# Educate a Newbie Pls :)



## meehai (Nov 1, 2009)

Hello everyone,

I'm fairly new to classical music, and I'm interested in what you think are essential albums to get...

I've checked out the best of Beethoven, Mozart (my fave so far), Schubert and Vivaldi... My favourite pieces are Canon and Guige, Fur elise, Montagues and Capulets... So far the longer 10 minute tracks put me off (short attention span  ) so I prefer all the shorter stuff really (so uncultured eh)

Thanks in advance for your replies


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## jhar26 (Jul 6, 2008)

meehai said:


> Hello everyone,
> 
> I'm fairly new to classical music, and I'm interested in what you think are essential albums to get...
> 
> ...


You've got to get rid of that "most essential albums to get" way of thinking that you know from pop and rock when it comes to classical music. In classical music it's about "most essential works or pieces" - all of them having been recorded by many different artists. So it's not only important to buy a good work, but also to buy a good performance of said work because the quality of the many different recordings of the same works vary in quality.

Cd's like "the best of Beethoven", "the best of Mozart" or whatever only consist of fragments from complete works. While those bits are no doubt very good, they don't give you the listening experience that the composer had in mind. Sorta as when you would buy a "the best of Hitchcock" DVD and you would have ninety minutes worth of five minute fragments from "Psycho", "Vertigo", "North by Northwest" and so on.

If you have problems listening to longer works I would say, never mind - buy complete works anyway and listen to just one movement (meaning part) and listen to another movement at a later time. Or if you buy "the Four Seasons" just listen to "Spring" and try out "Summer" at a later time. At some time the music will hopefully grow so much on you that you will be able to listen to a complete work in one go.

Just my two cents.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Tchaikovsky ballet suites, Swan Lake, Nutcracker, and Sleeping Beauty. Grieg's Peer Gynt. Really just look at any best loved classics cd compilations and that will tell you what pieces you might want to hear.


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

meehai said:


> Mozart (my fave so far)


 [Maybe try a collection of Mozart overtures. (Naxos/Capella Istropolitana has a nice one, and it's dirt-cheap.)]


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## meehai (Nov 1, 2009)

thanks for the replies everyone, i'll check out those reccomendations chi-town/starry 

@jhar aye thanks for ya two cents, i'll get digging and hopefully the longer works will begin to entice me in


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## Artemis (Dec 8, 2007)

I would suggest you don't buy any CDs until you know what kind of music you like a bit more clearly. Try listening to your local classical music radio station, or check out their website to see what kind of stuff their listeners tend to like (eg polls carried out by the station).

If you can't resist the temptation to splash out on a CD, you might like a compilation of Beethoven or Mozart overtures, most of which are extremely good. In case you aren't sure what these are, they are the introductory bits of music "before the curtain rises" for opera and other such stage works. They're all usually quite short pieces (note not "songs". Get this bit of terminology right and you'll be half way there in understanding the subject).


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

First I would advise that you find a good guide book to give you a bit of an idea of what you are listening to: the forms, etc... I personally quite like Phil J. Goulding's Classical Music: the 50 Greatest Composers and their 1000 Greatest Works. The book was written by a non-expert so it avoid professional jargon while explaining much of the same to the uninitiated. He makes strong arguments for the "50 Greatest Composers" while admitting that we may not always agree. He also offers a good number of appendixes with guides to other "also-rans".

As a classical newbie I would advise you to begin with what you know and like and slowly branch out from there. Advise to explore Schoenberg's atonalism or Wagnerian opera's at this stage are useless... not to say that you may not eventually come to them and enjoy them. So what do you like? Vivaldi, Mozart, Schubert, the Canon... and mostly brief pieces. So let's build from there. If you like Vivaldi you'll probably like more Vivaldi. Look into his Mandolin concertos. Then branch out into other Baroque composers: Handel's Water Music, Bach's _Brandenburg Concertos_, _violin concertos_, _keyboard concertos_, and the _Goldberg Variations_, and Scarlatti's keyboard sonatas may be up your alley.

You like Mozart? For ear listening I'd recommend the piano concertos no.s 19, 20, 21, the orchestral work entitled _Eine Kleine Nachtmusik_, and the late symphonies. You might then branch out with Haydn's _London Symphonies_.

For Beethoven I'd explore Beethoven's 5th Symphony (Carlos Kleiber conducting), and find a disc of favorite piano sonatas (8 "pathetique", 14 "moonlight", etc...). Rubinstein or Wilhelm Kempff are good starting points.

With Schubert you have a master of "small" works. You may not be ready for lieder (German art song) but there is always the _Impromptus_ (you cannot find a better recording than that by Brendel).

Many of the Romantic composers are ideal for your taste in small or brief compositions as they often composed short works that in many ways were akin to the lyric poems of the Romantic age. I would advise you to look into Schumann's _Papillons, Carnaval, Kindeszenen, Kreisleriana_, etc... (Rubinstein or Kempff recording). Also look into the short works of Chopin... especially the Nocturnes (Rubinstein!!!), Waltzes, and Preludes. Check into Brahms' _Hungarian Dances_ and his works for solo piano. Check into Liszt's brief works for solo piano. Try Johann Strauss' Waltzes, Rossini's overtures, Wagner's overtures, and perhaps push into early modern works with some piano works by Debussy (Preludes), Ravel's _La Valse_, and _Bolero_ (among other works), Mussorgsky's _Night on Bald Mountain_ and _Pictures at an Exhibition_ (orchestrated by Ravel), and Tchaikovsky's _Nutcracker Suite_.

These suggestions should begin to open the door for you... the world you are just entering is vast... even seemingly overwhelming... but it is also magical and worth the exploration. Good luck!


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## meehai (Nov 1, 2009)

thankyou ^


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