June 3, 2025

20 Free Audio Guides to Classical Music

One of the best ways to learn about classical music is through audio learning. Skilled lecturers can take you through a piece of classical music piece by piece highlighting different significant elements of each work. That’s just what American conductor Gerard Schwarz has done with his educational Musically Speaking series:

Over 20 Musically Speaking Conductor’s Guides to Famous Classical Music Pieces

These guides are available to listen to for free on Spotify. On each album in the series, Schwarz provides a full recording of the work, followed by an hour-long lecture that incorporates excerpts from the music. He starts each lecture with a short introduction of the composer followed by a breakdown of their work. As he highlights different components of the piece, he’ll play a short piece of the music he is talking about. For example, here’s a review of his:

Conductor’s Guide to Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons

In this free title from the Musically Speaking Conductor’s Guides Series, American conductor Gerard Schwarz breaks down one of Antonio Vivaldi’s most famous works. The album starts off with a full performance of Vivaldi’s four violin concerti The Four Seasons. Then Schwarz gives you a brief biography of the prolific Baroque master Vivaldi. He follows this introduction with a breakdown of each concerto for each season, movement by movement. Vivaldi wrote four sonnets to accompany the seasons, and Schwarz uses these sonnets to paint a picture of what the music was attempting to convey. Short pieces of The Four Seasons music are interspersed throughout Schwarz’s lecture. At the end of the lecture, Schwarz describes how Vivaldi’s work was rediscovered in the 1920s after fifteen volumes of his work were discovered in a monastery. Enjoy this brief introduction to one of the most famous works of classical music of all time.

Here are the other guides you’ll find in the series:

Conductor’s Guide to Handel’s Water Music in Three Suites Complete

Conductor’s Guide to Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 & Symphony No. 41

Conductor’s Guide to Stravinsky’s Petrouchka & The Rite of Spring

Conductor’s Guide to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 & Piano Concerto No. 4

Conductor’s Guide to Strauss’ Thus Spake Zarathustra and Dance of the Seven Veils from Salome

Conductor’s Guide to Schumann’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in A Minor & Symphony No. 3

Conductor’s Guide to Schubert’s Symphony No. 5 & Symphony No. 8

Conductor’s Guide to Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman, Das Rheingold, & More

Conductor’s Guide to Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique & Les Troyen: Royal Hunt and Storm

Conductor’s Guide to Brahms’ Symphony No. 4 & Variations on a Theme by Haydn

Conductor’s Guide to Bartok’s The Miraculous Mandarin & Concerto for Orchestra

Conductor’s Guide to Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain & The Three-Cornered Hat

Conductor’s Guide to Haydn’s Cello Concerto in D Major & Symphony No. 103

Conductor’s Guide to Prokofiev

Conductor’s Guide to Copland’s Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid, & Fanfare for the Common Man

Conductor’s Guide to Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, No. 5, and Orchestral Suite No. 3

Conductor’s Guide to Chopin’s Impromptu in C-sharp Minor, Nocturne in E-flat Major, & More

Conductor’s Guide to Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9, In Nature’s Realm, & Carnival

Conductor’s Guide to Debussy’s Prelude, Nocturnes, & La Mer

Conductor’s Guide to Liszt’s Les Preludes & More

Conductor’s Guide to Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3 & No. 4

Conductor’s Guide to Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 & 1812 Overture

Enjoy these guides to some of the greatest classical music of all time! And if you enjoy these, you might also enjoy the titles found in this blog post:

Free Introductions to 27 Great Operas on Audio