# The Beginning / First Purchase



## Revel (Feb 25, 2015)

I'm sure many of you are musicians and your passion for Classical Music is rooted in childhood ... such as being a band or orchestra member. But for those of you who have no formal training and may have been interested in rock, pop, metal, etc... is there a piece you first heard or first purchased that brought you over to the classical side?

I was a member of my elementary school orchestra and quit after 7th grade. I'm surprised I was able to last as long as I did. My interests were elsewhere...mostly in sports. My violin teacher coaxed me into "one more year", else I would have dropped out of orchestra after the 6th grade. I will say that although I gave up the violin early, I often recall how much fun it was to play "Ode To Joy". Wish I had stuck with it!

In any case, fast forward many years...to after college. I was in a record store at a mall; one of those places like a Sam Goody or Musicland...or maybe it was The Wiz. Can't recall exactly. 
The disc below caught my eye and I decided _What The Heck_..._I'm buying this_. It was Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra performing Holst's "The Planets" and RVW's "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis"...as well as "Fantasia on Greensleeves". It was part of RCA's Basic 100. The fact that I'm an amateur astronomer took part in my selection. The depiction of the planets within Holst's silhouette on the cover helped draw me in. I envisioned music with an ethereal quality.









I suppose I was fortunate to accidentally choose a disc with such approachable music for a layperson. The melodies within the two "Fantasia" pieces are hard to beat. I still get choked up while listening to them. Of course, I love the Holst suite as well.

The rest, as they say....is History. Sure, the passion with which I pursue new recordings waxes & wanes from time to time...but it'll never completely leave. Thank you Beethoven, thank you RVW, thank you Gustav, and thank you Mr. Ormandy for your excellent recording.

Can anyone else relay a similar story? A story containing "the spark"? I'd like to hear it, and possibly listen to the music that converted you.


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## Zarathustra (Dec 21, 2013)

When I was a teenager my mom brought home some classical music cds. Most of them I didn't care for, they were either piano works (to this day I don't have much love for keyboard instruments) or baroque music. Mozart I liked. Beethoven I loved. Mahler I adored. My tastes have since broadened a bit, but in essence they remain the same. If it has a couple or more of french horns I'm more likely to enjoy it.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

It's been quite a long time. I summarized my start in my profile and on my first blog entry, so I am not going to repeat it. There have been at least two or three threads with this same theme since I joined. Everyone loves telling their story 

Now, I am wondering how I got past the Darmstadt and New Viennese Schools into more mainstream fare. I know that, way back, I had a Handel Water Music and a Mozart concertos or symphonies album, both on some budget label, but neither much grabbed me for the longest time. I had a friend with an extensive, actually encyclopedic, collection. I am going to hazard a guess, and I can hear the groans, that it was Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and in particular the final movement with Schiller's Ode to Joy, that was my breakthrough to the less odd and more usual fare. Yes, Holst's Planets was not long after. So, too, some Tchaikovsky and Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik. Für Elise and the New World Symphony were early passions, too. It just kept on going from there...


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

I remember Alfred Brendel's first cycle on Voxbox cassette for the Beethoven Piano Sonatas being the earliest thing I heard. I bought a tape of Mutter's Mozart Violin Concertos as my own first purchase at a store.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

I'm sorry that I missed this thread, Revel. I thought it was an interesting OP & deserves more responses. :tiphat:

Curiously, my own first purchase of classical music was also Holst's Planets. It was an LP of the suite conducted by Sir Adrian Boult, and I bought it when I was about twelve. Growing up in the 1960s, I often heard 'Mars' and 'Jupiter' on the radio programme *Children's Favourites*. My older brother decided to buy the LP, but when he played it, he was disappointed by Side 2. He said, 'Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age? - Listening to it *makes* you old!' :lol:

Anyway, being eager to please, I offered to buy it with some pocket money that I'd saved up. I paid the full 30 shillings, which I don't really think Ian should have accepted. But anyway... 
I played it often, and enjoyed it, but it didn't really convert me to classical music.

I too played the violin at school, and I too gave up. Thankfully, 45 years later, I'm playing again, and loving it. I do remember practising Handel's *March from Scipio* and suddenly having a lightbulb moment, thinking, this is *beautiful*.

But coming to love Classical Music isn't a story of suddenly falling for her, in my case, but one of realising that after all these years, I've had a fondness for her all along and now in my Third Age, it is in full bloom.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Although I played piano as a child, the musical background at home was mainly folk (if anything). There was always a lot of (light) classical music on the radio and that was the sort of piano music I was taught - simplified arrangements of Blue Danube and Anvil Chorus and such.

As I grew up, I listened to folk and pop and some classical music. I really crossed over into Classical music proper from folk via David Munrow and the early music people. I took up piano again in my 30's and enjoyed playing Bach and Dowland. Now I'm retired I'm into music in a big way but it's mainly the early stuff that I like plus the light classics of my youth and the folk oriented nationalist composers.

There hasn't been a sudden lightbulb moment just a gradual awakening to the joys of Classical music.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

I'd always had access to classical music as a child, and my father never stopped me from playing his records. I remember a Reader's Digest box set of classical pops. It included the _Nutcracker suite_, _Fingal's Cave_, Herold's _Zampa_ overtire and things like that.

However the first classical disc I ever bought myself with my own pocket money was a recording of the Khachaturian Piano Concerto played by Peter Katin with the London Symphony Orchestra under Hugo Rignold. There was a photo of the Royal Festival Hall on the cover. I just loved Khachaturian back then, and ended up playing a section of his piano pieces at one school concert and the _Toccata_ at another.

My tastes have moved on a bit since then. I don't even have a recording of the Khachaturian Piano Concerto now, though that memory has made me want to hear it again.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Schubert's unfinished was one of the first CDs I bought back in 1986 (after 15 years of focusing on pop/rock), and one of my first experiences with classical music. Still love the piece. Unlike others, I continued to listen to pop and rock (and later jazz) as well though.


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## csacks (Dec 5, 2013)

I lived in a non musical home. My father has a musical interest, but he is still too much anxious as to listen to a disc. Music was for the creation of background for conversations or when visitors came. At the beginning of the seventies, we had an old Grundig Radio, and the modernity arrived home. My father bought a Saba "Quadrafonic" Receiver and a LP player, a Philips one. My favorite LP were one named Gypsy Music, which included Monti´s Czardas and some Brahms´ Hungarian dances and another with Jewish Music conducted by Stanley Black and his orchestra (Music of a People).
The first LP that I bought, from my own budget was a LP with Tchaikovsky´s 5th symphony. Can not remember the conductor, neither the orchestra, but I listened and listened and listened to it. I had no idea why I selected that one. Probably because I had heard about him at home.
After that Tchaikovsky´s LP, I bought a cassette (yes, as modern and vanguardist as that) with Brahms´overtures. Those where the compositions that pushed me into classical music, mostly op 81. And here I am, after almost 40 years of that, still listening to the same music, and not feeling tired about it.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

I remember Grundig! It was indeed at that time 'state of the art'! 

It would be interesting to know if people still *have* their first purchase. My Planets Suite LP went into the family cupboard and survived there till about five years ago, when Mum decided to get rid of her records. We took it on, but a couple of years ago we were downsizing and I gave it to a charity shop, figuring that I could get a cd of it if I really wanted. (Don't think I do...)

We kept all our Planxty, Steeleye Span & Boys of the Lough LPs, though! :lol:


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

My origins story also involves The Planets...

I was a Star Wars fan and came across a Boult recording of The Planets in my father's small collection of LPs, not knowing that the music had also, uh, "inspired" John Williams . So "Mars" became the accompaniment to many adventures.
A few years later, after sporadic and ineffective browsing of those LPs, we got the EMI "Classic Experience" cassettes and I found I already knew quite a few of the tunes, and liked the music generally. So that prompted me to make my own first purchases: one of Grieg's piano concerto plus the Peer Gynt suites, and another of Sheherazade coupled with Night on Bald Mountain.
Then, having access to a good music department in my local library tipped me over the edge into full-blown classicalitis.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

Sadly enough my biological dad did not allow me to touch his vinyl or Marantz record player as a young kid. But at least I got free license to raid the cassette tape collection and he had like 200 albums so I was kept rather busy with them.


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## dreamer (Mar 5, 2015)

I really relate to the OP's story. My parents were not all that into music, although there was a great appreciation for it in my childhood home. I was also part of the symphonic band until my 8th grade year when the band director and I came to an agreement...that it would be best for all involved that I just move on.  I was interested in far too many other things and hated school entirely. My sister, though, was very interested and a very talented vocalist. She sang in many choirs and groups for many years (still does)....it is she that kept me interested. I am no singer, though...be sure about that!....but her enthusiasm, even up to this day, has given me an appreciation and love for almost all music.. And I have a very broad range of favorites to choose from. Classic Rock, Blue Grass, Blues, a little Jazz and on and on...but I also do enjoy choral music, and really appreciate well arranged pieces...I guess as close to 'classical music' I have come to, up until now, has been the Kings College Christmas performances (love them!) or maybe some Robert Shaw recordings. 

Well, not too long ago, I heard a speaker say something like " I know of 3 people that now believe in God after hearing Bach's "St. Matthew's Passion"."....so I went to YouTube and was just memorized for about 3 hours! I am still considering which recoding to get, so I really do not have my 'first buy' yet...but that is what is leading up to it. I'll check back when I finally make my first buy.


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## cjvinthechair (Aug 6, 2012)

Appreciation of tunes started with Gilbert & Sullivan at a young age - though I was 'made' to listen to Swan Lake & couldn't find a tune of any interest there !
Next thing I recall is a disc of Rach preludes (strange..would never voluntarily listen to solo piano nowadays) - but the first 2 discs I bought were inspired by music heard on TV; 1st was Elgar Introduction & Allegro (had to write to the BBC to ask what it was), & 2nd Rach Symphony no. 1, part of which was used as the theme tune to Panorama for many years.


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## mountmccabe (May 1, 2013)

Interesting stories!

I loved music as a child but mostly focused on more popular genres. 

I had a couple classical CDs, both on budget labels. No idea where or when I got them. One was Dvořák String Serenade and Slavonic Dances on Pilz and the other was Schubert's "Trout" Quintet and a few other pieces on LaserLight. I didn't play them much and they made little impact on me. I have probably gotten rid of these CDs, though it's possible there're still in boxes to go away.

One summer while on break from university I stayed at my friend's apartment while he and his roommate were out of town. I listened to every single CD they had. One CD they had there was Carlos Kleiber conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in Beethoven's 5th and 7th symphonies. The 5th didn't get through to me, though I liked it, but the 7th was a revelation. I probably put it on as background music but that really grabbed my attention. I had never heard anything like the Allegretto. I mean, I had heard the piece before but it had never mattered; it was like I hearing it new.

The first CD I can remember buying is my own copy of that one. That was followed by many other classical symphonies and I was hooked.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

mountmccabe said:


> Interesting stories!
> 
> I loved music as a child but mostly focused on more popular genres.
> 
> ...


That is a very moving story. Thanks for sharing


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