Classical music

[METALMAN]

I've been watching that Howard Goodall series about classical music on the telly. It's really good. I like Howard Goodall; I like his enthusiasm for the subject.

I like classical music. My horrifically bourgeois parents used to take me to all manner of operas and orchestral performances and stuff. I really enjoyed it too. Then I played the stuff on trumpet and trombone in orchestras. I don't play it anymore, but sometimes it's just right!

I'm going to be totally uncontroversial here and say I like Beethoven best. He was a genius. The melodies and the feeling within his music is absolutely intense. Each of symphonies are wonderful and have their own character. I like the 7th best.

I'm going to be slightly more controversial and say I like Wagner. As a brasser, I love anything that offers an opportunity to play really loud! I like the atmosphere of his music. it's so foreboding and dark. Real macabre stuff. Speaking of macabre, Saint-Saens is cool too. Also Berlioz.

Dvorak is lovely. His music is so aching and longing. Beautiful melodies.

Debussy is probably my second favourite. I find it hard to explain why I like Debussy. He can turn his hand to anything really. Again, his music has an incredible atmosphere. I listen to classical music because of the atmosphere really.

Shostakovich really gets the blood coursing and the fist pumping!

John Adams is great. He is my favourite minimalist. Chairman Dances is the sound of the future. Steve Reich and mallets and 18 musicians is brill too.

I used to listen to Varese so much back when I tried to pretend I was really arty and pretentious. I don't listen to him so much anymore but his music is so exciting and unpredictable, however often you listen to it.

I love Mendelssohn. He basically invented to Lord of the Rings soundtrack.

Gabriel Faure is brilliant. You might have noticed I like most 19th century French composers. Even Bizet!

Handel is lovely and stately. So composed and restrained. Really pretty. Same goes for Bach, or at least the Bach music I like.

Gershwin is incredible. I only wish there was more music like Rhapsody In Blue, but it is really one of a kind.

Gregorio Allegri is responsible for my favourite piece of music ever, but I have never heard anything else by him.

Verdi made some of the most exciting and dynamic music. His songs go from happy to sad in seconds. Really exhilirating!

I love Holst's planets. Probably Britain's only decent contribution, apart from Elgar's Enigma Variations, which are beautifully nostalgic.

Mahler is really good. I have acquired lots of his symphonies recently because you can get them quite cheap.

Stravinsky is really exciting and crazy. I once saw Rite of Spring and Firebird played at a classical "gig" I was really young. i didn't get it at all but it was awesome.

Rodrigo is really good and very Spanish but I prefer Miles Davis doing his music I think. Both are lovely!

Penderecki! Argh! Pretty grim. But so unique and disconcerting. I love Hiroshima.

Funnily enough I have barely investigated Mozart. I actually know more by the others I listed than I do by him. I should probably sort this out!

What do you guys like and stuff?

[MalaCloudy Black]

I like Tchaikovsky. The string quartets more than the symphonies, but there's something about all of his work that I dig, the chamber music especially. The Nutcracker and Swan Lake are both pretty good too.

[Mick]

Beethoven: The Emperor's Piano Concerto and the allegro from Pathetique.

Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody #2

Chopin: Military Polonaise in A Major, Op 40 #1.

Mozart: The Requiem, with the Kyrie, Dies Irae, Confutatis, and Lacrimosa being favorites.

Handel: The Hallelujah Chorus (mainly because I sang the hell out of it in HS).

[SRN]

I like Beethoven too; his Ninth Symphony is currently one of my favorite classical pieces. I have all of his symphonies but he is the only composer that I've really dug into, thus far. However, Saint-Säens, Tchaikovsky and Liszt have also caught my ear. Generally, I seem to lean more towards Romanticism, looking at what I've got and what I enjoy.

[Skummy]

For Lizst, you really can't go wrong with Totentatz/Danse Macabre - one of the most wonderfully haunting pieces I've ever heard. There's an incredibly bleak arrangement of it that I'm going to have to look up, as I can't remember off the top of my head who it was by.

Messaien's Turangalila Symphony is superb. Not sure I spelt it correctly.

Gavin Bryars is a great, more recent, composer. String Quartet #1, #2 and #3 are all superb, and "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet" is one of my absolute favourite pieces of music. A "found sound" recording of an old tramp singing, set to a beautiful score and, in some versions, Tom Waits' singing voice. One of the most gorgeous things I've ever heard.

Harry Partch is mindblowing if you're after something a little more avant-garde. Along a somewhat similar vein, Moondog is fantastic.

Ryuichi Sakamoto is wonderful, too. Sometimes a little "experimental", sometimes just minimalist pieces for piano, but I've not heard anything I haven't liked.

[SRN]

Oh, if we are talking more modern composers too then I'll Philip Glass' opera Einstein on the Beach to my list. An absolute favorite of mine, definitely. The recording I have from 1993 with Robert Wilson at the head is just mind-blowingly well-played.

[TroutMaskReplica]

Arvo Part alll the wayyyy!

[METALMAN]

I am going to this - http://www.barbican.org.uk/music/event-detail.asp?ID=13059

shit waw. I love Chairman Dances. I will have a good time!