# Who was your gateway composer?



## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

Thought it might be a fun question? Mine was JS Bach. When I was 1 years old, anyone playing Bach would stop me dead in my tracks. By four I was trying to sort out the D minor Toccata and Fugue at the piano, but if I was a prodigy it was as a listener and not as a performer. I remained fiercely loyal to Bach until I was in my mid teens---considering all other composers second rate. And then one day I heard a Mozart piano concerto that had a Bach-like passage, and the door finally cracked.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Ludwig van Beethoven!


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Mine was Shostakovich. My dad was a major classical music enthusiast, and I was at the Boston Public Library which had a large collection of classical lp's and a few sound-proof booths. I came across a bunch of Shostakovich recordings and was drawn in by his name. I went to the sound booth and was amazed with the music. The rest is history.


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## Guest (Jun 26, 2019)

Mozart, or maybe Tchaikovsky if you could liking the 1812 overture when I was 8.


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## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

Beethoven oddly enough - sy 5 and 6 more or less convinced me for a while that I would never listen to pop and rock again.

Mozart came a bit later.


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## Bourdon (Jan 4, 2019)

I was 15
Beethoven was the start for me and a complete farewell to pop music, except for the traditional art music of different countries.


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## annaw (May 4, 2019)

I think it was mainly a mix of Bach and Beethoven. There were some pieces by other composers also...


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## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

Beethoven. I am tempted to add "of course" to that, but from the earlier posts, maybe it's not as obvious as I had first thought.....


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## MatthewWeflen (Jan 24, 2019)

Brahms, specifically Brahms Sextet 1, 2nd movement, in the Star Trek TNG episode "Sarek."


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## eljr (Aug 8, 2015)

Philip Glass. 



.........


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

Wagner. It was through the overtures/preludes to his operas that started my love for classical, twelve years ago.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

Bulldog said:


> Mine was Shostakovich.


Starting with Shostakovich.... Most of the later 20th century composers I would think of as acquired tastes. I can't imagine someone listening to Anton Webern's Symph. 21 or to a Paul Hindemith organ Sonata and thinking; "Yes, I'm home now!" Just seems like there's a lot of music to go through before one gets to that point... But I'd probably be dead wrong.


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## D Smith (Sep 13, 2014)

Bizet. When I was 9 or 10 I heard the Toreador March played on our piano and fell in love.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

And Wagner for me - well, eventually anyway. I had a couple of highlights albums on vinyl when I was in my twenties which I enjoyed as an occasional diversion from my rock music collection. When I decided to investigate classical music in earnest some fifteen or so years later I jumped in the deep end by buying Solti's Ring cycle which was an introductory offer from a music mail-order company and that pretty much kickstarted everything.


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## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

I can perhaps add Rossini to Beethoven - the overtures did make a huge impression.

How I ended up a Mozart fanboy is quite odd given that I initially got off on big band 19thC music.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

vtpoet said:


> Thought it might be a fun question? Mine was JS Bach. When I was 1 years old, anyone playing Bach would stop me dead in my tracks. By four I was trying to sort out the D minor Toccata and Fugue at the piano, but if I was a prodigy it was as a listener and not as a performer. I remained fiercely loyal to Bach until I was in my mid teens---considering all other composers second rate. And then one day I heard a Mozart piano concerto that had a Bach-like passage, and the door finally cracked.


Mine was Mahler, because I was stunned by some of the polyphonic music in the second symphony I think, I remember saying to someone that I didn't know music could be like that!


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## Aleksandr Rachkofiev (Apr 7, 2019)

I never remembered what my first listen was - my long term memory has always been terrible! However, the earliest pieces I remember loving are all by Chopin. I remember hearing his Heroic Polonaise, Cello Sonata, and Second Piano Concerto around the age of 8. To this day, I think the F Minor Piano Concerto in the hands of Arthur Rubinstein is my favorite piece of all time (mostly because of nostalgia, but also just because it's a fantastic piece!). I feel like I'm almost realizing a childhood dream now, because 7 years have passed since then and I'm now learning the F Minor Concerto and have both other pieces on my to-do list!


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Berlioz. Was given a record of excerpts from new RCA releases (they used to actually do this). The last track was the Dream of the Witches Sabbath. I played that track over and over - I loved it; really great stuff. Mind you I was all of 7 or 8. That's all it took - I was a classical junkie.


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## Hiawatha (Mar 13, 2013)

Copland - and Gordon Crosse.

Age - 11.

Being in the choir that sang three of the old American songs and "The Demon of Adachigahara" at the Croydon Schools' Music Festival at the Fairfield Hall. 

I still have the vinyl disc of it.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Russians. Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Rachmaninoff, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rachmaninoff. Big salad with Russian dressing, and then more Russians--Stravinsky, Prokofiev.....


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

Strange Magic said:


> Russians. Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Rachmaninoff, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rachmaninoff. Big salad with Russian dressing, and then more Russians--Stravinsky, Prokofiev.....


Cui? Not a word for poor Cui? I understand his great grandson Squi used to hang out with Judge Kavanaugh.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Bach (Brandenburg Concertos)... then Handel (Water Music), Haydn (Sym No. 104), Mozart (Sym No. 40), Dvorak (New World Sym), Rimsky-Korsakov (Scheherazade), Bizet (Carmen Suite), Rachmaninov (Sym No. 2) ... all about the same time when knee-high to a clarinet. I never looked back.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Impossible to say, but it may have been Prokofiev's _Cinderella,_ music from which was used on a golden record narrating that fairy tale. I had to have been quite young, but that dark waltz tune culminating in the terrifying clock striking midnight captivated me. I didn't find out that it was Prokofiev until at least 10 years later.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

vtpoet said:


> Cui? Not a word for poor Cui? I understand his great grandson Squi used to hang out with Judge Kavanaugh.


I thought Cui's last name was Cueg and that he sailed on the Pequod in search of Moby Dick, who wrestled with a giant squi.

Correct me if I'm wrong. Just don't call me Ishmael.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

Liszt. To this day I think his Années de Pélerinage are ridiculously accessible--simple musically, short, beautifully adorned, emotionally complex. His tonal language and melodies are special, and as a youth I wasn't as smart as I'm now, so Brahms and Mahler were out of the question.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Schubert was I think the first classical composer I remember really liking when I was about 18. There were random works here and there that I enjoyed before that – Shostakovich's 8th quartet, Górecki's 3rd symphony, Beethoven's Pastoral. But getting a full set of Schubert's symphonies was big for me, I listened to it all the time, especially the last 2. 

That being said I am a late bloomer with classical music. I didn't really get into it until last year. Glenn Gould's Bach Goldberg Variations was a MAJOR gateway drug which led to Chopin's Preludes, Mozart's symphonies, Ravel's piano works, and then the Rite of Spring, and the rest is history  my love for classical music spiraled seriously out of control beyond that... full blown obsessive compulsion. Far beyond the level of sanity. So I will always thank JS Bach, Glenn Gould and his Goldberg Variations (the earlier recording).


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## Clairvoyance Enough (Jul 25, 2014)

Probably the 3rd Brandenburg and Concerto for Violin and Oboe in the Best of Bach video on youtube. It was 3rd movement (I think? the fast part at the end!) of the Brandenburg that really struck me, because it broke my conception that the rhythms in classical music were always blocky and symmetrical in a way I just didn't find interesting, which is how I perceived the first concerto at the time.

Looking back, the real problem there was that the performance of Brandenburg 1 in that video is much slower than I like. Similar issues with another Best of video had me convinced that Handel, one of my top 3 favorite composers, must be one of the worst and most boring composers of all time. That's why I really hate seeing poor performances (at least half of the most popular videos seem to be of the music being _played _like it really is stuffy and boring) with millions and millions of views on youtube. I always wonder to myself how many listeners were turned off of something great forever.


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## Brahmsian Colors (Sep 16, 2016)

There were four symphonies and one concerto that initially and permanently drew me into classical music: Dvorak's "New World" Symphony, Brahms' Symphonies 1 and 2, Beethoven's 9th and Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No.1. I especially cannot forget the cosmic impression the Ninth had on me upon first hearing. To this day it remains unique in my entire listening experience.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Michael Haydn. A 12-inch 78 RPM recording of his "Toy" Symphony.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

My parents’ LPs. They could only afford a few, all mono at that time of course.

- Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony
- Debussy’s La Mer
- Ibert’s Ports of Call
- Schubert’s Great C Major

Maybe a couple of others – it was a long time ago!

BTW, a first-line stereo LP cost $5.98 around 1962. In today’s dollars, that would be close to $50!


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

Beethoven and Bach dominated the parents house, and Bizet Carmen on 78"speed disc, not to be touched by any other then my dad.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Rogerx said:


> Beethoven and Bach dominated the parents house, and Bizet Carmen on 78"speed disc, not to be touched by any other then my dad.


My father often worked during the day. I would grab his LPs and play them on the windup gramophone in my bedroom. If I held down the tone arm, I could see the little spirals of vinyl curling up from the record surface. That was fun!

I mentioned this to him in later years, when he was quite old. He just looked at me levelly and said, "I wondered why those records wore out so fast."


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

.....Balakirev, Glinka, Khachaturian, Ippolitov-Ivanov, Glazunov........


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## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

KenOC said:


> My father often worked during the day. *I would grab his LPs and play them on the windup gramophone* in my bedroom. If I held down the tone arm, I could see the little spirals of vinyl curling up from the record surface. That was fun!
> 
> I mentioned this to him in later years, when he was quite old. He just looked at me levelly and said, "I wondered why those records wore out so fast."


Poor old chap. why didnt you play them on his LP player?

you must be 80 if your dad had a wind up


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## Guest (Jun 27, 2019)

elgars ghost said:


> When I decided to investigate classical music in earnest some fifteen or so years later I jumped in the deep end....


This.

Tchaikovsky when I was 6, Holst when I was 7, Dvorak when I was 7, Grieg, Ligeti and Strauss when I was 12, Beethoven when I was 14 and Satie when I was 15.

But, like elgars ghost, it wasn't until I was much older that I bought Beethoven's Eroica and all his symphonies to properly investigate CM.

The first piece I learned to play on piano (badly) was Bach's Prelude No 1.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Back in 1986 when I started to get interested in classical music, my first CD's (IIRC) were by Schubert, Mozart and Dvorak. I liked what I heard so I continued exploring.


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## Bourdon (Jan 4, 2019)

I was lucky to go to a school where music was taught for an hour a week. That's how as a 12 years old child I was introduced into the world of classical music . I must have had an open ear but it would take several years before I was completely grabbed. My aunt was a tailor and while making clothes the radio was on and sometimes there was classical music.
I was a dreamy child and everything was fine because I liked being with her and unnoticed I heard the music that I would later love.
When I was 15 I went to the evening school and one evening the language teacher spoke about classical music and I was full of attention when he spoke about Beethoven. I asked him if he could sing it and there it was, pom pom pom po .. ..... m and a door opened.... and started saving for my first LP.
Immediately I started listening and comparing, I remember the one was Jochum a 25 cm record and Karajan wich was more expensive. After a few weeks I was proud of my first LP and my parents looked with surprise at their son and his interest in that strange music. It was an adventure and it still is.


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## NLAdriaan (Feb 6, 2019)

To me, the appreciation of any good music started in my teens in the seventies and it involved Pop, Jazz and Classical music. LP's would mainly be Jazz and Pop music.

Classical music really took off by taping the weekly sunday-afternoon concerts and the Christmas concerts from the Concertgebouw on cassettes. These were the years of Bernard Haitink and I was especially into Mahler, Bruckner and Berlioz (Faust).


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

Bourdon said:


> I was lucky to go to a school where music was taught for an hour a week.


At the elementary school I went to in America (also went to Germany) they had a once a week(?) "music program". We all diligently studied the flutofone-sometimes called a Trophy Flute. In American, you know, music is treated _seriously_. Alas that Mozart's Concerto for Flutofone was tragically lost when Haydn's wife mistook the MS for hair curlers. Fortunately, after Leopold Kozeluch wrote his Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat major for trumpet, piano, mandoline & Double bass, he was said to have followed that up with a Sinfonia Concertante in E-sharp minor for Bass Kazoo, Flutofone, Zither and Marimba.


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## apricissimus (May 15, 2013)

Shostakovich, and in particular, his 13th symphony. I've told this story here before, but to make it brief, my Greek professor in college brought us all to hear Yevgeny Yevtushenko speak (which had nothing to do with Greek, but whatever). He was in town for a performance of DSCH's 13th, which is set to five of his poems. I went to that performance and I was greatly impressed. I was maybe 22 years old and had never really listened to classical music before that.


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## Bourdon (Jan 4, 2019)

vtpoet said:


> At the elementary school I went to in America (also went to Germany) they had a once a week(?) "music program". We all diligently studied the flutofone-sometimes called a Trophy Flute. In American, you now, music is treated _seriously_. Alas that Mozart's Concerto for Flutofone was tragically lost when Haydn's wife mistook the MS for hair curlers. Fortunately, after Leopold Kozeluch wrote his Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat major for trumpet, piano, mandoline & Double bass, he was said to have followed that up with a Sinfonia Concertante in E-sharp minor for Bass Kazoo, Flutofone, Zither and Marimba.


I remember most vividly how I was impressed by the yellow label and could recognize the LP with the fifth by just looking at the grooves .


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

Bourdon said:


> I remember most vividly how I was impressed by the yellow label and could recognize the LP with the fifth by just looking at the grooves .


Yeah, I have that memory too. There were favorite moments in different pieces and I got so that I could recognize where they were by the shading within the LP's grooves.


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## Bourdon (Jan 4, 2019)

vtpoet said:


> Yeah, I have that memory too. There were favorite moments in different pieces and I got so that I could recognize where they were by the shading within the LP's grooves.


Exactly :tiphat:


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## Dimace (Oct 19, 2018)

Tschaikowsky, Verdi and Bellini. Horowitz and Maria Callas. I was in the paradise.


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## Bourdon (Jan 4, 2019)

..........................


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## samm (Jul 4, 2011)

For me Handel. Just by accident. I heard a piano performance of the "Largo" played by the piano tuner at school. I asked what it was and being told it was "Largo", I tried to find it in the library. What I had got from the library (and I had to go back with an adult because I only had a minor's library ticket which didn't allow borrowing recordings) was an LP of concerto grossi (op.3 or op.6) and I was lifting and dropping the turntable stylus at the parts marked out as "largo". I was soon feeling pretty frustrated, but I liked the music and recorded it onto a cassette.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

samm said:


> For me Handel. Just by accident. I heard a piano performance of the "Largo" played by the piano tuner at school. I asked what it was and being told it was "Largo", I tried to find it in the library. What I had got from the library (and I had to go back with an adult because I only had a minor's library ticket which didn't allow borrowing recordings) was an LP of concerto grossi (op.3 or op.6) and I was lifting and dropping the turntable stylus at the parts marked out as "largo". I was soon feeling pretty frustrated, but I liked the music and recorded it onto a cassette.


Did you ever find out which "Largo" it was?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

flamencosketches said:


> Did you ever find out which "Largo" it was?


I would guess it was a piano transcription of the aria *Ombra Mai Fu* from Handel's opera _Xerxes_. It's usually just called "Handel's Largo" and is the only aria I know of that's sung to a tree. Everybody starting out on the piano learns this.


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

Beethoven's 7th, Allegretto, Bruno Walter and the Columbia Symphony Orchestra.


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## caters (Aug 2, 2018)

Mozart

I have admired his complexity within simplicity since birth. He prepared me for Beethoven and Chopin as a pianist.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Arthur Bliss and Bruckner


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

Jacck said:


> Arthur Bliss and Bruckner


Is Bruckner still your touchstone?


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## Kivimees (Feb 16, 2013)

Arvo Pärt.

He did compose music for children in the 1960s.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

vtpoet said:


> Is Bruckner still your touchstone?


yes, I really like his symphonies, but listen rarely to them, because I do not want to spoil them for myself by overexposure. But everytime I listen to them, I am enjoying them a lot. I really liked Skrowaczewski and Celibidache, but now Jochum seems to be my top choice.


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## robin4 (Jun 9, 2019)

at age 14, I borrowed a neighbor's recording of Sibelius sym #2, and played it over and over. I bought the LP and after about 3 months, listened to the reverse side (movements 3 and 4). They were pretty good also.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky — ballet suites, tone poems — My mom played them for me when I was 5 or 6.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Modest Moussorgsky was an early one for me too, discovered through Emerson Lake and Palmer’s album Pictures at an Exhibition. My interest was augmented by the fact that he shares the first 10 letters of his name with my favorite band at the time, Modest Mouse  (this appears to be a total coincidence). I got Ivo Pogorelich’s CD with Pictures at an Exhibition coupled with Ravel’s Valses.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Beethoven and Chopin, because my mother used to play it on piano. After that, the first classical LP I bought was Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, after seeing his name on Zappa's "Freak Out" list.


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## TheGazzardian (Nov 24, 2018)

I'll ignore the music . I listened to growing up when I didn't know what a composer was. As an adult, the composer that got me into listening to classical music was Igor Stravinsky - due to the number of prog rocks act that cite him as an influence, as I was deeply into prog rock at the time.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

millionrainbows said:


> After that, the first classical LP I bought was Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, after seeing his name on Zappa's "Freak Out" list.


Freak Out was my gateway to Edgard Varese. Those crazy rock stars, trying to get us interested in classical music.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I was really into classical in my early 20s, then dropped away from music completely. It wasn't until 1992, when I stumbled on Erik Satie's 5th Gymnopedie on the radio, that something sparked back up. 

Who knows how much free space I'd have in my office, now taken up by my CD stack/pile/hoarding, if I hadn't been listening to the radio that night?


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## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

Georg Friedrich Händel!!


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

Manxfeeder said:


> Who knows how much free space I'd have in my office, now taken up by my CD stack/pile/hoarding, if I hadn't been listening to the radio that night?


I wonder if it's mainly classical music listeners buying CDs these days? I have spotify, but if I really want to listen (and with a decent sampling rate) I still want a CD.


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## Guest (Jun 28, 2019)

vtpoet said:


> I wonder if it's mainly classical music listeners buying CDs these days? I have spotify, but if I really want to listen (and with a decent sampling rate) I still want a CD.


I buy a CD or a lossless (FLAC) download, whatever is cheaper. If I buy a CD I will typically rip it to FLAC anyway. Actually loading a CD into the player is rare for me, now.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

vtpoet said:


> I wonder if it's mainly classical music listeners buying CDs these days? I have spotify, but if I really want to listen (and with a decent sampling rate) I still want a CD.


I don't know. It's funny; I don't purchase CDs in any other genre. I guess I'm afraid some day the classical recordings I want to hear will disappear. I don't have that same fear with pop or rock. I think we're stuck with them forever.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

Baron Scarpia said:


> I buy a CD or a lossless (FLAC) download, whatever is cheaper. If I buy a CD I will typically rip it to FLAC anyway. Actually loading a CD into the player is rare for me, now.


Yeah, I'll download FLACS, but then straight-away burn them to CD. I just don't have a sound card to compete with a CD player.


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## Guest (Jun 28, 2019)

vtpoet said:


> Yeah, I'll download FLACS, but then straight-away burn them to CD. I just don't have a sound card to compete with a CD player.


Seems strange given that some of the better sound cards, or external DACs, have very good electronics. My sound card is an Asus Essence that I'ved had several years. It has always given me excellent service, and it sounds perfectly fine to me on quite a decent hi-fi set up.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

Partita said:


> Seems strange given that some of the better sound cards, or external DACs, have very good electronics. My sound card is an Asus Essence that I'ved had several years. It has always given me excellent service, and it sounds perfectly fine to me on quite a decent hi-fi set up.


Yeah, I'm not saying one can't get a decent sound card. I just don't have one; and the best demand a desktop. Laptops, until you get into the thousands, generally don't have great sound cards and even when they do, they aren't designed to be hooked up to an amplifier.


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## Guest (Jun 28, 2019)

vtpoet said:


> Yeah, I'll download FLACS, but then straight-away burn them to CD. I just don't have a sound card to compete with a CD player.


I had the foresight to get a Marantz CD/SACD player that has digitial input, so I use it as a DAC. In theory it takes USB, but I found it to have a very flakey USB interface. I have a gadget that converts USB->Toslink and send the signal to the CD player with an optical link. When I want to be more mobile I use an external USB headphone amp.


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## Guest (Jun 28, 2019)

vtpoet said:


> Yeah, I'm not saying one can't get a decent sound card. I just don't have one; and the best demand a desktop. Laptops, until you get into the thousands, generally don't have great sound cards and even when they do, they aren't designed to be hooked up to an amplifier.


I think the best are external, and there are lots on the market. I have an apogee groove that I really like for driving headphones. For something that would connect to your stereo there are lots of options, one I looked at is:

https://www.amazon.com/Schiit-Modi-...ords=usb+dac&qid=1561750061&s=gateway&sr=8-10


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

Baron Scarpia said:


> I think the best are external, and there are lots on the market. I have an apogee groove that I really like for driving headphones. For something that would connect to your stereo there are lots of options, one I looked at is:
> 
> https://www.amazon.com/Schiit-Modi-...ords=usb+dac&qid=1561750061&s=gateway&sr=8-10


Interestingly, if you read the review that I linked, they say that for headphone use, audiophiles can't tell the difference between a $2 dollar codec and a $2000 sound card.


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## Guest (Jun 28, 2019)

vtpoet said:


> Interestingly, if you read the review that I linked, they say that for headphone use, audiophiles can't tell the difference between a $2 dollar codec and a $2000 sound card.


Even a $2 codec needs a power supply. I'm reluctant to trust a sound card because it is in the environment of the computer where it is subject to interference and noise of various times. I'm willing to spend ~$100 for something external which I am confident has competently designed voltage regulation.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

Baron Scarpia said:


> Even a $2 codec needs a power supply. I'm reluctant to trust a sound card because it is in the environment of the computer where it is subject to interference and noise of various times. I'm willing to spend ~$100 for something external which I am confident has competently designed voltage regulation.


Maybe you already know this? But one of the golden rules for the quality of stereo equipment is if you can crank to full volume, nothing playing, and hear no noise/static. I can't produce that on any but by very best equipment. But I'm only a lower case audiophile. That test is about as far as I go.


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## Guest (Jun 28, 2019)

vtpoet said:


> Maybe you already know this? But one of the golden rules for the quality of stereo equipment is if you can crank to full volume, nothing playing, and hear no noise/static. I can't produce that on any but by very best equipment. But I'm only a lower case audiophile. That test is about as far as I go.


Yes, that's why I use my Marantz CD player as a DAC, or baring that an external DAC. It gets closer to a quiet background.


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## Tero (Jun 2, 2012)

I got interested in baroque music as a teen, and they were all cheap labels like Turnabout. I think it must have been Bach, as it was festive music with organ, trumpets and recorders. I quickly collected a bunch of LPs with baroque brass works, and they were all mixed composers. The Bach Brandenburg 2 was certainly in there. But I never got all the Brandenburgs in the LP era.

A more serious involvement then developed with a single Vivaldi disc of wind concertos, among which was one bassoon concerto RV483. Max Goberman and New York Sinfonietta, on Odyssey. That was almost like heroin to me and I still have not got such a high on first listen of a concerto as that one. the Bach was more like enjoyable "cannabis" ( I have never actually got anything out of it). I have the LP, one of very few classical LPs I have. Most others are better recorded works from the CD era. I collected Vivaldi wind concertos on LP, then pretty much all on CD.

On CD, both Vivaldi and Telemann have been my companions all these years. From a much smaller instrumental set, plus some suites from large vocal works, Handel a third. Actually, from biographies, Handel is my favorite baroque character. Vivaldi is much more a typical drama queen.


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## AeolianStrains (Apr 4, 2018)

100% Disney's Fantasia, so Stravinsky, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Bach, Ponchielli, Dukas, and even that Schubert, though not as much as the others.

I always loved Classical, but I think it was Liszt's Liebestraum No. 3 which made me _fall_ in love all over again.


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## Curmudgeon (Jun 14, 2019)

Prokofiev. I remember was I was about 4 years old back in the dark ages of the very early 60s, my mother had a copy of Peter and the Wolf, narrated by Sterling Holloway. It was part of a set of LPs she had. Eventually I listened to all of them, but it was Prokofiev that gave me my love of classical music.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

Tero said:


> On CD, both Vivaldi and Telemann have been my companions all these years. From a much smaller instrumental set, plus some suites from large vocal works, Handel a third. Actually, from biographies, Handel is my favorite baroque character. Vivaldi is much more a typical drama queen.


Our tastes in music are very similar then. Here's a favorite Vivaldi performance:






This one just tickles the hell out of me every time I hear it. Vivaldi is like the Issa of composers.


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## AeolianStrains (Apr 4, 2018)

vtpoet said:


> Our tastes in music are very similar then. Here's a favorite Vivaldi performance:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Help with the Issa reference? That performance is just wonderful. Less ticklish to me, more soothing.


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## Harmonie (Mar 24, 2007)

Handel was the very first composer I got into. It didn't take me long to expand to other big-name composers like Mozart, Vivaldi, Beethoven, etc. I do find it neat my first interest was a Baroque composer. For some that may not reflect upon their tastes later, but for me the Baroque era is my favorite era to this day.


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## Tero (Jun 2, 2012)

Vtpoet, just got the Brilliant box with all the string concertos. Plus a few sinfonias.


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## brucknerian (Dec 27, 2013)

Mum playing Beethoven on piano and Dad getting us CDs of Chopin and Ravel from the library (yep CDs, I'm a 90s kid).


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

AeolianStrains said:


> Help with the Issa reference? That performance is just wonderful. Less ticklish to me, more soothing.


Yeah, Issa is an obscure reference. Issa is one of the three great poets of Japan. His haiku are always friendly, humorous and approachable.


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## Cadenza (Sep 24, 2012)

Grieg’s piano concerto on a beautiful autumn evening in Seattle. 
I was shopping for school supplies with my two very young children and thinking how wonderful my life was and it came on a radio station I hadn’t even programmed. It was one of those serendipitous moments in life that changed me forever. Thankful.


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## jim prideaux (May 30, 2013)

Sibelius-Karelia Suite, as a very young child.

He remains my favourite composer.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

Mozart, Beethoven, Bach and Verdi no particular order.


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## Littlephrase (Nov 28, 2018)

Mozart, Schubert and Bach. My love for Beethoven soon followed.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

OT:Have a guess?


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## poconoron (Oct 26, 2011)

Mozart, Beethoven and Rossini overtures.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Chopin and his Nocturnes while studying piano hooked me then, and after my run with Rock n' Roll.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Satie, Bach, Schubert, Chopin. Bach is really the big one, I guess, because once I got into his keyboard music, it started this whole downward spiral into obsession with the whole classical music tradition and everything.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Ligeti. 
I had heard other classical music when I was a child (usual suspects, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Vivaldi, Tchaikowsky) but when I heard Ligeti's music that was the moment I thought "I have to know more about classical music".


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## Cadenza (Sep 24, 2012)

Merl said:


> OT:Have a guess?


From a few things you've posted...Brahms?


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

Probably Beethoven.
But the first major work that really got to me was a live performance of Shostakovich 10th.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

John Williams. A home viewing of _The Phantom Menace_ was my first encounter with an orchestra in the hands of a master who gives it something to do on 20 staffs.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

I figured it's probably Beethoven.
Not original Beethoven, but The New London Chorale's "Young Beethoven" album which my mom used to listen to quite often, on cassette. And I listened along as a 9 year old.
Fortunately I got to listen to the original music later.


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## BachIsBest (Feb 17, 2018)

Bach's Tocatta and Fugue in D minor, although my first purchase was Glenn Gould's Goldberg Variations. My first year of real classical music listening was probably about half Bach organ works.


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## Open Book (Aug 14, 2018)

vtpoet said:


> Thought it might be a fun question? Mine was JS Bach. When I was 1 years old, anyone playing Bach would stop me dead in my tracks. By four I was trying to sort out the D minor Toccata and Fugue at the piano, but if I was a prodigy it was as a listener and not as a performer. I remained fiercely loyal to Bach until I was in my mid teens---considering all other composers second rate. And then one day I heard a Mozart piano concerto that had a Bach-like passage, and the door finally cracked.


What is the Mozart concerto that has a Bach-like passage, do you remember? These references to other composers are interesting.


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

Wagner for me. I went to my first orchestral concert at age 12 or 13, a compulsory Schools Prom which featured the Siegfried Idyll. I wasn't particularly impressed by the Idyll itself, and much preferred the Polovtsian Dances which were also on the bill. However, the compère (Jack Brymer, I think) did tell the story of the Idyll's composition and, of course, its connection with Wagner's Ring Cycle. Now, I was fascinated by Norse mythology at the time, decided to explore this Ring Cycle thingy a bit further and borrowed Solti's recording of _Siegfried_ from my record library. To say that this was a "Road to Damascus" event really wouldn't be an exaggeration; I really hadn't been much interested in music before then, but I was now completely hooked.


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

For me, Stravinsky, followed very closely by Bartok.

Before Stravinsky, the only classical I heard was pre-20th century, and even though I could appreciate it from the skill level and musical theory standpoint, it never did anything for me. 

When I heard Stravinsky, an entire world was opened for me, where classical did not have to sound like all the well known 'warhorses'. 

It wasn't long after my discovery of Stravinsky and Bartok, when I began exploring the rest of the 20th century. When I discovered: Schoenberg, Berg, Carter, Tower, Lindberg, Schwantner, Wuorinen, Penderecki, Ligeti, etc, that I went from being a fan, to being obsessed. 

I also credit the avant-prog subgenre of progressive music for my exploration of the avant-garde of classical. Since a lot of avant-prog bands (Thinking Plague, Aranis, Henry Cow, Univers Zero, Art Zoyd, etc) are influenced by late 20th century composers, they are also a big part of my "gateway" into classical.


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