity. It’s a piece few choirs can sing. But when you find a choir that can, it’s a wonderful thing.
Alberto Ginastera Cantata para América Mágica
The rhythms in this piece are not what you would associate with Europe: instead, they evoke the cultures of the Mesoamerican people. Alberto Ginastera opens by taking material and words from the Popol Vuh, a religious text of the Mayan people. Yet aspects of the compositional approach are very European, not least the way that he structures the pitch and rhythm of one of the movements like a palindrome. The level of expression is phenomenal.
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Olivier Messiaen Quartet for the End of Time
In the sixth movement of this piece, ‘Dance of Fury for the Seven Trumpets’, Olivier Messiaen reveals his Catholic faith. In the Book of Revelation, the seven trumpets are a series of punishments to be inflicted on Earth because of human sin. But the work also reveals a different context – Messiaen wrote it as a prisoner of war in a German camp in 1941. A lot of that comes from the quaver pulse, which is constantly changing: Messiaen lengthens it slightly, by adding a dot to the note, before returning to the original pulse. It has a sense of driving fury.
Gabriela Ortiz Concierto Candela, Concerto for percussion and orchestra
Gabriela Ortiz’s homeland of Mexico borders the Caribbean to the southeast, and you can hear that tropical influence here: it’s very sexy, with a hip-swinging quality. But the really interesting movement is the Toccata, in which the percussionist plays solo. It’s flamboyant, virtuosic, colourful and highly rhythmic. ‘Candela’ in English means ‘fire’ but it also has a slang meaning, as in: ‘Watch out! That little boy sometimes behaves, and sometimes he doesn’t. He’s candela.’ It’s an apt description of this piece.
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Béla Bartók Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion
For Bartók, the freedom to use rhythm without restrictions was an absolute priority. And that is particularly apparent in the slow movement of this 1937 piece, which epitomises his ‘Night Music’ style. Here, he uses rhythms in all sorts of original ways to imitate the sounds of the outdoors at nighttime and the animals that you would typically hear in the darkness. The result is a piece full of exciting and unusual colours that evokes the feeling of walking through a forest in the dark.
Who is Odaline de la Martinez?
In 1984, the Cuban-American composer-conductor Odaline de la Martinez became the first woman to conduct at the BBC Proms. She went on to champion female composers, starting a record label, Lorelt, to promote their music. In recent years, she has written an operatic trilogy on the slave trade, inspired by her native roots in Afro-Cuban drumming. In March 2025, Lorelt releases piano concertos by Julia Perry and Doreen Carwithen, with soloist Samantha Ege and Martinez conducting.