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Brahms wrote two concert overtures, the celebratory Academic Festival and this, as the name implies, the not quite so celebratory Tragic Overture:

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Schumann‘s musical realisation of Byron’s Manfred – dark, troubled, and with just a whiff of sulphur and the supernatural:

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Bright sunlight and dark passions. Bizet capturing the essence of Spain:

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Even darker passions. The motif of a cruel fate is the driving force of Verdi‘s overture:

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Celibidache shows how Wagner‘s Vorspiel should be done:

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