101 Classical Music CDs

It's not often that you see a classical music-related comment that makes you spit out your coffee : "Bach sucks because he was not a true composer. A true composer hears the music before he writes it. Bach composed using a mathematical system of numbers which he tought[sic] his students. After his death one of his students published a book “How to write a menuet[sic] with little or no musical knowledge”. Frankly, the result of his work is not musical, the opening bars always sound musical because he copied someone else’s melody, broke it down into numbers and wrote counterpoint from it. Handel did not even like Bach, because Handel wrote music. Anyone who does like Bach does so because they are told to. For a comparison, listen to music by Frescobaldi, Rameau, or Couperin, then listen to Bach. The difference? Something that is musical throughout the entire piece, and something that is musical for 10 seconds and quickly loses interest." Once I'd finished mopping the co...

Today we listen to possibly the most mediocre CD in my entire classical music collection, Glenn Gould's recording of Johann Sebastian Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. ********************** Glenn Gould, piano Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) The Glenn Gould Edition - Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I The Glenn Gould Edition - Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II Sony Classical, 1971/1993 ********************** It would take a nearly a century for his ideas to catch on, but aspects of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier would eventually come to revolutionize Western music. With this work, Bach promoted a new way of tuning keyboard instruments, using a twelve-tone chromatic system rather than the " meantone " system that predominated at the time. Furthermore, this enormous collection of preludes and fugues heavily influenced composers--including giants like Beethoven and Mozart--for hundreds of years to come, as it established some of the key ground rules for ha...

This week I listened to one of our all-time favorite CDs, a recording of three of Bach's most famous violin concertos. It reminded me of my favorite Bach story: It dates from college. My roomate in those days was a capable piano player, and at college he took organ lessons and became quite a gifted organ player. Once during his senior year, he was practicing in the University's chapel, pounding away at Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor . A young freshman kid walked into the chapel, came up to him, and in a fit of wanting to show how cultured he was, he asked, "is this BWV 565?" "Yes, it is. But dude, don't call it that. Nobody calls it that." I think he also muttered under his breath, "you dweeb" as the kid slunk away. And therein lies a lesson (I guess). Don't bother to try to show off--it only makes you sound like a tool. ********************** David and Igor Oistrach, violins The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Johann Sebastian Bach ...

Surprisingly little is known about Bach's Cello Suites. It's unclear when Bach composed them and there isn't even a definitive manuscript. ********************** Jian Wang, cello Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750 ) Six Cello Suites Deutsche Grammophon, 2005 ********************** In fact, the popularity of these amazing works is due to the singular coincidence of famous Catalan cellist Pau Casals finding an edition of the suites in a thrift shop . Casals probably did more than anyone else towards popularizing these works (he made the first complete recording of the cello suites in the mid 1930s), and today the cello suites are seen by many as the greatest works ever composed for a solo instrument. These suites sound profoundly difficult to play (of course I'm saying this with zero knowledge of how to play a cello), but the music doesn't have the many-layered complexity of what you'd typically expect from a Bach composition. The pieces are simple and elegant, an...

I considered holding off on Bach for a little bit because I feel he's almost too difficult to listen to, especially for classical music beginners. But because Bach holds such an important place in music history, and because his music will be the cornerstone of any basic classical music collection, we're going to tackle one of his more accessible works early on in this blog. ********************** Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic Johann Sebastian Bach The Brandengurg Concertos Orchestral Suites No. 2 &3 Deutsche Grammophon, 1965 ********************** The Brandenberg Concertos (there are six of them) are deeply complicated works, but don't let that scare you off. These works are accessible to a novice listener. And I'd suggest if you are starting your own classical music collection, get a copy of the Brandenberg Concertos early on. The particular recording I have (listed above) is performed in a relatively slow tempo on modern instruments, and I prefer...