# Recommendations Wanted!



## anephric (Dec 13, 2008)

Hi all, I'm new to the board. 

I've been wanting to expand my musical horizons for a while now. I'm an avid fan of classical music and listen to my local classical music / NPR stations daily - yet I find that the overall type of music is a hard nut to crack.

Part of it is the overwhelming history. To say its hard to find new music you really enjoy is dubious at best. Theres simply *too much*.

The other part - to which I tend to take flack for - is that I'm generally film score related. My CD collection is about 90% film score (to which I happily noticed theres a sub-forum here for. I'll check on that later.)

Anyway, I'm here looking for suggestions in the hopes that some here can recommend some music based on some of my all-time favorite works. They include:

David Diamond's Symphony #1
David Diamond's Symphony #3
Lee Holdridge's Violin Concerto #2
Michael Kamen's Concerto For Saxophone
Michael Kamen's Guitar Concerto
Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky
Prokofiev's Ivan The Terrible
Elliot Goldenthal's Fire Water Paper: A Vietnam Oratorio
Bernard Herrmann's Moby Dick Cantata

Please pardon the seemingly meager scope of my list!


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

Hmmm... like Alexander Nevsky? So do I. I don't think you'll regret Shostakovich Symphony #13 (Babi Yar). If you're "film-score-related" you may have developed an opinion on Korngold. If not, sample _his_ output. (There are folks more knowledgeable on Korngold than I am hanging out here... maybe they can add some specificity to my general "name-drop" mention.)


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## anephric (Dec 13, 2008)

I have several discs worth of Korngold - film and concert related - and enjoy him immensely. The Morgan/Stromberg recordings on Naxos/Marco Polo are absolutely mindblowing in quality.


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## jimmosk (Dec 11, 2008)

anephric, I know where you're coming from.
For a long time my listening was split about evenly between classical and film scores (Williams, Goldsmith, Trevor Jones, more recently Broughton and Hisaishi). That ratio has shifted to mostly classical, but I can tell you some of the pieces that best captured the film-score sense of drama-with-melody:

Holst, The Planets
Stravinsky: The Firebird
Respighi: Feste Romane (and to a lesser extent his other two 'Rome' works)
Shostakovich: Festive Overture
Vaughan Williams: Symphonies 6 & 7
Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade, Tsar Saltan Suite
Liszt: Les Preludes
Sibelius: Kullervo Symphony, Lemminkainen Suite

and, this is an odd one but I absolutely pictured film imagery whenever I listened to it, Leonard Bernstein's "Fancy Free".

-J

-- 
Jim Moskowitz 
The Unknown Composers Page: http://kith.org/jimmosk/TOC.html 
My latest list of unusual classical CDs for auction: http://tinyurl.com/527t7


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## Travis (Dec 19, 2008)

I have over 100 film scores and I have recently begun a foray into the wonderful world of classical music. I say wonderful because I am finding a wealth of music that in many cases far surpasses the film scores I have listened to all these years. 

Here are a few suggestions to get you started:

Marche Slave by Tchaikovsky
Pines of Rome by Ottorino Respighi (particularly the final movement)
Academic Festival Overture by Johannes Brahms
The Sorcerer's Apprentice by Paul Dukas
Scythian Suite by Prokofiev
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis by Vaughn Williams
Night on Bald Mountain by Modest Mussorgsky


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## Habib (Jan 29, 2009)

Can I add the Adam Zero ballet by Arthur Bliss. Very filmic.


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