How to read a program

A concert program can look like a page of code: Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67. Allegro con brio. Andante con moto. Every part of that line means something plain, and once you know the pattern you can read any program in the country, including the ones on this site.

The title

Most classical works are named by their type and a number, not by a title: Symphony No. 5, Piano Concerto No. 2, String Quartet No. 14. The number counts that composer's works of that type in the order they were published, so Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is simply the fifth symphony he wrote. When a piece does have a name, such as the "Pastoral" or the "Emperor", it usually came from a publisher or an audience rather than the composer, and it appears in quotation marks for that reason. Tone poems, overtures and ballets have real titles because they are about something: Don Juan, The Firebird, Romeo and Juliet.

The key

"In C minor" or "in D major" names the home key, the note the piece gravitates toward and the scale built on it. You do not need to hear it to enjoy the concert, but it is a rough guide to mood. Major keys tend to sound bright or settled; minor keys tend to sound darker, more restless. A symphony "in C minor" that ends in C major, as Beethoven's Fifth does, is telling you a story of struggle arriving at daylight. Composers also had favourite keys with particular colours, which is why two pieces in D major by the same composer often feel related.

The catalog number

Op. is short for opus, Latin for work, and Op. 67 means the 67th work a composer published, more or less in order of writing. Some composers published haphazardly or not at all, so later scholars numbered their music instead, and each scholar's initial became a label: K. for Köchel's catalog of Mozart, BWV for Bach, D. for Schubert (Deutsch), Hob. for Haydn (Hoboken), S. for Liszt (Searle), WoO for a Beethoven work without an opus number. The number is an identifier, nothing more. Its only use to you is telling two similarly named pieces apart, which is exactly why this site keeps them.

The movements

Under the title you will usually see a short list of three, four or five lines, often in Italian: Allegro con brio; Andante con moto; Scherzo: Allegro; Allegro. Those are the movements, the separate chapters of the work, each with a pause before the next. The Italian words are tempo and character markings, the composer's instruction to the players: Allegro is fast and bright, Andante is at a walking pace, Adagio is slow, Presto is very fast, Vivace is lively, Largo is broad and slow. The tags after them refine the mood: con brio, with spirit; con moto, with motion; ma non troppo, but not too much; cantabile, singing. A symphony usually runs fast, slow, dance, fast. A concerto usually runs fast, slow, fast. Knowing that lets you feel where you are in the piece, and it tells you when the work is over so you know when to clap.

The soloist line

In a concerto the program names the soloist beneath the piece, with their instrument. The concerto exists to show that person off, and the orchestra's job for the next thirty-five minutes is to play with them and against them. If the program lists a cadenza, that is a passage near the end of a movement where the orchestra stops and the soloist plays alone, sometimes something the composer wrote and sometimes something the player improvises or borrowed.

The order of the evening

A standard program has a shape: a short opener of eight to fifteen minutes, then a concerto, then intermission, then the symphony or the big work. The opener is often the newest or least familiar piece, placed first so that the audience hears it fresh. If the program ends with something by Mahler or Bruckner, expect the second half to be long and the first half to be short, or to be the whole concert.

Arrangements and excerpts

Words like "Suite from", "Overture to", "Selections from", "arr." or "orch." tell you that you are hearing part of a longer work, or a version of it. An opera overture is the instrumental opening of the opera, played on its own. A ballet suite is the best fifteen minutes of a two-hour ballet. "Orch. Ravel" after Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition means Mussorgsky wrote it for piano and Ravel arranged it for orchestra, which in that case is the version everyone knows.

Where this site helps

Every concert page here lists the program with each work linked to its own page, and that page gives the movements, the usual running time, what to listen for, and a recommended recording to hear first. If a program lists a piece you do not recognise, tap it. The glossary covers the Italian words and the rest of the vocabulary, and terms are underlined and explained wherever they appear in our notes.

Written by OrchestraFinder. Dotted words open a short definition; the full glossary is here.