The Music Room > Classical Music for Beginners
GMG Members' Personal Essentials Lists
DavidRoss:
Okay, y'all: We've gotten warmed up with a group effort at an Essentials List for newbies. How about we each offer our own essentials list, picking a manageable number of titles (cycles included here) that's neither too daunting for a newbie nor insufficiently restrictive to prevent us from careful consideration of our selections...say, 25 titles apiece? But to keep it a bit more challenging, let's limit the number of box sets to 5, and further restrict that to cycles (i.e. LvB 4tets) and not complete collections: no 100-disc Complete Haydn on Brilliant or similar offerings. Operas, oratorios, Mahler symphonies ( ;D ), etc., will not count as such a set but rather as one work
You can approach this however you like, as a broad overview intended for a rank newcomer, as a narrower but deeper exploration of a particular era or genre that excites you and you think will excite others, or as a personal "desert island faves" list that you would not want to be without...or by throwing darts at your CD collection, if that's what floats your boat!
Anyone care to begin?
karlhenning:
Taking title to include multi-disc issues makes this a bit easier.
Off the top of my head, 25 titles which, even if I somehow had to liquidate my library, I should refuse to let go:
Stravinsky Conducts Stravinsky
Stravinsky, Threni, Les noces, Symphony of Psalms / Robt Craft conductor
Shostakovich, Complete Symphonies / Maksim Shostakovich, conductor
Shostakovich, Symphony № 10, Songs & Dances of Death / Jansons, Phila, Robt Lloyd
Shostakovich, Preludes & Fugues, Opus 87 / Nikolayeva
Shostakovich, Suite on Words of Michelangelo, Six Romances on Verses by Relaigh, Burns & Shakespeare, &c. / Abdrazakov, Noseda, BBC Phil
Shostakovich, Violin Concertos / Khatchatryan, Masur, Orchestre National de France
Hindemith, Complete Kammermusiken / Abbado, members of the Berlin Philharmonic
Hindemith, Das Marienleben (new version) / Isokoski, Viitasalo
Prokofiev, Violin Sonatas / Kremer, Argerich
Prokofiev, Romeo & Juliet / Ozawa, BSO
Prokofiev, L’enfant prodigue, Le pas d’acier / Jurowski, conductor
Boulez conducts Schoenberg I
Boulez conducts Schoenberg II
Feldman, Crippled Symmetries / California EAR Unit
Sibelius, Symphonies / Blomstedt, SFSO
Doráti conducts Bartók
Berlioz Box / Munch, BSO
Rakhmaninov, Symphony № 1, Isle of the Dead / Noseda, BBC Phil
Rakhmaninov, Complete Songs
Wuorinen, String Sextet & other works / Group for Contemporary Music, &al.
Markevich, Arrangement of JS Bach The Musical Offering / Lyndon-Gee, Arnhem Phil
Tallis, Complete Works
Cage, Cheap Imitation &c. / Schleiermacher
My 40-disc JS Bach box
DavidRoss:
Way to go, Karl! Perhaps your approach is wiser than mine--I'm having a hard time paring it down and up. A dozen or so is easy, and 50+ might not be too hard, but trimming it to 25 is proving harder than I thought. Heck, in most cases even choosing one version among several competing recordings of a work is tough!
Anyway, here's a go that's both aimed at newbies and none of which I'd care to be without:
1 Bach Cello Suites Fournier
2 Bach Goldberg Variations Schiff ECM
3 Bach Violin Concertos Suwanai/COE
4 Beethoven Piano Sonatas Kovacevich
5 Beethoven String Quartets Emerson SQ
6 Beethoven Symphonies Abbado/BP (Rome)
7 Brahms Piano Concertos 1 & 2 Freire/Chailly/Gewandhaus Leipzig
8 Copland Appalachian Spring/Rodeo/Billy the Kid MTT/SFS
9 Debussy Prelude…Faun/La Mer/Images/En Bateau MTT/Giulini/BSO
10 Debussy Preludes Planès
11 Elgar Cello Concerto/Enigma Variations Tortelier/Boult/LPO
12 Haydn String Quartets op 33 Quatuor Mosaiques
13 Mahler Symphonies Sinopoli/Philharmonia
14 Mozart Symphonies 40 & 41 Minkowski/Musiciens du Louvre
15 Mozart Cosi fan tutte Jacobs
16 Pärt Tabula Rasa/Fratres/Cantus Jarrett/Kremer
17 Prokofiev Piano Concerto 3 (+ Ravel Piano Concerto) Argerich/Abbado/BP
18 Rachmaninov Piano Concertos 2 & 3 Ashkenazy/Kondrashin
19 Rossini Il Barbiere di Siviglia Prey/Berganza/Abbado/LSO
20 Sibelius Symphonies Blomstedt/SFS
21 Sibelius Tone Poems Vänskä/Lahti
22 Strauss, R. Four Last Songs/Metamorphosen/Oboe Cto Janowitz/Karajan/BP
23 Stravinsky Pétrouchka/ Le Sacre du Printemps Boulez/CO
24 Vaughan Williams Symphony 5/The Lark Ascending Davis/Thomson/LSO
25 Vivaldi Four Seasons/3 Violin Concertos Carmignola/Marcon/Venice Baroque Orch
Of course the list would probably be different tomorrow, but about half would probably be included every time (at least the works, if not the performers).
Edit: typo
Bulldog:
Question:
Can more than one recording be cited for a particular work?
The new erato:
--- Quote from: Bulldog on September 07, 2010, 10:10:59 AM ---Question:
Can more than one recording be cited for a particular work?
--- End quote ---
Translated: Is 50 Goldbergs acceptable?
:D
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version