101 Classical Music CDs

I saw an article in the USA Today recently that in a weird way explains precisely why I started this classical music blog. Let me share a few choice quotes: “Don't have time to read all those magazines you subscribe to? Not a problem. A new website called Brijit offers one-paragraph summaries of even the most complex and deeply researched tomes.” “Speed dating too slow? Speed Date.com dispatches with the in-person part of the encounter and sets strangers up for three-minute rounds of e-mailing or instant messaging. ‘We found that people think filling out long forms for most dating sites is too time-consuming,’ says co-founder Dan Abelon. ‘Our goal is to get people together, but even faster than before.’” “Take Irit Epelbaum. Compared with the laid-back pace of her native Bolivia, her rapid-fire Silicon Valley lifestyle is the stuff of madness. But by our time-crunched standards, she's family. ‘I drop off my laundry on the way out the door, I listen to Portuguese language tape...

Berlioz lived a colorful life, full of mistresses, marriages, chronic illness, and not least, laudanum addiction. Today we'll cover his best known work, the Symponie Fantastique, written to express his unrequited love for an Irish actress, Harriet Smithson. The interesting thing about Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique is that it tells a story, unlike the bulk of the symphonic works we've listened to so far. And you can really hear it in the music. Let's turn to the introduction to Berlioz's own program notes that he wrote for the symphony: "A young musician of morbid sensitivity and ardent imagination poisons himself with opium in a moment of despair caused by frustrated love. The dose of narcotic, while too weak to cause his death, plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by the strangest of visions, in which his experiences, feelings and memories are translated in his feverish brain into musical thoughts and images. His beloved becomes for him a melody and li...

Mendelssohn was a child prodigy comparable in talent to Mozart. In fact, some of the works he composed in his teens were thought of as superior to Mozart's when he was at a similar age. We also have Mendelssohn to thank for reviving the world's interest in the works of Bach. In 1829, Mendelssohn conducted a performance of Bach's St. Matthew's Passion, at a time when Bach's music had become nearly completely forgotten. The performance was so powerful and so well-regarded that it kicked off what we now think of as the "19th century Bach revival." ********************** Herbert Von Karajan and the Berliner Philharmoniker Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) Five Symphonies Deutsche Grammophon, 1973 ********************** The disc I have is a three-CD collection of all five of Mendelssohn's symphonies, and with any luck, I'll have a chance to blog about all of them. I've posted a link to this CD below, along with another, similar Deutsche Grammophon colle...

It's about time we tackled a Mahler Symphony, so let's start at the start and listen to his First Symphony. Mahler was born in Bohemia in 1860, what was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and during his career he was famous much more for his conducting skills than his symphonies. He even conducted New York's Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic during the last four or so years of his life. ********************** Claudio Abbado and the Berliner Philharmoniker Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) Symphony #1 Deutsche Grammophon, 1991 ********************** A few things about this symphony: 1) First of all, when you fire up a Mahler symphony, be sure to keep one finger on the volume button. I don't know any composer who goes through quite such a range of dynamics, from practically inaudible to roaringly loud. 2) This symphony was reviled at its first performance. Mahler later said, "In Budapest, where I performed it for the first time, my friends bashfully avo...

Most people, when they want to become more familiar with classical music, tend to focus almost exclusively on symphonic works. This is a big mistake. I think there are a few reasons people favor symphonies. First, everybody's heard of the major symphonic composers like Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, etc; so it's certainly reasonable (and easier) to learn classical music by starting with these guys and their key works. Also, the symphony is seen by many as the pinnacle of the classical music art form. Symphonies are big, they're dramatic, they have gravitas . And when you go to hear your local symphony orchestra, they're typically going to play--you guessed it--a symphony. But there's an entire universe of beautiful music to explore beyond the traditional symphony: solo piano, string quartets, piano trios, and a whole host of other chamber music forms. I'll confess, I had been listening to classical music for two decades before I made a meaningful effort...

Today we'll tackle Bruckner for the second time by listening to his First Symphony. ********************** Sir Georg Solti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Anton Bruckner (1824-1896 ) Symphony #1 (1865-1866) London, 1996 ********************** We've talked before about how it can be an intimidating investment in time to take on a fairly long classical music work like this 45-minute symphony. So if you're looking to experience a more bite-sized portion of Bruckner's First, try starting out with the 12-minute second movement. The movement starts out almost atonally, but then resolves into particularly beautiful waves of overlapping melodies performed by the strings. Pay close attention from (roughly) the 2:36 mark to about the 5:00 minute mark for this section. Finally, see what you think of the triumphant final two minutes of the second movement. Those are two of my favorite parts of the entire symphony. Let me share just a few thoughts on the Chicago Symphony, which...

We had dinner with some good friends last night and one of them commented on how he's trying to learn more about classical music, but he just didn't really like Beethoven. Too heavy and too serious. At first I thought to myself: Is this possible ? Somebody who doesn't like Beethoven? How can this be? ********************** George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra Beethoven (1770-1827) Symphony #4 Symphony #7 Sony Classical, 1992 ********************** We talked for a bit about how some of Beethoven's music, particularly his Fifth Symphony, has become so familiar to listeners and used in so many formats that the symphony--or at least the introductory "dut dut dut daaaaahhh" part--borders on self-parody. Remember "A Fifth of Beethoven" from the Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack? I can see how mighty works like his Ninth and Fifth symphonies might be seen as ponderous and even a bit over the top, and I can also see how, compared to Mozart or Bach, Beetho...