How did you fall in love with Classical Music?

I think this was instilled upon us all as we were watching cartoons when we were knee high to a duck many moons ago.

Tom
 
---When I was about 15 years old (I wanted to commit suicide).
And classical music* gave me an exit; a door to a wonderful world.

* I had a 12-album set of all the grand classical music composers.
 
I was a classically trained pianist and then studied clarinet/piano in college.
 
For my senior recital, I played Rachmaninoff's "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini". I like the Russian composers most.
 
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My mother was a music major and pianist. She liked playing Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. She was also an english professor. Instead of enrolling me in pre-school, she took it upon herself to home school me before turning me over to the Jesuits. :D Lessons were at our sala where her piano was. During breaks I'd play with her spaniel and have snacks while she played. She taught me how to identify musical instruments by playing Peter and the Wolf. I guess like most kids, attention went towards the music of our respective generations. I came back to classical music in force when I was already working. It now takes about a third of my listening. Best part about it is that I know so little. It's an inexhaustible topic for self learning!
 
My fifth grade class went to Severance Hall in Cleveland, Ohio for a field trip. George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra played Beethoven's 9th Symphony and a couple other short pieces. At age 10, I was blown away! Many other great lasting-impression (Sorry for stealing that...) moments during other trips to see them, as well as Maazel, Von Dochnanyi and guest conductors. A life-long interest.

Lee
 
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I have always loved it. My parents told me that they tuned into a classical station on the radio and I was instantly hooked. I paid no attention to any other form of music apart from classical. So little surprise that I do not remember actually developing a liking for it.
 
Two things: instrument training in my youth- recorder, piano, french horn, etc. And, the school field trips to the Pittsburgh Symphony. William Steinberg was conducting. Everything was dark and Germanic!
 
I think that it was listening to Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copland. There was a definite connect with ordinary folk, which I didn't see in the works of others. Of course, I also liked, at the same time, the works of Debussy and Ravel, which conjured up (possibly from the pictures on album covers) the works of the Impressionists, who I doubt were reaching out to the ordinary folks.
 
I was a classically trained pianist and then studied clarinet/piano in college.

Bruce, I had no idea. That is absolutely fascinating!

Off topic question for you - do you know why the clarinet is featured so little outside of Klezmer music?
 
I used to listen to classical radio stations at college while preparing myself for exams, for some reason it helped me staying focused and absorbing content, particullary exact sciences. Then attending to live concerts during my stay at Cambridge University (Saturday night concerts at the Round Church for those familiar). :)
 
Bruce, I had no idea. That is absolutely fascinating!

Off topic question for you - do you know why the clarinet is featured so little outside of Klezmer music?

It's not sexy! There are not too many featured clarinetist. I don't feel it has much character and can only do so many tones. Whereas a sax, it's sexy, you can make all kinds of tones with it.... some even NOT sounding like a sax!
One of the first location recording gigs I did was Woody Herman captured on a Revox B77
 
---Women (some) luv the harp. A Hammond B3 organ, gotcha! :b

An acoustic bass, a cello, and of course a grand piano.

The most sexiest instrument (sound wise) of them all?
Yeah, a sexophone, and a big one too (contrabass), I'd go for that.
 

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