I've been making headways into getting properly into classical music and I thought I'd make a thread to talk about it. I'll talk about individual performances and such as eternally-running series of shares on this post and also link to them from this post. So mute this post if you don't wanna see any of that and you'll be good!
Index
- J.S. Bach - The Well-Tempered Clavier
- Antonín Dvořák - Symphony No. 8
- Igor Stravinsky - The Rite of Spring
- Edvard Grieg - Ballade in the Form of Variations on a Norwegian Folk Song in G Minor
- Ludwig van Beethoven - Symphony No. 5
- John Adams - John's Book of Alleged Dances
- Béla Bartók - The Miraculous Mandarin
- Claude Debussy - La Mer
- Olivier Messiaen - Quartet for the End of Time
- Julius Eastman - Femenine
- Pyotr Tchaikovsky - Symphony No. 6
- Simeon ten Holt - Canto Ostinato
- Gustav Mahler - Symphony No. 9
Performance: Zhu Xia-Mei
Baroque music, and particularly Bach, is I think known as being pretty easy to get into coming from rock/pop because it's quite melodic and tight, with a big focus on instrumental interplay. And, y'know, Bach is wildly influential in popular music so there's a certain familiarity.
Anyway, I listened to this whole thing on an airplane and it is fantastic. I'm generally a pretty big fan of solo instrumental music because of the sheer expressiveness and personality it allows and The Well-Tempered Clavier is one of the most titanic examples of such in music, probably. It's remarkably evocative and imagistic, promoting a lot of visuals for me, and the way it moves methodically through forms and keys makes it feel quite diverse while remaining of a piece.
Performance: Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic
I was already familiar with Symphony No. 9, the New World symphony, and think it's quite lovely but I think I like this more honestly! It's incredibly beautiful and melodic but with some rather powerful underlying emotional darkness and the structure and recapitulation of themes and rhythms is pretty fascinating (shoutout to the Sticky Notes podcast for an excellent breakdown of this piece).
Performance: Péter Eötvös and the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie
As someone who is really into avant-garde prog rock and classical-influenced experimental stuff it's not a surprise I like Stravinsky but MAN THE RITE OF SPRING OWNS. It's incredibly intense and extremely percussive, rhythmically and harmonically wild, but also really beautiful and lush, and it being written as a ballet gives it an excellent sense of narrative flow right up to the explosive finale (even if Stravinsky himself wasn't satisfied with it). Genuinely spell-binding.
Performance: Lorin Maazel and the Cleveland Orchestra
I don't find this performance quite as powerful as the Junge Deutsche's, but it's a really nice recording regardless. Although it lacks some of the raw intensity of the other performance, there's a real intricacy and clarity to the recording and performance that makes the quiet parts of the ballet really stand out. Makes me really appreciate the rhythmic and harmonic interplay of the piece.
