Anyone into classical music?

Now that I have my Troyens opera DVD, I’m really starting to take a look at it.

It’s quite amazing. Berlioz is the inventor of the modern orchestra. I wonder if anyone’s studied orchestration or has opinions of what type of instruments create what type of mood.

Three words: Me :heart: Bach!

And I do mean JS himself.

You would like old farts.

Carmen (Bizet), Liszt, Rachaminoff, Tchaikovsky? There is no one else!

Bach’s Cello Suites by Casals are nice too. The well-tempered clavier. blah!

Berlioz was a mad genius. At one time I had 17 different recordings of Symphonie Fantastique. Each one captured a different nuance of the piece. Even today, when I hear a church bell toll it reminds me.
He was a mad genius.

Berlioz is amazing. Which version of Fantastique do you like?

The ones I still listen to are by Paray and Gardiner. Gardiner has done lots of Berlioz work with period instruments; the sound is much different, as Berlioz wished. If you’ve you’ve looked at the Treatise, you know how particular he was about instrumentation.

That’s why I’m so excited that Gardiner did Les Troyens. I’m listening to it now. Just finished ripping the DVD audio so I can play it on my iPod. Quelles jours d’ivresse.

Very lucky to sing in the chorus of Berlioz “Grande messe des mortes” along with 4 brass bands, full symphony orchestra, huge chorus and 16 extra timpani for the “Dies Irae”. The loudest and scariest piling up of sound that I’ve ever heard - really capturing the ‘day of wrath’ as the old latin prayer suggests.
Contrary to my normal resction I favour H. von Karajan’s recording of the fantastic symphony over others but my favourite piece is his “Romeo + Juliet” symphony conducted by Seiji Ozawa. The descent into hell from “Damnation of Faust” is quite mad but wonderfuly so with all the spirits of hell chanting nonsense sounds invented by Berlioz to represent the language of devils!

I don’t care for Classical. I much prefer the Baroque composers…especially Albinoni, Telemann and Vivaldi.

Not for me - too cold and intellectually atrophied. I prefer my music to be self-absorbed, overwrought and disturbing, like my coffee. My favourites are Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, Mahler, R. Strauss, Schrecker, Pftizner and early Schoenberg - the Austro-Germano-Slavic-Megalomaniac school.

Amazing. Did ya know about the recording of Te Deum done in a cathedral?

I really recommend checking out Paray’s Berlioz recordings. Even just for the heck of it. I’m not a big fan of slow conducting these days. I’ll take Toscanini anytime. Paray also does an amazing Danse Macabre on the Paray Conducts Dances of Death CD.

Gardiner’s Berlioz are mostly done with period instruments. Fantastique was even performed in the same hall were it first debuted.

Berlioz is unbelievable. He cried with such passion when his father read him Virgil in his youth. Look at his memoirs? When he first saw Shakespeare, he couldn’t sleep for 2 weeks. He walked the streets of Paris dazed by the new world that’d been opened up.

Did ya know, Liszt did a transcription of Fantastique? It would have been amazing to hear he himself perform it, the greatest virtuoso that ever lived. I have the CD by Leslie Howard. blah. :slight_smile:

Amazing. Did ya know about the recording of Te Deum done in a cathedral?

I really recommend checking out Paray’s Berlioz recordings. Even just for the heck of it. I’m not a big fan of slow conducting these days. I’ll take Toscanini anytime. Paray also does an amazing Danse Macabre on the Paray Conducts Dances of Death CD.

Gardiner’s Berlioz are mostly done with period instruments. Fantastique was even performed in the same hall were it first debuted.

Berlioz is unbelievable. He cried with such passion when his father read him Virgil in his youth. Look at his memoirs? When he first saw Shakespeare, he couldn’t sleep for 2 weeks. He walked the streets of Paris dazed by the new world that’d been opened up.

Did ya know, Liszt did a transcription of Fantastique? It would have been amazing to hear he himself perform it, the greatest virtuoso that ever lived. I have the CD by Leslie Howard. blah. :)[/quote]

Nice Mr Howard did all the recordings but they are all boring

Not for me - too cold and intellectually atrophied. I prefer my music to be self-absorbed, overwrought and disturbing, like my coffee. My favourites are Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, Mahler, R. Strauss, Schrecker, Pftizner and early Schoenberg - the Austro-Germano-Slavic-Megalomaniac school.[/quote]

Well…I [i]do[/i] like Shostakovitch’s 11th Symphony (The Year 1905)…ever see The Condemned of Altona?

Nice Mr Howard did all the recordings but they are all boring[/quote]

:slight_smile: exactly. I think there’s a women somewhere now doing the complete Liszt cycle, maybe in New York. There was a performance in Sydney of the transcription a few months ago. I found out the day it was to happen, too bad!

There might be a few other recordings. Horowitz is one of the few who could have done it justice. We need a new Horowitz!!!

A new Horowitz?

Pletnev??

[quote=“llama_lout”]A new Horowitz?

Pletnev??[/quote]

I think I have a few Pletnev’s. I haven’t given them a careful listen yet. If you’ve heard the Tchaikovsky no.1 with Horowitz and Szell, you’ll know there is no other. :slight_smile:

I thank my parents for instilling in me a love of classical music. In today’s era of mass produced music performed by idiots who can’t even play their instruments properly (let alone right a decent point of music), there is nothing more alternative in musical tastes than classical music.

I guess I’m a big fan of the German composers: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler, Handel, Haydn (well, I guess he’s technically Austrian).

Recently have been getting into Grieg, Dvorak, Sibelius, Rachmaninov, Debussy.

All in all, wonderful stuff. Though I have a hard time finding some quality recordings in Taiwan. I usually order most of my stuff from Amazon.

[quote=“TheGingerMan”]Recently have been getting into Grieg, Dvorak, Sibelius, Rachmaninov, Debussy.

All in all, wonderful stuff. Though I have a hard time finding some quality recordings in Taiwan. I usually order most of my stuff from Amazon.[/quote]

What recordings do you like of each? I listened to a bit of those computers, a lot more of Rachmaninoff. Know about the jazz version of Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun by Deodato? He also does an amazing Thus Spoke Zarathustra, both on the Prelude album.

It’s nice a lot of the romantic pianists generally play the most popular pieces.

Myself, my favorite performers are Horowitz, Richter, and Gilels. Gilels rach 3 is wonderful. I think I have his tchaikovsky 1 but I haven’t listened to it much yet.

For pieces I keep listening to:

Liszt no.2 - Richter/Kondrashin/LSO. The studio recording also became available a few years ago.

Tchaikovsky no.1 - Horowitz/Snell. I also have the two Toscanini’s. looking for Horowitz/Walter. I also have Gilels, van Cliburn, Richter, Argerich maybe, Rubinstein (w the grieg), but i haven’t tried them much

Rach no.2 - Richter.

Rach no.3 - Horowitz (Reiner i think), Gilels, used to listen to Argerich. have at least 8+ more recordings including the 10 CD box set of Rach himself.

I think Liszt no.2 and Tchai no.1 are the only ones I listen to multiple times a week.

Paray has done Debussy’s prelude. I’ve been looking for it for ages.

My new goal is to find a favorite Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I’m liking Blomstedt.

Les Troyens is truly Berlioz’s masterpiece. Oh My God. I need opera karaoke! I find myself singing to it in the streets of Taipei.

Cassandra, o how I love you.

I don’t know if I would go all the way as to say he invented it, but he certainly did a lot with the orchestra he used. His bassoons in the march in Symphonie Fantastique are killer, as well as the strings and the brass in the last movement. Yeah, that whole piece just blew me away when I listened to it in college.

I’m currently listening to the Beethoven String Quartets (I think I’m always listening to those), Ligeti, Bach Fugues, and, now again, Berlioz :slight_smile:

one of the gems of my CD collection is “Rachmaninoff Plays Rachmanininoff”. i love hearing the original composer play his own pieces. just something about it that’s so much more earthy and real than hearing a “piano champion” play them.course, that’s only possible with composers who made it as far as edison’s time and for later composers. i also HAD a “Gershwin Plays Gershiwn” that was very revealing as far as Gershwin’s amazing playing ability in addition to being a great composer.