Classical music that I might like?

newbie308

I have been thinking about broadening my horizons in terms of music. I grew up listening to Folk, Blues, Rock, Metal, Punk, and even a little Rap. Lately I have been questioning why I have not yet ventured into the Classical genre. I suppose it is an environmental thing. Nobody in my circle listens to classical, and I have no reference to what I might enjoy due to lack of exposure. Nobody to ask, "What classical music would someone who was raised on Rock n Roll find compelling and perhaps even enjoy?" So, if you have any suggestions, please share! Thank you!

SeleniumFalcon

Most people like Gus Holst's, "The Planets" or Stravinsky's, "Firebird" as an interesting way to begin enjoying classical music. There are same amazing recordings on Telarc of these pieces.

maximillian

Maybe try to watch in movie forms. Perhaps Fantasia (mixed), Amadeus (Mozart), and Immortal Beloved (Beethoven).

mhardy6647

FWIW, I heartily second The Planets. That Gus guy had it goin' on!
Dvorak's so called New World Symphony (Symphony Number 9) is dandy. Try before you buy -- the fourth movement

https://youtu.be/89jOPAGJq-M

I mean... there's The Ninth of Ludwig Van. Like the aforementioned Firebird, he/it kinda blew the doors off the status quo when it was written (albeit not as controversially as Stravinsky's Firebird or The Rite of Spring).

For "easy listening" - hard to beat Baroque: Vivaldi's The Four Seasons and Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik are dandy and easily digestible.

Howzabout J. Strauss -- " The Waltz King"?
Everyone knows this one, and everyone my age cannot hear it without thinking of this...
https://youtu.be/0ZoSYsNADtY

PS The scene immediately preceding the one above just may be the single best cross-cut in the history of cinema.

Clipdat

Yo-Yo Ma playing anything.

mhardy6647

^^^ magnificent stuff, Bach's cello works.

In western music, it really doesn't get any better than J.S. Bach -- but I am way biased.



Not always the easiest music for beginners, although Bach's greatest hits are probably a good place to start.

Heck, Bach's Well-tempered Clavier pieces are good, and they were student exercises.

Emlyn

People may not realize they've been exposed to classical music and know much more of it than they think they do. Many tunes used in commercials and movies are snippets of compositions from 100 or 200 years ago. In my view there's nothing more powerful and dynamic in music than listening to a full orchestra in person in a grand concert hall. Beethoven's my choice for a start, especially Symphony No. 6.

Here are some examples of tunes that may be familiar and a good starting point for digging deeper...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taIIxOZ_Zk4

PSOVLSK

https://www.amazon.com/S-M-Metallica/dp/B00EUUJ3RC

😉😁

txcoastal1

From the movies...

https://youtu.be/0rXHHKd__BQ

https://youtu.be/tysPbjturcg

kevhed72

Anything by Gershwin

jdjohn

Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt 'soundtrack' has a lot of familiar melodies.

Popular ballets like Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, and Nutcracker are usually crowd pleasers.

I also enjoy a genre called 'Court Music', which is basically a subset of the Baroque era.

tonyp063

When you consider that the "genre" extends for over a thousand years, from the simplicity of chant, plainsong and/or organum on through the 12-tone atonality of Schoenberg & Berg, the world's yer oyster.

I tend to suggest the French Impressionists (Satie, Ravel, Debussy) esp. the piano works.
The Mighty Five (Mussorgsky, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, et. al.) when well recorded, will do magical things.

msg

Yeah, the one that drew me in was Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé.
I'd heard a live rendition of the third movement, part 3. It's a ballet. Here's the funny thing about this...

As I was listening, it dawned on me that at one point I was envisioning a scene from James Bond Thunderball, that underwater hideout scene, where he fights the bad guys and sneaks in and there's more fighting. Intense. Then it hit me - hey, this is like a soundtrack! Then I put 2 and 2 together - of course it's like a soundtrack; this is the music accompaniment to the ballet - the dance, the performance of a story. A lot of it, though, just sounded like some old film score. It was neat.

So, it was ballet pieces that drew me in. Somehow ballets conjure imagery for me while I'm listening, and this doesn't happen for me with other styles of classical. I think this is the difference, and why I gravitate more toward ballet style than say something like chamber music. The other styles have their places, I do enjoy some others, but ballets seem to be my favorites. As @mhardy6647 mentions above - baroque is fun, too. Previously, that was the other style I liked best, as revealed to me by a classical violinist. But she was a mean drunk, so I don't care that she seemed to state it with derision. She also liked Puddle of Mudd, so what did she know.

I'll tell you who's a good classical dude is Phil - @Moose68Bash
Still around out there Phil?

Here's a link to the whole program
https://www.yourclassical.org/episode/2018/10/15/a-kick-in-the-pants
Here's a link to just that one piece - https://bit.ly/Juanjo-Daphnis

newbie308

Thank you everyone! This is great! I was thinking about the scene from Excalibur where Arthur is riding through Camelot and everything is bursting back to life. The music from that scene is so moving.

tonyp063

newbie308 wrote: »

the scene from Excalibur where Arthur is riding through Camelot and everything is bursting back to life. The music from that scene is so moving.

Heh.
On of my favorites.
'O Fortuna' from Carmina Burana

engie490

Wagner “Ride of the Valkyries”

Tchaikovsky “1812 Overture”

Rossini “William Tell Overture”

Mussorgsky “Pictures at an Exhibition”

Richard Strauss “Also Sprach Zarathustra”

Johan Strauss “Beautiful Blue Danube”

Tchaikovsky “Marche Slav”

Vivaldi “The Four Seasons”

Liszt “Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2”

Bach “Toccata and Fugue in D minor”

Rachmaninov “Prelude in C Minor”

Beethoven “Moonlight Sonata”

That should get you started…

txcoastal1

If you pick one like 1812, which was orchestrated around play also. You can read up on many of these, and understand each passage in song.

mhardy6647

txcoastal1 wrote: »

If you pick one like 1812, which was orchestrated around play also. You can read up on many of these, and understand each passage in song.

boom.

newbie308

@mhardy6647 gotta love Calvin and Hobbes! I appreciate all of your suggestions, too! I am looking forward to getting some time in front of my speakers, so I can start exploring the world of classical music and cannons 😁

mhardy6647

De nada.

The list @engie490 posted above is a nice collection. It is, FWIW, a collection of music that "classical" serious music" purists sometimes disdainfully refer to as warhorses. They're "warhorses" for a reason -- they're great, and broadly enjoyed. Orchestras play them because people enjoy hearing them! It's an excellent list for an introduction to a variety of "serious music".

aprazer402

To start with early Baroque classical. Composed in 1721.

Johann Sebastian Bach - Six Brandenburg Concertos

Played with period instruments.

Viking64

If it's not baroque, don't fix it.

SIHAB

PSOVLSK wrote: »

https://www.amazon.com/S-M-Metallica/dp/B00EUUJ3RC

😉😁

Not a bad idea. Maybe Symphonic Yes, Rush, Deep Purple, or Pink Floyd.

Or maybe Piano stuff like Glenn Gould, Gabriela Montero, or Maria Joao Pires...

and then their is Prog Rock...
He's a vid from someone way more knowledgable than I.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWoqqJCU_s8

maxward

First LP I bought (circa 1969): Mahler Symphony #1. For Mahler, it’s relatively short, but skip to the final movement if you’re impatient. And everything previously suggested. Should keep you busy until quittin’ time.

tonyp063

Viking64 wrote: »

If it's not baroque, don't fix it.

jbreezy5

For me, the key to getting the most enjoyment out of classical music is having at least moderately high-sensitivity loudspeakers (i.e. 90dB or higher) and sealed powered subs.

If speaker sensitivity is too low, dynamics (soft-too-loud) suffer and the sense of scale is unconvincing.

It’s also critical that the system can playback the full audible spectrum. Bass should be fast, tight, and powerful for classical music.

In addition to seeking specific classical works, keep an eye out for well-recorded labels, such as: Naim, Telarc, CBS Records Masterworks, RCA Red Seal (not Silver or Gold Seal), Chesky, etc.

I usually organize my classical stuff by label, then composer, then conductor (but that doesn’t reflect in these photos).

kevhed72

I believe someone on the forum gave me this this when I purchased a player from them. It is outstanding.

kevhed72

newbie308
I just bumped a collection of classical CDs in For Sale you may be interested in.

Dr_Wu

Lots of great suggestions here. I would only add that more modern orchestral music is also worth your time. In particular you might like Aaron Copland compositions, e.g. Appalachian Spring, Rodeo, Fanfare for the Common Man, Billy the Kid.
Oh, and Holst also composed a couple of suites for military band worth a listen.

TroyD

I got a lot to say on this topic….but for the moment, I’ll start with three pieces that are available on Tidal….

The adagio from Bruckner’s 7th conducted by Wilhelm Furtwangler and the Berlin Philharmonic (his reading of Beethoven’s 5th is amazing as well)

Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings by Eugene Ormandy (you’ll recognize this from Platoon)

The Lark Ascending conducted by Neville Marriner

If these three, listened to intently (classical demands your attention) don’t move you….there may be something wrong with you. Now, the Bruckner piece is not audiophile jewelry but get past the recording and listen to. The. Music.

Also throw in just about anything by Aaron Copland and Beethoven’s 6th Symphony as being very accessible gateway drugs to classical as well. For Copland, look for Leonard Bernstein (he and Copland were buddies) and Beethoven’s 6th I like Karajan….particularly the 1961 DG recording.

kevhed72

Ill second the Aaron Copeland motion: