Following on from the Beautiful Tracks thread, I thought of a few classical pieces that would fit the bill, but that thread went in a different direction, and anyway classical music is such a broad category I think it deserves a thread of its own. So, if you have a favourite classical tune or composer or if you've heard a piece on TV or films that you don't know the name of, post it up on here. Extra points if it's quite obscure.
The description 'classical' can be fairly loose - anything from opera (Bizet's Pearl Fishers duet holds a special place in my heart), film (Schindler's List) or even video games (the sig from Fallout 3 and the piano version in 4 are favourites of mine) is fine.
To kick off, the first one I thought of for the Beautiful Tracks thread was The Gadfly Romance by Shostakovich (try the second movement of his second piano concerto too) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0Xfyn0-YhU
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Thread: The Classical Music thread
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12-11-2017 10:07 AM #1
The Classical Music thread
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12-11-2017 10:18 AM #2
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This, for me.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/ksV5pORvWXE
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12-11-2017 11:28 AM #3
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I like both of the above. At the moment I'm listening to Chopin piano stuff, and I'm particularly fond of this one (my daughter plays it when she's home from uni): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_6APTb3RNQ
I'm also listening to Holst's military band suites, and this is my favourite bit (from the First Suite in Eb): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7EZEEuTmu0
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12-11-2017 12:08 PM #4
Chopin's Opus 10 etude no. 3 is my favourite piece.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpiJbQvBP8A
I also love the music of Johann Strauss II.Last edited by snooky; 14-11-2017 at 01:04 PM.
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12-11-2017 01:24 PM #5This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
My own favourite composer has to be Beethoven - the Egmont overture is stirring stuff and his odd-numbered symphonies are just brilliant (I got the organist to play Ode to Joy at my wedding). Favourite pieces are harder to identify - there's just so many of them. One I've been listening to a lot recently is Borodins 'In the Steppes of Central Asia' and one that makes me grin while being awestruck by the musicianship is Monti's Czardas (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMOHAcjlIWs ).
I also think a lot of the 'mainstream' stuff - e.g. Beethoven's fifth, The Blue Danube Waltz, The William Tell Overture - are played so much that people tend not to hear the subtleties in them any more. They're all excellent pieces of music if you listen to them rather than just hearing.
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12-11-2017 03:39 PM #6
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12-11-2017 06:42 PM #7
Hungarian Rhapsody No 2 from Liszt. The piece was so far ahead of its time I find it hard to believe he composed it back in 1850 odd.
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12-11-2017 07:56 PM #8This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
For vocal or choral pieces, I will chip in with Allegri’s “Miserere” and Geoffrey Burgon’s “Nunc Dimittis”.
I like Shostakovich a huge amount and there is a different kind of beauty to be found in his symphonic works. The first movement of his Tenth Symphony, especially as it builds roundabout halfway though is perhaps my favourite, but it’s also difficult to match the third movement of his Fifth. The piece as a whole has been interpreted in conflicting ways over the decades and I choose to interpret ithe third movement as a portrayal of the horror of Stalin’s persecution of the population.
Final recommendation is something from the same time and also very ethereal, but completely different altogether - Vaughan Williams’ “Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus”. It’s simply sublime.There's only one thing better than a Hibs calendar and that's two Hibs calendars
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13-11-2017 09:21 AM #9This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
Incidentally, don't think I've forgotten about your slur on Rachmaninov - there's nothing wrong with a bit of overblown romantic guff, in fact it's the only thing that makes Brief Encounter remotely watchable. So just to annoy you here's the sugary one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNyQz7SiPQY. I think I prefer the first movement to the rest of it tbh.
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13-11-2017 06:19 PM #10This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
Sticking with Rachmaninoff, I would give him a lot of credit for one of his few choral works, The Liturgy of St John Chrysostom. This Liturgy is the most important, or one of the most important, masses in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Rachmaninov’s rendering of it is beautiful. For some reason it’s a piece I tend to reach towards in November and it gets a few good plays up until Christmas.There's only one thing better than a Hibs calendar and that's two Hibs calendars
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14-02-2018 06:18 PM #11This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
“The climax of joy is not when you’re through a new symphony, but when you are hoarse from shouting, with your hands stinging from clapping, your lips parched, and you sip your second glass of beer after you’ve fought for it with 90,000 other spectators to celebrate the victory of your favorite team.”
His favourite was was then called Zenit Leningrad.
I've become cautious of reading too much into the supposed political agenda of Shostakoch's music. The official interpretation of his tenth symphony is that is a epitaph following Stalin's death. It's not.
For one thing, it was composed in 1951 when Stalin was very much alive (compare it with his 5th string quartet) and for another the music includes his musical initials - d, e flat, c and b - which always (that's ALWAYS!) indicates he's writing about personal matters.
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14-02-2018 08:30 PM #12This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
I have Ian MacDonald's biography of him though I've yet to read it, it's on the list though. My understanding is that it tries to strike a balanced and nuanced account that reflects the complexity of living as an artist in those times but ultimately comes down on the side of him being a dissident who hid his satire of the authorities in the more bombastic elements of his works. The last movement of the fifty symphony springs to mind as an example but I kind of like the fact that no one can really be too sure.There's only one thing better than a Hibs calendar and that's two Hibs calendars
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14-02-2018 09:04 PM #13
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Surpised no ones mention Philip Glass..'Opening' is such a gorgeous piece of music. Currently just playing his work on shuffle each morning without actually looking at what a lot of it is. Just allowing it to flow through me on my walks to work
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14-02-2018 10:12 PM #14This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
I used to listen to them a lot more in the past than I do now, maybe time to revisit them. I think my favourite Glass work was his music for ‘Candyman’.There's only one thing better than a Hibs calendar and that's two Hibs calendars
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12-11-2017 07:58 PM #15
That bit of opera in Shawshank Redemption gives me goose bumps!
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13-11-2017 09:31 AM #16This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
Probably my favourite aria from my favourite opera is the very dark 'Va Tosca' from ....Tosca. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3lPxwct2sk
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13-11-2017 10:00 AM #17
Dvorak's 8th Symphony is a big favourite. Amazing melodies, punchy brass in the orchestration. Nobody comes close to Mozart as a composer IMO, but I love Dvorak's music and outside of Mozart probably listen to his works the most.
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13-11-2017 10:40 AM #18
Rachmaninov. Anything by Rachmaninov!
Love his piano works (prelude in C# minor is utterly amazing, I once spent about 2 years trying to master it, and got nowhere near!) and his orchestral stuff is fantastic. It seems a bit 'overplayed' now, but the Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini is one of my go-to pieces of music, it's fantastic. Think it's variation 18 (beautiful strings) that gets me every time...
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13-11-2017 12:08 PM #19
Was listening to Strauss' Casanova a while back and had forgotten how good Anni Frind's Nun's Chorus was. Been listening to it regularly recently.
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20-11-2017 04:24 PM #20This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
My turn to be accused of overblown romantic guff - - I'm a sucker for 'Mi chiamano Mimi' and 'O soave fanciulla' from La Boheme and hide no shame in admitting to a fondness for 'Un bel di vedremo' from Madama Butterfly
I'm a big Puccini fan and would rather listen/see his work than Verdi, for example, notwithstanding the quality of what Verdi wrote. Tosca is outstanding and like so many of Puccini's works it tells a tale that is essentially an eternal truth and is therefore easily translatable into different settings and eras - a truly timeless story.
My favourite however is La Fanciulla Del West, sadly under-performed nowadays. Some of the duets are sublime and the mostly male arias are sumptious. It's a shame the opera isn't performed more often, I believe it was Puccini's favourite of all his compositions.There's only one thing better than a Hibs calendar and that's two Hibs calendars
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21-11-2017 01:36 PM #21This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
On your other posts, I thought there would be more mention of film music on this thread. As Sylar says the Lord of the Rings Trilogy is terrific. I'd add Ennio Morricone to his list of composers (not necessarily the spaghetti western stuff, although I quite like that too). Also the Godfather main and love themes and Dunbar's theme from Dances With Wolves (done with bagpipes here- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgZxdVJH8fc).
On Wagner, I like his music a lot, but I've never managed to watch one of his operas all the way through - they do seem rather hard work to me.
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22-12-2017 10:39 AM #22This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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14-02-2018 06:57 PM #23
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This thread is a fantastic read and I'm finally going to spend 5 minutes and contribute.
Firstly, I've been a bit of a hi-fi enthusiast for the last 35 years and I've slowly gotten into classical music. I now have a fairly sizable collection that I've gathered over the years. I still buy and sell vinyl as a hobby and attend auctions at least once a week. Classical music is ever so difficult to move on and I've ended up with hundreds of albums that have been part of job lots. I have a few favourites.
Rossini's 'Barber of Seville' is an outstanding work and there's a 1948 recording by Tito Gobbi at Covent Garden that surpasses all other versions. Absolutely fantastic and if I had a time machine then I would pay good money to have been in attendance.
I like the cello as an instrument and I'm currently getting increasingly admiring of Jacqueline du Pre. She and I are hitting the right chords. As an aside, I picked up a small job-lot of her works a few weeks ago and there was an unplayed 78 in the lot by her mentor, William Pleeth. It's an unplayed disc from 1944 and I can't find any mention of it on the web. I have it for sale on eBay but I'm sorely tempted to 'break the seal' and plop it on the turntable. Here's the listing: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/112815234...84.m1555.l2649
I also had the pleasure of seeing a Latvian soprano. Inesa Galante at a performance in London. It was at a small venue just off Kensington High Street and she blew me away. Her rendition of Ave Maria by Vavilov had me in tears. I might look it out shortly and give it another spin.
Over the years I've been to some outstanding performances at the Royal Festival Hall. You can normally get tickets at reasonable prices for top-notch performers. The Barbican is another good venue with fantastic acoustics.Last edited by Sergey; 14-02-2018 at 07:41 PM.
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03-01-2019 03:00 PM #24
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Opera Piece to listen to.
Va Pensiero from Nabucco.
Was tipped to be the Italian National Anthem at one time.
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23-04-2020 08:59 AM #25
Dug this thread up to let opera lovers know that Met Opera are streaming different performances every day through the lockdown - https://www.metopera.org/user-information/nightly-met-opera-streams/
It was Tosca last night and it was excellent. I would have posted this earlier, but I only found out about it myself recently.
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23-04-2020 04:47 PM #26This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
I had quite a lot of stuff saved on my Q Box, but it is starting to run dry, especially since Sky Arts cut one of their channels and prioritised ‘popular’ music. Before they did that I genuinely struggled to have enough space to record everything. Now it’s a case of there maybe being something once a fortnight.There's only one thing better than a Hibs calendar and that's two Hibs calendars
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24-04-2020 05:53 PM #27This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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15-02-2018 07:11 AM #28
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I might be slightly biased in that I performed in it in my younger years..
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25-11-2017 07:42 AM #29This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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12-11-2017 08:01 PM #30
Also.. Related to the thread... I remember when Classic FM started up... When driving in heavy traffic I always switched over to it..... Made me a better driver.... Peace man!
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