Classical Music

I've no idea. But I'll drop this here; I came upon it by chance.

Funny you should link to a video of a piece by Handel; the "mystery piece" in the Black Hawk Down trailer is the Sarabande from Handel's Keyboard Suite No.4 (second book) in D minor, HWV 437, arranged for orchestra. It's also used as the main theme in the score to Barry Lyndon.

As for favourite music, well, where to start? I'm not exactly the sort of classical music equivalent of the indie rock snob you get posting to classical discussion boards who only listens to composers no-one else has ever heard of or music no-one else can even understand, but I am a huge fan of the genre and my tastes do go a bit beyond mainstream. Just to skim the contents of my MP 3 player (and this list is nowhere near exhaustive):

Alkan's Etudes in the Minor Keys, Arensky's piano trios (No.2 especially), Bach's partitas for keyboard (No.6 is a personal favourite), Bartok's piano concerti (all three - yes, even No.1), Beethoven's late string quartets, York Bowen's sonatas for wind instruments and piano (especially the flute sonata), Brahms' violin sonatas and cello sonatas, Buxtehude's organ works, Chopin's works for piano and orchestra (not just the concerti - the Rondo a la Krakowiak, the Grande polonaise brillante...), Francois Couperin's Concerts Royaux and Nouveaux Concerts, Jean-Henry d'Anglebert's keyboard works, Debussy's chamber music (the sonatas for cello and piano and for flute, viola, and harp especially), Dvorak's Czech Suite, Elgar's violin concerto, Faure's preludes and impromptus, any number of keyboard works by Frescobaldi and Froeberger, Glazunov's piano concerti, Handel's organ concerti, Haydn's piano sonatas, Hummel's piano concerti, Kabalevsky's piano sonatas, Liszt's Paganini etudes, Litolff's third Concerto Symphonique (on Dutch patriotic songs - I'm not Dutch myself but I still love this piece), Lyapunov's Transcendental Etudes (written to complement the ones by Liszt), Mahler's even-numbered symphonies (and No.9 as well), Medtner's violin sonatas, Mendelssohn's violin concerto, Mozart's chamber music for woodwinds, Pachelbel's chamber works for strings (not just the Canon), Prokofiev's string quartets, Rachmaninov's piano sonatas (especially the slow movement of No.1), Ravel's Le tombeau de Couperin (more the piano version than the orchestral - though I do love his orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition), Reger's piano quartets, Reinecke's piano concerti, Rubinstein's violin sonatas (especially No.3), Saint-Saens' first piano trio (the second, not so much), Sauer's piano concerti, Schubert's piano sonatas (not just the late ones, the middle ones as well), Schumann's chamber works for strings (with or without piano), Shostakovich's chamber music (string quartets, piano trios, piano quintet, all of them), Tchaikovsky's piano trio, Vaughan Williams' "London" symphony...

All right, as that list (if anyone can even read it without going cross-eyed) probably demonstrates, I'm sort of a classical "indie rock snob" after all. Sorry.

edited 4th Sep '12 1:05:55 PM by mlsmithca

I've started a tumblr featuring different pipe organs and organ music if any of you care to check it out. Why? Because they're awesome. Here's the link.

edited 4th Sep '12 7:59:37 PM by CDRW

THANK YOU!! I've been looking for it for SO LONG!

I love vivaldi.

Does anyone know any classical music with epic violin riff like this?

Well, there's this:

This piece is stuck in my mind with The Lion King and The Stampede.

It doesn't have the same power, but it's nonetheless beautiful.

Well, it's Bach, of course it's beautiful.
/Bach fanboyism

Bach is awesome, yes.

Can anyone here link me to classic music that's performed with a modern sensibility? Like, Lindsey Stirling style, but, you know, with music that's more than just decent (no offense meant).

Can you please define 'modern sensibility'? I am unfamiliar with the term.

Lindsey Stirling mixes violin with classic music idoms, dubstep, and The Legend of Zelda. For instance. You also have Symphonic Rock. And this magnificent piece:

Gurren Lagann's "Libera Me From Hell", all of Cowboy Bebop's jazz, Inception's iconic pieces, anything by Danny Elfman, Friendship Is Magic's songs... they all represent a usage of classic music with a modern sensibility.

If I had to sum it up in one word, it would be "Rock". Things have to "rock". Electric guitars a bass and a battery are not necessary, but they are a step in the right direction.

A few years ago I would never have imagined myself saying this, but I've grown horribly, horribly jaded to classic music from the Renaissance to Romanticism. When kids my age used to tell me that music made them want to fall asleep, I was scanadlized, I didn't even understand how they could feel that way.

Ten years later, that is often how I feel, and it depresses me. I want to rediscover the classics in a new way.

edited 15th Sep '12 5:46:30 PM by TheHandle

Something like this?

That's... okay, I guess, but what I had in mind was more like this

Sorry for being such an uncouth prick.

Or something like this.

This, perhaps?

This sounds too much like JRPG music just above 16-bit technology.

The entire soundtrack of Ouran High School Host Club...

I especially like how they use the Oboe... It's one of my favourite instruments of, like, ever.

Might wanna check out Michiru Ooshima's soundtrack for Fullmetal Alchemist, or the Symphony SEED version of Sahashi Toshihiko's soundtrack for Mobile Suit Gundam SEED. Then, I'd also recommend two of the classics - "One-Winged Angel" (Orchestral Version, from the Reunion Tracks), by Nobuo Uematsu, and also Kazuhiro Toyama's remix for Crisis Core - "The World's Enemy (One-Winged Angel)".

My favourites... Boy, this might take a while. I'll just go with concertos in this post:

Violin:

Bruch's Violin Concerto n°1 - By far my favourite so far. I'm currently listening to Chloe Hanslip's or Maxim Vengerov's versions, with a marked preference for the former.

Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto n°1, obviously...

Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, a beauty - Try Isaac Stern's version, if you can.

Shostakovich's Violin Concerto n°1 - bit on the weird side, but a must if you like angsty, modern music.

I've also been recommended Saint-Saens, Brahms and Sibelius' Violin concertos, but I can't speak for them myself.

Piano:

Grieg's Piano Concerto n°1. A masterpiece - gets me every time.

Tchaikovsky n°1. Yeah, I know, heard it a million times. Bovvered?

Chopin's Piano Concerto n°1. Dem Keys.

Special mention: Beethoven's 5th Piano Concerto, the "Emperor". For some reason I never got to hear all of it, but the 2nd Movement's Adagio leaves me in awe every time. Earmarked it for my funeral because of its staggering beauty and serenity, but no worries - it can be appreciated in other circumstances.

...That's it so far, though I'll definitely try and post some other stuff.

Ah, FMA. Brotherhood's OST does have a classical feeling to it. Behold:

Minor points of pedantry: Mendelssohn only wrote one violin concerto and Grieg only wrote one piano concerto, so they're not usually numbered.

As far as violin concerti are concerned, that's more or less the only type of piece in which I can name a Top 5 (beyond that, I can name a top 3 or 4 in many others, but can't narrow down the list far enough to fill out the remaining spots): the Beethoven concerto, the Mendelssohn concerto, the Brahms concerto, the Elgar concerto, and the first Shostakovich concerto. (I've never been as fond of the Tchaikovsky or the first Bruch concerto. But that's just me.)

For piano concerti... hrm. The Beethoven "Emperor" is certainly up there (the Adagio is a real delight), as is the fourth Beethoven concerto, both Chopin concerti (the F minor perhaps more than the E minor as I find its first movement more tightly constructed, although the E minor has a fantastic slow movement), all three Bartok concerti (my favourite is probably No.3, even if it is the simplest in both form and content), both Brahms concerti (the second one is an absolute blinder), the third Prokofiev concerto (that finale, wow), the second Rachmaninov concerto (the third concerto does nothing for me after the first movement, but I do love the second concerto), the Schumann concerto, the Ravel concerto (the slow movement is sublime, and the outer movements are jazz-influenced fun), the first Tchaikovsky concerto, the Grieg concerto, the first Liszt concerto... and that's just the "standard repertoire" stuff, there's also the second Shostakovich concerto, the Glazunov concerti (the F minor more than the B major, but I love both of them), the Sauer concerti (the C minor more than the E minor, even if it falls a bit flat in the finale), the third Medtner concerto, the fifth Saint-Saens concerto, the Reinecke concerti (the E minor and B minor concerti especially), the third Litolff Concerto Symphonique... and more besides.

(As connoisseurs can probably guess from the above list, I've found Hyperion Records' Romantic Piano Concerto series to be an absolute gold mine.)

*listens to a few samples*... ...I'm gonna like you.

Btw, ever heard of the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition? (Im Belgian - little bit of advertising...)

edited 19th Sep '12 5:43:17 AM by karasu91

I spent some time signing musical scores out of the community college library near me, for music I also had record, just so I could read along, and eventually decided to buy some a week or so ago (Rite of Spring and Petrusha) and then became enraged when Amazon sent me an 'undeliverable' email after I was waiting over a week. Oh well. Them's the breaks.

Anyone have strong opinions on contemporary music like Glass or either Adams or anyone like that?

edited 19th Sep '12 9:33:42 AM by Hatshepsut

Never heard of it. But, then again, living here in Israel means that if you're not a fan of Pop you're outta luck.
Personally speaking, I dislike everything that's older than, say, Chopin, and not J-Pop, Celtic, or movie/video-game soundtracks. Though it might change.

Heard of it, yes. Would never enter it as I'm not a professional musician, but I've heard of it. (As well as many of the winners - just going down the ones whom I've either seen live or heard in recordings I've purchased, there's Gilels, Ashkenazy, Oistrakh, Kogan, Bezverkhny, Repin, Skride (going to see her play the first Shostakovich concerto later this year - for the second time, oddly enough, I saw her play it with the DSO about seven years ago), Kremer (well, he was third, but he still placed)... says a lot about the competition's prestige, I dare say.)

Ah, Stravinsky. For me, the jewel in his crown will always be the Firebird Suite rather than Petrushka or Rite of Spring, but that's just me. As for Glass and the Adamses... not too familiar with the Adamses, but I do like Glass' Concerto for Saxophone Quartet.

... you mean newer than Chopin, surely? Otherwise your fondness for Bach, Handel, and their contemporaries is a bit mystifying...

Yeah, newer. I mixed it up, sorry.