# What was the piece of music that started it all for you as a serious music listener?



## Fugue Meister (Jul 5, 2014)

But wait there's more...

If possible I'd love to know more about the moment where were you how did you come to find that particular piece and how old were you or how long ago was it.

To start it off here's my story...

I'd always mostly listened to Mozart and some "sampler" classical albums until I was 15 years old and started to get into Beethoven a bit starting with the complete 5th symphony (typical of course) but it was the Kreutzer sonata, op. 47 that really knocked me for a loop mentally and really woke me up to what music could be this is the recording I purchased totally by chance:









Okay so I got it because I knew Mozart's violin sonatas very well and thought it only natural to dip into some of Beethoven's chamber stuff and it changed my life. Suddenly I started exploring composers all over the map and actively trying to soak up any and all musical theory and the music itself. God, I love that recording to this day...

Anyway what were some of your stores of first loves or true eye openers in the world of absolute music?


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Probably Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto #1 when I was 5 years old. The soloist was Oscar Levant.


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## DiesIraeCX (Jul 21, 2014)

For me, it was a few things that all came together. For starters, my former professor would often mention Richard Wagner's _Tristan und Isolde_, how the prelude was revolutionary and unheard of for the time (something along those lines). His passion and main area of expertise is music so he would often bring it up when the situation called for it. This piqued my interest, I started listening to my local Classical station, 91.7 FM, there I heard Bach, Mozart and others. From there, I then went to YouTube and it was here where I really entered into the world of Classical. I constantly put videos into my "Watch Later" list, I would continually return to them and from there, the rest is history!

It was these three videos, specifically.

Mozart's 40th - 



Mozart's Requiem - 



Beethoven's 9th -


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

Passion in music started when I heard Zeppelin's _Dazed and Confused_ as a very young lad, and now I'm jamming Bartok and Feldman. What a trip it's been. Can't really remember the rest.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

It was Shostakovich's 5th symphony; best I can remember, I was 8 to 10 years old and my dad had the recording in his LP collection.


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

Brendel's Beethoven had me transfixed as a child. These recordings were what started me off, each LP painstakingly acquired from the classical music shop in town after saving up the required 99p pocket money. Here's the less than inspired cover art of the Brilliant Classics reissue which I bought last year.










Ironically this one, which is the only one I never managed to get my hands on, is the only original cover art I can find on the web. Turnabout Vox, of course.










I also had this. Richter's Op. 54 was very different, breathtakingly reckless, a helter-skelter dash to the end.










Still brings a tingle of excitement to remember back to this. The LP's are still at my parents' home, I think.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

Some random Bach pieces in a cassette tape.


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## Guest (Sep 6, 2014)

It was the fifth symphony by Beethoven.It was the beginning of a long journey.When I was 15 years old I bought my first lp.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

I first got into classical music seriously shortly after high-school and before attending college (art school). I was (am) a sworn bibliophile/bibliomaniac and I used to purchase bargain priced books and art books through one of those warehouse dealers that sold through catalogs. Beside books they also sold music. My first real purchases of classical music were of three box sets: a Vivaldi box that included the Four Seasons, the Mandolin concertos, and a number of others; a Handel set that was comprised of the Water Music, The Royal Fireworks Music, the Concerti Grossi Op. 3, and several of the Organ Concerti. Most importantly, however, was a 2-disc (LP) set of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos by Jorg Faeber and the Wurttemburg Chamber Orchestra:










Beyond this... my love of opera was ignited from three separate sources. My first real experience of opera was of Zeffirelli's film of _La Traviata_. I was sitting in front of the TV one day shortly after we had first gotten cable. I was so burnt out from a long day at school that I simply let the film play. Soon I found I was quite enthralled with the music and the narrative and I must have watched it several more times then.










Not long after that I was afforded the opportunity through my college of free tickets to the opera where I saw _Aida_. The spectacle and the music so overwhelmed me that I was immediately reborn as an opera lover. Almost immediately after I signed up for the "Opera of the Month" club where I received a different classic performance of one of the great operas of the core repertoire each month. But I couldn't wait so long. I ran down to the local library and took out two big box sets... largely on the basis of the covers (both were obviously brand new purchases by the library):


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

I grew up with classical music, so there was never really any particular moment or piece that changed everything. I was in my teens before I even realized that I was a "serious music listener." That said, it was also around that time that I began to become aware that there was more to music than Beethoven, Mozart and Vivaldi, so I started to explore a bit further. But I don't really remember any one particular piece as changing my whole outlook. 

I do remember that I was actually quite naive at first. I disliked Rachmaninoff's music because, er, "it has no discernible melodies"(!!?!). Nowadays he's one of my favourite composers. So I supposed I must have grown a bit.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Like many people perhaps, thos epopular tunes certainly help like Mozart's K525 Eine kliene nightmusic, Vivaldi's 4 seasons, Bach pieces, Tchiakovsky pieces, Beethoven etc.


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## Alypius (Jan 23, 2013)

I can date it almost to the day: April 6, 1971. That was the day that Igor Stravinsky died. The next week, I read a long article on his life and music in a magazine, probably either _Time_ or _Newsweek_ or _Life_. The description of _The Rite of Spring_, of his adventurous uses of rhythm, his bold explorations over the course of his life--it caught my imagination. I was fully immersed in rock at the time--in hard rock of Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin. So radical sounds were a normal part of my soundworld. So I wandered down to the local library to see if I could find a copy of Stravinsky's _Rite of Spring_. It was checked out, but they had copies of his _Symphony in Three Movements_ and his _Symphony in C_. I took them home and played them, and I was hooked immediately. Within a few weeks, I got hold of _Rite of Spring_ and _Firebird_ and was equally captivated. And so it began. It was right around that same time that I stumbled upon Miles Davis' _Bitches Brew_, and for some reason Miles' discordances woven within tightly organized motivic repetitions made almost immediate sense. Somehow, by that coincidence, I associate Miles's _Bitches Brew_ and Stravinsky's _Rite of Spring_. One seemed to explain the other, in a strange sort of way. Eventually, not too much later, I got hold of other works by Stravinsky: _Chant du Rossignol_, _Petrouchka_, _Agon Ballet_, _Requiem Canticles_. Stravinsky became my doorway into classical music.


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## mtmailey (Oct 21, 2011)

I really do not remember i guess i heard it in school i learned about jazz & opera.


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## eyeman (Oct 3, 2013)

For me it all began with Kashmir by Led Zeppelin. Actually it was the entire album that song was on...Physical Graffiti along with side 2 of the Beatles Abbey Road.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I don't know. It was so long ago I think classical music was just called music.

A series of events happened about the same time when I was that magic age of 11. The movie 2001: a space odyssey featured part of Ligeti's Requiem. I couldn't tell if it was music or sound effect, or both, but it had such a profound effect on me I remember clenching my fists and digging my fingernails into my palms, not quite drawing blood. 

About the same time I heard Wendy Carlos' now infamous synthesized No 3 Brandenburg Concerto, movement 3 on pubic radio, blooping and swooshing its way into my imagination and creating a lifelong interest in baroque music.

From then on most of my disposable income went into purchasing music, still true many decades later.


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## Andolink (Oct 29, 2012)

It was my first classical LP purchase with my own money when I was 12. My mother had told me Beethoven's 7th Symphony had always been her favorite and so I went to the neighborhood record shop and bought the von Karajan Deutsche Grammophone Beethoven 7th (this was in 1970).

Listening repeatedly, for the first time, I began to hear the overall Sonata form structure (Exposition-Devlopment-Recapitulation-etc.) and this got me all excited to explore further. After that it was Beethoven's 3rd and 9th, then on to Brahms' symphonies and by the time I was 14 I was already into Mahler in a big way.

My parents were both classical music lovers so I had exposure to it from the beginning but it was really that first LP of my own that launched my journey which continues to this day.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Late in the year I was four, or early when I was five, a gift of a record player and the following LPs:

Prokofiev ~ Lieutenant Kijé Suite & Zoltán Kodály ~ Háry János Suite.
Bach ~ Wanda Landowska, harpsichord: a.o. on the Album, the Italian Concerto.
Rimsky Korsakov ~ Scheherazade

In my sixth year, piano lessons began with:
Béla Bartók ~ _Microkosmos, Book I_
Bach ~ the Schirmer edition anthology of various short (non-simplified) beginner level pieces "_Beginner's Bach_," a number of those from the Anna Magdalena notebook, various other extracts.
Schumann ~ _Album für die Jugend_
Octavio Pinto ~ _Scenas infantis_

Almost certainly around the same time, I saw / heard Tchaikovsky's _Nutcracker._


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## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

It was in 2004, I was 25 at the time. I hadn't really cared about classical music before that. But I was into literature, and I came across a list of classic German language novels. The most recent title on that list was Thomas Bernhard's Woodcutting from 1984. I had never heard of Bernhard, so I was intrigued.

Turns out Bernhard quickly became one of my favourite writers. A year or so later, I read his novel The Loser, in which Glenn Gould is one of the main characters. I learned that Gould was actually a real person, not a fictional character. The novels also mentions the Goldberg Variations a lot, so I finally went and bought Gould's recording of the Goldberg Variations (The 3-disc "A State of Wonder" edition), not knowing what to expect.

I distinctly remember being unable to make any sense of the music, which just flew past me way over my head. But it started my fascination with classical music in general, Bach in particular and Glenn Gould on top of that.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

I'm not sure I'd say there was a particular time I knew that I loved classical music, but there was a particular event where I was moved more powerfully than ever before. I did not grow up with classical and heard relatively little until I began living with my wife (a violinist). She was practicing Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, and I gradually learned the music fairly well. Maybe a year later, Elmar Oliveira played the Tchaikovsky with my wife's orchestra. I was simply stunned. From the first note he played through to the end I was enthralled. Time ceased to exist. It was a remarkable experience that I will never forget.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

When I was small, my parents would play music in the living room early on Saturday mornings. My bedroom had a thin adjoining wall (it was a very small house) and they often played the Pastorale as I was still half-asleep. Other records, 78's and some 33s, included La Mer, Escales, the Emperor, and the Grand Canyon Suite. That was about all the library we could afford! But I heard it all.

Anyway, the rest is history.


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## Tristan (Jan 5, 2013)

Been exposed to classical music since I was a toddler, but it was when I was 8 and listened to Rimsky-Korsakov's "Russian Easter Overture" on one of my grandparents' cassette tapes and I was blown away by it--it really showed me what classical music could be and cemented it in my mind as the greatest genre of music there is, an opinion that hasn't changed, even a decade later.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

When I was 17 (in 1973 in grade 12), I had a friend who grew up hearing classical music. He had two albums that got me started on my classical music journey:










I recall liking some of the Strauss, particularly Also Sprach Zarathustra, but it was Ligeti's Lux Æterna that made the deepest impression on me.

He also had this album:










If I could say there was an album that was my soundtrack of those early years of classical music exploration, then Stockhausen's Opus 1970 was it. After I heard this music, I was hooked on classical and within days, I had quite a number of other DG albums in the Avant Garde series


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## stevens (Jun 23, 2014)

When I was 10 years old, these pieces changed my life:

1) Grieg "In the hall of the mountain king" 
2) Händels Messias
...It contnued whith Bach orchestral suite 1&2


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## ptr (Jan 22, 2013)

There where always top 40 classical around when I grew up, the first time something had my head spinning giving me an urge to go out and by an album was a commemorative radio show a month after Shostakovich had passed in August 1977. I ran to the local record emporium the next day an bought André Previn's classic 1966 recording of the fifth symphony. I still treasure that LP!

/ptr


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Brandenburg 3. We were playing an abridged version in the Tacoma Youth Symphony so when I listened to it I was pleasantly shocked to find that there was more and it went through a lot more than what we were playing.


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## psu (Sep 2, 2014)

Beethoven 5. When I was 8 or 9.


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## ToneDeaf&Senile (May 20, 2010)

I had little to no exposure to classical music during my early years, beyond what might incidentally appear accompanying television shows and movies. I had no idea such music was "classical", but was drawn to it as much as the "pop" music heard over the radio and on TV. My first true deliberate expose to so-called "serious" music came from participating in my junior high band program. (Orchestra/string courses were nonexistent in my neck of the woods.) I found myself more and more preferring to perform the more serious band pieces over pop arrangements and the like.

High-school offered a sort of combination music appreciation / history / theory / composition course for more advanced music students, of which I was one. (Music is the ONLY school subject I was any good at. Otherwise I struggled to maintain a C average, and didn't always succeed.)

As to one piece that cemented my passion for classical music, my downfall was Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique. It hit me like a sledgehammer. What's more, I found it so fascinating I bought and devoured David Cairns' translation of the Memoirs, as well as other writings by and about Berlioz. (All this before I learned to enjoy reading for pleasure.) Those books were a springboard to the appreciation of other composers and their music. For instance, Berlioz was an early champion of Beethoven. At the time, what little I'd have of Beethoven's music did nothing for me. But if Berlioz saw something in it I was willing to keep listening until I too saw what the fuss was about. I did so. Beethoven went on to become my musical god. I would surely have come to Beethoven on my own given time, but Berlioz led the way.


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## kikko (Jun 19, 2014)

I started to listen only at classical music at 14 with Chopin's nocturnes.


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## Jeff W (Jan 20, 2014)

For me, it was in third of fourth grade (that would be about '93 or '94. I feel old now....) when the music teacher at my school played the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony for the class. Begged for a recording and got one! Still have it too!









I have better recordings now, but I still play this one for the memories


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Schubert's Unfinished. It was the first CD I bought in 1986, and paved the way for a few more....... Until 1986, my listening was to pop and rock only - which I still enjoy as well by the way.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

Vesuvius said:


> Passion in music started when I heard Zeppelin's _Dazed and Confused_ as a very young lad, and now I'm jamming Bartok and Feldman. What a trip it's been. Can't really remember the rest.


 How does one jam with Feldman?


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

DiesIraeVIX said:


> For me, it was a few things that all came together. For starters, my former professor would often mention Richard Wagner's _Tristan und Isolde_, how the prelude was revolutionary and unheard of for the time (something along those lines). His passion and main area of expertise is music so he would often bring it up when the situation called for it. This piqued my interest, I started listening to my local Classical station, 91.7 FM, there I heard Bach, Mozart and others. From there, I then went to YouTube and it was here where I really entered into the world of Classical. I constantly put videos into my "Watch Later" list, I would continually return to them and from there, the rest is history!
> 
> It was these three videos, specifically.
> 
> ...


I love the part about the enthusiasm of your Professor being a catalyst.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

KenOC said:


> When I was small, my parents would play music in the living room early on Saturday mornings. My bedroom had a thin adjoining wall (it was a very small house) and they often played the Pastorale as I was still half-asleep. Other records, 78's and some 33s, included La Mer, Escales, the Emperor, and the Grand Canyon Suite. That was about all the library we could afford! But I heard it all.
> 
> Anyway, the rest is history.


Sounds like a really fun house!! :tiphat:


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

stevens said:


> When I was 10 years old, these pieces changed my life:
> 
> 1) Grieg "In the hall of the mountain king"
> 2) Händels Messias
> ...It contnued whith Bach orchestral suite 1&2


The Grieg was my portal into Music as well. I was 13, beginning to tire of Rock Music, and a Music teacher played it in class. I bought an lp with Peer Gynt on one side and Grieg's PC on the flip.
At the same I became friends with a guy who wanted to be a Violinist and he introduced me to many pieces. My older sister was in College and took Music Appreciation classes and brought many new lps home with her. It all came together at the same time.


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

I'm not sure I can narrow it down. My mother plays the piano, and she played a lot of classical: Beethoven sonatas, Mozart, some Bach, I've heard her muddle through the first movement of the Grieg Piano Concerto. She had a few greatest hits LPs: classical hits, Prokofiev, Stravinsky. 

In the late 70s in my early teens she bought two cassettes that I listened to repeatedly. The first was HvK conducting the Nutcracker and Tchaikovsky Serenade for Strings. To this day I associate the Serenade for Strings with Christmas. The second cassette was Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique. I played both a lot.


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## Onder (Jan 2, 2014)

I think the first thing that made me seriously interested in classical music was Tchaikovsky violin concerto on a vinyl I borrowed from my grandmother. With Oistrakh. I never returned that vinyl.

Then Sibelius violin concerto. Those two were my gateway.


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## Clairvoyance Enough (Jul 25, 2014)

Several years ago I just randomly found Bach's violin concerto in e-major and the third movement of Beethoven's 16th quartet on youtube. I never actually thought to seek out more until about a year ago, and I can somewhat trace the journey I've taken by just looking at my old bookmarks. So let's see here...

Looks like another vote for Tchaikovsky piano concerto 1. The New World symphony was an early one, but back when I bookmarked it I didn't even have the patience to get through the slow opening before clicking away. Some Sibelius from the Fantasia soundtrack that I also wasn't patient enough for. I know that Mahler's 9th, the first five minutes anyway, was one of the first things too. I wasn't reacting to the music much but I could tell it was very good and I was mad at myself for _not _getting goosebumps.

Ultimately the Amadeus OST is what really kicked it off, as well as the movie itself.

It's always exciting to journey into a new selection of great music, but in the case of classical music specifically, what with all the lore about tragic, mysterious deaths and rivalries and the revolution of Beethoven and all the elegant, enchanting descriptions of these mythical figures and their works, it really felt like entering a fantasy world.

Unfortunately most of that feeling is gone now, at least when it comes to the aura of the composers. For some reason, reading a bunch of "such and such is overrated" and "vs" threads seems to kill that a little bit. It's hard, for example, to not think of Haydn as that guy who usually loses against Mozart in the poll. Not that I can't easily fix that by just listening to Haydn and remembering how much I love him.


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## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

It was Tchaikovsky's 4th symphony, part of which was used in an episode of Star Trek: Voyager. And it's still my favorite symphony.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Probably Rachmaninoff's 2nd piano concerto that I listened to at a young age; it was the first time I was deeply moved by music.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Clairvoyance Enough said:


> Looks like another vote for Tchaikovsky piano concerto 1. The New World symphony was an early one, but back when I bookmarked it I didn't even have the patience to get through the slow opening before clicking away. *Some Sibelius from the Fantasia soundtrack that I also wasn't patient enough for.* I know that Mahler's 9th, the first five minutes anyway, was one of the first things too. I wasn't reacting to the music much but I could tell it was very good and I was mad at myself for _not _getting goosebumps.


Hmm? There wasn't any Sibelius in Fantasia or Fantasia 2000.


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

For me, it was Fantasia when I was 9 or 10. Bach's Toccata and Fugue for orchestra and Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker suite were the first pieces I loved. *Sigh* the memories


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## Clairvoyance Enough (Jul 25, 2014)

Mahlerian said:


> Hmm? There wasn't any Sibelius in Fantasia or Fantasia 2000.


I must be thinking of The Swan of Tuonela. Apparently Walt Disney thought about using it but never did. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swan_of_Tuonela

The original youtube video I had bookmarked was taken down, but I do remember that it was a montage of storyboards.


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## Fugue Meister (Jul 5, 2014)

Mahlerian said:


> Hmm? There wasn't any Sibelius in Fantasia or Fantasia 2000.


I was about to say... also and forgive me for being so caught up with technicalities yet I can't help but to point out:



> There where always top 40 classical around when I grew up, the first time something had my head spinning giving me an urge to go out and by an album was a commemorative radio show a month* after Shostakovich had passed in August 1977*. I ran to the local record emporium the next day an bought André Previn's classic 1966 recording of the fifth symphony. I still treasure that LP!
> 
> /ptr


Shostakovich passed in 1975... but I wish he'd have lived 2 more years... he would have gotten that much closer to finishing his cycle of 24 string quartets one in every key.

On the related subject the piece that brought me to love Shostakovich was his trio no. 2 in e which I bought on a whim one day without having ever heard anything by DSCH, I just liked the sound of his name and was exploring. Hey.. the things you find sometimes at random, right?


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## Krummhorn (Feb 18, 2007)

I was totally hooked on classical music the instant I heard the Saint-Saens Symphony No 3 (the organ symphony). It was the recording with Robert Elmore at the organ console. Soon after I also heard the Cesar Franck Chorale No. 3 in A Minor for organ. 

I've played the latter numerous times in recital - have yet to do the organ orchestra piece, but it's on my bucket list. I've got the complete score.


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## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

Mozart piano concerto no 21

I was 24 - a friend lent me a tape with kate bush on 1 side and mozart on the other

it changed my life


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Beyond this... my love of opera was ignited from three separate sources. My first real experience of opera was of Zeffirelli's film of _La Traviata_. I was sitting in front of the TV one day shortly after we had first gotten cable. I was so burnt out from a long day at school that I simply let the film play. Soon I found I was quite enthralled with the music and the narrative and I must have watched it several more times then.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## revdrdave (Jan 8, 2014)

I was ten years old and had gone to the public library to check out some books. I wandered into a room I'd not been in before and it was stacked, floor to ceiling, with phonograph records. I never knew you could check out records from the library but thought that was a pretty cool idea. Without having any idea at all what I was selecting, I randomly pulled records until I'd found four or five that had covers I liked. When I got them home, I pulled one out at random--it was the Brahms' First Symphony performed by Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. I much later realized that that particular LP had the labels reversed, so when I put the tone arm of my parents' turntable down on what I thought was side one it was, in fact, side two. I heard the short third movement and the opening of the fourth, and remember thinking, yeh, this is OK, kinda interesting...

But then came the French horns followed by the cellos singing out the main theme of the movement...and it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard in my ten years on planet earth. I was hooked.

Needless to say, I eventually checked-out most every LP in the library.

The first LPs I actually ever purchased, by the way, were Strauss waltzes (also by Ormandy) and _Wagner's Greatest Hits_ from the series of composers "greatest hits" that Columbia did back in the 70s.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Triplets said:


> How does one jam with Feldman?


_Just don't push the music or the sound_


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Onder said:


> I think the first thing that made me seriously interested in classical music was Tchaikovsky violin concerto on a vinyl I borrowed from my grandmother. With Oistrakh. I never returned that vinyl.


Your Nana forgives you


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## poconoron (Oct 26, 2011)

Mozart's symphony # 40 and the Marriage of Figaro overture.


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## Mesenkomaha (Jun 24, 2014)

I only got into CM last year but for me the piece that really snagged me was...Moonlight Sonata. I came across one of those best 100 classical music pieces of all time CDs at a thrift store and listened to it that night. About 8 songs pieces in Moonlight Sonata comes on and it really grabs my attention especially in the third movement. I put the thing on repeat the whole night. 

Now having been here a while and knowing the general sentiment of the piece I feel somewhat embarrassed sharing. I still really enjoy Moonlight though and do spin it on occasion.


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## DiesIraeCX (Jul 21, 2014)

Mesenkomaha said:


> I only got into CM last year but for me the piece that really snagged me was...Moonlight Sonata. I came across one of those best 100 classical music pieces of all time CDs at a thrift store and listened to it that night. About 8 songs pieces in Moonlight Sonata comes on and it really grabs my attention especially in the third movement. I put the thing on repeat the whole night.
> 
> Now having been here a while and knowing the general sentiment of the piece I feel somewhat embarrassed sharing. I still really enjoy Moonlight though and do spin it on occasion.


Don't! Absolutely not, don't be embarrassed, it's a great work regardless of its mega popularity or it being "overplayed", yada yada yada. That never has and never will change how I feel about a piece and it certainly won't make me think any less of it because of it. Beethoven's 9th and 5th are still my top 2 favorite symphonies regardless of their popularity. The whole "_I don't like it anymore because it's everyone else's favorite_" thing has always rubbed me the wrong way (it's pretty hipster-ish, actually).

I too love the third movement, I replayed it quite a bit when first heard it, as well.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

The _Moonlight Sonata _(not yet named that) was a mega-hit from the beginning, and was much appreciated by knowledgeable fans of music. Here's a snippet from a contemporary review:

"This fantasy is a solid whole from beginning to end, arising at once out of an entire, profound, and deeply moved spirit and then virtually formed from a single piece of marble. Anyone to whom nature has granted an inner feeling for music must be moved and gradually uplifted by the initial Adagio, which the author has very aptly accompanied with the description _Si deve suonare tutto questo pezzo delicatissimamente e senza sordino_, and then moved profoundly by the Presto agitato, lifted up as high as one can be by piano music." (AMZ, 1802)

A mega-hit it remains, and rightly so.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

The first answer is something by Schoenberg but I no longer know what it was. I was at a friend's house, he said, "Listen to this!" He put on an LP, and all I remember is that it was something by Schoenberg and it blew me away.

The next step for me I can remember, it was the Kronos Quartet CD "Black Angels," opening with Crumb's _Black Angels_. Phenomenal. Listened to that over and over, and both _Black Angels_ and Shostakovich's 8th string quartet (also on that album) are still among my favorite works of music.

I've always loved that radical edge of classical music, but I was determined to become one of the cool, cultured people who enjoy Beethoven, Bach, Mozart.... My resources in college were limited - I was able to see quite a bit of live music performed by students, but I could only buy about one CD a month. The first major work in the traditional canon of the common practice period that I loved was Mozart's _Requiem_, as recorded by Karajan in 1962 - fortunately not the remastered one!

For all of that I was really just fumbling around without understanding much about how to listen to music. Of all places, it was Chopin that really opened up the dynamics of development, variation, and so on to me. I first began to identify structural patterns (ABA and so on) in stuff like his nocturnes and études, and when I realized how interesting it was to hear that stuff I started listening for it everywhere. Mozart's 40th and Beethoven's 5th symphonies were the first "large" works that I began to have insight into, thanks to written guides helping me figure out the structures. I fell in love with them too, of course.


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## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

KenOC said:


> The _Moonlight Sonata _(not yet named that) was a mega-hit from the beginning, and was much appreciated by knowledgeable fans of music. Here's a snippet from a contemporary review:
> 
> "This fantasy is a solid whole from beginning to end, arising at once out of an entire, profound, and deeply moved spirit and then virtually formed from a single piece of marble. Anyone to whom nature has granted an inner feeling for music must be moved and gradually uplifted by the initial Adagio, which the author has very aptly accompanied with the description _Si deve suonare tutto questo pezzo delicatissimamente e senza sordino_, and then moved profoundly by the Presto agitato, lifted up as high as one can be by piano music." (AMZ, 1802)
> 
> A mega-hit it remains, and rightly so.


Yes, even Gould called it a masterpiece. And it reminds me that in 2005, in the earliest days of my classical music listening, I watched the Gus van Sunt film Elephant, in which the Moonlight Sonata plays a prominent role. I don't think I had properly heard it before that.


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

The album Demon Days by Gorillaz was what got me into music in a serious way  It made me interested in exploring all sorts of music, and it made me want to be a serious musician rather than just as a hobby.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

DiesIraeVIX said:


> Don't! Absolutely not, don't be embarrassed, it's a great work regardless of its mega popularity or it being "overplayed", yada yada yada. That never has and never will change how I feel about a piece and it certainly won't make me think any less of it because of it. Beethoven's 9th and 5th are still my top 2 favorite symphonies regardless of their popularity. The whole "_I don't like it anymore because it's everyone else's favorite_" thing has always rubbed me the wrong way (it's pretty hipster-ish, actually).
> 
> I too love the third movement, I replayed it quite a bit when first heard it, as well.


The Moonlight Sonata was one of the fist pieces that hooked me as well. Don't feel embarrassed. I envy you because there is so much great Music that you have yet to discover.


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## jpar3 (Mar 9, 2016)

My star with classical music was Beethoven's 4th piano concerto. We had a 78 rpm record of Schnabel with Chicago symphony Orchestra, with Frederick Stock, in the early 1950s - It's still my fave Beethoven concerto.


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## bioluminescentsquid (Jul 22, 2016)

Buxtehude Chaconne in c


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## Ariasexta (Jul 3, 2010)

Starting with musical interest in general--Japanese and american game/cartoon music at 12 years of age
Starting with classical music--Tchaikovskys Swanlake and other works
Starting with a serious musical passion--Mozart
Starting with Baroque--Gustav Leonhardt playing Henry Purcell from Philips and Handels Organ concertos
Starting with Baroque vocal music--Henry Purcells Dido&Aeneas directed by Andrew Parrott Sony
Starting with religious Baroque music--Buxtehudes Der Herr is Mit Mir BuxWV15 and Palestrinas Canticum Canticorum


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Beethoven piano concerto no 5 Wilhelm Kempff did it for me, old recording but I still have it.


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## Mahlerite555 (Aug 27, 2016)

It was Mahler's Fifth.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

I have answered on previous threads about my earliest experience of classical music - Bolero & the Ritual Fire Dance, when I was five - and my realisation that I liked baroque music - learning to play Handel's March from Scipio on my violin when I was thirteen - but 'this time round', I think it was the music of Lully played by Jordi Savall & co that made me really fall in love.






Before that, it was just flirtation. 
But when I listen to Lully, I feel both 'out of time' - an eternal spirit observing beauty - and also 'in Lully's time', experiencing vicariously the atmosphere of the Sun King's Court.

And the strange thing is, when Taggart & I joined Talk Classical in 2013, there was no Composer Guestbook on Lully! There is now:
http://www.talkclassical.com/25050-jean-baptiste-lully.html

Merci beaucoup, Destiny, for prompting me to stumble across this forum. 
*Vive* Talk Classical! :tiphat:

Et *vive* Jean-Baptiste! :tiphat:
http://www.talkclassical.com/groups/baroque-exchange-d268-baroque-chat-2-may.html

Hope that helps,
Madame la Marquise.


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