Help me build a starter kit for my students.

[jwinter]

I think these might help cover the bases...

[hornteacher]

BIS 1263 Mozart: Clarinet Quintet |Clarinet Concerto--Martin Frost, clarinet, Vertano String Quartet; Peter Oundjian, cond. Amsterdam Sinfonietta.  The clarinet is an instrument that maybe, if you're lucky, one of the kids already plays, and its important to have something on the list that someone can maybe see himself playing with some practice.

Yes!  The Frost is one of my desert island CDs.  I love it and have purchased several copies for presents to special clarinet students.

[M forever]

Yes!  The Frost is one of my desert island CDs.  I love it and have purchased several copies for presents to special clarinet students.

All of them female, no doubt, and girlish looking, like Miss Hahn.

[hornteacher]

All of them female, no doubt, and girlish looking, like Miss Hahn.

Not all of them.

[M forever]

But only the little girls get the CDs.

[hornteacher]

But only the little girls get the CDs.

Nooooo.  Be nice now.     I give CD presents to all my special students, talented girls and boys.

[Joe Barron]

Some nice suggestions on this thread, and some really bad ones. Does anyone remember what is was like to be a kid? We're dealing with middle schoolers here, people: short attention spans and very little musical sophistication. As I recall from my own development as a listener, you need something short, bright and melodic to get them hooked --- in other words, a nice pops program. The Rite of Spring and the Chopin Piano concertos and Tristan and Isolde can come later, or do we want to kill their interest immediately?

I like the recommendation of the Gershwin American in Paris. I'd also go with excerpts from Copland's Billy the Kind and Rodeo, and one or two of Dvorak's Slavonic Dances. All are available on excellent and economically priced CDs, which I have linked to.

When I was kid, I was also very fond of Leroy Anderson's orchestral miniatures. Not heavy classical music by any means, but a wonderful and witty introduction to an orchestra can sound like.

[dirkronk]

Sorry, but I really can't believe I've read through five pages of responses and I don't think I've seen one mention of Rossini overtures! Let me heartily recommend them--and most especially the Reiner/CSO on RCA, whose remastered Gold Seal is very good. Plenty of humor, drama, excitement, familiar tunes all offered in shorter pieces. I LOVED these as a kid...and not just because they were used as background music in cartoons.


Let me also suggest trying to find an early music compilation disc--others have suggested baroque, and that's probably a good idea, but I'm personally thinking more along the lines of Praetorius' Terpsichore. This set of dance pieces astounded me when I took a music survey course in college (and had not yet been exposed to much music from the earlier eras). Rackets and sackbutts and krumhorns and portative organs, in skilled hands, might just warp their 12-year-old minds. In a GOOD way. Has French Harmonia Mundi ever put a compilation disc together featuring Paniagua and his amazingly talented (and occasionally hilarious) Madrid crew with, say, some Deller Consort and other, more recent HIP groups?

Even as an adult, when I decided to give this classical music stuff another go, I responded very well to things often seemingly pointed to younger children. One old EMI LP that included Prokofiev's Peter & the Wolf, Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, and Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals is STILL a favorite of mine. It helped, I think, that the version I'm thinking of eschewed narration except in "Peter." I'm betting someone has put together a CD with at least that much variety that might be useful even if my specific example isn't deemed desirable for today's preteen set.

I do think that the Rimsky Sheherazade would be a good choice, in part because of the drama, but also because of its split into episodes. Less likelihood that young ears will get bored.

Just a few thoughts...

Dirk

[hornteacher]

Let me also suggest trying to find an early music compilation disc--others have suggested baroque, and that's probably a good idea, but I'm personally thinking more along the lines of Praetorius' Terpsichore. This set of dance pieces astounded me when I took a music survey course in college (and had not yet been exposed to much music from the earlier eras). Rackets and sackbutts and krumhorns and portative organs, in skilled hands, might just warp their 12-year-old minds. In a GOOD way.

Yep, I use Terpsichore when I go over Renaissance secular music.  Middle school kids really get into crumhorns and sackbuts.

[adamdavid80]

I would maybe go with really familiar, typical choices like The Four Seasons and Beethoven's 5th, but then have wrk that might surprise them by it's familiarity from movie soundtracks.  Thus Spake Zarathustra, 2001, or the Star Wars theme...I dunno...have middle-school kids seen Apocalypse Now?  They grow up so fast these days... 

But work that might "sneak up" on them in that the kids already know it, and they already think it's cool, because it wasn't introduced to them as "stodgy old classical".  The reason it took me so long t get into classical is because I always thought it was the sterotyped, stodgy, tuxedoed pompous ass lightweight crap.  And, hey, what does that have for a 12 year old when Metallica is an option?  But had I known that classical can be HEAVY, and that it can be truly expressive and filled with so much more color than I ever appreciated...if it's somethign I already know, and didn't realize I knew, my ears and objectivity would be much more open.

(Some Philip Glass would also be surprising and unconventional)

[Jay F]

When I was kid, I was also very fond of Leroy Anderson's orchestral miniatures. Not heavy classical music by any means, but a wonderful and witty introduction to an orchestra can sound like.

I just found out this year it's his "Syncopated Clock" that's the theme to the Early Show and the Late Show on WCBS in New York when I was a kid. There's a nice series of three Leroy Anderson discs on Naxos now.

[Jay F]

When I was young, my mother played piano, and I've always thought that was the best instrument in the world for hearing music. So I would put a disc with two of Mozart's Piano Concertos on the list, 20 and 21. Either Mitsuko Uchida or Friedrich Gulda has a disc with both of those PCs.

Then I would go to Beethoven's 9th. I don't have a particular version I love most. I usually play Bernstein's Berlin "Ode to Freedom" or von Karajan's 1977 version on DG Galleria.

I also like the tunefulness of Mahler's 4th Symphony. My favorite, or at least my imprint, version is by von Karajan, but I believe it is OOP. I don't like either Bernstein version. Maybe someone else could suggest a good, readily available version.

For a little chamber music, I'd suggest the Beaux Arts Trio's Schubert Piano Trio, op. 100.

Again, piano. This time, solo piano: Paul Lewis' first Beethoven disc. I simply couldn't take this out of the CD player for close to a year.

And then there's that Leroy Anderson someone recommended earlier.

[Szykneij]

I just found out this year it's his "Syncopated Clock" that's the theme to the Early Show and the Late Show on WCBS in New York when I was a kid. There's a nice series of three Leroy Anderson discs on Naxos now.

The high school orchestra I conduct performed "The Syncopated Clock" last year. I'm lucky to have a pretty extensive library to draw from, and I believe the sheet music we used was one of the first, if not the original, printings from the early 1950s.

Clock songs used to be general music staples for younger children, but today kids really don't relate to them as much. Digital phone displays don't go tick-tock-tick-tock. I'm not sure if high schoolers would even get Anderson's "The Typewriter".