Name the seminal piece that got you interested in classical music

[Karl Henning]

I doubt stores selling new CDs will rise from the ashes of their business model.

Your point is fair.  I think it unlikely, but also possible that shops could return.  Something that Borders tried for a while (nor do I know why they folded it up so quickly) was what looked like an on-demand disc-burning kiosk. That could be a model for boutiques to provide new CDs, with a smaller footprint and without the need to stock a large inventory which may not particularly move.

[rw1883]

I had some piano lessons when I was young and Amadeus had a substantial impact as well, but it wasn't until 1995 when I bought the 1st edition of the Rough Guide to Classical Music and it recommended Beethoven's 9th conducted by Fürtwangler (1942).  The impression was absolutely spellbinding and I've been an avid listener, concert attendee, and collector since then.

[val]

I was a kid and learning the piano. Obviously Czerny, Burgmüller and Clementi were not very appealing. And my mother gave me an LP with Cantatas of Bach, conducted by Kurt Thomas. The Cantata BWV 4 was, as far as I remember, my first musical passion. A few weeks later I listened for the first time Beethoven's Sonatas opus 106, 110 & 111 by Brendel in those old VOX LP and saw on stage Don Giovanni with Tito Gobbi ...

[Christo]

an intelligent person may find the fugues of J. S. Bach more interesting than a person with lower intelligence.

I've found no correlation between intelligence and what kind of music a person likes.

I side with Sarge (as always) . And generally find discussing "intelligence", or even the claim of it, seldom an indication of it being used.

[71 dB]

I side with Sarge (as always) . And generally find discussing "intelligence", or even the claim of it, seldom an indication of it being used.

Forget I ever said it then (you misunderstood me).

I like even Katy Perry's music. Good to know it doesn't make me stupid. 

[Christo]

It was mostly Bach and Händel, sounding from the loudspeakers in the stable of the little farm I grew up in, my mother and father milking the cows there during the winter, but often listening to my father's music from a tape recorder that could play for hours. Later, when I was about eleven, I taped my own music from the radio. First Beethoven, mostly the symphonies, then Dvořák and Grieg and Tchaikovsky and Saint-Saëns, al of whom are still dear to me (but no longer first choices).

[Sergeant Rock]

I like even Katy Perry's music. Good to know it doesn't make me stupid. 

It comes perilously close though. I listen to Annabella. I'm sure that has knocked more than a few points off my IQ 

Sarge

[The new erato]

Liking bad music isn't a crime, or a sign of dementia. Mistaking it for great music, is.

[johnshade]

What really did it for me (in the 1950s) were the Fritz Reiner LP of Bartok's Music for strings, percussion and celesta and the Reiner LP of Ein Heldenleben.

JS

[Karl Henning]

Liking bad music isn't a crime, or a sign of dementia.

But, you know, it's a little amusing to find cinematic characters who appear to believe just that, like Waldo Lydecker in Laura.

A little amusing, though at times a bit worrisome, as it caricatures fanciers of higher culture.  Though there just may be some real-life characters to justify it . . . .

[scarlattiglenross]

Strange as it may seem, for me the answer would be either Ligeti's piano études or Ives' The Unanswered Question.

[Lilas Pastia]

A chance encounter with my parent's never played small batch of mono RCA lps. I think they bought them because some retailer was ditching mono stuff. I never heard any of that music played at home. I must have been 12 or 13.  The one I kept playing on and on was Chopin's first PC (Rubinstein). Another Rubinstein disc was played very often: Beethoven sonatas 8, 14, 26. And Franck' Symphony (Monteux), Tchaikovsky's Parhétique (Munch). And there was a double lp set of Toscanini Plays Light Favorites: Carmen Suite, Moldau, Stars and Stripes Forever, Danse macabre, William Tell Overture etc.  There were a few others, but I didn't play them as often. Except a Boston Pops album with the lovely In a Persian Market.

After a while (maybe 2 years ?) I found out that there were music stores. Obviously - these records came from somewhere, right? Well, I had never heard of a record store before, and I had no pocket money anyways. At the time our mom gave us 25 cents every week to clean up our room, the bathroom, pick up dog poop in the backyard and vacuum the house...

[Uncle Connie]

First recordings I specifically recall by name, from my parents' collection of 78s in the late 40s, were Tchaikovsky Nutcracker Suite (can't remember whose version, but it had bright orange labels) and the Beethoven P.C. no. 1 op. 15 with Dorfmann and Toscanini.  My parents had a number of other things (e.g. a certain amount of Brahms, whom they adored) but the foregoing are the two I can still "hear," sort of.  I also recall standing in the living room in front of the phono, age maybe 5 or 6, "conducting" those things.  Isn't it amazing how the NBC Symphony played quite as well for me as they did for Toscanini?     

[offbeat]

for me wud have to be prokofiev classical symphony and hearing it today im swept into a beautiful nostalgia 

[DavidRoss]

Hello, I've only just recently started listening to classical music within the last year or so, but I just can't get enough now.  I'm so glad I found this great forum.  I thought it would be fun to list the seminal piece that got each of us interested in classical music.  For me, it was Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 performed by Ashkenazy and the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Andre Previn.

Welcome, Rhymen!

Like many an American whose family enjoyed popular but not classical music, I was first exposed in grammar school via Proky's Peter and the Wolf. None of the usual suspects given cursory needle-dropping airings (Beethoven's 5th, Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker, etc.) caught fire. What first grabbed my attention and compelled me to want to hear more was, I suspect, all too typical for those of us coming of age in the '60s: Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra, courtesy of Kubrick's 2001.

IIRC, this was the first classical record I bought, more than 40 years ago:

[Kontrapunctus]

Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring." It was the natural progression from rock/metal!

[Lilas Pastia]

First recordings I specifically recall by name, from my parents' collection of 78s in the late 40s, were Tchaikovsky Nutcracker Suite (can't remember whose version, but it had bright orange labels) and the Beethoven P.C. no. 1 op. 15 with Dorfmann and Toscanini.  My parents had a number of other things (e.g. a certain amount of Brahms, whom they adored) but the foregoing are the two I can still "hear," sort of.  I also recall standing in the living room in front of the phono, age maybe 5 or 6, "conducting" those things.  Isn't it amazing how the NBC Symphony played quite as well for me as they did for Toscanini?   

Hi Connie. I had the same experience with Toscanini, but about 10 years later. Waving arms frantically when listening to a Toscanini interpretation is a natural thing  . I think it's the dynamism and inexorability of his conducting that naturally engages our physical involvement. Waving arms up and down, faster and slower seems the only possible response to the physical excitement induced by the Maestro's music making !

[prémont]

In my case it was the LvB symphonies and piano sonatas and Bach´s Brandenburg concertos and the WTC, thanks to my father.  Since then my field of interest has expanded enormously, but these two composers have always been in the centre of my attention. Important factors were also the piano instruction I got as a child and young and the organ instruction I got later.

[jwinter]

I can remember 2 orchestral LPs that snuck into the pop/rock rotation when I was probably around 10 -- John Williams' soundtrack to The Empire Strikes Back, and George Szell's Wagner Overtures (Tannhauser in particular).  After that I stocked up on the classics with Szell, Walter, Ormandy, & Bernstein via the old CBS Great Performances on cassette, and never looked back...

[Cato]

I thought this was an older topic, where I had already answered the query.

Then I saw the date!   

So...

In the early days of television, classic cartoons from the 1930's and 40's with Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tom and Jerry, Woody Woodpecker, etc. were shown as children's programming, devoid of politically correct propaganda about saving whales or eating healthy foods or drinking water when it is hot or washing your hands when they are dirty.

Parents took care of the latter 3 items, God took care of the first.   0:)

Since Carl Stalling and Scott Bradley and other cartoon composers often wove Wagner or Rossini or Von Suppe' into their 7-minute scores, my ears picked up the difference between the "pop music" my mother played (my father was unmusical, except for a chanteuse known as Teresa Brewer (Put Another Nickel In, In the Nickelodeon) and these semi-classical scores.

One children's show which really perked up my ears used Smetana's Moldau to accompany a short film showing how rain eventually forms rivers.  It was my favorite sequence, and one day the title and composer were mentioned!  So this became the seminal work, since I had no idea what the cartoon composers had done at the time.