Read on to discover the BBC Music Magazine team's 10 top pieces of music to help you feel calm and relaxed...
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 5, ‘Emperor’ – Adagio un poco mosso
As a violinist, there are plenty of contemplative middle movements of string concertos that I find soothing. But it’s the middle movement of Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ that really helps me to a state of muscle-relaxing peace: the warm, glowing strings of the opening, the plucked steps down in the cellos, and the entry of the cool piano, delicately tracing a scale-like passage from the top of the keyboard. For the most beautifully pure piano and velvety strings, look no further than Krystian Zimerman’s 2021 interpretation with the London Symphony Orchestra under Simon Rattle, recorded during the pandemic. Music to help us through dark days, then and now. Charlotte Smith
Brahms: Intermezzo, Op. 118 No. 2
Whenever I need to soothe churned-up emotions, I turn to Brahms’s Intermezzo in A major, Op. 118 No. 2, a tender jewel for solo piano. Sometimes I’ll play this short piece myself, comforted by the gentle rock of its opening melody, the familiar warmth and weight of its rich harmonies. It falls so well under the fingers. On other occasions, I’ll listen to one of its many wonderful recordings, relishing the music’s shifting moods: joyful, bittersweet, lyrical, reverential. Always, as the final cadence resolves to a beautifully spaced A major chord, I find myself calmer. Rebecca Franks
More classical pieces to bring calm to your life...
Ludovico Einaudi: I Giorni
I find plaintive, meandering solo piano music really grounding ,and Einaudi’s album I Giorni has brought me so much pleasure and peace since I was first handed a copy of it 23 years ago. I would often put it on at night, to calm a racing mind or simply soundtrack my troubles. Lying there, hearing the title track or Melodia Africana I, would somehow put me instantly at ease. I would imagine the piano keyboard and visualise just how each phrase was formed; it represents a kind of musical mindfulness for me, and it still works. Michael Beek
Enescu: Octet – Lentement
Written in 1900 when he was 19, Enescu’s Octet seems to represent a forgotten corner of music history. But there’s nothing dusty about it – instead it’s sparkling, transparent, a tiny message of hope. The wistful Lentement third movement, coloured with Romanian folk modes, is full of calm and consolation. It opens like a gentle stream burbling in the shallows, stilling restless thoughts. Gradually the music swells and blazes – sun trying to emerge from the dark clouds – then it dies down again. Gidon Kremer’s 2005 recording has a distant, muted acoustic that adds to the soothing effect. Amanda Holloway
Haydn: Cello Concerto No. 1 – Adagio
If you are ever stuck in a traffic jam, or waiting far too long for that non-existent bus to turn up, just zone into Haydn's beautiful Adagio to calm your frayed nerves. It’s simply a glorious outpouring of expressive melody from first bar to last. We hear it initially on the strings and it is then taken up almost seamlessly by the solo cello whose opening entry, a discreetly sustained long note, is a stroke of compositional genius. That such wonderful music remained unknown and unperformed for nearly 200 years, until its rediscovery in the early 1960s, is quite remarkable. Erik Levi
More classical pieces to bring calm to your life...
Mahler: Symphony No. 3 – Langsam, Ruhevoll, Empfunden
I’m a born fidget, and don’t really do ‘calm’. That said, with a half-decent single malt to hand, a luxurious late-evening listen to the Langsam, Ruhevoll, Empfunden final movement of Mahler’s Third Symphony may just about get me to sit still and relax for a short while. Those three German words mean, roughly, ‘slowly’, ‘tranquil’ and ‘with feeling’, a potent combination in helping me to lose myself in the music as, over 20 gloriously unhurried minutes, we build up to the most radiant of all endings. Simply lovely. And then I get up and find something useful to do around the house. Jeremy Pound
Morales/Jan Garbarek: Parce Mihi Domine
A choir sings a pure, round chord. Instinctively, I breathe in. A saxophone enters, just above the voices, barely audible. I breathe out, feeling an intense sense of calm. The saxophone grows in confidence, tracing a line above the choir. Soaring up, it turns, darts, circles and resolves. It reaches a dizzying, dissonant height, piercing my very soul, and then swerves away again. In one way the sound is primitive, visceral, triggering feelings that have made it a chillout playlist favourite. In another, it’s intellectual, a dialectic between opposites: comfort/pain; darkness/light; togetherness/solitude; earth/sky; past/future. The many copies and clichés that the Hilliard Ensemble and saxophonist Jan Garbarek’s Officium album spawned on its release in 1994 were never as meaningful or original and, all these years later, it still holds its grip on me. Ariane Todes
Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians
It’s half a century since Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians was written, and its relevance has only increased in the decades since. In today’s frenetic, borderline-chaotic world, ‘Music for 18’ offers a reassuringly orderly vision of how change can happen organically, without convulsive or violent interventions. Its timbres tingle with quietly spoken sensory and emotional nuances, its pulsing rhythms evolving slowly in a measured and democratic fashion. The effect is cosseting and immersive, soothing the frazzled senses and somehow renewing hopefulness for the future. My recommended recording? The Colin Currie Group. Terry Blain
More classical pieces to bring calm to your life...
Schubert: Wandrers Nachtlied, D768
Goethe’s poem has received settings by composers from Loewe to Ives and Howells, but the very simplicity of Schubert’s version lifts it into another sphere.The reflective poem is a short description of a night-time, natural scene that leads to a final, poignant reminder of mortality. In his version – just 14 bars long, with mostly straightforward harmony and a few delicate gestures depicting the slight movements of nature – Schubert encapsulates the nocturnal stillness and the listener’s sudden, inescapable contemplation of the death of the song’s creators, the artists performing it and oneself too. The effect is movingly consolatory. George Hall
Tallis: Spem in alium
Whenever I listen to this English Renaissance choral masterpiece, I am enveloped in a serene, otherworldly soundscape. Written for no fewer than 40 voices, Tallis's ten-minute work creates a vast, shimmering texture where harmonies ebb and flow like waves. The slow, cascading vocal lines blend seamlessly, evoking in me a sense of weightless suspension. It’s complex, but somehow never feels chaotic – each voice moves with precision, forming this kind of celestial tapestry of sound. The gentle rise and fall of dynamics only adds to the meditative quality, leaving me with a profound sense of peace and transcendence. Steve Wright