ernestolynch said:
go easy on me folks I's a beginner and all that
He He !
As you can see from this thread, the trouble with classical music is that there's so much of it that there are as many opinions as there are people. If you try to listen to every piece played end to end non stop, you'd be dead long before you'd heard a fraction of what's been written (I made that up but it sounds right).
My advice, for what it's worth, is to start by listening to the popular pieces by each composer (they're popular for a reason) and move on to exploring other work from there according to what YOU like, not what people say you should like. There are no rules. You don't HAVE to listen to an entire symphony if you only like the 4th movement (unless you're at a concert!). Few people would say that Brahms is their favourite composer and I find most of his 4th symphony boring, but the 3rd movement is rollickingly fantastic, so I listen to that then play something else.
Download these popular pieces first, you'll recognise most when you play them, then check out the other stuff by the blokes you like best:
Baroque -
Bach:
All the toccatas and fugues.
"Sleepers Awake".
Violin Concerto No.2
Concerto for 3 pianos
Brandenburg concertos
Vivaldi:
"Four Seasons"
"Gloria" ...... they are singing "glory in a Chelsea stadium"
Handel:
"Music for the Royal Fireworks"
"Water Music"
"The arrival of the queen of Sheba"
Albinoni:
"Adaggio in Gm"
Charpentier:
"Te Deum" ...... Not as boring as it sounds.
Pachelbel:
"Canon"
Classical -
Mozart: By far the greatest composer that ever lived ...IMO
. It's all good. Check out all the piano concerto's (that'll keep you busy). Probably the most famous is 21. The 1st and 3rd movements are technically awesome so you need to find a recording played by a top pianist (Ashkenazy's my choice), and the slow (2nd) movement is arguably the most recognisable piano piece ever written.
Also get "A Musical Joke". The theme tune for the BBc's "Horse of The Year". It was written as a pisstake and was said to illustrate the music of a bad composer played by crap musicians. I defy you not to laugh out loud at the last three chords.
Haydn:
Symphony 94 "Surprise"
JC Bach:
Try the sonatas and the overtures.
CPE Bach:
Lots of churchy god stuff, but try Symphony 1
J Stamitz:
Symphony in Dm.
Schubert:
"Trout Quintet"
Symphony No.8 is the famous "Unfinished" Symphony, and some say that it should never have been started. Hard work. Best left to the type of person who likes Mahler !!!
Beethoven: Second only to Mozart. Nuff said.
Romantic-
Chopin: Plenty of solo piano. A lot of short pieces so you can listen to loads of different stuff quite quickly which is quite satisfying when you first get into classical music. You'd get all the Preludes and Nocturnes on 1 CD.
Mendelssohn:
The 2 piano concertos
Violin Concerto in Dm
Brahms:
Symphony 4 (3rd movement)
Dvorak:
"Slavonic Dances"
Tchaikovsky:
Lot's of good stuff here but YOU will probably like the 2nd symphony "Little Russian". It was Stalins favourite piece
.
Of course the "1812 Overture" is practically legendary.
Debussy:
"Claire de lune"
Some other composers of this period would be Liszt, Verdi, Bruckner, Mahler, Satie, Berlioz and Wagner (who was Hitlers favourite composer).
Modern-
Rachmaninov:
The piano concertos (3 I think)
"Rhapsody on a theme by Paganini"
Prokofiev:
Get both superb violin concertos. The second is particularly special.
Shostakovitch:
Again try both violin concertos. And the one that was used as the theme for "Reilly Ace of Spies", part of "The Gadfly" can't remember which.
Others here would be Stravinsky, Britten, Copland, Williams, Bernstein and Glass, some of whom I'm told, have mixed some half decent tracks
.
BE WARNED: THIS CAN TAKE OVER YOUR LIFE.
Good luck
