Most achingly-beautiful music

The most achingly beautiful music: The 1st movement of Schubert's last three string quartets. The most awe inspiring wonderful music ever composed. The Emerson Quartet's recording is my favorite. Bruckner's 9th symphony,third movement;positively ,heavenly inspired.Solti and the CSO recording is my favorite with Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic a close second.Smokestack Lightning by the Yardbirds, a raunchy rave-up of a blues standard. The live version with Eric Clapton on lead guitar was the best. Keith Relf plays a devilish blues harp on that number. To me that song was the epitome of rock and in its own way was achingly beautiful. Led Zeppelin's first album was just a variation on that one song.

It is awesome to see Aphex Twin mentioned twice here.Psilonaut and Aphex Twin are standouts on the "Pi" soundtrack. How about Metallica's "Call of the Cthulu(sic)" and Eddie Van Halen's "Spanish Fly" as two of the great rock guitar songs.

Tubegroover, re: Eric Carmen's borrowing from Rachmaninoff, I clearly remember hearing an interview on the radio way back when, where Carmen described how he took the theme for his song from Rach's symphony. At the time, I wasn't familiar with the symphony, but I remember being impressed with the fact that Carmen had an appreciation for classical music.

Hcfolm: Unfortunately in Carmen's case, it's just the opposite of what it seems. Carmen was a child prodigy, Julliard trained as a concert pianist before he hit the pop stage w/ the Rasberries and demonstrated his affinity for the Beatles. So he had been inundated w/ old Sergei way before that first solo release. He lifted the melody from the Rach 2 (Piano Concerto, not symph) verbatim, and while he may have cited the source in an interview here and there, did NOT in the published sheet music at the time (early 70's, right?). Caused quite a stir in the keyboard community...as many saw it as blatant musical plagarism, much as 2nd movement of Beethoven's "Pathetique" sonata has been lifted, and other throughout pop history.

Thanks Hcfolm & Timwat I was always curious about those details since it was so obvious the melody was the same almost verbatim . Now Timwat you have me confused somewhat. You have stated he lifted the music from the 2nd Concerto not the Symphony. The piece I am talking about is definitely from the 3rd movement of 2nd sym not any of Rach Concerto pieces which I am intimately familiar with. Are you speaking of other pieces as well that he plagerized?