Performances that move you to tears

[longears]

Tears of laughter, and then of compassion for our common condition.

Canninator--I like your list quite a bit (as well as many others by many other posters) but one item puzzles me:  Radiohead's OK Computer.  So many seem to regard this as a milestone achievement on the order of Nevermind or Kind of Blue, but though I've tried a couple of times I hear nothing distinguishing it from dozens of other wannabe alt-rockers languishing in a dying medium (Rock is dead...unless something comes along to jump start its fading heart...I read that John Fogarty's making a new record...who knows?).

Can you tell me what it is about OK Computer that moves you enough to include it in your list?  Thanks, dude!

[George]

Can you tell me what it is about OK Computer that moves you enough to include it in your list?  Thanks, dude!

I realize you asked someone else, but to me it matters little whether Radiohead is rock or whatever. What I do care about is whether or not I like something or not and OK Computer is my favorite album by the band. Does it move me to tears? Not usually, though this song is a good contender:

"Exit Music for a Film."

I also love the last 3 songs.

Though the fact that you don't like it proves a point I made earlier in the week: consensus choices aren't liked by everybody, nor do they need to be.

[longears]

I don't know that I don't like it, George...I just don't get why so many regard it as so outstanding, when it sounds to me pretty much like everything else in the genre these days (by these days I mean the past decade or so  ).

[George]

I don't know that I don't like it, George...I just don't get why so many regard it as so outstanding, when it sounds to me pretty much like everything else in the genre these days (by these days I mean the past decade or so  ).

Different ears?

Or perhaps they perfectly express the modern alienation that has become life for so many people. By listening to it, people somehow feel less alone. "I live in a town, where you can't feel a thing."

[Renfield]

Back to the OT, and even though I don't generally cry over things that touch me even to the most profound extent, I did have a very sincere emotional experience listening to a Bruno Walter interview I didn't realise I had, yesterday:

He was talking about Mozart, and of the latter's letter to his father expressing his fear of death. "Death begins our path to eternity", he concludes; "death, is the door..."

Then the interview fades out, and the next item on the track list for that "album" (really the Bruno Walter Original Jacket Collection) starts playing: Gustav Mahler's "Das Lied von der Erde".

Honestly, I don't think a documentary sound editor could have made the transition better than it already was, nor the sequence more poignant; to think they weren't even in the same CD, and the sequence was relatively coincidential!

And at that moment, upon hearing the opening of that piece, conducted by that man, after those words, my eyes misted...


Edit: I am such an idiot, I mis-quoted the interview. Fixed.

[techniquest]

And at that moment, upon hearing the opening of that piece, conducted by that man, after those words, my eyes misted...

I have never heard the interview, nor do I know DLvDE - but I do know exactly what you mean. Thankyou for such a lovely post.
If I am in a susceptible frame of mind, Vaughan Williams 2nd movement from the London Symphony can tip me over the edge, especially the introduction of the second subject on viola. I grew up in London and it takes me back to far easier, happier days - or at least it gives me the sense of such times.

[stingo]

Janet Baker's 'Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen.'

I have this in a coupling with M3 under Michael Tilson Thomas' direction (LSO) - excellent. But my first exposure was live in concert in Philadelphia, with Branford Marsalis playing soprano sax in the soloist's role. It was one of the most moving musical experiences I've ever had.

[Frellie]

Tears almost always push against the gates of my eyes when I listen to LvB's 'Eroica', 2nd mov., at the beginning of the double fugue. Quite impressive. Any good performance will do. However, my favorite is by Osmo Vänskä.

Another typical tear moment: opening movement of the Nelson Mass by Haydn, somewhere over the middle, when the soprano cries out.

I usually start shedding tears much more quickly when I can see the faces of the performers. On tv, for example.
Is that a familiar inclination?

Also, listening intensely to music by using good headphones also seems to encourage the tears.

[Renfield]

I usually start shedding tears much more quickly when I can see the faces of the performers. On tv, for example.
Is that a familiar inclination?

Well, our inborn empathy for other "animals" (including other humans) does play a role, there. When you can see the tension, as well as hear it, the experience is so much more "live", and indeed noticeably more intense. Human social instincts.

Although for those of us who are happy to be known as "synaesthetes" (of the music/shape, music/colour - or even music/taste for all I know - variety), the music itself can be seen, or otherwise felt, thus adding whole new layers to its intensity.

Edit: I just realised I made "synaesthete" sound like some sort of obscure synonym for "oracle", or "magician". In fact, it actually refers to someone experiencing a neurological phenomenon, known as "synaesthesia". You can look it up in any good psychology or neuroscience dictionary, if you're curious and this is your first encounter with the term.

Or you can also look it up online, obviously.

[MISHUGINA]

Almost any (good) performance of Tchaikovsky's 6th symphony.

p.s Is Tchaikovsky's Pathétique symphony the greatest of all symphonies outside the best of Mozart and Beethoven? Discuss.

Sorry, but it pales to Mahler 6th and the 9th of Mahler and Bruckner. But the performance of 1929 BPO/Furtwangler is so depressing sometimes it can drive one suicidal.