I’m looking for some heavy hitting classical music. Very dramatic, speaker rattling stuff.
What can you suggest?
The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps) by Stravinsky. The Telarc Atlanta SO/Yoel Levi CD as great bass drum hits.
That’s probably the first answer most people would give, and it looks like I got here first.
Wagner Ride of the Valkyries
Tchaikovsky 1812 Overture or Marche Slav
Also maybe Beethoven’s 5th symphony.
Bach’s D-minor Toccata & Fugue (BWV 565) and the g-minor.
The modern piece Kraanerg by Xenakis is pretty raucous.
I have a double Philips CD of Tchaikovsky tone poems that are very dramatic. Fatum, Romeo and Juliet (that stereotypical rising love music comes from this) and Francesca de Rimini stand out.
Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain”.
Mars, the Bringer of War, from The Planets by Gustav Holst.
O, Fortuna from Carmina Burana by Orff
Mozart’s Requiem. Bring a tissue.
Mozart’s Requiem.
Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s “The Great Gate of Kiev”.
This album – best cd of 19th-century Russian choral music I’ve yet heard.
Another vote for Holsts’ “Planets,” Along with Mars, Jupiter and Nepture are big and brash. I can’t help but hear stuff that I know influenced John Williams when he was composing the music for “Star Wars.”
There’s been a recent movement in the metal underground that is strongly influenced by classical music. If you don’t mind adding traditional rock instrumentation into the mix, you should check out Therion’s Vovin and Theli, some Lacrimosa’s Fassade or Elodia, and Solefald’s In Harmonia Universali. Unfortunately, really orchestral stuff is rare because of the high cost of production, so there are a lot more bands that have a symphonic feel without traditional instrumentation.
I’d say the big influences on this type of music were Wagner, Orff, Stravinsky and Grieg to a lesser extent. For those who are fans of Stravinsky, a band called Golem did a fairly industrial arrangement of Sacre du Printemps that is very much worth tracking down if you’re open to that sort of experimentation.
You should also check out Classical, Contemporary Classical and Opera/Choral from the Essential Music Library series.
Rossini overtures, but especially William Tell and The Barber of Seville.
1812 Overture, but only if you have real cannons handy. No CD can do justice to it.
You might try
Badass Classical Music
“Angry” Classical Music
That, and Beethoven’s 9th, 4th movement, “Ode to Joy,” will probably do the trick, at high volume. Starts out a bit quiet, sure, but then…blam. If that’s not heavy hitting enough for ya, I got nothing.
The fourth movement of Dvorak’s New World Symphony is hard-hitting. DUM, dum, dum, DUM DUM-DUM…DUM, DUM-dum-dum-DUM!
There’s also a trio CD done by one man here:
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/stravinsky
It sounds a bit like Primus at times. Apparently Matt Groenig likes it too.
I have a couple of CDs kicking around here somewhere from the beloved and critically acclaimed “Heavy Classix” series.
Wagner, Ride of the Valkyries, from The Valkyrie.
Stravinsky, Infernal Dance, from The Firebird.
Charbrier, España.
Khachaturian, Sabre Dance (the plate spinning music!).
Oooh, yes! Also
Gorecki - Second symphony
Shostakovich - Fourth and eighth symphonies
Stockhausen - Helicopter Quartet (it’s certainly speaker-rattling, anyway)
And certainly a seconding of the first reply by riker1384 is right, that the Rite of Spring is a must.
Ignore: Rossini, Dvorak, Mozart 
Blasphemy!
::throws a rock::
The third movement of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth (Pathetique) Symphony – that really will get your speakers rattling.
Shostakovich’s 2nd Piano Concerto
Prokofiev’s 3rd Piano Concerto
Maybe a bit “soft” compared to Wagner’s Ring (oh, in addition to the flight of the Valkyries – the whole of “Siegfried.” Siegfried shouting madly about how the blood will run down his sword, while smashing steel against iron, after having brought home his chained pet bear home to an evil dwarf…something like that).
Bartok’s Sonata For Two Pianos and Percussion.