I should add to my previous post that a good friend of mine was the sales manager for Warner Brothers for several years. He also had connections at Telarc, having worked there. He had a pair of season seats (company perk) at Severance Hall (Cleveland Orchestra) and I attended around 100 concerts over a five year period. Perlman, Hogwood, Pinnock, Sofie-Mutter, among a long list. Hard to tire of classical music with that type of regular dosing!
I should add to my previous post that a good friend of mine was the sales manager for Warner Brothers for several years. He also had connections at Telarc, having worked there. He had a pair of season seats (company perk) at Severance Hall (Cleveland Orchestra) and I attended around 100 concerts over a five year period. Perlman, Hogwood, Pinnock, Sofie-Mutter, among a long list. Hard to tire of classical music with that type of regular dosing!
What a great friend to have! Who was the MD for the Cleveland Orchestra in those days? Was that the time of Maazel or Dohnanyi? Both of them were very active in London with the Philharmonia Orchestra during the last 15 years or so, until Maazel's death.
Having started with classical music before the age of 10, I am just now discovering other music, through the medium of 15ips 2 track tape. With trades with other tape heads, I at age 73 just heard my first albums by Led Zeppelin (LZ4 - not greatly impressed so far), Dire Straits (DS, Love over Gold and Brothers in Arms - quite appealing although the lead singer sounds a lot like Bob Dylan after he stopped smoking), and several others. I can hear some classical influences in some of the albums.
My frame of reference has been classical music. So when I heard Miles Davis Sketches of Spain, I knew it was the Rodrigo Concierto de Aranjuez. I heard the story that when Jimi Hendrix moved in with his girl friend in London to her flat on Brook Street, he learned that George Friedrich Handel lived next door to him (albeit 200+ years earlier). Don't know whether Handel's music influenced any of Hendrix's compositions.
What a great friend to have! Who was the MD for the Cleveland Orchestra in those days? Was that the time of Maazel or Dohnanyi? Both of them were very active in London with the Philharmonia Orchestra during the last 15 years or so, until Maazel's death.
Larry, I saw Maazel conduct several times before Von Dohnanyi took over, then saw Christoph conduct many programs. Maazel had a more flamboyant, dynamic style & let the orchestra blow the roof off the place. Rite of Spring was incredible.
Von Dohnanyi was a bit more reserved & carefully measured. Oddly, I remember him leading Beethoven’s 4th as a keen memory!
Only saw Szell twice, unfortunately. Many guest conductors too. Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting Messaien’s Turangalila was a favorite!
Other favorites:
Leon Fleischer playing Ravel’s “Concerto for the Left Hand”
Rudolph Serkin playing Beethoven’s “Emperor Concerto”
Itzhak Perlman & Samuel Sanders duo
Carlos Barbosa-Lima solo program
The combined movie & soundtrack of Prokofiev’s “Alexander Nevsky”. Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom Music Center
Larry, I saw Maazel conduct several times before Von Dohnanyi took over, then saw Christoph conduct many programs. Maazel had a more flamboyant, dynamic style & let the orchestra blow the roof off the place. Rite of Spring was incredible.
Von Dohnanyi was a bit more reserved & carefully measured. Oddly, I remember him leading Beethoven’s 4th as a keen memory!
Only saw Szell twice, unfortunately. Many guest conductors too. Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting Messaien’s Turangalila was a favorite!
Other favorites:
Leon Fleischer playing Ravel’s “Concerto for the Left Hand”
Rudolph Serkin playing Beethoven’s “Emperor Concerto”
Itzhak Perlman & Samuel Sanders duo
Carlos Barbosa-Lima solo program
The combined movie & soundtrack of Prokofiev’s “Alexander Nevsky”. Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom Music Center
Thanks, that is an impressive list. I wish I had seen Maazel and Dohnanyi earlier in their careers. We only saw them toward the end. In the case of Maazel the last time was only a few months before his death in 2014, when he was a substitute conductor for the Vienna Philharmonic's tour of the US. I never saw Szell which I really regret. Serkin would come to Boston just about every year when I was in college in the mid '60's and would try to see him each year. Never saw Fleisher until he made a comeback after his hand problem. Sounds like you heard him when he could only play with his left hand. We heard Perlman and Sanders on Superbowl Sunday 1982 in San Francisco. We got great tickets at the last minute when many tickets were returned because it was the 49ers first time in the game. Never have seen Carlos Barbosa-Lima.
All the Szell Cleveland recordings I have heard of Beethoven 3 and 5 are among the best. I also like the Fleischer emperor and 3rd with szell and Cleveland which I haven't heard on LP yet
My first experience with classical music was at school , and concerts.
Later in life I explored Beethoven , Vivaldi , Bach, and Handel, Mozart, and recently discovered I very much like Mahler. Mostly I love Baroque music .
I grew up with my mother playing the piano, mostly pop music al la Sinatra, Como, Crosby, Dean Martin, with an occasional Chopin thrown in. I played a violin with little expertise in freshman orchestra. I still had no idea Music had labels like “pop” or “jazz” or “classical.
The turning point came in high school. My best friend had a nice singing voice. She kept bugging me to read a book she enjoyed called “Enrico Caruso, His Life and Death” written by Caruso’s widow.. I thought that was about the last thing I would ever want to read, but she kept bugging me and eventually, to please my good friend, I read the book and by the end, I thought Caruso was quite the most wonderful fellow!
About that time I was gifted with my first piece of audio gear, a Webcor Record Player. Our house had only a radio, so this was “A Big Deal”. I immediately rushed to our local record store and as fate would have it, displayed prominently in the window was a 3 LP album with Caruso dressed as Pagliacci the clown on the cover. Talk about fate! Of course I bought the album and being an impoverished teenager it was many weeks before I could afford to buy that next LP. So I listened to those three Caruso LPs over and over and over. I’ve been an opera lover ever since. And I love classical music too.
I lived through the Elvis Presley era, the Beetles era and the rock and roll era, and so on, never tempted to buy anything but classical or opera music. I do occasionally wonder what sort of music I would have gravitated to had I not read the loving biography of Caruso by his widow, or had that particular LP album not been in the window of that store. I can only say that fate decided my choice and I’m very satisfied with the result.
Probably via a not so evident route: I got very hooked on Tchaikovsky's 4th symphony and listened to it over and over again and wondered why, in contrast to pop music, i would not get ennoyed by it. On the contrary, with every listen i learnt to hear, place and appreciate every detail in it...
It still is one of my favourite symphonies or classical works altogether, first love never dies I guess
Probably via a not so evident route: I got very hooked on Tchaikovsky's 4th symphony and listened to it over and over again and wondered why, in contrast to pop music, i would not get ennoyed by it. On the contrary, with every listen i learnt to hear, place and appreciate every detail in it...
It still is one of my favourite symphonies or classical works altogether, first love never dies I guess
I almost never judge a classical piece on first listen. I have found the more I listen, the more I tend to like something. I have come to the conclusion that listening over and over again is the only way to really learn to appreciate a classical music piece.
Me too. Many times in my life I’ve listened to classical wanting to love it more. There are pieces I do love, I am drawn to big powerful orchestral works, don’t care at all for most chamber music, and get a harpsichord the hell away from me. For the same reasons a lot of jazz escapes me—I like melody and rhythm. My mother played violin but died when I was very young, I have memories of her fingers dancing. My cousin became director of music and a conductor, and my great, great uncle was Antonin Dvorak.
I’ve come to accept I’m a rock’n’roll and blues lover, or as Van Morrrison’s lyrics describe “jazz, blues, and funk.” Just keep the jazz melodic (for me). With jazz sometimes I just want to scream “play something you know!”
I grew up in a classical musical environment (mother/violinist- aunt/pianist) and I do enjoy classical but I do not get "goosebumps" from listening to classical. I do get "goosebumps" rather often when listening to 60's/70's rock which being a child of the 60's is where my brain really got "wired" from a musical/emotional sense.
