What is your favourite classical piece?

[bpatrick]

The Grieg Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in a, Op. 16 is currently my favorite piece of music, but it changes, naturally, over the years.



Above is the first part of the wonderful performance (and recording) by Krystian Zimerman. Obviously, if you follow the logical "recommendations" on youtube, you'll be able to navigate to the 2nd part of the first movement, then the 2nd and 3rd movements of the piece.

It's funny considering I have a bachelors in musicology and a masters in trumpet performance, yet I don't think you'd find any of the major trumpet repertoire in my "top 10" ... maybe not even my "top 20" ... unless you consider Mahler's 5th symphony to be "major trumpet repertoire" ... anyway, I hope I'm exposing somebody to something they've never heard before.

As far as what I like to listen to when I do math: pretty much anything, my itunes has about 3.5 months of solid "classical" music on it, so who knows. Nothing really distracts me too much when I'm doing math ... except TV / video / speech in languages I can understand.

It's surprising how many people enjoy Bach while doing math, or at least list something of Bach as their favorite.

 

[Jonathan Scott]

The Grieg Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in a, Op. 16 is currently my favorite piece of music, but it changes, naturally, over the years.



Above is the first part of the wonderful performance (and recording) by Krystian Zimerman. Obviously, if you follow the logical "recommendations" on youtube, you'll be able to navigate to the 2nd part of the first movement, then the 2nd and 3rd movements of the piece.

It's one of my favourites too; Again, I've played it with orchestra in rehearsal and performed the first movement in a concert of single concerto movements, back in 2002.

I have a cassette tape of the Zimerman/Karajan recording which I used to play a lot, and most of it is excellent. However, I do not like it when pianists treat the entry in the slow movement as being in completely free rhythm, where the third beat of each measure takes as long as they like. I like instead to maintain the sense of still being in three with a flexible pulse, not a totally suspended one.

 

[epenguin]

I am alas unable to sound any musical instrument.
But I like sounding off about music!

I think you cannot have a favourite piece - it is almost meaningless. But also I think there is no piece, no music that bears too much repetition. You hear something again you may hear more, if you hear it too often you are hearing less or not hearing at all.

So is it open to give several pieces?

Sounding off: I think many performers, most these days, miss a bit of the point of pieces thinking they are extracting the last ounce of expression from them by playing them too s l o w l y. It has been proved by programmes and recordings that the length of performances has notably increased over decades. I felt this for the Gould-Goldberg on the first page of this thread. Though towards the end either he quickens or I got used to it. However I would bring a prosecution against Claudio Abbado for the murder, a long drawn-out one, of Johannes Brahms and Felix Mendelssohn.

For many pieces we may be a bit attached the the moment we first heard it, whether this is associated with anything else or not.

OK OK I'll get to some sort of answer. Many many years ago, almost by chance as a young green student passing by the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam I saw there was an organ recital and went in (there was if I remember as often in organ recitals not much more than a handful of listeners) and was taken aback by the piece I give. I committed to memory then the name of the piece (though it was many years till I worked out what it meant) and of the organist, who I presume was then only moderately famous (it was about the time, oh dear, though not place of this recording). I recently acquired ten discs of his of Bach organ music, but if there can be a 'favourite', something outstanding somehow in it, I can only say, purity, this is it.