Virtuoso Transcriptions

David Stanhope

David Stanhope is an Australian conductor, composer and pianist whose career also takes in horn and bass trombone. He has led opera, ballet, film scores and orchestras across Australia, and is widely known for his wind-band and brass writing.

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) was a German composer and organist of the late Baroque. His sacred and secular music for choir, orchestra, organ and solo instruments remains among the foundations of the Western concert and church repertory.

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) was a German composer and pianist whose music stands at the centre of the Western classical tradition, bridging the Classical and Romantic eras.

Alexander Borodin

Alexander Borodin's Nocturne from the String Quartet No. 2 in D is pure lyric warmth: long-breathed melody and glowing harmonic colour that sit easily beside Schubert and Tchaikovsky.

Leopold Godowsky

Godowsky's Studies on Chopin's Études turn already demanding pieces into labyrinths of counterpoint, left-hand bravura and interlocking textures. His Passacaglia and Schubert song paraphrases share the same dense, glittering pianism.

Percy Grainger

Percy Aldridge Grainger (1882–1961) was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist. A brilliant folk-song collector and arranger, he was also a restless experimenter whose work ranged from tuneful percussion to Free Music machines that foreshadowed electronic synthesis.

Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt (1811–1886) was a Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor and teacher of the Romantic era. His vast output reshaped piano technique, invented the symphonic poem and pushed harmony toward the twentieth century.

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music.

Franz Schubert

Franz Schubert (1797–1828) was an Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. In only thirty-one years he left a vast body of work, including over six hundred Lieder, and remains among the most frequently performed composers.

Charles Villiers Stanford

Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (1852–1924) was an Anglo-Irish composer, teacher and conductor of the late Romantic era. His choral music for the Anglican tradition remains the work for which he is best remembered.

Georges Bizet

Richard Strauss

Richard Strauss wrote Lieder of lyrical sweep and romantic intensity: songs that bloom with wide vocal lines, shifting moods and the glow of late-Romantic harmony. His pages ask for firm shape, fine tonal control and real expressive colour.

Liner Notes

David Stanhope

David Stanhope is an Australian conductor, composer and pianist whose career also takes in horn and bass trombone. He has led opera, ballet, film scores and orchestras across Australia, and is widely known for his wind-band and brass writing.

Cover Photo

Ken Mills