Romantic Piano Music Essentials

Editors' Notes There’s something profoundly intimate about a person sitting alone at the piano, caressing its keys, and extracting the most rapturous, arresting music from them. And whether you’re listening alone or with that special someone, these compositions are sure to induce a dreamy mood. In the early days of the instrument, circa 1700, composers like Bach and Mozart focused on the cozy, dynamic interplay between voices; by the 19th century, artists like Beethoven, Chopin, and Liszt were crafting rhapsodic, dramatic works whose high-register melodies brought to mind the sighs and whispers of one longing for a romantic touch. Later, Impressionists Debussy and Ravel transfixed listeners with their dreamy, jazzy chord changes and airy lyricism. Today, composers like Alexis Ffrench and Ludovico Einaudi carry the flame of a tradition built on getting listeners to step out of the world for a minute and indulge their most amorous fantasies.