# Initial attraction



## violadude (May 2, 2011)

What was the initial thing about classical music that you were attracted to?

Back when I was 12 years old and listened to the Brandenburg #3 for the first time (the piece that pretty much "converted" me) I think the first thing that really attracted me about it was that there was a range of emotions. It was happy at first, and then it got dark, and then it got happy again, lol. This was something that I wasn't really used to (in pop music there's pretty much one emotion expressed per one song), but I really liked it and it's pretty much the first thing that really drew me to classical music.

That...and I think I was also attracted to Classical Music because I didn't have to be a certain someone to listen to it, i.e. I didn't have to be a "metalhead" or a "gangsta" or a "skater" or a "punk" to listen to classical music, I could just be Violadude.

Of course, now that I've matured, I realized you don't have to be a "metalhead" to listen to metal music anyway...but back then social pressures are so irresistible.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

The initial thing that attracted me was the fact that there is so much knowledge that can be gained through reading about the music I hear, and this information just happened to be more readily available to me. I learnt as much as I could, from rebec technique to horn crooks to serialism and a lot of stuff in between.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

I was around 5-6 years old. I kept listening to Peer Gynt suites and Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto #1 because they were my Dad's.
I was bored and found it was a great way to pass the time. Better than building blocks.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I first became completely enthralled with music in general on seeing _2001: a space odyssey _in cinerama (kind of a 1960's equivalent of Imax) at near rock concert volume levels. The Ligeti Requiem in particular coupled with those iconic images made me dig my fingernails into the flesh of my palms. For an 11 or 12 year old it was the most intense thing I'd ever experienced.

So I'd say it was the larger than life mysticism that attrracted me.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Weston said:


> it was the larger than life mysticism that attracted me.


_Nice!_
...........................


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## csacks (Dec 5, 2013)

It was Vivaldi´s 4 Seasons that caught me. When I realized that it was really raining inside the record, I was fascinated. I was 11 or 12 years old and it was enough. Then, somebody gave me a book with some biographies and records and that was all that I needed. Brahms´s Overtures did the remaining task. It has being around for years and years. With rock during some time, but always around


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

My first introduction to classical music was attending performances of Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker. I liked the music, but it never made me want to listen to more classical. It wasn't until I was much older and listening to my wife practice violin that my desires changed. I remember that she would play Bach's Partita No. 3, and I would be captivated. I enjoyed the music, but there was much more. To me there seemed to be 2 violins at times (in the 1st movement). There was so much of interest - so much going on, and it pulled me in. I listened to the music like I'd never listened before. She also played Tchaikovsky's violin concerto - at times more beautiful than anything I'd ever heard, at times wonderfully thrilling with the fast runs, and at times fascinating with the aggressive double stops. The music was both fascinating and beautiful - something I'd never really experienced before. And eventually I was hooked.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

I came to classical music through Mahler's Symphony No. 1 in D major. Just what the doctor ordered for an angry, depressed and nihilistic teenager.


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

Huh, I can barely remember. I think it was when I watched Fantasia when I was 8 or 9, Bach's Toccata and Fugue and Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker suite stuck to me most


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## Matsps (Jan 13, 2014)

I heard Mozart's Rondo Alla Turca on a chess program when I was 13. I decided that I would learn to play it, so got a keyboard and starting practicing. A few years later, when I was actually good enough to play it, I never actually did, having been introduced to the Romantics who had really swept me away. In fact, even now over a decade later, I still haven't learnt that piece!


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Lope de Aguirre said:


> I came to classical music through Mahler's Symphony No. 1 in D major. Just what the doctor ordered for an angry, depressed and nihilistic teenager.


Not a common first classical hearing.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

My parents had some classical records, so I pretty much grew up with it, especially Beethoven symphonies. So there was never some particular Damascus moment - classical music has always been awesome to me, since as far back as I can remember.


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## Tristan (Jan 5, 2013)

I was introduced to classical right from the get-go, but it was these sample CDs of various classical pieces that really got me interested. I remember ones that stood out to me the most were: Saint-Saens' Organ Symphony, The Great Gate at Kiev from Pictures at an Exhibition, and most especially, Rimsky-Korsakov's Russian Easter Overture. When I first heard the Russian Easter Overture, I was blown away by it--it was the most spectacular piece of classical music I had ever heard (and to this day it still ranks in my Top 10). Hearing those pieces pretty much convinced me that it would always be my favorite genre.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

hpowders said:


> Not a common first classical hearing.


I was listening to the radio and had lost interest in rock music. The local classical station just happened to be playing the beginning of the third movement and _that_ drew me in.


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## cjvinthechair (Aug 6, 2012)

Gilbert & Sullivan - wonderful introduction to melody !


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## AH music (Mar 25, 2014)

My parents had a few classical records - Handel's Messiah highlights and Water Music, Haydn's "Farewell" symphony.... At infants school I won a pen for a piece of writing after listening to the "By the brook" movement from Beethoven's "Pastoral" symphony. When I was old enough to start getting spending money, classical records soon became a priority - Holst "Planets" and the "World of Mendelssohn" being amongst the first. At junior school we had a teacher who played records in a music appreciation session one afternoon each week - thank you Mr Elliott, an ordinary village school near Lancaster. My interest really took off when I was the only pupil to put my hand up to say that I liked "Saturn" the best from the Planets Suite (all the others had gone for Mars or Venus....) After that the teacher lent records from his own personal collection and I was really getting set on my way as a listener. Piano lessons only proved I was terribly nervous and had a very poor sense of time-keeping and rhythm.

My exploration has been purely personal and done at my own pace - slow partly because of lack of funds and of any friends who shared the interest - with a mix of research before purchases and serendipity from browsing record stores. [Sibelius 2nd symphony became a real favourite, but it was the spectacular mountain scenery on the sleeve that made me buy it in the first place....]


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## cwarchc (Apr 28, 2012)

I don't know?
I just somehow started to take much more interest in MUSIC?


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

Paul Crossey - music teacher at SFX, Liverpool in the 1970s

Thanks, Sir - you got us singing, you gave us the chance to learn an instrument, you played us records and told us about the music. You planted a seed in me that germinated many years later .... and for that, I am very, very grateful. I tried to send you a message some years ago, but I think it didn't get through. If anyone on here knows him, please pass on my thanks

ps - the seed that germinated was Berlioz, Symfonie Fantastique (of course!)


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

Oh, and just remembered ..... there was a snippet from Stravinsky's Rite of Spring on the live LP from Siouxsie and the Banshees (Nocturne???) in the early 80s (and also on one of their other LPs, I think) and I remember being riveted by that intro and pretty soon realising that it was something to look out for and explore further


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## omega (Mar 13, 2014)

It was certainly not the _first_ classical piece I listened to, but it was undoubtedly the first that I really loved was _Sheherazade_ by Rimsky-Korsakov.
A little later, there was Dvorak's ninth...


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

I'm not really sure what was the special moment in my early childhood that did it for me. Classical simply surrounded me from birth. I remember vaguely moments when I was about 3-4 being in the car with classical on the radio. Also around that same age, I was watching my own baby movies (kinda odd since I was only that age like 3 years earlier ), which my mom took of me crawling around the house with classical playing from the stereo in the background. Very sweet stuff, like the Boccherini and Haydn's Serenades, Nimrod Variation, and then exciting stuff like Khachaturian's Sabre Dance which made me dance as a 10 month old (my 4 year old brother also dancing with me). There's one great clip where my brother is singing that scary brass introduction from Sibelius' Finlandia with a wrapping paper tube up to his mouth to magnify his little voice, and my eyes were really big the whole time in the video. :lol: I liked watching those segments a lot because the music also appealed to me. This was all _way _before I actually knew what I was listening to, not until middle school were a bunch of things finally labelled for me. I guess you could say that I was exposed at so young an age that it just became second nature to love classical.


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## Dustin (Mar 30, 2012)

I've said this before on here but my first experience feeling mesmerized by classical music was after smoking some weed. I don't need drugs anymore to enjoy classical music but that's what kind of opened my eyes to this amazing new universe I hadn't known was there. It was Chopin's Heroic Polonaise that I was listening to and the complexity of the piece was just mind-blowing to me in that altered state. From then on, it was like that experience flipped the "switch" and allowed me to become enthralled with classical music ever since.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

I was probably Mozart in a past life or something.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Vesuvius said:


> I was probably Mozart in a past life or something.


Then, if I may ask, why in blazes did you write that - that horrific THING?! That Sonata semplice, No. 16 in C major, K. 545? It very nearly derailed my classical music journey.


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## shangoyal (Sep 22, 2013)

The first classical piece that I heard was the 3-4 minute sample of the scherzo from Beethoven's 9th that used to come default with Windows 98. I really liked it, given how there were interesting sounding instruments and an irresistible propulsion to the music. Then, in college, I started listening to complete Beethoven symphonies and it started from there.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

What initially attracted me was the bizarreness. It was wilder and stranger than the rock I was into. Xenakis' Orient-Occident, Messiaen's Turangalila, Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, Webern's Orchestral Pieces etc.: Velvet Underground, Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Brian Eno, etc. paled in comparison.

Also, I guess there was peer support. Some friends were interested in obscure musics, so we shared an interest in this modern classical music. Also, Stanley Kubric had used Ligeti in the soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Other movies and television programmes also used modern music for their themes. There was a lot of public interest in Morton Subotnick and synthesizers, then, too. Surprisingly, modern classical was actually happening all around us then.

But there was also a personal attraction. As a teenager, I quickly wearied of the 4-man rock groups (vocal, lead, bass, drums) and I studied the back covers of LPs for indications of a 5th band member, unusual instruments, anything that was just a bit different. In those days, they didn't permit listening to albums before purchase, so I had to use whatever means were available to me to ferret out the different... and I managed to succeed greatly! Classical was the answer to my search for a broader instrumental palette, a wider musical range of expression, etc.


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

I can't remember a specific piece of music or time, but music was always in the house. And I must have been listening to BBC radio as a tiny kid. My mother bought classical LPs. My mother plays the piano. I was given a guitar for Christmas, I was 11. When I was a teen I did see Pictures at an Exhibition performed live. That was thrilling. I can't really remember a time before the music. I can't imagine life without it.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

There seems to be a recurring theme here: classical music was already in the house. We were lucky.


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## shangoyal (Sep 22, 2013)

hpowders said:


> There seems to be a recurring theme here: classical music was already in the house. We were lucky.


Like somebody whose mother makes awesome orange cakes.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

shangoyal said:


> Like somebody whose mother makes awesome orange cakes.


Spoiled for life, eh?


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## shangoyal (Sep 22, 2013)

hpowders said:


> Spoiled for life, eh?


Not with orange cake. But yeah, she cooks well.


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

But having music in the house is not the only requirement, of course. My sister grew up in the same house, and she's not interested in music at all.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

senza sordino said:


> But having music in the house is not the only requirement, of course. My sister grew up in the same house, and she's not interested in music at all.


True. I once dated someone where classical music definitely was in the house and she told me she hated it. Probably rebelling against her father. Needless to say, this "romance" didn't last very long. :lol:


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

hpowders said:


> True. I once dated someone where classical music definitely was in the house and she told me she hated it. Probably rebelling against her father. Needless to say, this "romance" didn't last very long. :lol:


I would guess that by the third time the two of you went out to a club, and you insisted they put on Debussy's preludes instead of the usual boom-boom-boom, it became too much for her.


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

I often feel sorry for some people who have a limited musical experience. Some of my friends and colleagues, who are the same age as I am, still only listen to 80's radio. Their musical taste hasn't evolved, no jazz, no classical and not even new adult contemporary. It doesn't make sense to me.


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## techniquest (Aug 3, 2012)

When I was at primary school, classical music was played as we filed into morning assembly. I remember that one of the pieces was the 2nd movement of Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov, but at the time all I knew was that I liked the theme and the feel of the music. 
Later it became tv theme music that whetted my enthusiasm: a program called "Family at War" used a theme from RVW's 6th symphony while a weekly documentary program used a theme from Rachmaninov's 1st symphony. These snippets of music had depth of feeling that I couldn't get from other types of music; I found pop music to be shallow and generally talking about something that I neither recognised nor wanted, so I embarked on my journey of discovery and have loved it ever since.


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## Guest (Apr 17, 2014)

senza sordino said:


> But having music in the house is not the only requirement, of course.


I tend not to think of 'classical' as something I was attracted to separately from 'music'. In my house, I was exposed to music in all its forms - records, radio, TV, films (but not live) - and several different genres, though pop predominated. And all my brothers and sisters (6 of us) grew up as fans of one genre or another. But it's difficult to say what the musical 'hook' was. Mood, perhaps ('Mars' from _The Planets Suite_ or the Largo from Dvorak's 9th or the 1812 Overture). Maybe I was attuned to particular keys, or there were associations with other 'meaningful' things such as TV programmes or adverts?

I guess it's not just having it around, but 'noticing' and 'storing' and making connections.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

brianvds said:


> I would guess that by the third time the two of you went out to a club, and you insisted they put on Debussy's preludes instead of the usual boom-boom-boom, it became too much for her.


It didn't go down like that. She simply asked me what kind of music I liked and after I replied, she said the following, filled with revulsion, "I HATE classical music!!" Good thing I was 6 feet away. The venom might have killed me!


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## Dustin (Mar 30, 2012)

There was absolutely no classical music in my house growing up, only country and rock and roll. That's probably why it took me until the age of 21 to start enjoying it. But luckily since childhood, my musical tastes have evolved greatly and I wasn't stuck in a musical box. Like someone earlier mentioned, I feel bad for the people who have a certain style of music and disregard everything else as trash, sometimes even doing this with pride (especially country music folks).


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## Op.123 (Mar 25, 2013)

Chopin - Piano Concerto 1 - 1st mvt - Pollini


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## GioCar (Oct 30, 2013)

hpowders said:


> True. I once dated someone where classical music definitely was in the house and she told me she hated it. Probably rebelling against her father. Needless to say, this "romance" didn't last very long. :lol:


As strange as it may seem, the same happened to me... and her father was actually the cause...
I have a suspicion... but she wasn't from the U.S. so possibly I'm just a bit paranoid :lol:

uhmmm... maybe yours was from Italy?


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

GioCar said:


> As strange as it may seem, the same happened to me... and her father was actually the cause...
> I have a suspicion... but she wasn't from the U.S. so possibly I'm just a bit paranoid :lol:
> 
> uhmmm... maybe yours was from Italy?


No. She was from Brooklyn, New York. Into the disco and rock scene. Found classical, boring. I could have tried changing her mind, but she didn't seem "open to negotiation", so the relationship died a quick and merciful death.
Too bad. Very pretty.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

GioCar said:


> As strange as it may seem, the same happened to me... and her father was actually the cause...
> I have a suspicion... but she wasn't from the U.S. so possibly I'm just a bit paranoid :lol:
> 
> uhmmm... maybe yours was from Italy?


nope - not from Milan or Brooklyn .... from Southport, Lancs (see the signature below!) :lol:


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## GioCar (Oct 30, 2013)

Headphone Hermit said:


> nope - not from Milan or Brooklyn .... from Southport, Lancs (see the signature below!) :lol:


You have to blame birdwatching...


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

GioCar said:


> You have to blame birdwatching...


nah! - how could never knowing where your bloke is be any kind of an issue? Is he really in the woods (with no mobile signal) on his own at that time of day????


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## GioCar (Oct 30, 2013)

What about leaving your phone to a (well instructed) friend? :devil:


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## Haydn man (Jan 25, 2014)

My introduction came from my room mate at university
He only listened to classical music, I was not initially impressed and frankly thought it was a bit odd at first.
However once I started to listen I gradually became a convert


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

My mother tells me that as a toddler I used to stand beside the Victrola ( that's a machine for playing 78rpm records, you kids out there) completely transfixed by the sound of music. That was in the early 1950s and I don't know what the music was, but at a certain point I was jolted into a sharper state of awareness by a song called _Grandma's Lye Soap_ with lyrics that went something like "Mrs. O'Malley down in the valley suffered from ulcers, I understand. She swallowed a cake of Grandma's lye soap. She has the cleanest ulcers in the land." I don't think this prepared me for classical music particularly, but soon afterward I was given a Little Golden Record (45rpm) which told the story of Cinderella, accompanied by some strange music which enchanted me but remained but a memory until, in college, I discovered and recognized instantly Prokofiev's ballet. As childhood progressed I heard my grandmother bang out "100 piano classics you love to play," inherited a stack of 78s with Caruso, Galli-Curci and Pinza, watched Bugs and Daffy accompanied by Wagner and Rossini, and at some point started asking Santa Claus for Johann strauss and Tchaikovsky records (the world had moved on to LPs by then). Of course none of this high-minded fare interfered with my enjoyment of "you ain't nothin' but a hound dog," "itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini," or "the purple people eater," which were permitted to assume an appropriate position in my hierarchy of musical pleasures (i.e. somewhere near the bottom). I didn't actually become an insufferable musical snob and a social pariah until the advent of the Beatles, by which time I was too busy wallowing in tragic passion with Tristan and Isolde to care about the length of my bangs (oh to have bangs again!). After that I remember little about my life, which I believe passed by in a classical-music-intoxicated trance from which I have still not fully emerged and in which, from what I can see of the world out there, I think I would prefer to remain.


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## shangoyal (Sep 22, 2013)

^^^ Wow, that brought a lot of joy to my day!


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

My mom played classical records for me from the age of four, mostly Russian ballet and programmatic stuff, explaining the scenarios and programs as the separate numbers went by. I was hooked. My interest in classical music went underground in later childhood but reemerged strongly in my teen years.


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## Resurrexit (Apr 1, 2014)

Unfortunately my parents were very limited with music. They liked the popular music of their youth but nothing else, definitely not classical. I remember always having a love for music but because I listened to what my parents listened to in my childhood I only heard what I now think now is *bad* music. But I loved the hell out of that bad music! Hahaha! Then in my teenage years I started exploring music more, first with other genres...everything from electronica to jazz to rock to underground and indie...I was a dj at my radio station at university. Then one day I realized that there was a whole style of music that I was ignorant of: CLASSICAL. This is what attracted it to me at first...the fact that here is a a whole new WORLD of music to explore, of fascinating composers who lived interesting lives an put their souls in their music. And once I started listening to it and getting into it deeper I was hooked! I no longer can stand pop music or even other genres all that much. At most I will listen to something for nostalgia. But the depth and nuance and pure artistry of classical cannot be matched on the whole by any other music IMO, and this coming from someone who used to listen to it ALL.


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

As a child, the first classical piece I can remember listening and actually being attracted to was Beethoven's Piano Concerto No.5. 
My parents - despite neither of them was a music enthusiast - did have this cd with the Leon Fleisher version.
I don't remember how old I was - maybe a bit less than 10, maybe a bit more, I don't know. I kept playing the opening part again and again. I loved how it sounded like the pianist was quickly going up and down some hills, and when he'd reach a top there would be that BANG from the orchestra, and then down again he went and then back up and then BANG again.

However, that event didn't start anything in particular, except a very broad awareness that classical music existed and could be very interesting albeit "long and difficult". My teenage years then saw me digging deep into rock and the likes.
At 25 or so, I was so much into music (yeah the "rock" - in a very wide sense - side) and into its historical evolution, that I couldn't help wondering what had been _before_. And that was the real start of my exploration of classical music (and jazz, albeit less deeply).


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

I grew up in a household where classical music was what was mostly played, my father's fairly conservative taste. He also had an interesting collection of trad (and some modern) Jazz but he rarely played it. My grandmother sang in a choir and though not that interested in classical music I certainly remember her singing to and with me as a small child. She also used to play me her Victor Borge LPs. I was taken as a child to hear G&S at the theatre and the Scottish National Orchestra play at the local concert hall.

As a result I can't clearly remember what classical works first interested me (by contrast I can clearly remember the first pop song I ever noticed, at a friend's home.) 

I discovered Beethoven's piano sonatas and concertos at around the age of seven - but I can no longer remember how this came about. I started to spend pocket money on Brendel's inexpensive Turnabout Vox recordings.

Around the age of 10 I discovered pop music for myself and then got into prog rock, then punk, new wave, etc. I was a devotee of the seminal BBC 'John Peel show' throughout my teens, but I also began to discover modern jazz and some 20th century classical music, through my local record library's well chosen collection.

I went back more seriously to classical music as a student, and then started to build my own (budget) LP collection: Beethoven at first, then Schubert, Haydn, Schumann, Brahms, Debussy, Poulenc, Berg, Webern, Schoenberg, Bartok, Britten.

Recently my son has become enthusiastic about contemporary and modern music of all sorts, which has inspired me to some further exploration of contemporary and modern classical music (and jazz).

I realise now that getting immersed in music (of all sorts) has been an important way for me to shut the world out and create some space in my mind to commune with my thoughts and feelings - I've been doing that since I was a small child.


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