Classical music has long been the voice of the soul’s deepest yearnings—love, awe, grief, devotion. But sometimes, it speaks through gritted teeth.
Anger may not be the emotion most readily associated with the concert hall, but some of the repertoire’s most explosive moments are fueled by fury: rage at injustice, rejection, mortality, betrayal, or simply the searing pressure of being alive. These works don’t whisper—they roar.
Below, conductor Domingo Hindoyan guides us through seven classical compositions where emotion crosses into defiance and then into full-blown wrath. Whether it's a father’s fury erupting after his daughter is kidnapped, or a composer railing at God and mortality in music he would not live to complete, each piece captures an aspect of anger that’s deeply human, yet artistically transcendent.
Sometimes the rage is grand and theatrical, sometimes icy and internalised. One composer’s resentment over unrequited love spirals into a drug-induced hallucination. Another channels quiet rage into lyrical melodies that mask a looming death. In one searing aria, the pain of betrayal is met not with revenge but a heartbroken cry of “Why me?”
Through these pieces, we witness how anger—often so hard to contain or express in life—can be sculpted into something cathartic, thrilling, even beautiful. These are not just musical outbursts; they are complex portraits of emotional extremes, rendered by some of the greatest minds in music history.
Turn up the volume, and prepare to feel every pulse.
Angry music: seven works that seethe with rage
1. ‘Cortigiani, vil razza dannata’ ('Courtiers, vile, cursed race!')
by Giuseppe Verdi
This aria from Verdi's opera Rigoletto arrives as Gilda has just been kidnapped by the Duke’s courtiers and Rigoletto, the court jester and Gilda's father, turns against the Duke. Until this point, he has felt plenty of bitterness, but has held it inside – only revealing it indirectly through jokes.
But this is the first time that he lets it all out, and the way that Verdi handles this outpouring is fantastic, with a real sense of aggression in the voice, and this beautiful moto perpetuo in the strings. You can feel the emotion bursting from Rigoletto and he sweeps the audience up in that emotion with him.
Check out the anger in ‘Cortigiani’:
2. Scherzo from Symphony No. 9
by Anton Bruckner
This is not the folksy Austrian scherzo that we might expect from Bruckner. This is something really ferocious, with an anger that comes from deep inside the composer. Bruckner was very religious, and I see this music as part of a conversation with God.
But whereas other movements in this symphony are more celestial, this one seems to deal with the anguish of being alive; the frustration of making mistakes here on earth, and of thinking, ‘What could I have done differently?’ Which is unsurprising, coming as it does from a musician who was totally insecure.
3. Violin Sonata No. 9, ‘Kreutzer’
by Ludwig van Beethoven
It’s not surprising that Russian author Leo Tolstoy took the ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata as a starting point for his famous novella about love, death and anger. There is so much rage in this piece of music: the moto perpetuo, the harsh chords, the violent pizzicati, the sudden contrasts, the way that Beethoven uses the half tone as a kind of dissonance.
When I was young and played this on the violin, I took great pleasure in interpreting its anger. At the time, I hadn’t read the Tolstoy story. Now that I have, I think I’d play it even better.
Have a listen to the first movement below, where the energy becomes ferocious, bordering on violent:
4. Symphony No. 6
by Gustav Mahler
Often viewed as a fight against death, this is probably the most dramatic and tragic symphony ever. It’s full of sobbing melodies and the last movement is particularly famous because of its three hammer blows, which respectively represent Mahler’s problems at the Vienna Opera, his issues with his wife Alma (pictured) and the heart condition that would eventually kill him. For superstitious reasons, the third hammer stroke sometimes isn’t performed. When I conducted the piece, however, I did include it. And I’m still here.
Here are those famous hammer blows:
5. ‘Death and The Maiden’
by Franz Schubert
Sometimes, even when we feel angry, we remain diplomatic, while on the inside we are burning. And that is exactly the kind of anger we find in the second movement of this string quartet. It describes a dialogue in which a maiden begs the figure of Death to pass her by.
She is fighting against Death, but not with a hammer, or with forceful rhythms. Instead, she does it through lyrical melodies. It’s a passive kind of anger, and it’s also autobiographical given that, when Schubert wrote this piece, he already had the syphilis that would kill him.
6. 'Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath’
from Hector Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique
Berlioz wrote his Symphonie fantastique to express the frustration of unrequited love: the kind of frustration that drives you to take opium, have hallucinations and hate the world. The result is full of extreme effects, not least the glissando in the strings, the use of bells, the demonic-sounding clarinet and, of course, this Dies Irae motif at the climax. It’s an extravagant expression of anger and totally revolutionary for its time, written in 1830 – just two years after Schubert died.
7. 'Vissi d'arte' ('I lived for art')
from Giacomo Puccini's Tosca
This moment – just before Puccini's Tosca kills the villain, Baron Scarpia – represents another type of anger: ‘Why me? I’ve been so good in life’. It’s a beautiful, lyrical piece, full of pathos. But a minute later, she kills with her own hands.
It’s like those moments when you are alone at home and reflect on all the bad things that have happened to you, and the next day you emerge out of yourself and want to kill someone. But, of course, compared to Tosca, we are lucky.
Who is Domingo Hindoyan?
Domingo Hindoyan began his music training as a violinist and member of the Venezuelan musical education programme El Sistema, before studying conducting at the Haute école de musique de Genève. He is now chief conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and principal guest conductor of the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, and has worked with ensembles ranging from the Orchestre National de France to the Dresdner Philharmonie.
All pics: Getty Images