# Music associated with moments in your life



## Chat Noir (4 mo ago)

I'm certain long-term listeners have works that remind them of moments in their lives. It's the same for all music, not just classical. However, are there works you listened to, still listen to, never listen to maybe, which have been the 'soundtrack' to moments in your life?

At the weekend I was listening to the Satie nocturnes just off-hand, which I hadn't really listened to for something like 20 years. It was the second one that did it and my chest fell-in! I remember that I'd been properly jilted after having made my way all the way to my girlfriend's university digs (she attended a different university - guaranteed romance failure) where it all unravelled.

Then me in the following weeks acting like a bargain-basement character from a _Sturm und Drang_ novel. The very spare and melancholy atmosphere of Satie's use of 7ths/2nds in two-part harmony, parallel open fifths, ethereal runs in fourths, mediaeval-sounding themes. It suited my desolate mood and I played them a lot. Since young people with a sense of the romantic tend to torture themselves this way.

That's just one. I have more, but I want you to stay awake. Tell me what music has been the soundtrack to moments in your life.


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## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

Really interesting topic. I have various pieces that I associate with various places and various people (often this is someone who performed the work or the composer if the composer happens to be a friend of mine). Some years ago, my family would usually go see the Nutcracker around Christmas time, so I have associations of those concerts. I've also seen Swan Lake several times with some of the family, so I have similar associations there. 

Another interesting work that comes to mind is Hans Abrahamsen's work Schnee. I heard this live for the first time in Boston, and I think I will always have associations with the specific church and cold winter evening where that performance happened. I've since heard the work several times in London.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Kinda like "they're playing my song"...Interesting thread. There are a couple of works that I do associate with special moments and can't listen to them without a sense of nostalgia washing over me. 

For 20 years, from 1982 to 2002, I owned a cute, rustic A-frame cabin in eastern Idaho near the Yellowstone border. The first night I was there a fierce storm was brewing over the mountains. Partner and I needed a break. A nice bottle of bourbon was indulged in while listening to Brahms 1st with the Boston SO and Charles Munch on an RCA LP - these were pre-CD times. Sitting there, watching the rain slowly pick up was nice enough, but then all hell broke loose with thunder and lightning galore as the fourth movement played out. It was a great listening experience - especially since the power didn't go out like it often did. Everytime I hear or play the Brahms my mind goes back to that wonderful and memorable evening.

The other is Schoenberg's Pelleas und Melisande. Decades ago I had finally made it to Vienna, arriving in the late evening. After checking in to the hotel and getting cleaned up I wanted to go out for a walk and get something to eat. But first...I needed my trusty Sony AM/FM radio. Didn't take long to find a classical station and the music that was on was haunting and really intoxicating. I walked the Ringstrasse and wouldn't quit until they announced whatever the music was. Finally I learned it was the Schoenberg. I can't listen to that music without thinking of that fine first night in Vienna. 

There are many other works that evoke old feelings, some that provoke frustration, anger, remorse too. Music is a potent thing.


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## Chat Noir (4 mo ago)

mbhaub said:


> but then all hell broke loose with thunder and lightning galore as the fourth movement played out. It was a great listening experience - especially since the power didn't go out like it often did. Everytime I hear or play the Brahms my mind goes back to that wonderful and memorable evening.


I even got a shiver up the spine just reading that description of the Brahms in a raging storm. Amazing.


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## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

The Brahms in a raging storm reminded me of a performance of the Rite of Spring at Tanglewood I went to see some years ago. It was absolutely pouring outside, and the concert hall is a semi-outdoor space: the "shed" as it's called is fan-shaped, and the end with the stage is fully covered on three sides. About halfway down the back, the sides become open, and the back of the hall is open. Here's a couple of pictures to give a better idea:









[picture removed by moderator]

Anyway, it was absolutely pouring outside – quite a different experience being open to the elements than inside of a standard concert hall!

I had another experience, with Wagner's Die Walküre, where they broke up the opera into three concert performances, one act each, with an hour break in between. Just as the third act was beginning, storm clouds began to brew. As Andris Nelsons lifted his baton to indicate an upbeat, a massive thunderclap resounded overhead. Then everyone's singing about a storm brewing, and there's a literal storm brewing outside!


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

When I first moved to Tennessee from California, I was listening to the Quartetto Italiano's recording of Beethoven's C# minor string quartet when I looked out the window, and it was snowing. I hadn't seen that before. It was so still and beautiful, and it matched the first movement.  

To this day, when it snows at the beginning of winter, I reach for that recording.


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## RandallPeterListens (Feb 9, 2012)

I don't wish to come across as a contrarian jerk, but my answer to your question is - no.

Yes they are many concerts I have attended where I vividly recall the music which was played, and have many "life-moments" in which music was playing at the time. Somehow or other, I never inextricably associate the two. When I think Chopin Nocturnes, no, I don't immediately think of hearing Rubinstein play them in concerts many decades ago. When I hear Patty Page sing I don't necessarily think of the moment in 1968 (?) when I was introduced to certain substances indicative of that era and heard a Patty Page song playing on the radio. But the appreciation of the experience and the appreciation of the music have always remained separate in my mind. The experience doesn't trigger the music, and hearing the music today doesn't trigger the experience unless I make a conscious effort at recall.

But I suppose, to be 100% honest, there is one piece of music I actually do associate with an experience. I remember sitting on the curb when my father was washing his car in either 1959 or 1960 when I heard Frank Sinatra's rendition of "High Hopes" playing on his tiny transistor radio. When I was quite young, it was always novelty popular songs with novelty lyrics (e.g. "Mairzy Doats") which caught my attention before I was ever struck by the music itself. Don't quite know what that means.


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## Chat Noir (4 mo ago)

See though, you did recall immediately that the Chopin was played by Rubinstein many decades ago. The link is there! 

High Hopes, I once had those.


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## Hogwash (5 mo ago)

Richard Strauss Blue Danube was played for the grooms march at my wedding.


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

Hogwash said:


> Richard Strauss Blue Danube was played for the grooms march at my wedding.


_Blue Danube_ is not Richard Strauss!


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## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

Neo Romanza said:


> *Blue Danube[/i] is not Richard Strauss!*


I’d rather like to hear Richard Strauss’ Blue Danube – though would this be early or late R. Strauss?

Come to think of it, Blue Danube combined with Singing in the Rain a la Ariadne auf Naxos would be fun…


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Call me a sentimental sap, but RVW's Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis always gets me weepy about a lady who has since passed from this world. I played it a lot when we owned an art gallery together back in the 90s. She was -- indescribably beyond Eros, Philia, Storge and Agape combined. God's masterpiece. There will never be another.

Not classical but I remember playing Mike Oldfield's Hergest Ridge while trying to meet an illustration deadline late, late one night in the pre-internet days. Now it always makes me a little nervous to hear it. "How late does Fedex stay open and will our tires hold out to get me there in time?"


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

'The Bangin' Man' by Slade and 'Life on Mars' by Bowie will always be associated with listening to the first broadcasts of them on radio from my mate's dad's post office van as we didn't have a portable radio. 'Love is in the Air' will always be associated with a prank played on me by the artists I was playing for in a Cabaret club. I was about to play (sight read I might add) a complicated looking solo in the middle of the song. Unbeknown to me, they'd rigged my keyboards with flash explosions at the base and as I was steeling myself for the first beat of the solo, they triggered the explosions via a footswitch on the 4th beat of the bar just prior to the solo start. Already tensing, I leapt up and to make matters worse, lighting was in on the joke and caught me 6 feet in mid air terrified. They told me later that the solo was intentionally difficult to wind me up as they'd heard I was a decent sight-reader......****ers....


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Plenty of non-classical music, but I still remember two classical music occasions, probably of the unlikely coincidence.

Spring 1987, about a year after I started exploring classical music, I was at home listening to Grieg's Two Elegiac Melodies (The Wounded Heart and The Last Spring), when my mother phoned me to tell me that my father had been taken to the hospital in an ambulance, with a likely heart attack. Fortunately it was not, but they did find that a heart attack was imminent, he was operated, and lived for another 26 years.

Summer 1987, business trip to Houston. I was staying in the Marriott hotel and from the corridors at higher levels one could lean over the balustrade and see the central area on the ground floor. A young woman was playing a grand piano, typical light music tunes. I was thinking to myself: would it not be nice if she would play something like Chopin's most famous etude (opus 10/3). Within seconds she switched to that exact melody.


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## dko22 (Jun 22, 2021)

although there are several pop songs (particularly one or two Christmas songs) which I very much associate with specific events long ago, I can't think of a clear example with classical. I guess the problem is that all the classical works which move me the most are ones I've heard so often and know so well that particular experiences tend to blur into each other or that there are too many to single out any specific one. 

If there is an exception, it is perhaps the Schumann Fantasy op.17 which always seems to recall my feeble attempt to play the left hand of the slow movement together with a girl I was somewhat in love with at the time....


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## Viajero (1 mo ago)

Hi, Chat,
As a long-time Jazzer, I cannot listen to Nat Cole's "Stardust" without thinking of my dearly departed grandparents. It gets me every time and is a real emotional experience.
Viajero


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## Nigel Oulton (4 d ago)

I came here when I was doing some research on another matter connected with music, but as soon as I saw this thread I knew I had to join and post a reply - so hello everybody :.)

The piece of music, if it was classical, would be the Adagio by Barber, although whenever I hear it I hear it in a version recorded by Steven Halpern the new age recording artist and producer and for me it will always be the most momentous day in a course of dental treatment that I had during 1991 with a wonderful dentist named Gregory Marshall - probably one of the nicest and most wonderful people living on this planet.

To me it is when the temporary crowning came out and in went my wonderful brand new smile, something which - considering I looked upon myself as a dental phobic at the time - was something that only months beforehand I would have dreaded and yet, months later, was overjoyed had finally happened for me.

Funnily enough back in 1990 I began collecting the Complete Mozart Edition released by Philips, only to sell off what few volumes I had collected in 1991 to help partially finance the course of treatment. Sadly I also had to cancel the monthly charitable donation I had with Oxfam - but the universe moves in mysterious ways and, just recently while talking about the Complete Mozart with a friend I did a search on the web and by chance discovered that Oxfam had a complete collection they were selling for just £180 plus postage. It had 2 discs missing and one of the booklets and, at first I thought nope I need the money for other things and then 3 weeks later it was still there and I just new that, after 30 years or more, it was meant to be mine - so I made the purchase and gave them a extra £40 as a donation.

When it arrived, about a week later, I discovered that, apart from a little fading on the cardboard sleeves and the original owner obviously being a fan of the symphonies, concertos and Italian opera's, the rest of the volumes were in virtually mint condition. It took me a week, but in that time I ripped it all to FLAC and can now stream it anywhere I like at home and, 30 plus years later, walk around with the whole collection on my iPhone.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

composingmusic said:


> I’d rather like to hear Richard Strauss’ Blue Danube – though would this be early or late R. Strauss?


Richard Strauss composer a set of waltzes called "Schlagobers" ("whipped cream"). When it came out a critic commented: For Richard, better go for Wagner, for Strauss, for Johann, for whipped cream, go to Demel (a famous Viennese café). 
(The better Richard Strauss waltzes are the suite from Rosenkavalier, I still prefer the unrelated Viennese Strausses.)


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I do associate some pieces of music with some books back from when as a teenager I was still getting to know basic repertoire pieces and would tend to play a record multiple times often while I was reading a book. So, for example, whenever I listen to Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade I find myself remembering John Wyndham's _The Kraken Wakes _which I must have been reading when I first listened to Scheherazade, probably Beecham's recording.


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## Hogwash (5 mo ago)

Neo Romanza said:


> _Blue Danube_ is not Richard Strauss!


Yes. I stand corrected. Johann not Richard. Brain fart


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## Nate Miller (Oct 24, 2016)

this is an interesting thread, and some of the moments you guys have shared are pretty cool.

which is why it baffles me that for somebody like myself that's played all my life and lives for the art of music has no associations between music and any moments in my life like you guys have. I thought about it, and I'd have to make stuff up if I was going to post about music associated with any moment of my life.

and I find that rather surprising.


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

Nate Miller said:


> this is an interesting thread, and some of the moments you guys have shared are pretty cool.
> 
> which is why it baffles me that for somebody like myself that's played all my life and lives for the art of music has no associations between music and any moments in my life like you guys have. I thought about it, and I'd have to make stuff up if I was going to post about music associated with any moment of my life.
> 
> and I find that rather surprising.


This is how it is with me as well. I have had some "epiphanies" (or "light bulb" moments) when I was a teenager like hearing Strauss' _Eine Alpensinfonie_ (the HvK recording) for the first-time. I can think of another instance where I heard Bartók's music for the first-time, which is what initiated my full-blown exploration of classical music. But, compared to other posts here, I have say these moments aren't exciting in that I'm not in some kind of foreign land or the stars did something magical while Mahler's _Symphony No. 3_ was being performed. No, nothing cool from my little dull corner of the world.


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## Chat Noir (4 mo ago)

Neo Romanza said:


> I have say these moments aren't exciting in that I'm not in some kind of foreign land or the stars did something magical while Mahler's _Symphony No. 3_ was being performed. No, nothing cool from my little dull corner of the world.


It doesn't have to be epiphanies or like a religious experience! More like music having been present during certain times and this being somehow indivisible from the memory. 

Another one for me is Rimsky Korsakov's 'Song of India', from when I used to hang around at the house of a piano teacher...a lot! A bit odd outside of lessons perhaps, considering he was 25 years older and a bit strange, but it was the old days. He had zero cooking ability, so I would make little pancakes and he often played that work in the other room, along with Heller's Op.47 no.3 étude. I remember that a lot.


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

Chat Noir said:


> It doesn't have to be epiphanies or like a religious experience! More like music having been present during certain times and this being somehow indivisible from the memory.


Oh, in that case, I have none.


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## Waehnen (Oct 31, 2021)

I´ve told you this before but my spectacular musical moment was in 1996 in Australia. I was alone in a tent during a thunderstorm in the desert, at the foot of the Uluru rock. I was listening to my brand new first Sibelius album, the 7th Symphony by Sibelius, performed by Davis/Bostoners. The storm section in C minor hit while the tent was swaying in the wind. "Oh this is something!" I thought. When right after the 3rd occurrence of the 'Farewell Theme', in the recapitulation of the Adagio the string chords in countermovement hit, I was in tears and shivering. I had never experienced anything as strong when it comes to music. The sense of awe and wonder and absolute beauty. My being, the music and the surroundings somehow coming together in an existential way.


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## FrankE (Jan 13, 2021)

None that I can think of.
I don't think the special sense of hearing has as much connection to recall from long term memory as the special sense of smell does.
Music isn't overly important to me though and I've gone long periods without listening to or incidentally hearing any music such as when I worked at sea and when I was sojourning. I've also had less long periods of listening only to speech with some incidental music (Radio 4 before it saturated with intersectionality). A shameful admission from someone who worked for a record label with a tagline 'the soundtrack to your life'.


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

FrankE said:


> Music isn't overly important to me though...


This is a completely alien thought to me. I couldn't imagine my life _without_ music.


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

I guess I am the odd person out.

I have no association, good or bad, of music with moments in my life. Let me clarify, I have almost no _emotional_ connection with moments in my life.

I can listen to something, that I was listening to during some of the best or worst times of my life, and not have any of the emotions I was feeling at the time. Music for me, stands completely on its own, completely unassociated with what was going on in my life at the time I was listening to specific pieces.

Example: I was listening to bands like: Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Grand Funk, etc., during some of the best times of my youth (late teens, early 20's). Despite that, when I hear these bands now, I get nothing out of them, musically or emotionally.

Another example: I was listening to the album "Canto di Primavera" by Italian prog band, Banco del Mutuo Soccorso during a horrible breakup. I can listen to the album to this day, with zero negative feelings associated with the breakup I went through. All I hear is the emotional content of the music itself, and the emotional response they instill in me while listening. 

Music is extremely important to me. It is by far, the best artform for me.


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## Chat Noir (4 mo ago)

It's quite interesting seeing the number of respondents who say they have no connection. I find this strange. Sensory connections in all spheres of life knit together a sense of consciousness and meaning among what are really disparate experiences and sensory perceptions. 
I think the worst thing is for sense impressions to fade and disappear, it destroys memory and continuity.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

No association for me either. I like my music abstract and dissociated from non-musical events. That is why I love symphonies the most, I guess.


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## Chat Noir (4 mo ago)

Well all the music in itself can be dissociated from non-musical events; even if it was written on a basis of non-musical inspiration. You can take it like that and many listeners do. I also listen to music in the 'technical' way, I'm a musician; or in the way of an audience.

That's not what this thread is about. When you say:


TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> I like my music abstract


It's not about something preferred or willed, it's about those things that are not necessarily anything to do with what you want or generally prefer. In the way that the name 'Peter' might give you a twitch because a nasty landlord called Peter once, long ago, crossed your path.


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## Chat Noir (4 mo ago)

FrankE marked post#29 as 'funny'. How come?


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## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

I guess this is just something that’s different for everyone, but somehow I end up associating people and places with pieces (especially in a case where, say, I know the composer or the performer(s) the piece was written for).


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## verandai (Dec 10, 2021)

I also think it's totally fine if people don't have such associations (or don't give importance to them).

I do have these associations (mostly to places where I've heard the piece first). Also some special ones, here one of them:

When I was 19, I was applying for a special kind of sound engineering study (called "Tonmeister" in German), where my chances were quite slim to get a study place. About 300 applicants went to an entry exam - for a handful of seats only.

One part of the entry exam was to listen to an orchestra piece while reading a score - and to find the errors and mark them in the score. They chose Bruckners 8th symphony, which I didn't know at that time. But although I didn't pass the overall exam (I did fine in this part - but failed in another one), I really was moved by the symphony and bought a recording shortly after. I didn't wait for 1 year to apply again and studied physics instead. 

When I hear the symphony, I often think about this exam. Mostly I'm fine with the way things went after (and my decision not to try again) - only sometimes I'm thinking "what if..." 

And it's still one of my favourite works to listen to!


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## Hogwash (5 mo ago)

Chat Noir said:


> Sensory connections in all spheres of life knit together a sense of consciousness and meaning among what are really disparate experiences and sensory perceptions.
> I think the worst thing is for sense impressions to fade and disappear, it destroys memory and continuity.


Try this: find good scented candle 🕯 or sticks of incense. Keep them nearby and use them when you listen to a particular piece of music 🎼. Repeat the process a few times using the same scent when playing the same piece of music. Then play the music without using the candle or incense then report back here 😎


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

composingmusic said:


> I guess this is just something that’s different for everyone, but somehow I end up associating people and places with pieces (especially in a case where, say, I know the composer or the performer(s) the piece was written for).


I can't listen to Beethoven's 3rd piano concerto without thinking of a good friend who played it at college. I can recall the hall, the band, the performance and the friends I was with at the time. This can then trigger other memories.
As a composer I also associate moments from my own music with moods and/or situations around the time of writing, does this happen to you?


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## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

mikeh375 said:


> As a composer I also associate moments from my own music with moods and/or situations around the time of writing, does this happen to you?


Definitely!


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## Viajero (1 mo ago)

I remember as a teenager ,heavily into Soul Music and Jazz, driving home from my girlfriend's house late at night and listening to AM Public radio when one of the most haunting pieces of music I'd ever heard was playing. It was The adagio movement of Beethoven's "Pathetique" played nightly by Karl Haas at the beginning of his "Adventures in Good Music" program. It was, at that time, and from that music that I began a slow immersion into Classical Music. I have undoubtedly heard the piece hundreds of times in my lifetime and it has never lost its deep emotional effect and my mind is flushed with remembrances of the past whenever I hear it. For me, I must be moved by music where there is both an emotional/spiritual and intellectual component to the music. Life is too short to waste time. 
Viajero


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Not many, but I do have one I can relate.

When I and a friend were in college, this was in the early 1970s, he came to my home with a four-hand arrangement of The Rite of Spring. He was a much better pianist than I was, but we managed to get through most of it after a few tries.

This memory is bittersweet today since my friend has been going through some serious health problems, which have been worsened by the rules of Medicare coverage. Remembering those earlier, happier, carefree, days has been a welcome change of subject.


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## Animal the Drummer (Nov 14, 2015)

Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto no.2 is widely regarded as some of the most romantic music ever written.

I can vouch for that.


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