Classical Music anyone?
 

Anybody else ever listen to any classical music?

Favorite composer or piece?

I'll take Tchaikovsky.
Shostakovich and Gershwin as runners-up, I think.

We were sort of hoping our son would play the cello but he wants to play the drums.
:o


An album I highly recommend (which, actually, is not Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, or Gershwin) is Vivaldi's Cello

I liked Tchakovsky a lot when I was younger, but have gravitated to Beethoven more over time among the romantic era composers.

On balance, however, Bach is the master for me. His work transcends conscious perception and connects with something spiritual and mysrtical that is very difficult to articulate.

The other night we went to the SF symphony to hear a program of all Mozart. This was a family oriented production (although unlike us, very few people acutally brought childern, to my surprise; must be a San Francisco thing). A feature of this concert series is that the conductor, Michael Tilson Thomas, talks about each piece beofer it is played in an informal but informative way. At one point he told this very long, involved joke, which was sort of amusing. But the part that I liked was one of the set-up lines. In the joke a musician dies and gets to heaven where he meets St. Peter. He asks St. Peter how all the great compsoers are doing in Heaven. St. Peter says they are doing very well. As an example, He says that Bach is living with his two wives and all his children and that he has taken to compsing 1000 voice fugues. St. Peter then comments that no one else really understands them but God seems to enjoy them quite a bit. The joke goes on to a punchline about Mozart having weekend passes to hell. Not a great joke, but I thouhgt it amusing and insightful that Bach was considered a composer of such quality and complexity that the comment that he might write music that only God would understand and enjoy could bne used as a premise for a joke among serious musicians. Very appropriate from my point of view.

Yes, I love classical music. Zeppelin, AC/DC, CCR, etc.

yo-yo ma. bach.

Hooked on Classics. :)

Favorite composer, at least for now (my favorite anythings seem to change with the seasons): Chopin. Trying to learn Rondo a la Mazur, beautiful piece. Far and away my favorite piano composer.

Also love Rachmaninoff. Piano Concertos 1, 2, 3.

Beethoven's 9th as far as entire symphonies go--but that's hardly a unique pick.

Lately have been loving listening to Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, i think it's Opus 35. Love the 3rd movement, listen to it almost daily.

I also really like Aaron Copland, esp Appalachian Spring.

Many, many others but those are current faves.

Percussion is a great instrumental family. :)

I'm officially jealous. They broadcast the San Francisco Symphony out here and it's clearly a world-class group. And I love Tilson-Thomas. All we have is the Oklahoma City Philharmonic which is, well, um...

On the other hand, we have lots of kids at the family concerts!

I'll always be a fan of the Romantic era. But my favorite Bach is probably Brandenburg...

They've got some great videos of Yo-yo Ma on Youtube.

A couple from when he was a little kid. Also the duets with Bobby McFerrin.


Yes, Creedence is good, too!

I'm particularly fond of Debussy ... my wife plays several pieces a lot.

We mostly only listen to classical on the Weekends -radio, itunes internet feeds etc. When I'm working on a design project I often prefer classical to other music.

Somehow, I never have appreciated Mozart very much. Learning the piano sonatas as a kid, I found it a lot of technical fluff. He does write some gorgeous melodies though.

There a lot of pieces that I love. These are the ones that I keep coming back to.
Bach- Goldberg Variations (love the way these evolve from a simple Aria that was originally a teaching piece.) Any of the unaccompained violin or cello partitias. Clean lines, sophisticated form and content, meditatively beautiful.

Beethoven- any of the piano sonatas, esp. the later ones. Also, the Grosse Fugue (string quartet)- talk about hearing Beethoven's inner demons in this one.

Chopin- (esp. the Ballades) the most pianistically friendly composer, I haven't met a pianist who doesn't love to play Chopin.

some Rachmaninoff preludes- though I find him to get a little bombastic sometimes.

love the harmonies in Debussy and Ravel

love the rhythmic energy in Ginastera