# What recording couplings would you like to see?



## Animal the Drummer (Nov 14, 2015)

Was listening to (and enjoying) the Busoni violin concerto and thinking how well it would go with the Brahms concerto on a CD, though a pound to a penny says that'll never happen. Had a similar thought some weeks back listening to the Rachmaninov cello sonata and thinking how well the sonata by Samuel Barber would go with it.

Any matchups you'd like to see? The more left field the better!


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

I often see the Fauré and Duruflé Requiems coupled - but I'd like to see the Duruflé coupled with a Renaissance work, e.g. the Ockeghem Requiem.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

For the purpose of cataloging and keeping my cd collection in order, I do not like couplings with different composers.


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

Though I've never seen it done on a record album or CD; I always thought that Richard Strauss' _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ (_Also Sprach Zarathustra_) goes well with Igor Stravinsky's _Rite of Spring_ (_Le Sacre du Primtemps_).

As a teenager back in the 1980s, these were two of my favorite pieces that I'd blast on my stereo the way other boys my age would blast Heavy Metal or Rap music.

Both _Zarathustra_ and _Rite_ are a little more than a half hour long; both are loud sound spectaculars; and both were composed to usher in a New Age in classical music.

_Zarathustra_ premiered in 1896, on the eve of the 20th century; with blaring horns, rumbling percussion, and jagged dissonances that at the time were considered to represent the "Music of the Future". _Rite_ premiered just a few years later in 1913, with a savage element that made _Zarathustra_ sound dated and contrived by comparison.

Still, I love both works and often play them side by side. In retrospect, _Zarathustra_ is more an ending than a new beginning; as instead of taking music somewhere new and "Modern"; it serves rather to push Romanticism and Late Romanticism to the limits. In this regard I find it interesting that while Stravinsky continued to branch out and discover new worlds in Neo-Classicism and later serial music; Strauss became more traditional and more grounded in Romanticism. By 1949, the likes of Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Messiaen had become the leaders of the New Age. Meanwhile just before he took his last breath, Richard Strauss would compose the lovely _Four Last Songs_ as the final burst of the beautiful High Romantic music that echoes the world of Schubert and Schumann.

Richard Strauss and Igor Stravinsky:















My first recordings of _Zarathustra_ and _Rite_ that I owned on LP:


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