Classical Music for Aficionados

@schubert      Len, I do agree with you regarding Haydn that his symphonies are just as great as Mozart and some of them more so. I would rather listen to Haydn than Mozart any day of the week. Haydn piano sonatas are rated greater than Mozart to me but no one comes near to Beethoven for piano sonatas as after listening to Op.111 there is no music I want to listen to after that, it has all been said.

I go on with Pachelbel organ 2 complete sets.... Antoine Bouchard and Joseph Payne....

My impressions did not change and i prefer the more interiorized and intimate version of Bouchard than the more extrovert version and more spectacular one and more celebrated and more rhetorical gesture version of Payne...But get me right, the Payne version is very beautiful, and many will prefer it... I enjoy the 2 sets....Only in the case i would be in the obligation to choose i will keep Bouchard...in fact the 2 versions are so different that it double the pleasure....Almost 24 hours of Pachelbel with these 2....😉

I an very pleased by Pachelbel genius in simplicity, clarity, and soothing melodic inspiration....Pachelbel is a genius because nothing is never out of place or with less interest.... All is perfect .....I can have preference about some part or works but really all is on the same scale of beauty all the time....No low nor high really in the writing composition....It is like Scarlatti, amother giant, with no defect in his output .... 

No boredom at all, only a sweet and immersive contemplation with an always perfect humility that persuade us with no arguments, some wave of sounds floating like swans on a lake of silence...

Some genius dont ask for attention and dont force the attention at all to their points for the sake of being known....They gives to us the precious gift of an attention of a new kind, an encompassing one....The music of Pachelbel walk with us or in us and never on us and passing us....It is a commentary on silence....

There is something taoist in Pachelbel....I am not surprized that at least 2 Bach admired him....

By the way with Bouchard we even forgot that the music is for organ, the organist disapear and even the instrument.....Not with Payne....

B.S. in an opera he dam sure does !

Can’t but agree with you Jim.I


At my age time is of the essence . Like any Classical lover I have played
all the LvB sonatas many times . Bach takes about 1/3 of my 5-6 hours daiily time. My biggest love has always been String Quartet and to me that’s LvB’s best music . His last are beyond compare .


Haydn needs no help there nor does Schubert or the 2 gems of Leos Janacek for starters And a few hundred others .
If you want to go deep kids ,the Buxtehude outing on Naxos 8.557251 will get you there.
As will Byrd, Purcell and the Bach of his time,the Great Josquin Desprez.

P.S. Jim , I have long thought the Haydn Piano pieces were up there with Mozart but never said so.                 Few years ago I heard  Imogene Cooper the great knock out  a few live in the wonderful acoustics                  of MACALESTER  college in St Paul( started by Scots and one of the elite US liberal arts colleges ),
                   the women was so powerful and  skilled the audience was frozen . Say it to  any one since !

@schubert         Again in complete agreement with you Len, LvB string quartets no other comes near t hem I think especially the late ones. I love the last three esp. Op.127 and who cannot but admire the Grosse Fugue which if played to someone who doesn't know it would probably think Stravinsky had wrote it. Talk about tossing your lance into the future I'm sure it will still be thought as written in the Twentieth century long into the future. 
At the moment I am typing I am listening to a masterful reworking of Tchaikovsky's Seasons played by Trio Zadig on Qobuz. If you have Qobuz I think it  is is a must listen as it brings a new slant to this lovely work. Of course if you want to listen to the original piano version then Mikhail Pletnev who I think is the definite best in this work.
Enjoy your weekend everyone. Jim.

The Brahms string quartets are genius and under represented.