As the modern piano evolved over the course of the 19th century, its expressive range increased. Many composers soon understood its potential as a vehicle for intimate and very personal expressions of emotion. They graciously provided us with a repertoire of extraordinarily affecting pieces of romantic piano music.
Felix Mendelssohn so loved this genre that he wrote eight volumes of solo piano Lieder ohne Worte, a genre invented by his sister, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel. So clearly, composers loved writing their most intimate music on the instrument, so here is the definitive list of the most romantic piano music ever written.
Best romantic piano music
Josef Suk: Píseň Lásky (Love Song) Op. 7 No. 1
This passionate declaration of love by a young composer in his late teens has been a firm favourite of mine since I discovered the score in a secondhand music shop in Prague in the mid-1980s.
Immensely popular in Suk’s own lifetime, it has enjoyed many different arrangements, and is now more often heard in a version for violin and piano than in its original form as a solo piano piece.
Its carefree romanticism is all the more poignant in the light of the darkness that entered Suk’s music after the death of his wife Otilie, Dvořák’s daughter, aged only 27.
Zdeněk Fibich: Lento (Poème) from Moods, Impressions and Souvenirs (No. 139 Op. 41/IV)
While Suk was composing his six early piano pieces, the musical world in Prague was scandalised. Unfortunately for Suk, he was at the centre of it. His compatriot, Fibich, had been conducting an affair with a beautiful and talented pupil, Anežka Schulzová, who was 18 years his junior.
The romance gave birth to one of the most extraordinary collections of piano pieces ever written. Fibich’s Moods, Impressions and Souvenirs consists of almost 400 short piano pieces. They are written as a kind love diary, including expressions of feeling, recollections of events that they shared and tributes to almost every part of Anežka’s body. By far the best known of all these pieces is the warm and nostalgic Poème. It has lived on in many different kinds of arrangements, and became a smash hit in 1933 with the title My Moonlight Madonna.
Robert Schumann arr. Liszt: Widmung (Dedication)
Technically, one of Schumann’s best-loved lieder may not belong in this list of romantic piano music. That said, many of Liszt’s arrangements of other composers’ works are classics of the piano repertoire. With the touch of Liszt, these piano adaptations have become works of genius in their own right.
The breathless rapture of Schumann’s Widmung has an inward quality that intensifies the passion of the song. It was written as a wedding present for his beloved wife Clara. Liszt, in his piano transcription, brings this latent passion into the foreground. The melodic line is embellished with dramatic, swirling arpeggios and massive, triumphant chords covering the entire span of the piano. It is hard to imagine that the Schumanns would have approved of Liszt’s treatment of the song, but pianists can’t resist this outrageous and glorious reworking. This is romantic piano music at its best.
Franz Liszt: Liebestraum (Love’s Dream) No.3
Liszt took similar liberties in his piano arrangement of a song, ‘O Lieb, so lang du lieben kannst’, but on this occasion the original was his own. This impassioned piano piece has become Liszt’s best-known work and has far outstripped the song in popularity.
The poem that he set in the original song is an exhortation to love unconditionally, until separated by death. This is a sentiment echoed in Elvis Presley’s Today, Tomorrow and Forever!, his 1963 version of the Liszt. A comparison of the piano and voice versions provides an insight into Liszt’s extraordinary imagination for the expressive possibilities of the piano as a solo instrument.
Granados: Quejas ó la Maja y el Ruiseñor (Laments, or The Maiden and the Nightingale) from Goyescas
The haunting atmosphere of The Maiden and the Nightingale hovers between bleak despair and almost angry passion. The plaintive melody, based on a Valencian folk song, is coloured by piano writing of exceptional subtlety and originality. It also features some of the most evocative birdsong effects in Romantic piano music canon. Granados instructed that this piece should be played ‘not with the grief of a widow but with the jealousy of a wife’. It’s an intriguing recommendation given that he dedicated the piece to his own wife Amparo.
Fritz Kreisler arr. Rachmaninov – Liebesleid (Love’s Sorrow)
Anyone who hasn’t heard Kreisler’s own performance of his famous encore piece should rush to hear it without delay. The irresistible sweetness of his violin sound and his schmaltzy portamentos might cause pianists to despair of the limitations of their own instrument. Fortunately, help is at hand with Rachmaninov’s reinterpretation of his friend’s piece, which brings a whole different flavour to the Liebesleid.
The sugary melody is still present, but Rachmaninov adds an acerbic wit and a dazzling display of pianistic flourishes that are inimitably his own. His performance of Liebesleid should not be missed either.