"Never pay any attention to what critics say. Remember, a statue has never been set up in honour of a critic!" Thus said Jean Sibelius, whose 150th anniversary is celebrated in December. It’s a different situation with composers though. Sibelius himself has the most extraordinary monument erected in his honour, a sculpture by Eila Hiltunen titled Passio Musicae.
This month, we’re setting Bachtrack readers a crowd-sourcing challenge. Can you provide photographs of statues or monuments of famous composers? Here’s a list of the 50 classical composers whose works were among the most performed last year, according to our annual statistics. Simply send us your photo via social media – Twitter (@bachtrack) or onto our Facebook page. It has to be your own photograph, which by submitting you grant your consent to use on this page. As they come in, we’ll mark them off on our list and post the photos. Can Bachtrack readers find all 50 before Sibelius’ birthday on 8 December? Over to you!
Composers in bold font are those we're still seeking!
Johann Sebastian Bach
Béla Bartók
Ludwig van Beethoven
Hector Berlioz
Georges Bizet
Johannes Brahms
Benjamin Britten
Anton Bruckner
Frédéric Chopin
Aaron Copland
Claude Debussy
Gaetano Donizetti
Antonín Dvořák
Edward Elgar
Gabriel Fauré
George Gershwin
Edvard Grieg
George Frideric Handel
Joseph Haydn
Leoš Janáček
Franz Liszt
Gustav Mahler
Felix Mendelssohn
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky
Carl Nielsen
Francis Poulenc
Sergei Prokofiev
Giacomo Puccini
Henry Purcell
Sergei Rachmaninov
Jean-Philippe Rameau
Maurice Ravel
Nikolay Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov
Gioacchino Rossini
Camille Saint-Saëns
Arnold Schoenberg
Franz Schubert
Robert Schumann
Alexander Scriabin
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich
Jean Sibelius
Johann Strauss II
Richard Strauss
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Giuseppe Verdi
Antonio Vivaldi
Richard Wagner
