I recently started a job where, starting Monday, I will be able to listen to music at work through headphones. I thought I’d take this opportunity (around seven listening hours a day) to branch out and listen to other types of music; I mostly listen to rock/alternative, but I’ve always wanted to listen to more classical, not because it’s what I “should” be listening to, but because I’ve liked a lot of what I’ve heard and I would rather listen to a long composition while doing brainless typing instead of a bunch of three-minute songs since the latter will just scatter my attention. I want music I can really get into, if you know what I mean, not just something of my own choosing to block out the chatter of the annoying people around me. Trouble is, I know next to nothing about classical music, and every time I try to ask someone at a classical-geared music store what’s good I get either a snooty look or a ten-minute spiel about various periods and how I should really buy vinyl and only buy recordings made by a certain orchestra that played once in 1960 for twenty minutes, because apparently classical music aficionados are all snobs or obsessives or both.
So I’m turning here for advice. So far the only things I know that I like are Barber’s Adagio for Strings (better known as the song from the opening credits from Platoon, but the full composition is better than the five-minute clip in the movie), and what little Mozart I’ve listened to. I know I don’t like bombastic patriotic music, like the William Tell Overture. I have access to a public library with thousands of music discs, the majority of them classical or orchestral. Based on my admittedly very rough knowledge of what I like, what should I be listening to? And which one of Mozart’s works should I start with, since I already know I like him (but don’t know the names of the works that I liked, just that I’d recognize them if I heard them again)? Really any suggestions would be helpful; I can take out ten discs or some obscene number like that at a time so I’m likely to sample anything you suggest to me. Help me expand my musical horizons! Or at least, help me make work more bearable through the use of classical music.
you can really get a good quality collection going for only 20 dollars,
youll pretty much have most of tchaikovsky’s work, all of beethovens piano concertos, and a lot of bach
you should definitely listen to beethoven symphonies 1-9
If you have a decent connection at work, this tends to have pretty good programs.
For some good stuff to look up besides that:
Pretty much anything by Mozart and Dvorak, plus most baroque - especially Bach’s “The Art of the Fugue.”
Symphonies: Beethoven (1, 2, 4, 6 if you don’t like anything really bombastic, but all of them are excellent).
Piano concertos: Chopin (both), Beethoven (1-4, I hate the fifth for some reason), Schumann, Grieg, Rachmaninoff (#2)
Violin concertos: Beethoven, Sibelius, Mendelssohn.
Strongly agree. Even better would be a recording of this symphony with a recording of his “Serenade for Strings.”
If you liked the Barber and you like Mozart, I’d say that you like melody, which makes me suggest a few other very melodic pieces (things you can find yourself singing along to) that are mostly string-heavy. All of these pieces are very accessible, I think.
Liszt’s “Hungarian Rhapsodies.” They are a little more bombastic than, say, Mozart, but you’ll find a lot of melodies in them that you didn’t even know you knew.
The aforementioned Dvorak’s 9th plus “Serenade for Strings”. The “Serenade” might be my favorite musical piece ever outside of opera.
I’d also echo the recommendation for Brahms. He’s lighter than Beethoven (my personal favorite) and more forceful than Mozart. Try “Symphony no. 3.”
You don’t like the “1812 Overture,” but you might like some other Tchaikovsky. “The Nutcracker” has so many wonderful melodies that I bet you’ll recognize. “Swan Lake” is too long for me, generally, to listen to in one sitting, but the music is wonderful for contemplative moments.
And someone mentioned Rachmaninov. Piano Concerto no. 2 is extremely melodic, very dramatic, and romantic as hell. It’s often paired with Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto no. 1, which has one of the most famous openings of any musical piece ever. The pieces complement each other, though I prefer the Rachmaninoff.
Forgot another very accessible melodic piece: Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez.” I’ve likened it to Dvorak writing for spaghetti westerns, which sounds dismissive but I don’t mean it to be. I love it. And it can give you a taste of the magic of guitar in an orchestral setting.
The BBC’s classical music station is available online, both streamed and with much of the last week’s programmes available. From the schedule page, the Lunchtime Concert series is small chamber music, Afternoon Performance is generally fairly accessible orchestral stuff, Performance on 3 sometimes-slightly-less accessible , and Composer of the Week is an excellent way to get to know individual composers - over five programmes, they take you through the composer’s life story, illustrating how he (it’s rarely ‘she’) came to write what he did.
To further the suggestions so far for recordings, I’d recommend:
Sibelius: second and fifth symphonies
Stravinsly: Petrushka
Mahler: first and fourth symphonies (bombastic in places, but not silly-bombast like William Tell )
Bach: Goldberg Variations, and the Brandenburg concertos
Copland: Appalacian Spring
www.classicfm.com is a great option it’s a “popular” classical station. Most of the time you won’t be listening to a complete concert but to it’s most popular part. (for example: the third movement of Mahler’s 1st symphonie instead of the entire work). It’s a great way to start. Once you acquire the ear you can move to complete compositions. That being said my favourite “long compositions”
Berlioz’s “Fantastic symphony”.-
Mahler’s 1st and 5 symphonies.-
Beethoven’s 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 symphonies and his violin concert.-
Dvorak’s 9 symphony.-
Brahms symphony Number 4.-
Rodrigo’s Aranjuez Concert for guitar.-
Ravel’s Bolero; Piano Concert for the left hand, Piano concert in sol; Daphnis and Chloe’s suit.-
Bach’s Brandenburgs concerts, (you should also listen to his religious works).-
Mussgorsky, Pictures of an exhibition and a night on the bare mountain.-
Gershwin’s piano concert, Rhapsody in Blue and an American in Paris.-
Rachmaninoff’s Piano concert 3 and 2 and his variations on a theme of paganini.-
Les preludes by Listz.-
Stravinsky firebird’s suite and “The consagration of springtime” (I am translating from french to spanish and only then to english, someone will provide the correct title in this last language). Pulcinella suite is also good.-
Bruch’s Violin Concert.-
Elgar’s Cello concert and his enigma variations
Haydn’s Suprpise, Goodbye, (again translating), symphonies.-
Mozart’s piano concert nº 21.-
Mendelsshon’s Italian Symphony, Fingal’s cave, and his violin concert.-
Chaicovsky’s Piano concert Nº 1, Symphony Nº 6, Violin Concert.
Sibelius Violin Concert.
And a lot more that I can’t remember without checking my collection.
If your tastes is rock run towards the intricacies of hard rock & album rock rather than the simpler ol’ time rock-n-roll 1-4-5-1 stuff — your auditory taste buds have already been prepared. Beginning in the late 60s and reaching a golden age in the 70s, bands like Zeppelin, Floyd, Styx, Yes, Alan Parsons, Genesis, the later Beatles, Emerson Lake & Palmer, and other groups that might have been accused at some point of “changing the beauty of the melody until it sounds just like a symphony” owed as much to classical as to jazz and blues and 50’s-era rock-n-roll.
I recommend the dramatic and bombastic:
Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. Crank it to 11 and prepare to say “Holy Shit”.
Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra.
Alexander Borodin’s Polovetsian Dances.
Gustav Holst’s The Planets. Not all bombastic and dramatic, lots of scintillatingly beautiful bits, but Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus can blow you away.
Richard Wagner’s Tannhaüser Overture. Another one to crank. Sit back in your chair and end up looking & feeling like the guy in the old BASF ads.
Dig deep enough, and you can go wrong with all four. Actually, with Vivaldi, just scratch the surface and you can go wrong…but hey, what’s quality got to do with it when you can churn out 400 concertos?!
, and Composer of the Week is an excellent way to get to know individual composers - over five programmes, they take you through the composer’s life story, illustrating how he (it’s rarely ‘she’) came to write what he did.