SCHUBERT  Fantasy in C Major, D. 760, “Wanderer Fantasy”

Although Schubert made no pretense of being in Beethoven’s class as a piano virtuoso, he pushed the envelope of keyboard sound and technique in works like the monumental “Wanderer Fantasy.” Based in part on Schubert’s song “The Wanderer,” the four-movement fantasy resembles his late piano sonatas in its formal integration and expansive scale.

DEBUSSY  Images, Book I

At once radical and traditionalist, Debussy rebelled against the ponderous academic style of establishment composers like Saint-Saëns and d’Indy, urging his compatriots to return to the “pure French tradition” that he admired in the music of Rameau. Debussy’s first book of Images, composed between 1901 and 1905, combines an homage to the Baroque master with a pair of exquisitely crafted tone poems.

DEBUSSY  Selections from Préludes, Book I

Much of 20th-century music would be unthinkable without Debussy’s innovations in harmony, form, tone color, and texture. In the 12 pieces that comprise his first book of preludes, he followed in the footsteps of Chopin, another musical revolutionary. He wrote that Chopin “was a delightful teller of tales of love and war, and he often slips away to that forest of ‘as you like it,’ in which the fairies are the sole mistresses of the mind.”

MUSSORGSKY  Pictures at an Exhibition

Mussorgsky’s highly personal and innovative voice was long obscured by well-meaning editors and orchestrators who considered his unconventional harmonies and orchestrations crude. Pictures at an Exhibition and other masterpieces can now be heard in their original state, enabling audiences to see Mussorgsky not just as a Russian nationalist, but as an authentic genius who was decades ahead of his time.