I kinda know my way around classical music a little, but I could use some guidance - I'm familiar enough with my composers, but there are so many recording of each piece of music from so many different composers and conductors with differing arrangements, that my head spins and I have no idea where to begin.

I'm not a huge fan of symphonies, but here's some stuff I have that I really like to illustrate my tastes:

Bach's Brandenburg Concerto is one of my favorite pieces, along with Handel's Water Music.

I also dig old dance music, such as the Hungarian dances by Brahms and Liszt, and German dances by Mozart.

So baroque chamber music seems to be your favored genre. Go to your local library and look for pieces like Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, Bach's The Art of the Fugue (I have the the Emerson String Quartet doing it, and it's outstanding) and his four Orchestral Suites. That should be enough to get you started.

I do have a good version of Four Seasons, but I've never heard Art of the Fugue - I'll have to check it out. Thanks.

^ Don't forget to give Bach's Orchestral Suites a spin...

check out some Bartok...
I like this recording:
http://www.amazon.com/Bart%C3%B3k-Mi...2878404&sr=8-8


Oh and another tip. Classical only refers to an era of music, I've gotten chewed out for this before. Here are the rough era's of music that many call "classical":
Medieval (476 – 1400)
Renaissance (1400 – 1600)
Baroque (1600 – 1760)
Classical (1730 – 1820)
Romantic (1815 – 1910)
20th century (1900 – 2000)
Contemporary classical music (1975 – present)

This info is just if you're ever talking to any serious music historians/teachers, they will get on your case about this stuff, and also about calling anything "songs," if you don't know what it is call it a "piece."

I don't claim to be very familiar, unfortunately, with classical music, but my fave baroque is Respighi's "Ancient Airs and Dances: Bergamasca". Beautiful piece of music.

I love piano music, without accompaniment. Dvorak's "Humoresque, Op. 101 #7" is great, as is "Moments Musicaux D780 #2" by Schubert and the series "Kinderszenen" and "Kreisleriana" by Schumann. The latter two composers made some of the best piano music of all.

getting into piano, i think the nocturnes by chopin are magnificent

I guess this as good a place as any to share the lyrics of Drunk Horse's "The Bitch is Bach":

Let me tell you 'bout a man
A Well-Tempered man
Wrote the book on music
and procreation
Had two wives and nineteen kids
He was a church-goin' man but knew how to live
Orphan child to the head of Leipzig
He was the wild one with the powdered wig
Art of the Fugue to the master of counterpoint
When the man touched his organ he rocked the joint

Every note he wrote he dedicated to the Lord
and hoped the Lord dug that harpsichord
He kept on as death reared it's head
The man still composed on his death bead
His final words in some in-law's hand:
"Before Thy Throne, My God, I Stand"
Here's a little talk for those about to rock
Let's tip our hats to the master Bach

I like my classical music, "oprah style"....Heavy and dark.

Wagner

Wikipedia has a well-written entry on "Classical Music" that's worth reading to get some bearings.

The eras of the music that are by far the most popular are the Baroque era, the Classical era, and the Romantic era so I recommend researching the composers from those eras first.

Try Dvorak's "New World Symphony" as it has been the blueprint for a lot of what you've been hearing from Hollywood since the 70's.
-ringding-

No I haven't, but I'll look into him. To be honest, I love "Classical" music but my knowledge of who's who and who plays what is somewhat limited.


Thanks. I'll read this when I have some time.

It was actually a DVD that got me started on listening to classical music again. It was the limited edition of The Pianist ($9.99 used at Gamestop), that contains 2 discs plus the soundtrack. I put on the soundtrack as a lark, and was hooked. It's almost all Chopin, so it's very different from the Baroque stuff you mentioned, but I think you'll like it. If you ever come across this set for a good price, I highly recommend it, since the movie's pretty good too

I also like Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin, the Goldberg Variations, and the Well-Tempered Clavier.

Heh. Yeah, I actually got that 3-disc version of The Pianist when it came out (it's a Canadian import, btw), and it's transfer is improperly converted from PAL to NTSC, but the soundtrack cd is nice, though I'm not a huge fan of just piano by itself.

I did get a cd of baroque music played on guitar by John Williams (the guitarist, not the Star Wars composer), and it's really good.

a great classical music based soundtrack is the 1991 film Tous les matins du monde under the musical direction of Jordi Savall, there is a Hyrid SACD which I bought from a friend's recommendation and I was extremely impressed

anything by Richard Strauss

I also have to give a plug to (Johann) Pachelbel's Canon, as to any Washingtonian (or tourist) can atest, this classical piece of music was popular at the Air and Space Museum because it was what the museum played before the IMAX screening's of 'To Fly' - and it was glorious coming out from the system's multiple speakers.

sorry I'm having a stream of thought here:

as a kid (and still do) love Ferde Grofé:Grand Canyon Suite (the 1954 Walt Disney live action short is also recommended) 'On the Trail' in particular, with the donkey clomping I'd be dancing round the living room (I was weird )

I also like Gustav Holst's 'The Planets' but don't actually own a recording of it, can anyone recommend which performance/recording is 'essential'?

I love that one piece from Swan Lake that everyone knows, and I'm embarassed because I can't actually remember the name of the piece!

One of the quintessential recordings of The Planets is by Charles Dutoit and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra.

Picking classical pieces is easy, picking the "right" recording is another matter because they're a gazillion recordings of the same pieces by so many different conductors and symphonies. It all comes down to taste or name recognition. If it sounds good enough for you, don't worry about what the naysayers tell you.

I'm a sucker for most anything by Aaron Copland: Billy the Kid, Appalachian Spring, Rodeo (the "Hoe Down" movement is what you hear in those "Beef, it's what's for dinner" commercials). He basically created that "Americana" sound so prevalent in a lot of those Western film scores, not to mention the Smallville sequences from Superman.

I will have to give that one a listen, my introduction to The Planets was André Previn and the Royal Philharmonic.

Classical is like other music genres, you start out with the big names and expand your horizons with lesser known composers or pieces as you find what you enjoy.

One funny thing about Holst's The Planets is it was written a few years before Pluto was discovered, so that omission was always noted. (Heck, another composer - Berstein? - even wrote a "Pluto" piece to add to Holst's work but it really never caught on.) So for years, the work seemed "out of date" - but now that Pluto has been demoted from being a full planet, Holst's work is back in sync with the scientific view of the solar system!


BTW, look for the "Penguin Guide to Compact Discs and DVDs" for the most comprehensive guide for finding the better recordings of individual musical pieces.

Also look to the Naxos label if you want a bargain label that puts out quality performances.

Interestingly Respighi was a 20th Century composer writing in the baroque style.

---
Rudolf