Some months ago I discovered that Spotify is a wonderful resource for the classical music fan. I’m always looking for new pieces to enjoy, and figured the Dope has a good number of classical buffs.
I’m specifically looking for pieces that aren’t in the “top tier” of fame – stuff that you’d typically find on those ubiquitous Top 100 Classical Pieces of All Time lists that float around the Internet. (I like Beethoven’s 5th and 9th symphonies as much as anyone, but I don’t need recommendations pointing them out to me. :)) Obviously, fame is subjective here, so feel free to include something that might be on the borderline.
I suppose I should list some of my own not-super-famous favorites, to start things out:
Irish Rhapsody No. 5 by Charles Villiers Stanford. This is my favorite piece of classical music, and the piece that, when I heard it on the radio a couple of years ago, re-ignited my love for the genre.
Vasily Kalinnikov’s Symphony No. 1. My favorite symphony of all time. Kalinnikov is one of those great composers who died too soon to compile a large body of works. The second movement of his first symphony is the most beautiful few minutes of music that I’ve ever heard.
Josef Suk’s Fantastic Scherzo. Marvelous piece, reminiscent (to my ears) of Dvorak, which is unsurprising given that Suk was Dvorak’s son-in-law!
Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus by Ralph Vaughan Williams. It seems like his Lark Ascending is usually named as his best work, or sometimes Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, but Dives and Lazarus is my favorite work by my favorite composer.
Symphony in C Major by Paul Dukas. (More famous for his Sorcerer’s Apprentice.)
Holst’s Mars. I know the Planets are plenty famous, but it’s Jupiter than usually gets all the limelight. Mars is a piece where, if I hear it while driving, causes me to speed up by about 20 mph!
So, what pieces do you love that casual classical listeners might not have heard? Help enrich my Spotify experience!
And while it’s hardly obscure, Prokofiev in general, and the 3rd Piano Concerto in particular, deserve to be better known than they are. (Here’s a link to one performance, chosen more or less at random.)
I’d have to go with the works of John Taverner (with an “r”), 16th-century composer and owner of a massive organ. His radical reworking of Them’s “Gloria” is particularly lovely. Nowadays it sounds like the kind of music they play in films when the bomb’s about to go off, and we have a montage of people who are going to die unless Batman (for example) can save the day. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
I find that his music is justedgy enough to avoid the inevitable Monty Python and the Holy Grail comparisons. The obvious problem is that to my modern ears it all sounds like a wash.
And of course there’s John Tavener (without an “r”) who was big in the 1960s but has been dogged with ill-health, although that hasn’t stopped him for writing some awesome music, including this piece which is reminiscent of John Taverner in parts.
I’d also say that Valse Triste by Jean Sibelius is one of the most beautiful pieces ever, if it weren’t for *Allegro Non Troppo *making it impossible for me to listen to without blubbering like a child…
Debussy Pour le Piano Introduction and Allegro For Harp, Flute, Clarinet and String Quartet Nocturnes for orchestra Danses Sacrée et Profane Suite Bergamesque (Clair de Lune is its 3rd movement)
Rachmaninoff’s The Bells, in four movements, for orchestra, chorus and soloists, based on the poem by Poe. This is just the beginning of the first movement.
