Hitting the Classical Groove with JAGUARDOG's A-to-Z Music Write off Jun 16 '05    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet Popular Products in Books Mildred D. Taylor - Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry: A Literature Unit From $8 Olivier Dunrea - Ollie From $7 The Bottom Line Classical music grows on you over time until most other music sounds and acts dull. Of course you knew that I would eventually come around to doing a listing of my favorite classical music recordings, from the really old stuff to modern music that also gets listed as classical. You know, that boring long hair music that most folks sit and say, boooooorrrrrinnng! Hardly. For me, there is nothing more thrilling to be sitting in an orchestral hall and hearing an opera by Mozart or Verdi being performed by artists both on stage, and off, and the conductor and the orchestra in the pit. It's a fest for both the eyes and ears and the soul, along with some of the most thrilling melodies ever written. Or a symphony or a solo piece for piano that is performed with both technical skill and emotion. For more details along with a list of participants, go to Jaguardog's introduction here. So without further ado, here's my list: A B The first that comes to mind is Johann Sebastian Bach. This Baroque period composer packed them in his day, and they still have yet to stop coming. He's also very prolific in both his music and his children, several of whom went on to successful musical careers. My favorites of Bach's compositions include Sheep May Safely Graze, one of the most serene pieces of music out there. American composer Samuel Barber is another B entry. His Adagio for Strings turns me into a sobbing, soppy mess on occansion. Of course, Beethoven has to be on this list with those magnificent nine symphonies, the collection of sonatas and the violin concerti that he wrote. C Fryderych Chopin. Who else could woo a keyboard and make it fall in love with him? Raindrop Prelude, his waltzes and mazurkas are beautiful. D Claude Debussy's Clair de Lune is one of the most romantic pieces that I've ever heard, and worth it. Another Italian who blew the world away with opera is Donizetti. Brilliant bel canto songs, these are some amazing vocals. Sure the plots are pure melodrama, but with such great music, who cares? Try on Lucia di Lammermoor. Antonin Dvorak's New World Symphony. E Enescu and his Romanian Rhapsodies. Think gypsy music kicked up to hyperspace with some of the fastest tempos I've ever heard. F Faure Etherial. Gorgeous. G Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris helped to define American classical music. By all means, get the versions with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. Yeah, I know, a lot of folks think that Philip Glass stinks. I happen to like him, always have after I heard the soundtrack to the film Koyaanisqatsi. Then there was the Symphony No. 2 which is grand and sweeping, and the intimately haunting score for The Hours. For the purists out there, there's Edvard Grieg and his Piano Concerto in A minor. H A classic is Gustav Holst's The Planets. The best version is still Pierre Boulez and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. I've grown to love Alan Hovhaness' Mount St. Helen Symphony. It's grand, it's beautiful. So is Symphony no. 6: Celestial Gate. A modern composer with exotic rhythms, haunting melodies and a touch of the fabulous. Try it with Gerard Schwartz and the Seattle Symphony for the best recordings. I J Janos Janacek and his Fanfare for the Common Man. K Aram Khatchaturian wrote some great ballet music with Spartacus. The Adagio from this simply is dripping with romance and heartbreak. Also try James Galway's take on his violin concerto transcribed for flute. Gorgeous. L Franz Liszt was one of the 'bad boys' of the nineteenth century, and was a buddy of Chopin's. Together they romanced Europe, and Liszt still his romancing folks with his brilliant Hungarian Rhapsodies. M Gustav Mahler's symphonies are grand, eloquent works that dig down into the human psyche and pull out some interesting emotions. My favorite is still the Symphony No. I "Titan". Mozart. I have an awful lot of his work in my collection. I adore The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute when it comes to opera. N O Carl Orff took a medieval collection of bawdy songs and ballads, and turned them into music for the modern age with Carmina Burana. These themes have been endlessly lifted for film and television, with O Fortuna being overused. But it's still great to listen to. P Prokofiev rules! Five symphonies, and the gorgeous ballet Romeo and Juliet. Q R More Russians: Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade is one of the most gorgeous compositions around, with the opening first movement one of grand images and rich sensuality. Rachmaninov's three piano concerti are gorgeous, along with some of etudes and preludes. S Jean Sibelius and Finlandia, Symphony Number 5, and Valse Triste. Strauss. Both the family of waltz composers and the turbulent Rikard Strauss are up there with my favorites. When I need something light to help me cheer up, I tend to listen to Strauss waltzes, among them Tales from the Vienna Woods, The Music of the Spheres waltz, The Emperor Waltzes. For more serious fare, there's Rikard Strauss's opera Salome with the electrifying Cheryl Studer as the doomed teenager. For romance, there's Der Rosenkavalier. T Tchaikovsky. Hard to spell, but great to listen to. His operas, Eugen Onegin and The Queen of Spades are great tales of venegeance, lost loves, and dispair, with plenty of heart stopping arias. Then there are the ballets: Sleeping Beauty and of course, Swan Lake. The waltzes from these two approach the sublime. U V Who else can go here but Verdi? This Italian composer of opera was revered in his own land and helped to spark a revolution with the chorus from Nabucco. There's also La Traviata, Don Carlos and Otello. Sigh. W Oddly, my favorite bit of Wagner isn't an opera, but the Siegfried Idyll. X Y Z So there you have it, the collection of music that I would grab if I was to forced to choose.

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