# Your immortal beloved



## Gouldanian (Nov 19, 2015)

We all have that one particular piece that just won't go away. Years go by, we purchase new albums, we discover new pieces, we fall in love with many recordings, we keep moving on from on to another and we rarely look back. But there's a specific one we find ourself listening to every now and then. A piece which we hate to admit holds us prisoner. We listen to it and think that we're done with it for good this time around, yet a few weeks later we're back listening to it, as in love as we were the very first time. I call it the ''immortal beloved''.

Mine is Bach's Piano Concerto in D minor performed by GG and Lenny Bernstein. What's yours?


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

I have about a dozen favorites that fall into that category, and all of them are piano concertos. I just have a weakness for these, as they allow for so many different opportunities for the composer to mess around with the themes--just piano, just orchestra, together in varying ways. Plus the chance to let the melodies really breathe.... For starters, I'll name the first three Prokofiev piano concertos as being repeated must-hears. Good on the GG Bach, also.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

The infectious joy in Vivaldi's choir works under Vittorio Negri's baton alternating with the classical poise of Julia Hamari's alto in Juditha Triumphans: once I'm hooked on again, there's just no end to it. (I confess  that I do prefer Vivaldi over Bach).


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## Gouldanian (Nov 19, 2015)

TxllxT said:


> The infectious joy in Vivaldi's choir works under Vittorio Negri's baton alternating with the classical poise of Julia Hamari's alto in Juditha Triumphans: once I'm hooked on again, there's just no end to it. (I confess  that _I do prefer Vivaldi over Bach_).


I was about to like your comment when I saw the last part... I can't bring myself to like that


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Tallis' _Spem in alium_, which I first heard when I was 15 or 16.

Maybe I should be embarrassed as a 16th century music aficionado, since it's The One Everyone Knows, but there's nothing else like it. I'll never get tired of it.


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## Stirling (Nov 18, 2015)

Sibelius 5
Beethoven 9
Rubbra 2
Newberry Wind Quintet
Koechlin String Quartet #1
Sojabji Fantasie Espagnole
Bach Little Fugue in G


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Lully: Suite from Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme - performed by Jordi Savall & L'Orchestre du Roi Soleil

& Carmen - especially the Placido Domingo/ Julia Migenes film


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## Lyricus (Dec 11, 2015)

Liszt's Liebestraum #3 is that for me. Best piano piece of all time.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

One piece  You have got to be kidding 

Would it be possible to even select a single Beethoven Symphony, or one String Quartet? Sure, there are a few that move me more, but one!? Maybe half of them would be more realistic, not to discount the others, though!

And the other composers? Again, I've got a few dozen that are, in general or for the moment, dearer to me than others, but even those others have written a few pieces that I'm  over.

One just would not do!


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## Gouldanian (Nov 19, 2015)

brotagonist said:


> One piece  You have got to be kidding
> 
> Would it be possible to even select a single Beethoven Symphony, or one String Quartet? Sure, there are a few that move me more, but one!? Maybe half of them would be more realistic, not to discount the others, though!
> 
> ...


I feel your pain... I really do.

I'll make an exception for my good friend, the one and only brotagonist. What are your immortal beloved, dear?


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

Gouldanian said:


> We all have that one particular piece that just won't go away. Years go by, we purchase new albums, we discover new pieces, we fall in love with many recordings, we keep moving on from on to another and we rarely look back. But there's a specific one we find ourself listening to every now and then. A piece which we hate to admit holds us prisoner. We listen to it and think that we're done with it for good this time around, yet a few weeks later we're back listening to it, as in love as we were the very first time. I call it the ''immortal beloved''.


I have hundreds of pieces "that just won't go away." I "purchase new albums... discover new pieces... fall in love with many recordings," but I do not "keep moving on from one to another" without "look[ing] back." They are so gorgeous, they have been with me so long: why would I forget them or wish I could be done with them for good?

Ah-ha! Perhaps I missed something? The "piece which we hate to admit holds us prisoner": one we are embarrassed to like or feel is not truly good, but we love beyond words anyway? Is that it?

That will take some doing. I am going to have to think about it some more


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

Just a quick scan of my collection turned up:

Beethoven - Für Elise
Ravel - Bolero

The Beethoven piece has such a pretty melody, that I cannot ever resist it. I used to dislike the Ravel piece, because I thought it was overly simplistic, but I had a wonderful ah-ha! moment with it a few months ago and have decided that it really is a marvellous piece.


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## Avey (Mar 5, 2013)

I like this post. Though, before answering, I want to say I reject your characterization -- or, I should say, I am not listing works that, as you mention, "we listen to it and think that we're done with it for good..." I instead listed a work I never tire of and will never tire of, because time has proven that.

Yo, also, I *adhere* to the thread instructions -- namely, OP requested *ONE *work. Thus, although I could list three, or five, or dozens, I picked the *one *that, _upon my first immediate thought while reading the thread proposal_, came to the fore. ...though I mention some others in passing...

*Elgar's First Symphony* - No comments, because I have reflected (lengthy) on that before, so I will spare it now.

Comment: The "media player" play count check is amusing. Amazingly, that piece turns out to be my most played piece _ever_. Some very close (and others, very surprisingly, very far -- makes me wonder about the play count thing...). Surprisingly, Stravinsky's Violin Concerto was second on the count. Maybe the change in media device about two years ago changed counts...?

Edit/comment #2: OK, confirmed: the play count is BS -- this has not even registered certain songs that I know I have played so far beyond a ZERO. Brahms 3rd, which Elgar allegedly revered(!), was my second nomination here (which popped into my head with my above selection), and yet it registers ZERO PLAYS. What a joke.


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## Gouldanian (Nov 19, 2015)

Avey said:


> I like this post. Though, before answering, I want to say I reject your characterization -- or, I should say, I am not listing works that, as you mention, "we listen to it and think that we're done with it for good..." I instead listed a work I never tire of and will never tire of, because time has proven that.
> 
> Yo, also, I *adhere* to the thread instructions -- namely, OP requested *ONE *work. Thus, although I could list three, or five, or dozens, I picked the *one *that, _upon my first immediate thought while reading the thread proposal_, came to the fore. ...though I mention some others in passing...
> 
> ...


About the play count, it doesn't count as long as you let the piece finish completely i.e. if you click on another piece one or two seconds before the end of the 45 minute piece you were listening to it wouldn't count!

And I absolutely love your second choice of Brahms 3rd... the III and IV movements are from another world!


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## Haydn man (Jan 25, 2014)

Well if the choice is one single work
Mozart Piano Concerto 23 
Sublime


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## helenora (Sep 13, 2015)

I was about to say that ( surprisingly for myself! ) I don't have such an " immortal" piece, or as you said I fall in love with "new" ones pretty often....., change my preferences... but then I realized there is such a piece *Tannhauser's overture* , since a very first time I've heard it when I was a kid till now it's a shining diamond and I can't help being fascinated with it, it's always new every time I listen to it


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I have, like many, a lot of works that fall in the "immortal beloved" category. It's easy to say I couldn't live without them, but of course I could (just like the rest of us). If I didn't know they existed, I'd never miss them. But I think my life would be poorer.


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## Animal the Drummer (Nov 14, 2015)

I'm a pianist and guitarist, and above all else a Mozart nut.

So of course my nomination is the Brahms Violin Concerto. I've loved that piece longer than any other single classical work.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

One piece only? Mahler - Das Lied von der Erde.


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## ribonucleic (Aug 20, 2014)

Schubert's Piano Trio No. 1. It's the most profoundly expressed vision of life I've encountered in any work of art in any medium.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Either I have no such pieces or all of them are.


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## poconoron (Oct 26, 2011)

Mozart's Don Giovanni.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Lately I've been shocked at the intense amount of emotional nostalgia I feel for *Saint Saens 4th piano concerto*. I first listened to this work when I was 11, and could not get enough. More than a decade later, I still get a strong yearning to listen to it and experience the same feelings of youth when I do.

The other top contender is *Beethoven's 6th Symphony*, which I had never properly identified as a kid, but always had the tune going in the back of my mind. As a teenager, I cried in the middle of a time when I felt unable to cry, listening to this work.


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## Heliogabo (Dec 29, 2014)

Goldberg variations in my case.


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

On top of my head: I can't seem to get tired of Act 1 Scene 1 of Das Rheingold or of Debussy's Nocturnes. Both simple and complex, calm and full of energy, dark but shimmering.


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## PJaye (May 22, 2015)

I have two pieces. Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A, K. 622, and Oboe Concerto in C, K. 314 / K. 271k. Its really associated with them being on the first recording I listened to that turned me on to classical music when I was young. It was an experience that still resonates with me to this day, and these pieces still hold a particular place for me that nothing else can really touch. Its hard for me to compare them to anything else critically, because the way I feel is based on some other criteria that I won’t try and put into words. It still takes me back to that experience when I listen to them, which I try and do selectively.


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## Gordontrek (Jun 22, 2012)

Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker. Was my favorite when I was small, and I've never stopped listening. Still gives me immense pleasure.


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## SalieriIsInnocent (Feb 28, 2008)

Le Nozze Di Figaro - Mozart


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

*Verdi; La Traviata *


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

I'm sure I have many, but the longest lasting (going back to around fifth grade) is the "Eroica" in the 1950 Carnegie Hall Toscanini performance.l


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## D Smith (Sep 13, 2014)

Debussy: Deux Arabesques, L74


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## Guest (Dec 14, 2015)

I love Bach but I tend to choose a song of Schubert ,in fact it is an impossible question.


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

If I have to choose one, it might be Čajkovskij's Piano Concerto 1.


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## DiesIraeCX (Jul 21, 2014)

All solo piano music by Debussy and Beethoven. 

Beethoven's Late String Quartets.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

DiesIraeCX said:


> All solo piano music by Debussy and Beethoven.
> 
> Beethoven's Late String Quartets.


The OP asks for one piece.... not a small library.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Schubert's Piano Sonata in G major, performed by Sviatoslav Richter, for me.


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## DiesIraeCX (Jul 21, 2014)

Art Rock said:


> The OP asks for one piece.... not a small library.


Well, if you're going to force me to play by the rules, OK.

Beethoven: Piano Sonata #30, Op. 109


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

The piece that I have listened more often in my life. and also the one that I have the higher number of versions, is Bellini's _Norma_.

Forced to go with just one version. I would select this one:


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

I think I'll go for _Eroica._ I don't listen to it with any regularity, but whenever I hear it, I'm always moved and awed.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Beethoven, C# minor string quartet. Preferably by the Lindsay Quartet (their first cycle).


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## bz3 (Oct 15, 2015)

Bach's Concerto for 2 violins BWV 1043.


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## jenspen (Apr 25, 2015)

Haydn man said:


> Well if the choice is one single work
> Mozart Piano Concerto 23
> Sublime


The slow movement could be a prescribed medication - to alleviate grief and mourning.


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