# You liked it then...you still like it now



## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

The formula always seems to be - you listen to a piece of music and love it, but the more times you listen to it, the less it gives you back in return. You get tired of it.

Conversely, you listen to a piece and either dislike it or are a bit confused by it, but the more times you listen to it, the better you like it. And, now it's one of your favorites.

So this is a thread devoted to the most unusual of all - something you liked the very first time you heard it and still like it as much even after years of music experience and repeated listenings.

Feel free to make a list if you want. I'm going to devote one post to each work.

And, I'll start with one that perfectly fits the bill for me:

*Haydn's Symphony No 96 in D* (the so-called "Miracle")

Because of liner notes, I knew from the first that even if the story of the falling chandelier was true, it didn't happen during a performance of this work, so it's a misnomer. Doesn't matter. There are no extra-musical elements that make this symphony appeal to me. It's all in the music - the first one presented to the London public in the first series of six symphonies Haydn prepared especially for them.

The simple introduction that suddenly turns just a bit mysterious gets things off to a great start. The movement that follows never flags - it's intriguing from the first static, but falling theme to the last dramatic fanfare to introduce the coda.

The slow movement is a marvel of orchestration with just enough contrapuntal stuff to keep it interesting. The minuet is stately, but somehow intimate, with a sweet landler-like trio that found an echo in a later work I also love (Mozart's 39th).

The finale's opening theme trips along innocently enough until things get more dramatic, but the fun keeps coming back and coming back again. The good humor never really dies.

The version of this work I grew up with and still love today is Szell's with the Cleveland Orchestra.


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## Yardrax (Apr 29, 2013)

I remember when I was in school studying music and I looked up Mozart's 41st and Beethoven's 5th, I thought they were great then and I still think they're great now


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## EricABQ (Jul 10, 2012)

There are many, but Beethoven's first piano concerto stands out for me. It was one of the first pieces that really got me into classical music, and I still listen to it often and love it every time.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Schubert's Trout Quintet ,I heard Schnabel and the Pro Arte Quartet when I was a kid and thought it was fantastic.
I still do and I have a number of versions now but think Schnabel and co. are still the best.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Handel, The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba - I liked hearing it on 1950s radio, I liked playing it at the Schools Orchestra, and I liked it when De Dannan brought out their Irish Traditional version, Arrival of the Queen of Sheba _in Galway_.

It has a lovely crystalline pattern and a joyful exhilaration about it that keep it fresh. I will love it forever.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

For people of my generation the William Tell overture will always be associated with the Lone Ranger but it has never lost its charm. When you hear it in Brassed Off it still has a certain magnificence.


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet
Sibelius Symphony #5
Mendelssohn Violin Concerto
Beethoven Symphony #9
Villa Lobos Bachianas Brasileiras #5 soprano and cello 
Holst St Paul's Suite
Stravinsky Firebird

I can't really remember the first time I listened to any of these, many years ago. Love them upon first hearing and still regularly listen.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

There are so many. I will post the first one that came to mind: Gorecki's 3d. Bought the famous version with Dawn Upshaw when it was all the rage, and love it every time I play it. And that is quite often.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Perhaps I'm unusual but there are no works I can think of that I currently like less than I used to like. Maybe I haven't listened to anything enough to have it lose some of it's charm, but whenever I put on a favorite work, it continues to bring me enormous pleasure. Admittedly I spend the vast majority of my listening exploring new works that I have not heard before or perhaps heard once. When I decide to listen to an old favorite like Mozart 41, Beethoven 9, Tchaikovsky violin concerto, Tallis Spem in Alium, etc., I'm almost stunned by how beautiful they are. I hope that never changes.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Tchaikovsky Piano concerto 1 played by Julius Katchen was the first serious classical LP I ever bought as a lad. Set me off on a wonderful journey. Still love the concerto which is one of the truly great and most original ones in the repertoire. Fantastic!
I have recordings now by Argerich (2 of them) Pletnev, Horowitz, Solomon, Richter, etc
The Katchen set me off on the journey but I've never seen it reissued.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Beethoven's 9th always has gotten to me, and after lots of recordings and a marked-up score, it still gets to me.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

There are lots of works that began up and have stayed up, by many composers. I have to safeguard their positions in my esteem by avoiding overexposure, but don't mind that at all.

Playing the first dozen LPs I owned over and over, that larned me; yep, larned me good.


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## Cheyenne (Aug 6, 2012)

Mahler's whole oeuvre; it is as if I simply cannot tire of it.


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

Bach's (?) Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565. One of the first pieces I discovered, and fell in love with. Now, I never have the desire to listen to it.
Same with most of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

I could list hundreds  These are a few whose names appear in the album titles:

Bach : Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin, Cello Suites, Toccata in D minor...
Beethoven : Hammerklavier Sonata, Geister Trio, SQs
Berg : 3 Orchestral Pieces, Chamber Concerto
Carter : Symphonia, Concerto for Orchestra
Dowland : Lachrimæ
Haydn : String Quartets Op76
Ligeti : Piano Concerto...
Messiaen : Chronochromie, Catalogue d'Oiseaux, Quartet for the End of Time...
Mozart : Eine kleine Nachtmusik
Penderecki : De Natura Sonoris I/II...
Prokofiev : Piano Concerto 5
Schoenberg : Pierrot Lunaire, Suite, Wind Quintet, SQs...
Schubert : Trout Quintet (one of the very first classical LPs I ever bought)
Shostakovich : Chamber Symphonies (Barshai)
Stockhausen : Opus 1970, Bird of Passage, Mantra, Ylem, Hymnen...
Webern : 5 Pieces, 5 Movements, String Trio, Symphony...
Weill : Die Dreigroschenoper
Xenakis : Persepolis, Orient-Occident, ST-4, Kottos, Metastasis...
Zimmermann : Die Soldaten (relatively recent wow!)

I could list hundreds more that I was initially disappointed with that grew on me to become my favourite works. Over the years, I have often exclaimed that "the finest music takes a while," but the finest music also hits me immediately, as the above list shows.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Ravel's Piano Trio. I've listened to the work so many times it should logically be over-killed now, but somehow that piece never fails for me, it is invincible. My liking of it has actually increased tremendously, but I did enjoy it on first listen.


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## mstar (Aug 14, 2013)

Cosmos said:


> Bach's (?) Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565. One of the first pieces I discovered, and fell in love with. Now, I never have the desire to listen to it.
> Same with most of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies


I was scrolling down this page really fast, and I managed to see "Liszt".... Happens to be the most short-lived musical "obsession" of mine, lasting for about one to two months. :lol:
*Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker* has been more wonderful and musically pleasing every time I listened to/saw it.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring as performed by the NY Philharmonic and Leonard Bernstein. Nothing more poetic and moving. I first started listening to this during the early 1960's and whenever I hear it again, I'm back in time nostalgically remembering Camelot and the Kennedy's.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Vesteralen said:


> ...
> 
> So this is a thread devoted to the most unusual of all - something you liked the very first time you heard it and still like it as much even after years of music experience and repeated listenings.
> 
> ...


There are many like that, one that I have recently been listening to many times is Copland's Piano Concerto. I first got to know it over 20 years ago. Recently listening to it again, I think its equally amazing as then. Its been many years intervening since I haven't heard it. Its got this jazzy and ragtime element, but with quite a dark undertow. There is this feeling of being lonely in a huge city. Some months back I reconnected to his Clarinet Concerto and again, its the same experience. In that, the influence of Mahler came through stronger than with previous listens long ago, and also the feel of Latin American music. I suppose what I liked in therse pieces going way back is that pared down element. Not necessarily minimalistic, and not as distanced as some Neo-Classical things, but similar to those its got a good deal of restraint.


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## samurai (Apr 22, 2011)

@ Vesterelan, Great thread! :tiphat: What I have found in my personal and rather limited listening experience, is that, rather than suffering from repeated listenings--or getting "tired and stale"--the pieces that I really enjoy offer me more each time that I listen to them, revealing different aspects which I might have missed upon a prior hearing, perhaps attributable to the mood I was in or degree of fatigue, etc., etc. 
Some of the works which immediately come to mind in this regard are Mahler's First and Sixth, Nielsen's Third and Fourth, and Prokofiev's Fifth, Sixth and Seventh. I enjoyed them immensely upon my first exposure to them, and my enthusiasm in their regard has never waned one bit.
Each time I "cue" them up for another listen, my excitement and sense of anticipation to hear them are palpable.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

^^^Good for you Samurai!


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## hreichgott (Dec 31, 2012)

Mozart 40th Symphony.
(And so many others. Really, it would be harder for me to think of music that I stopped liking...)


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Shostakovich's 8th String Quartet 

Golijov's Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind

most of Mozart's famous symphonies (especially 38 and 40) and piano concertos (especially 20), and his Requiem, and Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro

Haydn's London symphonies and the op. 76 string quartets

Verdi's Otello and Rigoletto

Beethoven's 3rd, 5th, 6th, and 7th symphonies, late piano sonatas

Dvorak's 9th symphony 

Brahms's chamber music except the string quartets and clarinet sonatas; symphonies 1 and 4; piano concertos 

Ligeti's Poème symphonique for 100 Metronomes (not joking, and I really don't care whether he liked it or not!) 

Actually this list is beginning to get too long, so I'll stop! There must be a lot more stuff that I liked from the first time I heard it. There's actually nothing that I've come to appreciate less than I did before, except perhaps relatively.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

My earliest exposure to real classical did not go so well. I thought a hand me down Vox recording of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 was a big wad of overblown pomposity. Little did I know I would come to love it not long after.

For pieces I liked from the start and still do, I would list, as close to chronological order as I can remember:

Ligeti: Requiem- Kyrie
Schubert: Symphony No. 7 or 8 in B minor "Unfinished" (Can we all stop renumberin' stuff now please?)
R. Strauss - Death and Transfiguration
Beethoven: Symphony No. 9
Bach: The Art of the Fugue (Yes I was a stuffy sort even as a teen)
Mendelssohn: Hebrides Overture.

Many, many more, but more recently -- Alfven: Symphony No. 4, and many more still, but I suppose the real test are those I liked as a teen when we used the little dinosaur birds inside the record player to make the turntable go round.


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## shangoyal (Sep 22, 2013)

Most works by Beethoven and Chopin.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Another love at first sight from way back, which have remained perennial favourites: the three major Mahler song cycles, Kindertotenlieder, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellens, Rueckert Lieder. My first CD of them was by Fischer Dieskau on DG - one of my desert island discs.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Stravinsky's Le Sacre du printemps. It sounds just as wonderful to my ears as it did 50 years ago.


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

Thanks to all of you so far for sharing.

Going at my snail's pace, my second work is *Vaughan William's Second Symphony* (London).

I was blown away by it the first time I heard it, from the almost shattering end of the introduction as the day begins to the quiet denouement of nighttime. And, in between, the aching melancholy of the slow movement and the urban excitement of the third.
This work thrills me every time.

I still have a soft spot for my first LP, with Barbarolli and the Halle, but I've heard many equally good since.


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## QuietGuy (Mar 1, 2014)

For me, it's Debussy's _L'Apres-Midi d'une Faune_ or Ravel's _Daphnis et Chloe_. I'll never tire of them, ever.

On the other hand, it took me well over 25 years before I had the guts to listen to Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps all the way through. Now I love it.


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## echmain (Jan 18, 2013)

Holst, The Planets. Fell in love with it when I was about 14 or 15 (an electronic version by Patrick Gleeson).

Still love it. Although I listen to orchestral versions now. Current favorite, Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Dutoit.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Beethoven's 5th--the warhorse of warhorses. It was one of the first pieces of classical music I heard, and it made me love it forever. I played it daily for what seems like years when I was young. At this point I have a lot of recordings and I know the piece well, but when I put it on I'm always like: wow, I'd forgotten how _good_ this is!

Don't worry, you shouldn't feel obliged to give me a "like" for liking Beethoven's 5th.


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