Classical Music - Are there any aficionados on here?

[VeryOldMan]

Are there any?
It all seems to be Pop and Taylor Swift on the board!

Drop a post on your favourite performers, composers or pieces of music.

USA music prom on BBC 4 tonight. All rather wonderful including one of my favourite pianists, Stephen Osborne, playing Rhapsody In Blue, and Ives' Unanswered Question played around the hall.

Ives is fascinating, for me. Very radical and conceptual composer who was also an insurance executive from Connecticut.

Busoni's Piano Concerto tonight. I might have to give that a listen.

With Rachmaninov's wonderful Symphonic Dances first.

Not if you're a cellist - my daughter's second least favourite after Pachelbel's canon😁

More seriously - I went to the Faerie Queen at the Proms last night - really really good but disappointing that they didn't film it for TV as I think it will lose a lot in radio broadcast - you won't be able to see when instrumentalists come to the front of the stage to interact with singers and dancers etc (all whilst playing from memory...).

Not a huge fan of sensu stricto classical music but love early and Baroque especially early English composers such as Byrd, Purcell and John Downland (who's songs I play, albeit on a modern guitar rather than a lute). At the other end of the time period I love Satie, Poulenc, Stravinsky, Cage and above all Debussy.

It's just the big chunk in the middle that I find a bit meh...

My dad is the chairman of an opera company for young singers and they did a beautiful and funny production of it summer. The music is delightful - it also featured musicians interacting with the singers and there was a lot of choreography.

I've been to one prom so far this season but most of the ones I want to go to are at the end of the month after we get back from holiday.

I'm considering splashing out on tickets for Beethoven's 'Fidelio' at the Royal Opera for me and my 16 year old in October, as it's such a fantastic opera but I don't think it's been on in London for a bit.

Always love a bit of Alpinesinfonie! I nearly missed it, I didn't realise it was on so early.

That excruciatingly beautiful bit of pathos at the end just before the reprise of the opening...

Beethoven's 'Silence' - Ernesto Cortazar

Sublime.

Anyone listening to tonight's prom? East west divan, Daniel Barenboim in his last ever prom appearance plus Anne Sophie Mutter. I just about held it together during the first half but in the interval they played a recording of Barenboim as a young man playing Chopin op 9 nr 2 nocturne and that tipped me over the edge.

Also I noticed that even though I have heard (and played ) it a million times there was one particular phrase where he brought out the voicing in a noticeably different way that made me hear it fresh. And that is exactly why he's a maestro. I do hope they show this on BBC 4 at some point. It is a historic event.

Listened to most of the NYO prom. They're always good fun because they bring the whole course on - apparently 180 players tonight! Shame they couldn't have done something bigger.

The conductor looked a bit creepy, and there were certainly things that could have been better, but the energy of that orchestra is always something special.

Mozart. It help me survive my A levels, all my best work for many years has been undertaken while listening to all his pieces. Stunning.

Mozart is a joy.

Barenboim's concert has had 5 star reviews everywhere. It was powerful listening to it but I wish they'd have put it on the telly. I don't know why they haven't - surely everyone would want to watch his last ever prom?! He is important to people across all generations and the work he has done with that orchestra is crucial, especially now. One of the good guys imo as well as being a maestro. I saw him conducting with Argerich as soloist a couple of times and the way they bounce off each other is something else. Someone needs to make a documentary about the pair of them.

See again, this is something I would love to see on telly. BBC 4 is all repeats now isn't it, apart from Proms and the odd documentary that they buy? So just show all the proms. Or at least most of them. It's not like it would interrupt the schedule really.

I agree. They've got all the equipment there, why not broadcast them all? It's great content.

I'm sure they would also be able to sell it on to other countries too.

I don’t understand why so few are on iplayer either. I listen on BBC sounds but my DC are a lot more visual. I would love to share a few of the proms I have heard with them because I think they would enjoy it. But they aren’t on iplayer which is a total shame. Same with the Barenboim too. They could have made money making that available.

Ooh, Dvořák 7 tonight! That's his best symphony by far. I hope the conductor does the end properly though, so many don't...

What’s this please? It’s very famous, I think you’ll all know. 3 minutes 22 seconds in. Rob and Rylan’s Grand Tour.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001z7v8

That's a bastardisation of a part of Winter from Vivaldi's Four Seasons.

@WaverOfSticks great, thanks.

One day I might get through the 9th without crying my eyes out but today is not that day. The first "Freude" and I'm gone.

Oh, I'm always a mess by the end. My choir sang it once (and I did the blimmin' soprano solo, which is fiendish) and I had to keep it together and not cry at the end.

I'm glad it's not just me. I'm not usually a very emotional person but Beethoven's 9th really gets to me.

Oh it's just wonderful.

Those of us of a certain age may remember it being played about a month after the reunification, in Berlin, broadcast on big screens to a big crowd. The wall was still there! Such a powerful expression of unity.

It was on Christmas Day 1989, just a few weeks after East Germans first breached the wall in Berlin but before the legal reunification. People had fled the DDR via Hungary since the summer. Leonard Bernstein conducting, and Freude replaced with Freiheit and the choir being made up of both West and East German choirs. I grew up less than an hour drive from the inner-German border (on the Western side) and watched that concert live on German TV.

Ooh I think I have found my tribe. Anyone else hear Sibelius 5 this evening? It's one of my favourite symphonies both to listen to and to play. I also love Mahler.

One of the best parts of my job is teaching The Development of the Symphony from 1750 to 1900, along with conducting the not at all bad school orchestra.