The piano is the most popular solo concert instrument in Western music. One of the key reasons is the fact that it has inspired many of the greatest masterpieces in the concert repertoire. To study these masterworks and to understand their genius and lasting appeal is to know one of the greatest accomplishments of Western culture, works that give great pleasure even as they deepen your insight into the meaning of music.

The 23 works you'll study are carefully chosen to highlight the most important compositional and pianistic achievements in the solo piano tradition.

These 24 enthralling lectures by Professor Greenberg take you through more than 200 years of piano music. Beginning with the monumental figure of Bach, followed by Mozart and Beethoven, you experience the piano music of such 19th-century masters as Chopin, Schumann, and Liszt, before moving forward to visionary modernists including Scriabin, Debussy, and Prokofiev. Each lecture presents a single work in a fresh, accessible encounter with its musical substance, welcoming listeners new to concert music as well as experienced concert music lovers.

In addition to your study of the music, the lectures treat you to a rich panorama of music history. You dig deeply into the artistic and cultural environments that the compositions reflect, shedding light on what inspired these great works and how they were written. As a third layer of the course, you delve into the fascinating history of the piano itself, uncovering the ways in which the evolution of the instrument directly influenced the music that composers wrote for it.