Classical Music

[tweeds]

if such a term exists!

i'm a violinist and i've studied privately for about 15 years now, began with the suzuki method, took my foot off the pedal midway but in the last two years i've begun to realise how stupid i was to throw away my early start, and put more work into developing my technique and repertoire. at the same time, i've been pursuing interests in jazz very actively, as well as playing in a friend's rock band backing his fantastic singing voice.

but amid all that flash i think i have a very fundamental respect for classical musicians and composers. to my mind, few people have mastered the piano as successfully as rachmaninoff and liszt, and the best pianists today (in whatever genre) inevitably possess a similarly high standard of technical competency, which allows them to apply themselves to playing jazz, rock, etc.

some my favourite violinists include hilary hahn, nigel kennedy and david oistrakh. glenn gould is my favourite madman, followed closely by kennedy. beethoven's 9th, performed by john eliot gardiner and the ORR, as well as stravinsky's le sacre du printemps (rite of spring) are two great orchestral works that i constantly conduct while in the bathroom.

would love to hear other musicians chime in about your influences, stories, etc.

[viv1984viv]

I only have an amatures knowledge of classical, only really because I have a close friend who is a classical pianist/composer, i really like phil glass, gyorgy ligeti, glen gould for documentary footage, prokofiev, rachmaninov, chopin, bartok, all the big names. I have heard many great great pieces in the early hours of the morning, I also saw ( and I cant remember his name, aaaaaghhh ) ......... perform, rachmaninovs piano preludes, or a nice selection, not all of em.

I sometimes see a lot of paralelles between post rock and classical, like phillip glass, maybe its just me, like in structure and composition etc

I love talking to my friend about music, I ask him to accurately transcribe venetian snares etc, its a fascinating chat, hes very conservative in his tastes and cant understand pop, not even from a gould perspective, yet im pretty contempory in my tastes, my academic area being contempory art. So far we've boiled it down to a major difference..... I like pop/art/whatever not for what it is but for how its done, where its done, context specific, position. He however appreciates for what it is, virtuosity, themes, structure, ......

E.g. - its why smells like teen spirit is significant for me but not for him.

[tweeds]

haha that's a clash that happens to me as well. my background is purely classical and when i first came into contact with jazz it was a huge shock because at first glance, mendelssohn, beethoven etc don't seem to have much to do with improvisation, groove and such standard devices in popular music.

but i think this divide is purely imaginary - listening to beethoven i can in fact pick out basslines that wouldn't be out of place in a jazz ensemble, and likewise jazz pianists playing with a very traditional feel, bill evans and chick corea, could very well fit into the cadenza of a mozart concerto. in fact chick has recorded 3 mozart concertos with improvised cadenzas with bobby mcferrin conducting.

glenn gould is the shit. truly nuts.

[viv1984viv]

my friend finds jazz really hard to get to grips with, it messes with his head, I thinks its because he listens to understand whats going on and with pop and classical he can do that but with jazz and world music also because of his background and his approach he finds it baffling.

heh, have you ever seen the footage of gould trying to do the beethoven piano pieces? Its so funny, he sits down rips off a flawless performance, then would say to the shattered technician, "no! something wasnt right, ill do it again" perform the piece exactly the same, flawless then say "ok, that was ok, but id like to try it with the microphone there" and this would go on for hours, and he would go over the slight chord changes and pieces of melody constantly winding the tape back and forth over and over again over the same bit of the the piece but on umpteen different recordings, of course all sounding the same because he recorded a flawless performance almost everytime! But he found a problem wth everything, mad perfectionist.

He was almost rude n interveiws as well, didnt really like talking about music!

Another thing that stands out in my mind is watchinga berstein lecture ( on dvd ) about how music has primal roots, like mama is 2 positives majors but the childish nur nur nu nur nur taunting is unresolved and teasing, and so threatening, like the jaws theme.... obviously im the worst person to describe this. But yeah, fascinting stuff.

And oscar peteson ( i think ) talking to andre previn about ghost notes.....

[jake snake]

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[mspark]

I love classical. My girlfriend is an operatic vocalist, so lately Ive been listening to Aida by Verdi. Great story and fucking amazing opera to see. Bach is the shit as well as Chopin's piano concertos. Beethoven string quartets in A minor and F minor are amazing. There are parts that sound like heavy metal they are so hard.

[julianREE]

i don't listen to classical music that often, but i do enjoy playing it. i play double bass for a youth orchestra, and it's a great feeling when you play a piece and everything matches together.

as for composers, i love debussy. i'm more into the contemporary and romantic composers, because classical composers songs are so structured, and sound a lot like the same thing imo.

[Double D]

Music student right here <-

As per usual, I am ever fixated on Bartok and Shostakovich's string quartets and generally not doing enough listening for my actual courses, which currently seem to be revolving around mind-bashingly dull analysis of the second Viennese school's output, which generally involves a lot of numbers and wandering attention spans.

[insidertrading]

tchaikovsky, chopin and debussy. holla!

[Crillz]

On HEAAAAVVVY rotation lately.

[Charlie Delta]

I really enjoy some Satie pieces.

I am also still of the opinion that th piano it my favorite classical instrument.

[Blackplatano]

Im a huge mahler fan. Mahler #3 and #5 are my shits.

I don't like classical as much as romantic, but I do like some mozart like 40th symphony and the magic flute. I second the bach.

[isoform]

:cough: Rach :cough:

not a music student and i don't know much about classical music period... i just listened to what my aunt used to play on the piano like Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Bach, Chopin, etc. so, yeah, i have a soft spot for piano and violin concertos--and the depressing and/or quiet and not too giddy bits by Mozart are amazing...

i don't have the patience (or know of a good resource) to explore outside of my mother or aunts' collections. :/ i know what they have will be cool, outside of that there's soo much and it really takes time to listen thru pieces. a part of why i really respect Beethoven is because he gets right into it pretty much as soon as the piece starts, rather than 5 minutes or even many more minutes later.

:shrugs:

[jake snake]

I really enjoy some Satie pieces.

I am also still of the opinion that th piano it my favorite classical instrument.

it's never in tune...

[mono14]

I listen to alot of pieces by Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and Chopin. I listen to more jazz though...

[tweeds]

http://www.superfuture.com/supertalk/showthread.php?t=23380

glenn gould playing bach is great stuff.

things that are always on and off on my media player:

prokofiev piano sonata no. 7...love the precipitato movement (played by pollini/gould/argerich--three different styles and each masterful in their own way, although the argerich one is a touch too spammy for my liking)

beethoven symphony no. 9--Gardiner/ORR's recording

stravinsky le sacre du printemps

bach 6 sonatas and partitas--apart from the ciaconna, the first sonata's fuga is one of my favourites. polyphonic genius of bach leaves me amazed each time. milstein and hilary hahn's versions are probably my favourite, but recently i heard another one played on a period instrument, and it knocked me over. sans crashes and vibrato, and transposed down a semitone, the piece takes on a completely different character.

blackplatano - i love the wind/brass parts on the no. 40! everyone knows the string motifs but the harmony is really driven by the underlying parts.

[Pandemonium]

Chopin's Fantasie-Impromptu, opus 66 in C sharp minor.

Enough said.

[airfrogusmc]

Beethovens 9th & 6th.

Paganinis Concerto for Violin No 1 in D major

[airfrogusmc]

I really enjoy some Satie pieces.

I am also still of the opinion that th piano it my favorite classical instrument.

CD Bachs Brandenburg concertos. The 4th was adapted for harpsichord. I know not piano but......

[tweeds]

for those bach and glenn gould lovers

_1ain4qftoM

[Corbin Law]

henryk gorecki symphony no. 3 is maybe one of the most emotional peices of music i ahve ever listened to in my entire life.

[denimdestroyedmylife]

i love gorecki

i like 20th century classical, but i guess that is for another thread, huh?

[snugglepony]

i like 20th century classical, but i guess that is for another thread, huh?

nah, here's fine:

[mellowfellow]

I took a music class while i was in college and I learn to appreciate classical music. But i guess the "classical" music that I am into the most is more modern and is probably file under the electronic/ambient genre in a music store. I like gonzales, max richter, goldmund, hauschaka, sylvain chauveau, ect.

Susumu Yokota: Symbol is a great electronica album with classical songs. He sampled most of the classical artists that you guys have mentioned: Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Mahler, Offenbach, Beethoven, Mussorgsky, Chopin, Bizet, Brahms, Prokofiev, Bach, Schumann, and Rachmaninoff. Check him out if you have a chance.

[jake snake]

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[Double D]

I don't get the fixation on Satie either. It just gives me memoies of Classic FM, a radio station entirely pandering to middle aged philistines who feel the should get into classical music but lack the experience of music to listen to and appreciate the complexities of Bach fugues or the climaticism of an entire Wagner opera. Everything has to have a catchy melody and be no longer than 10-15 minutes, hence the fact that Barber's fucking bastard Adagio for bloody Strings gets played 5 times a day. Now BBC Radio 3, there's a classical station...

A little rant about Barber's Adagio: The adagio is by far the hardest form to write, due to it's incredibly slow tempo. Even composers the calibre of Beethoven wrote few, and often towards the end of their careers. Evidently Barber is a composer not in the category, and it shows when a great opening melody is followed by one of the most meandering and outright stagnant development section I've heard in my life.

[tweeds]

barber's adagio --nice rant, Double D.

friend was telling me about a jazz violinist who was improvising with a mozart concerto, adding his own cadenzas, ornamentation...a little like chick corea/bobby mcferrin's version of the mozart piano concertos (no. 20 and 23, i think it was). scope for exploration!

[jake snake]

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[Vitamian]

I like opera. I also like the complex Paganinni and Bach.

Satie is the embodiment of the middle-class appropriation of the fringe figures. No doubt, a musical man who wore white velvet suits and kept umbrellas in his small apartment would be received well today by the suburbanites.

He'd probably be labelled as a sex offender for no reason.

[mrjuby]

I also like the complex Paganinni

caprice no. 24 is amazing. and vivaldi's la primavera is crazy. i took listening to music in university. too bad i didn't finish the course.