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What is a classical music piece you like? And why?
What is a classical music piece you enjoy and what do you like about it? Maybe we can help each other find new classical music or even different styles of classical music to listen to. I like classical music a lot but I'm far from well versed in the different periods or much more than the most famous composers and performers.
One (far from obscure) piece I like a lot is Paganini's Violin Concerto No. 1. It is full of explosive energy and the diversity and emotion of the violin part always amazes me.
And bonus question: how do you listen to classical music? I primarily listen to the local classical music radio station but occasionally attend concerts.
It's maybe a basic choice, but I am a big fan of The 1812 Overture, the full piece is a masterwork of themes and motifs and never fails to give me chills. When I was a teenager and not feeling well, I would crawl into bed and stick this on a loop.
Another bit of Tchaikovsky that I really enjoy is the Allegro con Fuoco from Piano Concerto No 2 in G major. I aspire to one day be able to play piano to this level, but the degree of practice required to play this piece is practically otherworldly to me.
A final bit of classical-adjacent music that I adore is the final track from Avenged Sevenfold's last album: Life Is But A Dream. It's a very Chopin-esque piano solo, and it's absolutely gorgeous.
Hell yeah 1812. Bonus points for using cannons as percussion instruments.
I don't think that it's basic to appreciate something that is well known. Usually these things are popular for a reason! Check out the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra recording of the 1812 Overture - it also includes the cannons and bells, but also includes a chorus singing the hymn Spasi Gospodi that provides one of the leitmotifs throughout the work. Highly recommend!
I agree, although classical music is rife with elitism, so it does kind of insist upon obscurity to be "good." It's like metalheads thinking anything popular is automatically bad. I don't agree, of course! But it's a facet for definite.
Thanks for the recommendation, this is an absolutely belting version!
He also had a big impact on John Williams which is iconic for Star wars, Indiana Jones etc.
I just watched your 2nd link and noticed that the pianist Yuja Wang (?) is playing without sheet music. Is that normal? Seems wild to me
It is fairly standard, as far as I'm aware, for concert soloists to play without sheet music, yes. These are professional musicians who are able to dedicate 4 or more hours per day to learning, memorising, and practising music. There are a lot of techniques to assist with memorisation, and these people have been doing it their whole lives. It's an impressive skill, to be sure, but honestly even one that a modest amateur can master if they put their mind to it. For something like this concerto on the other hand, it's probable that if you asked her a year after this performance to play it all again from memory, she would struggle greatly, not least because she would have learned and performed half a dozen or more other pieces in the interim, and pushed this one out of her brain. When you dedicate your mind to a single piece of music for weeks at a time, memorising it for the performance isn't so difficult, but retaining that long term is far far more difficult.
Rimsky-Korsakov - Scherezade
Link to one of my favorite performances of it
I think it's a masterful piece of storytelling in symphony form, plus the bombast and power of the horns in the sultan's theme get me every time.
Oh, that's a good choice! My favorite part has always been the Kalendar Prince, namely that theme that gets introduced by the bassoon solo at 12:53 in the version you linked and then develops into something that, to me, sounds downright swashbuckling.
Another one that I consider a great bit of musical story telling: Dvořák - The Water Goblin. Wikipedia has details on the story and inspiration.
Smetana - Má Vlast also comes to mind, though it tells less of a story. Wikipedia details. But I've long held that if I were directing a Hobbit movie, the first minute or so (35:38-36:45 in link) of its "From Bohemia's Woods and Fields" would be absolutely perfect for the company entering the Forest Gate of Mirkwood. Or for Fellowship, when Fatty Bolger closes the gate in the Hedge behind Frodo and friends as they enter the Old Forest. It just screams to me "you are setting foot in a large menacing forest where you are not welcome and yet there's no turning back."
Vivaldi's The Four Seasons - Summer in G Minor, RV. 315: III. Presto as performed by the Dover Quartet.
When I first saw this particular piece performed live, by a string quartet at a dinner show in Vienna, Austria, I was absolutely enthralled, and got totally covered in goosebumps. It was hard to believe that only four instruments could produce such powerful and evocative sounds. It genuinely sounded like there was an entire orchestra playing, not just four people. Vivaldi has always been a favorite of mine since then, but that is still my favorite piece of his to this day because of that experience.
Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58: II. Andante con moto, as performed by the Cleveland Orchestra, and Leon Fleisher.
I first heard it on Yo-Yo Ma's Artist's Choice™ compilation album that he put together for Starbucks, of all places. I love how it alternates between the bombastic strings, and the melancholic piano. And the progression makes it feel like it's telling an equally dramatic and heartbreaking story.
p.s. Since you mentioned Paganini you may enjoy Ewan Dobson's rendition of Caprice No. 5 on acoustic guitar. And for comparison, here's Sumina Studer performing it on the violin, as it was intended.
I also highly recommend Max Richter’s… reimagining? of The Four Seasons! Especially when listening back-to-back to the original version, it’s quite fun to pick up on the “modernized” bits that make you go “oooh, nice”, while respecting the mood/style/flow of the source material, in my opinion.
There seem to be newer “official videos” released just a year ago, but I prefer the sound of the older uploaded recording specifically for Summer 3 you’ve mentioned above. My personal favorite is Summer 1, which got a beautiful video to match!
Huh. I'd never heard those before. I'm so used to the original compositions that it felt very weird hearing them totally rearranged like that. But it was still really interesting, and enjoyable, so thanks for sharing!
p.s. That Summer 1 video is blocked here in Canada, so I had to connect to my US VPN to watch it.
My daughter plays cello and is taking part in a master class focused on Vivaldi's Four Seasons this weekend. I am really looking forward to hearing her practicing her part of that after she gets back. It's hard not to love that piece. I have never seen it performed live but I can imagine it is wonderful.
And thanks for recommending Ewan Dobson and Lumina Studer. I will definitely listen to them. A local Violin/Cello repair shop in my area is run by a guy who also collects old Paganini artifacts. His shop walls are covered by old hand written notes and all kinds of neat items touched by Paganini. He loves talking about him too so I really enjoy visiting that shop and talking to him. Fun fact: Did you know the shape of the violin and length of the neck was influenced (partly) by Paganini's playing demands?
Hah, nice. I would be looking forward to hearing someone practicing it in my home too. :P I'm surprised they aren't focusing on his Cello concertos though. Especially since he was one of the first major composers to write them for the Cello.
If you liked that Ewan Dobson video, I highly recommend checking out his own compositions too. E.g. A few of my favorites: Time, Time 2, Motion potion. He's an absolutely fantastic guitarist, and is kind of obsessed with Paganini. So even beyond naming a few of his own tracks after Paganini (Paganini's Hip, Paganini's Laugh Paganini's Whiskey), he has also played a bunch other Paganini pieces on his own channel as well, E.g. Lucca Sonata No. 6, Sonata in A Major Op.3, No. 1, Moto Perpetuo.
p.s. I didn't know that about Paganini and the violin's design. But did you know he had a love affair with Napoleon's sister Elisa? :P
This one is an event for all strings. I'm actually not familiar with Vivaldi's cello-only works so I will definitely look those up. Thanks!
And haha, I did not know that about Paganini. He sounds like he was a really "colorful" person. I've also heard the stories about his reputation for having made a pact with the devil to gain his violin skills. Apparently some people really did believe this and it caused some problems after his death when a church was otherwise supposed to manage his death/burial rituals.
And I will look more into Dobson. Thanks!
They're not Cello-only, but they are the featured instrument.
If you or your daughter are curious and want to see the arrangements:
https://imslp.org/wiki/List_of_works_by_Antonio_Vivaldi
(CTRL-F for
Cello, strings)His Cello Sonatas are about as close as you can get to Cello-only for that period though, AFAIK:
(CTRL-F for
130and look below that)p.s. If you want to hear them performed: Vivaldi: Complete Cello Concertos, Vivaldi: Cello Sonatas. And unsurprisingly, Yo-Yo Ma has performed a bunch of them over the years too. E.g. Vivaldi's Cello
I’m sure I’ve heard other recordings that played as fast as that recording of the Vivaldi quartet, but something about the video looks or sounds slightly sped-up to me. Maybe it’s my device playing up, but the musicians looked a little too twitchy…
That's possible, I guess. But it's more likely just the video's low frame rate and YouTube's shitty encoding making it seem that way. The Dover Quartet are a rather famous quartet, and Grammy nominated, so I don't think they would need to resort to doing something like that. Especially since that pacing is nothing unusual. It's actually pretty standard these days to play it that fast. E.g. 1, 2, 3, and even a 10 year old can do it. ;)
Yeah, that’s what threw me — I know it’s definitely possible to play that fast, especially for professional musicians, so I was confused as to why they’d bother squeezing a little extra tempo out of the recording…
I’ll have to watch this at home on my computer and see whether it looks the same or if my phone was playing up.
It's unfortunately a 24fps video, even the 1440p version, so it'll prob look the same even on your desktop. :(
Raindrop Prelude by Chopin (D-Flat Maj, Op 28, No.15).
Wonderful peaceful piece interrupted by a passing storm.
link
This piece is so incredibly special to me, I'm glad someone else mentioned it. It was the first "real" piece of classical music I learned to play and it got me through some tough times later on. It's so simply beautiful.
agreed on all counts. i learned to play part of it (the storm), but my son learned the whole thing and was nice to have it "in the house".
I was very pleased when I happened to hear it in a nice NPR Tiny Desk concert recently last song played, 11:29
Wow! That had some different ideas I've not heard before and might have to steal. The use of the una corda (or whatever version of one that piano had) for the final Db section is incredible in contrast to the storm. Totally using that next time I play it. I do wish the piano had been in tune though :(
There is a lot of classical music that I like, but one of the more recent ones that managed to enrapture me was Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tillis by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
I consider myself to be fairly knowledgeable in music theory but this song tends to elude explaination. When I heard it I thought it might have been a modern composition, but it’s 100 years old and based on a theme that came out of the 16th century.
I’m also a big fan of Chopin; there aren’t many of his songs that I have heard that have failed to make me happy. I can’t really narrow it down to one song but I do particularly like his polonaises. I guess I just like dance music.
Probably my favorite individual piece of classical music, though, is Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata. I like all three movements but of course like the simpleton I am I do like the first movement the best. The song is full of such strongly mixed emotions it is almost as if the composer managed to find some brand new ones that have yet to be named, and surely it captures feelings that no other song has managed to duplicate. The first movement in particular I would describe as capturing the feeling of coming to a positive resolution in the middle of the night as you allow yourself to process your most painful thoughts - an experience that I suspect most people go through privately but we wouldn’t otherwise be able to talk about. In such a way the song manages to be the single best example of the power and importance of art as a whole.
There first time I ever heard the Vaughan Williams Fantasia many years ago, I immediately thought of Tolkien's elves. To me it has just the right touch of nobleness mixed with melancholy for them.
(I can't speak to the music theory behind it. I'm a visual thinker foremost and not a musician, so I just tend to evaluate music by the mental images it conjures.)
I'd really appreciate it if someone had a classical for dummies intro or playlist of some kind. I love exploring genres and have general music theory knowledge from playing instruments, but my background is jazz and rock so I never knew where to start... I love French impressionist stuff like Satie and Debussy, I'm a basic bitch for In the Hall of the Mountain King, and I adore technical pieces like Kapustin's Eight Concert Etudes. Any time I try to get past that I fizzle out a bit.
Classical music encompasses such a broad range of styles from all around the world, over such a huge time span, that I suspect it's probably impossible to write an all encompassing introduction, or even one that touches on a fraction of the genre. But one way to go about exploring the genre could be to dive into RYM's genre and sub-genre entries, or the entries for specific artists/works/arrangements/performances you've enjoyed in the past. Then just floating around reading all those, listening to related tracks, and clicking on links to any other entries that pique your curiosity. And you can do the same with Wikipedia entries for the same subjects too.
E.g. Based on the ones you already listed:
https://rateyourmusic.com/genre/classical-music/ (expand the genre Hierarchy to see all 189 sub-genres)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_music
https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/erik-satie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Satie
https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/claude-debussy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Debussy
https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/edvard-grieg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edvard_Grieg
https://rateyourmusic.com/work/i_dovregubbens_hall
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Hall_of_the_Mountain_King
https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/николай-капустин
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Kapustin
https://rateyourmusic.com/work/concert_etudes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_Nikolai_Kapustin
I always found RYM kinda difficult to navigate typically for classical, since the bulk of the works have been performed by other people and the composer pages were the more historical opus listings rather than any particular releases of their work with existing ratings and reviews as a launch point for good recordings... But now I'm seeing the genre and sub-genre pages do that well, whoops. Thank you!
Yeah, RYM can be pretty information dense, and the individual artists and track pages can be kinda hard to use as a means of exploring or learning about the genres. But the genre pages themselves are quite well laid out, IMO. And each genre/sub-genre also has a related Album Chart page that is usually worth diving into, and experimenting with the different sorts too. E.g. Sorting the chart by Esoteric or Diverse rather than the default Top:
https://rateyourmusic.com/charts/esoteric/album/all-time/g:classical%2dmusic/
https://rateyourmusic.com/charts/diverse/album/all-time/g:impressionism/ (so it isn't all Erik Satie albums ;)
There is a book call the NPR Curious Listeners Guide to Classical Music. It has a lot of guidance through different eras and composers.
When I was young I had a record called the Great Composers. I'm sure such things exist, possibly like mine, designed for children.
like @cfabbro mentioned, there's too much music out there to make such a thing. In addition to their recommendation, you might want to try radio. Radio is curated by a large number of people to appeal to masses, so it's a good way to get into it because it lets you just drop into music you wouldn't have been interested in otherwise. KUSC is one of the big ones, and they have a web stream so you can listen anywhere. I particularly like that they don't just have classical era stuff; they also do modern "classical style" music as well.
Wow, this is the first time I hear Kapustin's concert etudes and they immediately reminded me of Zelda BotW's OST. Not everything is exactly the same, but there are just so many similarities that I would find it very surprising if it wasn't an inspiration.
I ended up on Kapustin via the soundtrack for the visual novel Wonderful Everyday, since the composers were supposedly influenced by him. Wouldn't be surprised if he's a common thread.
Replying again because I am on mobile right now. You could look for music history or music appreciation on Coursera or on YouTube.
A simple encyclopedia article about which composers influenced each other would help
I like mixing genres too
The song that has drawn me to classic music more than any other is String Quartet No 60, Musica notturna delle strade di Madrid. I first heard it in Master and Commander and am itching to find another classic piece I enjoy as much. If anyone has any suggestions I would love to hear them!
I took music lessons from about age seven and played in youth orchestras before focusing on other interests as an adult.
Some pieces I will never forget include Ases Tod from Pier Gynt by Grieg and Mussorgsky Night on Bald Mountain. (Disney's Fantasia includes Night on Bald Mountain also). March Slave by Tchaikovsky. Some excerpts from the Magic Flute.
As an adult I find myself listening to Chopin. Bach's Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor.
I also have to give credit to Looney Tunes and Bugs Bunny for part of my classical Music education along with Peter and the Wolf and the Nutcracker Suite.
There is a wonderful interpretation of this tune by the prog band Sky that is one of my favourite songs of all time.
Perhaps this is a superficial reason for liking it, but I thought it was used to great effect in Mega Man Legends when introducing the final boss and during his fight.
I love just about every music genre, it all depends on my mood. With classical I have a hard time with all of the names and understanding what is what. I end up listening to a YouTube Music playlist of classical and going down a rabbit hole of artists. Regardless I still get to enjoy it but I could not tell you one song that I've listened to in my life because of the naming convention.
That is sort of hard to pin down. I am partial to 19th century big names like Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorak, Wagner and Mahler. I also like some early 20th century Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev.
I like Wagner operas, but I understand if people can be put off by opera, so I would recommend The Ring Without Words which is a symphonic re-arrangement of music from Wagner's four opera in the Ring Cycle.
For Mahler, his 2nd Symphony is a standout and the 8th is impressive with its massive scale of musicians needed.
Rachmaninoff and Brahms have some great piano concerts. Brahms 1st and Rachmaninoff's 2n are among my favorites.
The 9th Symphony by Dvorak is also worth mentioning for its epic soundtrack like feel.
Wow. I was really taken back by the Richard Wagner the ring without words. Thank you for sharing.
I have really enjoyed Brahms' Hungarian Dances recently. I'll check out the 1st piano concerto you mentioned. I love Rachmaninoff's piano concertos too.
This may be a bit cliché but Mozart's Requiem in D minor, specifically the Lacrimosa section. The way it conveys such desperate sorrow is really dramatic and raw it's almost too on the nose. Though what really sealed the deal for me was hearing it used in certain scenes of The Amazing World of Gumball, like here and here. Tickles me pink every time.
Gustav Holst's The Planets is just about my favorite orchestral suite out there - It's heart-pounding, delicate in places, and really worth listening to all the way through. If you've got a good pair of headphones and the better part of an hour available, I highly recommend listening to it in its entirety in once sitting.
Coincidentally I bought the performance by the London Symphony Orchestra this week. I've only listened to a little bit of "Mars, the Bringer of War" previously and I'm very excited to fully get into it.
I'm a big fan of Gustav Holst's The Planets. This suite has had - and continues to have - such a massive influence on film scoring, particularly in the writing and arrangements of John Williams, for example. I love how the movements each have such a unique and beautifully defined character that, when taken together, add up to this wonderfully grand array of emotions and moods that sweep you up on your solar journey.
However, as you mentioned 'a piece', I'll take that as a single movement in this case and go with my personal favourite, the magnificently dramatic Mars, the Bringer of War. There are few classical pieces I can think of with this much rhythmic power, it feels almost primal. And not forgetting that big I - V - Vb motif that has been influencing metal since Sabbath immemorial.
I'll finish off with a few recommendations from my favourite recordings of Mars:
The only other work as close to as influential as The Planets on film scoring is Wagner's Ring cycle. However, The Planets are massively more influential to the summer blockbuster sound. The Ring is more subtle (not by much) and more used for epics [think Howard Shore's scores].
Not technically classical music, but I fell into a YouTube hole and ended up having a moment with Andrea Bocelli's Con Te Partirò.
I'd heard it before, but something about seeing it really had an effect. It's popular, so I'm probably not opening anyone's eyes, but I felt compelled to share.
My grandfather was obsessed with Andrea Bocelli (and Pavarotti too). So on his deathbed, Bocelli's Best Of album, with Bocelli and Sarah Brightman's rendition of that song, was basically on repeat for days on end. I still can't listen to anything from it without tearing up. :(
Sorry for your loss. Sounds like he meant a lot to you.
Thanks, but TBH he didn't. He was a raging alcoholic, and violently abusive towards my grandmother, father, and aunts while they were growing up. So I only ever saw him a handful of times in my entire life as a result. I remember him being good to me in the few times I did see him, and he had sobered up and repented by then, but I still never really connected with him because of how infrequently I saw him. The emotion that music evokes comes mostly from the fact it was playing constantly while I stood witness in his hospital room. And since I was one of the few people who could stand to be in the room with him for prolonged periods as he slowly withered away, I got to hear those same songs over and over and over again... All the while witnessing the full range of emotions that the death of someone like that brings about in a family. So the tearing up is not necessarily due to him passing, per se, but mostly from the painful memories and suffering I witnessed during that period, which I now associate with that music.
I can relate - you don't get to choose your family, but they are can teach you a lot, sometimes by example, sometimes by anti-example. Being party to that kind of death is certainly an intense encounter with mortality, too. We should all make the most of it, coz we're all in it together.
100% agreed, and I definitely learned a lot from that experience. It also makes me eternally grateful for the new medical assistance in dying (MAID) laws we now have here in Canada too. IMO, nobody, not even an abusive asshole, should have to suffer like that at the end of their life. So I wish the laws had been in place back then for him, and for the sake of my family as well.
I agree with that, too. There's a graceful, humane way to allow one to pass, and these laws allow for that. The attacks on those laws by those who are against them are mostly false and entirely infuriating.
To mention a piece that gets way too little attention (most classics are classics for a reason), Shostakovich's Gadfly suite.
Without knowing any context, there are just a host of brilliant melodies. And they come just one after the other for 40 minutes in great orchestration that uses a variety of dynamic tools and instrumentation.
Beyond that, it's incredibly fun to play the orchestral parts, as there are a number of unconventional key signatures, key changes, orchestrations and other quirks.
For example, the Romance in C#-major with motifs in the strings. Then having the audacity to move the melody into a tutti strings-section for a minute in a key signature with all 7 accidentals? Magically absurd, and it's done so well, your average won't even notice!
Then there are two deeper layers beyond that:
Shostakovich was denounced, rehabilitated and denounced again by the Soviet Union. He died a bemedaled hero of the country, but that's probably because the Soviet leadership simply didn't manage to pick up the sarcasm, irony and over-pompousness of many of his pieces. The Galop is just one example of this from the Gadfly. Listening closely, there's plenty of harmonies that betray the exaggeration.
There's some disagreement, but most seem to agree that Shostakovich was making fun of the Soviet leadership he knew would applaud fervently at premieres of his huge works for a large portion of his career. While the music-knowledgeable parts of the audience were in on the joke: the leadership were the ones being made fun of and were, quite literally, the ones being played, as they sat there in full brass.
The last layer is made apparent if you see the movie. Clearly, the pompous genre of Soviet propaganda is being made fun of. I can't find a legal way to share the full film, but you get an idea of the Romance-theme overlaid by clips in the movie. The effect throughout the film is pretty similar.
That's not what the regime wanted in a blockbuster production to show off the proletariat and importance of Soviet socialist dogma. And the movie was a smashing hit.
I find myself listening to a lot of Baroque music while working.
For a while it was Corelli's 12 concerti grossi. The "Essential Classical" channel on Youtube has a good recording. In the same vein, Vivaldi, Telemann, Handel, Bach, etc. wrote enough "light" orchestral pieces to last a lifetime.
At other times it's Bach's Art of Fugue. I listen to a lot of different recordings of this one---I think, due to its highly academic nature, it benefits from being heard in diverse instruments and styles. I recommend the string quartet rendition by the Emerson Quartet.
Lately it's been the Well-Tempered Clavier, which is a much easier listen. Richter is my favorite piano rendition. The harpsichord rendition by Pierre Hantaï on Youtube is also very good, and maybe even my preferred version now.
If you want something that will warp your perception of reality, listen to Carlo Gesualdo. This is a composer from the 16th century who uses chromaticism in a way that sounds practically modern. Astounding.
If you want something life changing, you should sit down and listen to some late Beethoven. I highly recommend the 30th piano sonata as a starting point, and then the 13th and 14th string quartets (the 13th with its original finale). For me, these are the nearest things in the world to transcendence.
Beethoven's 6th, the "Pastoral" Symphony.
Not as famous as 5 or 9 (and I really do like 9), but I particularly like 6. Unlike most of Beethoven's work, this Symphony is programmatic, meaning it conveys a rudimentary musical narrative, which is probably why it was chosen for one of the more coherent segments in Walt Disney's Fantasia. Basically the 19th century equivalent of a modern day concept album or rock opera.
I will never pass up the opportunity to shill the following classics:
EDIT
How could I have forgotten Incantations for Percussion & Orchestra or Ginastera's Piano Concerto #1?
A little different maybe, but Un Sueño en la Floresta by Augustin Barrios Mangoré. It’s an amazing piece for classical guitar. The interplay between the low and high voicings is just magical.
Dvořák - Symphony No. 9 (From the New World), 2nd movement. I like most everything I've heard from Dvořák but this has to be a favorite. It's just so soothing and hopeful sounding. I remember being thrilled when I found that the Civ V soundtrack used it for some civs in peace times.
Dvořák - The Water Goblin. (I mentioned this in another comment here.) This tells such a dramatic story, and I love the goblin's theme so much with those trills.
Schubert - Symphony No. 8 (Unfinished). The opening of the first movement once the violins start going always makes me picture a thunderstorm rolling in after dark, when it's still dry out and the rain hasn't started yet, but the leaves are beginning to swirl as the wind picks up. (Bonus points for being used as a theme for Gargamel in The Smurfs.)
Bach - Little Fugue in G Minor (BWV 578). I'm not sure if you'd count it as classical, but it's one of my favorite Bach pieces, though I can't explain what I love so much about it.
Shostakovich - Waltz No. 2.
Mussorgsky - Pictures at an Exhibition.
In case you haven’t seen it, someone created the most amazing music video for Waltz No 2 using photos of Saturn from the Cassini probe.
Gustav Mahler - Symphony No. 1 (Titan), just an incredibly creative and beautiful piece to me.
The movements are so different one from another but still blend beautifully, and the melodies come back to the final to tie the masterpiece.
Jean Sibelius - 13 pieces, Op 76 II. Etude, most of the interpretations are too fast for my liking, but I especially love the version for cello and guitar by Jian Wang and Göran Söllscher for the 2020 Finlandia: Finland independence day compilation. This one hits hard, the melody and bass lines are fantastically simple yet effective, and there is something about the cello and guitar alternatively supporting each other that hit the nail.
I don't listen to classical that much, but when I do, I end up listening to Ode an die freude or Marriage of Figaro overture.
It is kinda weird that I listen to those two while being Czech and thus having cultural heritage in this regard. But I don't find that much of Antonín Dvořák or Bedřich Smetana that I would like to listen to. Sorry to fellow Czechs.
Symphony No. 1 by Vasily Kalinnikov is something that will always stick with me ever since the band I was in played the finale. Beautiful melodies, strong development of its ideas, incredible orchestration, it's just an amazing work. I truly believe that this is something that should be more widely known. If you already know it, great. Have another listen. If it's your first time, give yourself an hour in a spot you love and enjoy.
Also the entirely of Camille Saint-Saëns' The Carnival of the Animals. Personal highlights include:
Honestly I could talk about all of the movements. It's such a good introduction to music's ability to paint entire scenes without a single word.
Thanks. I am listening to Kalinnikov right now.
I remember the first time I heard Carnival of the Animals on the radio, and the host took time to explain the idea behind the piece. I really like that piece and I'll look up more work by Saint-Saens too.
"Miss Donithorne's Maggot", composed by Peter Maxwell Davies and performed here by Mary Thomas and the Fires of London.
Why do I like it? The vocals on the first track are crazy, in the best sense of the word. I adore wild, off-putting vocals, and "Miss Donnithorne's Maggot" has all the ridiculous histrionics I could ever hope for, including hiccoughs. The jilted, recluse mezzo-soprano rants among the destroyed remains of her wedding cake with nothing more than an alto flute to keep her company. This is totally insane modern opera, and I love it.
I've played piano (though at a fairly casual level) for most of my life, so if I'm in a classical/"classical" mood, it's usually solo-piano or piano-focused pieces.
Beethoven's piano sonatas are always good - I'm a fan of most of the usual most-famous ones, and my favorite is Sonata 23 "Appassionata".
I also really like the Impressionists - Debussy is probably my favorite, especially Images, especially Mouvement. I also quite like Ravel's Miroirs.
Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 3 and Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No 1; in particular these versions played by Martha Argerich. I like the underlying melody and the emphasis and colour Argerich uses with the orchestra.
I'm a sucker for the romantics, and these Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov pieces are my favourites.
I don't often get the urge to listen to classical, but two pieces by Stravinski draw me back in now and again. His compositions were so different from anything else I'd heard in classical music, they just stuck with me.
Rite of Spring
Firebird Suite
Just thought of a few more worth mentioning because of how hilarious they are:
Igudesman & Joo's performance of Rachmaninoff 's Prelude in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 3 No. 2
If you haven't seen it yet, I highly highly recommend watching. It's not your standard performance of the piece. ;)
Same with their I Will Survive and Mozart Bond mashups.