Classical

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Mahler = bleech ! :tongue:

Mahler wrote what German musicians dismissed as "conductor's music" -- the kind of stuff conductors wrote that featured the endless instrumental voicing detail that ran through their heads as possibilities while they were working, but amounted to not so much unless length and volume counted. Unremitting depression & self-pity. Bummer every time.

The damn stuff takes endless rehearsal time, too -- it's so full of individual voice dynamics there's no getting out of slogging through the whole nine yards of it any time it's programmed.

Bruchner's a lot more pleasent unless you're a violin player. At least he's got a good heart. But your bow arm is going to be hanging by a thread from all the tremolandi. It's reduced me (and others) to resting my wrist on my knee & jiggling my hand after ten minutes of it.

There are places in Mitteleuropa where both are considered great, favorite masters -- in a class with Brahms and Beethoven. (!)

Kurt Masur said a really interesting thing re. concert programming for different countries : Italians find Bruchner boring, but respond positively to Mahler because he's full of shifting colors & sonorities.

Bruchner, I think, is a lot like Elgar in that he's appreciated much more on his native soil than he is abroad. Maybe unfairly.

:face:
 
Personally, I love composed music. But I cannot say I have urge to throw on a Motzart or any other "classical music" really ever. That being said, I love what Sufjan Stevens is doing with music composition today. Unlike the classical composers of the past who wrote the scores out in sheet music. Musical composers of today are able to put all the music together on a computer.

What Sufjan is doing is writing all the musical parts for the instruments on the computer and actually creating the sounds and music right there. Once the album writting is complete, he then transcribes everything onto sheet music so it can be performed by an orchestra. It is quite impressive actually.
 
Sufjan Stevens is quite impressive, I do agree. I also have a very high opinion of the talent of Jason Mraz. He's definitely more jazzy or poppy, but his albums are all done extremely well and his live performances are 5X as good as his albums.
 
Unfortunately, only the last 2:45 of this is available -- the conclusion of the 1st movement of Brahms' Fourth Symphony played by the Leipzig Gewandaus with Kurt Mazur directing them.

It's an excerpt from a DVD of them performing all four in Glascow in 1991 that's commercially available and -- if you ever want to hear Brahms performed the right way (their unbroken and fiercely preserved musical tradition goes back to Brahms himself) (actually, back to Mendelssohn, who was their Kappelmeister, as Mazur was later) and you can live with 1991 sonics/video and the winds drifting sharp, the set you want.

Don't miss the last ten seconds -- the tympanist blunders into the concluding ritardando with his head up his ass. The look Mazur impales him with is priceless.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aBCtgAq7fS0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>

:face:
 
I don't really have an ear for Classical music but I like Bryn Terfel, does he count? :scratch:[/quote]
Bryn Terfel is brilliant, his "Songs of Travel" are worth hiking a long distance to hear - and the Finzi and Butterworth collections are spectacular.  While I would consider him an opera singer, his classical renditions of oratorio and art songs are special indeed.

I had an old recording of Leonard Warren on last night, another opera legend, probably one of the greatest bass baritones in the last century - died on stage at the Met from a massive coronary while performing the opera, La Forza Del Destino - the Force of Destiny.   He was a lion.

Those of you who like to try new things, you should look up a modern contemporary choral composer named Eric Whitacre - he writes for choir, and if you have a system that can keep up - it is some of the most haunting and beautiful music I have ever heard (very much like a secular Arvo Part).  There is a recording out by the Brigham Young University choir singing a compilation of his acapella works, that I highly recommend - look him on Pandora or your favorite music sharing site.  one of my favorite songs is "Sleep" originally written as "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" but the estate of Frost refused to let Whitacre use the poem for the lyrics of the song, so a friend of his wrote replacement lyrics about his toddler son sleeping - and it is magic.

Sorry so long - this is one of my things...Let me know what you think if you check them out.

B[/quote]
Awesome to see another opera fan around!!
 
curmudgeon
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Life is best experienced with a curmudgeonly outlook. It prevents many deceptions.

As for classical, I'll endorse the aforementioned Mozart, add in Carl Nielsen and Ludwig van Beethoven, J.S. Bach, Franz Berwald, Jean Sibelius and Anton Bruckner, for starters. Great stuff. After a few months of listening to it, the ordinary background noise of mass culture just sounds like television commercial jingles.
 
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