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Classical Music for Aficionados

I would like to start a thread, similar to Orpheus’ jazz site, for lovers of classical music.
I will list some of my favorite recordings, CDs as well as LP’s. While good sound is not a prime requisite, it will be a consideration.
  Classical music lovers please feel free to add to my lists.
Discussion of musical and recording issues will be welcome.

I’ll start with a list of CDs.  Records to follow in a later post.

Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique.  Chesky  — Royal Phil. Orch.  Freccia, conductor.
Mahler:  Des Knaben Wunderhorn.  Vanguard Classics — Vienna Festival Orch. Prohaska, conductor.
Prokofiev:  Scythian Suite et. al.  DG  — Chicago Symphony  Abbado, conductor.
Brahms: Symphony #1.  Chesky — London Symph. Orch.  Horenstein, conductor.
Stravinsky: L’Histoire du Soldat. HDTT — Ars Nova.  Mandell, conductor.
Rachmaninoff: Symphonic Dances. Analogue Productions. — Dallas Symph Orch. Johanos, cond.
Respighi: Roman Festivals et. al. Chesky — Royal Phil. Orch. Freccia, conductor.

All of the above happen to be great sounding recordings, but, as I said, sonics is not a prerequisite.


128x128rvpiano
mahgister's avatar
mahgister
12,961 posts
 
Very great choice.... Thanks for the link.... Barbirolli is the proof that some of the highest genius are not enough known.... Sibelius is a great poet like Mahler....

If Mahler is a poet, Bruckner is more a mystic and a projective geometer.... I love the 2 but Bruckner changed my life.... Mahler make it more beautiful....i am in love with all his lieder tough more even than with his marvellous movements in his symphonies... There is a unity of thinking in Bruckner 5 for me that override anything save Bach affine geometry....
schubert
7,386 posts
 
As you know , the hardest person to understand is yourself .

I like the Mahler lieder but his symphonies (except 1st) seem like a waste
of time to me , often like a dog chasing its tail .

I realize I most be wrong , so many others can’t be.

I recently listened to his 5th trying my best to like it . Even with one of
favorite bands , Orchestre symphonique de Montreal .

What seems to be beautiful to others seems nothing to me .
I’m of the straight -ahead Brahms is A + Mahler C- club,
even if I’m only one in it .

I suspect it is largely because I was a soldier for many years and
of my own doing was an Infantryman , aka aggressive  



mahgister's avatar
mahgister
12,961 posts
 
We can all beat our own character.... But in music it is very slowly like in life....

We cannot change our inclination and taste, but we can open our mind.... It is difficult i confess... For example Stravinsky is evidently a genius in music but dont spoke to me deeply...

I was a dreamer nothing will change that then i perfectly understand what you just said about your soldier character...
edcyn
1,876 posts
 
I've never gotten anything but harrumphs and eyeball rolling, but my favorite Fifth Symphony is Tchaikovsky's. Maybe it all started when, as a kid, I'd watch a TV show that recreated great moments in history...recreations doctored to make them look like aged, silent newsreel footage. The theme music for the show was the second tune of the Second Movement.  
jim204
881 posts
 
I really have to say that for me the greatest 5th is Beethoven's ,it exploded onto the scene in Vienna in 1808 and nobody had heard such  audacity and daring in a symphony before. It goes through every emotion unimaginable despair to absolute joy. It to me is the most perfect symphony of the 19th century and beyond. When I was very young I burned myself out from playing it too often but now as I am old with lots of time on my hands I spend most of my time now streaming and have found lots of original instrument bands from Germany and the bring a crisp rawness to the sound that I like to think the folks heard at the premier of the symphony.
I also love the Sibelius symphony again conducted by "Glorious John".
More to discover