Favorite Composer

[E.A Rumfield]

I'd have to say Gustav Mahler.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVsLCzSK7Rs

Tchaikovsky is great along with, Stravinsky, Franz Schubert, Mozart, Ludwig Van of course.

In a similar vein of classical music, does anyone listen to jazz? John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy, Theloniuos Monk or Django Reinhardt.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Tie between Holst and Dvorak.

[E.A Rumfield]

Dvorak. I heard him once I think. Never heard of Holst.

[YesNo]

At the moment my favorite composer is Richard Rodgers: Carousel, Sound of Music, Oklahoma. I'm sure I'll find others as I think about it.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Dvorak. I heard him once I think. Never heard of Holst.

You have to check out Dvorak's 7th and 9th symphonies and Holst's Planets Suite. They're the definition of epic.

[Lokasenna]

Wagner is absolutely at the top for me, with Mozart and Beethoven just a little bit behind.


Dvorak. I heard him once I think. Never heard of Holst.

I second Mutatis' comments. Dvorak is one of the greatest of the Romantic composers. As well as the 7th and 9th symphonies, you might want to listen to his 8th symphony, his cello concerto, and his slavonic dances. Holst is good, though I wouldn't rate him anywhere near Dvorak personally - The Planets is his only truly great piece of work, though I have recently been enjoying some of his wind suites.

If you haven't come across it yet, there is a very popular and long-running thread called 'Classical Listening' that's usually a really good place to find music recommendations.

Oh, and I've not yet made any attempts at listening to jazz, though at some point I intend to educate myself in that area!

[Charles Darnay]

Holst's Planets is wonderful, as is Dvorak.

Like books, I could never settle on a favourite. I have been listening to a lot of Mahler recently. Mozart comes towards the top of the list, as well as JS Bach. Chopin, when I'm in the mood for Chopin, can be the best thing in the world.

As for jazz.....if you have not heard Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" you are missing out on life. Exhibit A: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoPL7BExSQU

[E.A Rumfield]

Chopin is kind of like frosting.

[Lykren]

I'll put it in a word for Ravel, though I really love Beethoven's piano sonatas.

EDIT: Oh yeah, Bach. You should listen to Glenn Gould's recordings of the Goldberg Variations.

[Emil Miller]

You have to check out Dvorak's 7th and 9th symphonies and Holst's Planets Suite. They're the definition of epic.

Dvorak's 7th is an epic work but the definitive recorded performance is Pierre Monteux with the London Symphony Orchestra. It quite simply blows all of the opposition clean out of the water in one the most brilliant and dynamic performances ever committed to record. The nerve tingling brass entry at 37.11 is one of the highlights of all orchestral music.

http://youtu.be/IXf0DcX8lO8

[stlukesguild]

1. J.S. Bach
2. W.A. Mozart
3. L. v. Beethoven
4. Richard Wagner
5. Franz Schubert
6. Joseph Haydn
7. Richard Strauss
8. Gustav Mahler
9. Johannes Brahms
10. G.F. Handel
11. Piotr I. Tchaikovsky
12. Anton Dvorak
13. Claude Debussy
14. Antonio Vivaldi
15. Claudio Monteverdi
16. Robert Schumann
17. Giuseppe Verdi
18. Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber
19. Carlo Gesualdo
20. Dimitri Shostakovitch
21. Sergei Rachmaninoff
22. Guillaume Dufay
23. Jean-Philippe Rameau
24. Gabriel Fauré
25. Frederick Chopin
26. Franz Liszt
27. Christoph Willibald Gluck
28. Maurice Ravel
29. Hector Berlioz
30. Georg Telemann
31. Igor Stravinsky
32. Josquin des Prez
33. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
34. Giacomo Puccini
35. Gaetano Donizetti
36. Vincenzo Bellini
37. Béla Bartók
38. Sergei Prokofiev
39. Henry Purcell
40. Domenico Scarlatti
41. Alessandro Scarlatti
42. Hildegard of Bingen
43. Luigi Boccherini
44. Jacques Offenbach
45. Johann Strauss II
46. Jules Massenet
47. Ralph Vaughan-Williams
48. Felix Mendelssohn
49. Modeste Mussorgsky
50. Jean Sibelius

The first 15 are pretty much set in stone for me... after that..? I could easily move a composer up or down depending upon my mood... and I could easily imagine replacing some 4 or 5 with other names on another day: Buxtehude, Lully, Delius, Scriabin, Balakirev, Weinberg, Zelenka, Takemitsu, etc...

[stlukesguild]

Dvorak's 7th is an epic work but the definitive recorded performance is Pierre Monteux with the London Symphony Orchestra. It quite simply blows all of the opposition clean out of the water in one the most brilliant and dynamic performances ever committed to record. The nerve tingling brass entry at 37.11 is one of the highlights of all orchestral music.

I'll have to look into picking up a copy... although I tend to lean toward Pierre Monteaux for French music. With Dvorak the Eastern Europeans seem to "get" him the best: István Kertész, Rafael Kubelik, and most recently, Otmar Suitner, a student of Clemens Krauss.

[Emil Miller]

Dvorak's 7th is an epic work but the definitive recorded performance is Pierre Monteux with the London Symphony Orchestra. It quite simply blows all of the opposition clean out of the water in one the most brilliant and dynamic performances ever committed to record. The nerve tingling brass entry at 37.11 is one of the highlights of all orchestral music.

I'll have to look into picking up a copy... although I tend to lean toward Pierre Monteaux for French music. With Dvorak the Eastern Europeans seem to "get" him the best: István Kertész, Rafael Kubelik, and most recently, Otmar Suitner, a student of Clemens Krauss.

Of course Kubelik made important recordings of Dvorak's symphonies but it doesn't follow that a Czech is necessarily the best for his homeland's music.
There are plenty of examples of outstanding recordings by non national conductors and orchestras. Monteux had a wide repertoire that included the likes of Schoenberg and Stravinsky, he conducted the first performance of The Rite of Spring in 1910. His recording of the Sibelius 2nd with the LSO is justly famous and only beaten by Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony.
Perhaps the best performance of Cesar Frank's Symphony in D minor is that conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham with the French National Radio Orchestra. Beecham excelled in French music and one only has to listen to Bizet's sparkling youthful symphony in C to realise that French music doesn't require a French conductor for optimum performance