Classical music for focus or relaxation

“The fifth of the "12 Danzas españolas" by Enrique Granados got the nickname of "Andaluza", after the southern region of Spain, for its melody evoking the genre of flamenco music. Composed originally for piano, and arranged here for harp, the left hand's part mimics the sound of a guitar. It is followed by Baroque composer Giuseppe Tartini's joyful trumpet concerto. "Gesänge der Frühe", or "Songs of the Morning", by Robert Schumann are among the Romantic composer's last works. Dedicated to writer Bettina von Arnim, these pieces for solo piano are "dawn-songs, very original as always but hard to understand," wrote Clara Schumann. It is followed by the work of Japanese composer Rentarō Taki, with his "Moon over the Ruined Castle", inspired by the ruins of Aoba Castle and Aizuwakamatsu Castle, and a choral work by Rebecca Clarke, "Weep you no more, sad fountains", which echoes Elizabethan music... Also in tonight's mixtape is a piece composed for the 1980 French animated film "The King and the Mockingbird", directed by Paul Grimault, about a ruthless king in love with a shepherdess. Love is also at the heart of "Erwin und Elmire", an opera by Princess Anna Amalia of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, a patron of the arts and a composer herself, who worked with the poet Goethe for the libretto of this operatic work. We finish with a reinterpretation of Bach, for accordion and guitar, with his "English Suite No. 3", before the emblematic "March of the Women" by Dame Ethel Smyth, which served as the anthem of the Women's Social and Political Union, and as an anthem for the Suffragette movement more generally, being one of Emmeline Pankhurst's favourites... _________________ Producer: Julien Rosa”