Tristan und Isolde: Prelude und Liebestod<\/em><\/h3>\nIf you and your beloved are planning a really, really long Valentine\u2019s Day dinner \u2013 around four hours or so \u2013 then playing the whole of Wagner\u2019s Tristan und Isolde<\/em> should have the music pretty much covered. Alternatively, there\u2019s the Prelude und Liebestod<\/em>, which distils the sumptuousness of Wagner\u2019s 1865 opera into around 20 minutes or so. Opening with the famous \u2018Tristan chord\u2019, 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.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Elgar Salut d\u2019amour<\/em><\/h3>\nMusical expressions of love don\u2019t have to be long, grandiloquent affairs. Elgar\u2019s Salut d\u2019amour<\/em> 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 \u2013 \u2018Carice\u2019, the dedicatee at the top of the score, is a conflation of her two first names, Caroline and Alice.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Price Adoration<\/em><\/h3>\nGiven 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<\/em>, charm and warmth. Written in 1951, two years before her death, her Adoration<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 2<\/em><\/h3>\nThanks in part to Brief Encounter<\/em>, Rachmaninov\u2019s Second Piano Concerto will forever inevitably be associated with romance \u2013 the work can be heard through much of David Lean\u2019s 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\u2019s pompous and she\u2019s drippy, but we still find ourselves urging them to get together. In particular, it\u2019s the work\u2019s dreamy central Adagio sostenuto<\/em> that really pulls at the heart strings, both on screen and in the concert hall.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Scriabin Poem of Ecstasy<\/em><\/h3>\nWhere Laura Jesson and Alec Harvey fear to venture, Scriabin goes in headlong in his Poem of Ecstasy<\/em>. With its orchestral climaxes \u2013 screaming trumpets and all \u2013 and score markings including \u2018very perfumed\u2019, \u2018with a feeling of growing intoxication\u2019 and \u2018with a sensual pleasure becoming more and more ecstatic\u2019, it\u2019s not too tricky to guess what the Russian composer was getting at in the symphonic poem he initially titled \u2018Orgiastic Poem\u2019. One for the end of the evening, we think.<\/p><\/body><\/html>\n
","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jeremy Pound Published: Wednesday, 09 February 2022 at 12:00 am You\u2019ve 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\u2019s Day romantic supper just perfect. May we, then, suggest the following to accompany your love-filled evening\u2026? Best […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":12117,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"3"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/02\/best-romantic-classical-music-for-valentines-day-scaled.jpg",2560,1707,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/02\/best-romantic-classical-music-for-valentines-day-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/02\/best-romantic-classical-music-for-valentines-day-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/02\/best-romantic-classical-music-for-valentines-day-768x512.jpg",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/02\/best-romantic-classical-music-for-valentines-day-1024x683.jpg",800,534,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/02\/best-romantic-classical-music-for-valentines-day-1536x1024.jpg",1536,1024,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/02\/best-romantic-classical-music-for-valentines-day-2048x1365.jpg",2048,1365,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Jeremy Pound Published: Wednesday, 09 February 2022 at 12:00 am You\u2019ve 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\u2019s Day romantic supper just perfect. May we, then, suggest the following to accompany your love-filled evening\u2026? Best…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/12116"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}