You’ve lit the candles, have the champagne ready and the oysters are on ice. Now all it needs is a little classical music to make your Valentine's Day supper just perfect. May we, then, suggest the following pieces of romantic classical music to accompany your love-filled evening…?
Best romantic classical music inspired by love
1. Fanny Price: Adoration
Given the prejudice that she encountered throughout her career, on account of both her race and her gender, one can assume that the American composer Florence Price was made of tough, gritty stuff. Despite this, her music regularly displays an abundance of joie de vivre, charm and warmth.
Written in 1951, two years before her death, her Adoration implies a loving fondness built up through the years rather than the full fire of youthful passion. Though Price wrote the four-minute work for solo stringed instrument and piano, there are lovely arrangements for string ensemble and for organ.
We named Florence Price one of the best female composers ever and one of the greatest black composers of all time.
2. Richard Wagner: ‘Träume’ from Wesendonck Lieder
In 1849 Richard Wagner and his wife Minna fled Germany to stay with his patron Otto Wesendonck and his wife Mathilde. Although he later denied it, Wagner and Mathilde appear to have fallen deeply in love, causing a 10-year separation between Wagner and his wife.
Wesendonck Lieder, songs written to the words of five poems by Mathilde are some of his most beautiful compositions, and he himself said ‘I have done nothing better than these songs.’ My favourite of these songs is 'Träume', because it floors me every time. Here's the great Jessye Norman drawing out all its emotion and intimacy.
3. Edward Elgar: Salut d’amour
Musical expressions of love don’t have to be long, grandiloquent affairs. Elgar’s Salut d’amour does the trick in just two-and-a-half minutes. We know from various cryptic messages left on his manuscripts that Elgar could be a soppy old soul, and this touchingly simple work for violin and piano was given by the composer to Alice, his wife to be, as an engagement present in September 1888.
It couldn't be more personal: ‘Carice’, the dedicatee at the top of the score, is a conflation of her two first names, Caroline and Alice. Romantic classical music at its soppiest.
4. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet
The most famous love story of all has inspired many a composer, from Berlioz and Gounod to Prokofiev and, in the guise of West Side Story, Leonard Bernstein.
Sure the most lushly romantic take on Shakespeare's great romance, however, has to be Tchaikovsky’s fantasy-overture of 1886. Though the work’s 20-or-so minutes include flashing swords and, of course, a mournful finale, by far the best known moment of Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet is the gloriously sweeping love theme at its heart, a staple of film scores and TV adverts over the years.
- Six of the best: musical settings of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
- The best classical music inspired by Shakespeare
5. Wagner (again): Tristan und Isolde: Prelude und Liebestod
If you and your beloved are planning a really, really long Valentine’s Day dinner – around four hours or so – then playing the whole of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde should have the music pretty much covered. Alternatively, there’s the Prelude und Liebestod, which distils the sumptuousness of Wagner’s 1865 opera into around 20 minutes or so.
Opening with the famous ‘Tristan chord’, this is a wonderful wallow in the rich orchestral sound that depicts the infatuation of the two title characters, incurred by drinking a love potion. Perfect with a glass (or several) of heady red, this is a sumptuous piece of romantic music to pop on in the background of any Valentine's dinner.
- Six of the best... productions of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde
- Vote now for your favourite classical music releases in the BBC Music Magazine Awards
More best romantic classical music
6. Sergey Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 2
Thanks in part to the film Brief Encounter, Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto will forever inevitably be associated with romance – the work can be heard through much of David Lean’s 1945 film, as Laura Jesson (Celia Howard) and Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard) meet by chance at Carnforth Station and begin a friendship that forever teeters on the brink of full-blown romance.
OK, so he’s pompous and she’s drippy, but we still find ourselves urging them to get together. In particular, it’s the work’s dreamy central Adagio sostenuto that really pulls at the heart strings, both on screen and in the concert hall.
7. Alexander Scriabin: Poem of Ecstasy
Where Laura Jesson and Alec Harvey fear to venture, Alexander Scriabin goes in headlong in his Poem of Ecstasy. With its orchestral climaxes – screaming trumpets and all – and score markings including ‘very perfumed’, ‘with a feeling of growing intoxication’ and ‘with a sensual pleasure becoming more and more ecstatic’, it’s not too tricky to guess what the Russian composer was getting at in the symphonic poem he initially titled ‘Orgiastic Poem’. One for the end of the evening, we reckon. See if you can catch the particular mood Scriabin was looking to evoke, below.
8. César Franck: Piano Quintet
When César Franck composed his Piano Quintet he was 57, and had been a professor at the Paris Conservatoire for some years. He developed strong feelings for his organ and composition student, Augusta Holmès.
However, he had competition from many others who had fallen in love with her, including his fellow French composer Camille Saint-Saëns, who had proposed to her several times. Franck was married, so couldn’t act on his feelings, so instead poured his emotions into the Piano Quintet, a work dedicated to Saint-Saëns.
Trouble was, the latter walked off stage after playing the piano part at the work's premiere. The story goes that he hated the Quintet's endless modulations to such a degree that he stormed off the stage, ignoring both the applause from the audience and the Franck's offer of the manuscript in thanks for his magnificent performance. None of which should detract from the immense passion at the heart of Franck's work.
9. Gabriel Fauré: ‘L’hiver a cessé’ from La Bonne Chanson
The overarching theme of these choices seems to that composers cannot seem to be faithful! Gabriel Fauré spent the summer with the banker Sigismond Bardac and his wife Emma, a soprano. Fauré fell completely in love with Emma, despite the fact that she went on to marry Debussy. Emma did, however, go on to work closely with Fauré, singing new material for him each day. He dedicated this set of songs to her.
Best romantic classical music: broken hearts and court cases
10. Gustav Mahler: Adagietto from Symphony No. 5
This was famously written as a declaration of love to Alma Schindler, whom Mahler would soon marry. She was excellent at getting married – and also consequently pretty good at having affairs. However, this piece was composed at the beginning of their relationship before the affairs began.
The conductor Willem Mengelberg, a close friend, annotated in his score of the Fifth Symphony: ‘This Adagietto was a declaration of love to Alma! In place of a letter, he sent her this in manuscript form, not adding a further word.’
11. Johannes Brahms: Intermezzo Op. 118 No. 2
The whole Brahms / Clara Schumann did-he-didn’t-he thing will probably never definitely be answered, but there’s no question there was a lot of love and respect between them. Brahms’s Six Pieces Op. 118 were dedicated to Clara and this Intermezzo in A is one of the most beautiful pieces in the set.
‘My Beloved Clara, I wish I could write to you as tenderly as I love you and tell you all the good things that I wish you. You are so infinitely dear to me, dearer than I can say. I should like to spend the whole day calling you endearing names and paying you compliments without ever being satisfied.’
12. Leoš Janáček: String Quartet No. 2, ‘Intimate Letters’
Janáček’s Second String Quartet was written towards the end of his life, and in it he reflects on his long friendship with Kamila Stösslová, married and 38 years younger than him. They exchanged over 700 letters during their friendship, and it is these which give the work its title.
‘You stand behind every note, you, living, forceful, loving. The fragrance of your body, the glow of your kisses – no, really of mine. Those notes of mine kiss all of you. They call for you passionately…’
13. Hector Berlioz: Un Bal (A Ball) from Symphonie fantastique
When he was 24, Hector Berlioz went to a performance of Shakespeare's Hamlet, where he fell distractedly in love with the actress Harriett Smithson. He sent her love letters which she ignored. At a further attempt to capture her attention, Berlioz poured his broken heart into the Symphonie fantastique.
Smithson later listened to the piece, realised he was rather talented, and married him the following year. Unfortunately, they probably should have left their relationship within the brilliant symphony because the marriage became increasingly miserable and they eventually separated.
14. Robert Schumann: Kreisleriana
Incredibly, Robert Schumann composed Kreisleriana - a dedication to his wife Clara - across just four fertile days in the year 1838. At this point in their relationship, Clara had accepted his offer of marriage and they were in the process of fighting her father, who was opposed to the union. Eventually they took him to court, the judge ruled in their favour, and the happy couple married the day before Clara’s 21st birthday.
In the end, Schumann dedicated Kreisleriana to his fellow Romantic composer Frédéric Chopin, who apparently commented favourably only on the design of the title page!
15. Benjamin Britten: Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo
Composed in 1940 for tenor and piano, this was Benjamin Britten's first full song cycle for his partner, the tenor Peter Pears. It was Britten's first song cycle in the Italian language, setting texts from Michelangelo's sonnets. Exploring themes of love, beauty, and devotion, Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo reflects Britten and Pears's deep artistic and personal connection.
Each of the seven songs in the cycle captures a different emotional nuance, from passionate longing to philosophical reflection, showcasing Britten’s sensitivity to text and his ability to craft expressive vocal lines. The piano accompaniment plays a crucial role, providing both harmonic depth and dramatic contrast.
