Ten Classical Albums No One Should Be Without

Recommend a recording of arnold schoenberg's pierrot lunaire.

and don't be silly, its 10 for starters.

For once it's better to post album covers as answers (to avoid having to type the composer, conductor, orchestra etc etc)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000003CSU.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0000025TP.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

otm about goldberg variations! get "a sense of wonder" which has both versions and a third disc with a long interview with him!

>Recommend a recording of arnold schoenberg's pierrot lunaire.

if only... http://www.dancerinthedark.de/read_pierrot.html

I wish I could recommend one. I have a Boulez, it's in German. It's evidently imperative with sprechstimme to hear the piece in a language you understand, and it's hard to find recordings of the english version.

sorry I should have said 'I recommend...' bcz it is one of my fave pieces.

yes there is a version by boulez but its not the one I have (can't recall right now). its also in german.

I didn't know there were recordings with the english version.

thanks for the link milton.

gorecki's third symphony
my favourite piece of music ever,and what got me into classical music...
you can hear echoes of it in a lot of contemporary music,so it should be reasonably easy to get into...
you can pick it up on naxos for about a fiver...

Erik Satie compilation with the three Gymnopedies pieces - great late night listening!

arvo part - tabula rasa
if there's more than one version it's the one on ecm you want.

Now I'll ask someone to suggest some Stravinsky recordings for me to get my hands on. I'll listen to them after I turn sixty. I swear it.

Elgar's Cello Concerto in E minor as performed by Jacqueline du Pré. Can't describe it in words. I'll never be a classical music critic.

Schubert - Winterreise, Deitreich Fischer-Dieskau, Jorg Demus, DG Originals

(maypang - Igor Stravinsky: S and D but please ignore my awful joke on that thread)

simon 803 otm with the arvo part recommendation,although i reckon you should get the naxos version cause you get cantus in memory of benjamin britten as well,which is my favourite piece by him...

saint-saens concertos
chopin nocturnes
durufle's organ works

and (obv.) beethoven's symphonies 3, 5, 6 - 9, concertos 4 & 5 and quartets op. 74, 95, 132

Holst's The Planets, Toronto Symphony Orchestra with Andrew Davis conducting.

mussorgsky: pictures at an exhibition

there's a nice london/decca one with ashkenazy playing the solo piano version first, then conducting the ravel-arranged orchestral version

Bach Suites for Solo Cello. The Pablo Cassals recording is the classic, but I prefer the Rostropovich. The most sublime music on earth.

I have a bunch more suggestions, but no time now. Will check in again soon.

Beethoven's late string quartets as performed by the Quartetto Italiano - perhaps the most transcendent music ever produced

Mahler's 9th Symphony conducted by Otto Klemperer, with the New Philharmonia Orchestra - ascending heaven's ladder...

Pärt's "Tabula Rasa" for approachable contemporary classical that refuses to wallow in sentimentality, yet never fails to send a chill down your chair's spine

Shostakovich's symphonies and quartets for introverted drama in relatively accessible form

and Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" and lots lots more, of course

i like schoenburg's two chamber concertos, piano concerto, variations for orchestra and five orchestral pieces -- these cover both the first transformation in style (post-straight-forward romantic) and some mature period statements (new-romantic maximalism of his big idea)

they're all orchestral, and i initially found them more accessible than some of the opera, music song and ensemble pieces.

well, i can't stand trad classical singing.
sprechstimme is something i wish was used a lot more in all sorts of music (sprechstimme aprox.= speech-melody, 'spoken with an actors nuance yet in various pitches'), but only in english (and i guess for non-english speakers, preferable in their most instantly meaningful tongue)

though i would be keen to hear pierrot lunaire in english too, 'ode to napoleon' has too much historical baggage though a good example of sprechstimme used for effects like sarcasm and mock-pontification.
I have never been quite sure how sarcastic S. was actually being (if at all) with Kol Nidre though. It's a genuinely religous thing i think, but i've always used it as a musical-comedy depiction of a witch-hunt.

Berg's new-romantic impressionism and width, together with the small amount of his work actually out there, have made his music just as enigmatic as Shoenburg's for me. Both of them wrote orchestral stuff large scale, 'phat'.

I like some Boulez, a little Varese, the later serialist-Stravinsky, and a whole heap of American academic composers who followed up somewhat on these earlier characters (i guess Boulez was a follower too in some ways -- "Figures, Doubles, Prismes" is pleasantly self-explanatory).

Stockhausen is the most whacked of the big names, and my favourite of his is "Trans" because it's got lot's of musical theatre and heavy orchestra going on, (and because it might have influenced Neil Young in his most interesting venture) but mainly for its sturdy musical qualities.

Elliot Carter is one of those american scholars who may be more accessible too. He sometimes seems like the blotchy Jackson Pollock of orchestral music.

Xenakis is eclectic, all over the place, or at least not a follower in the tradition of any of the above. So are Conlon Nancarrow and Harry Partch. Partch uses his own form of sprechstimme and unique instrumentation as part of more musical theatre and a 20th century re-invention of opera for 20th centure people. Nancarrow and Partch each have a special quirkiness. At least Xenakis often used regular orchestral subsets (even if they were sometimes on electronic supplements).

who are the late 20th century 'classical' (as in orchestral or acoustic ensemble) giants ?
(so many institutions of "musical learning" produce digital electronic music these days, from acousmatic/ electro-acoustic through to techno)

Late 20th century giants would probably include Part, Tavener, Adams, Harbison, and Previn (although I admit Previn is a stretch seeing as the only thing I know of that he did was "A Streetcar Named Desire").

The following list is totally subjective, and I am totally without claims to any serious expertise. That said, these are the 10 classical albums I own that I love most, have listened to most often, and would most readily recommend to pretty much anyone without reservation--especially relative neophytes such as myself.

Bach / Goldberg Variations / Perahia
Bach / Cello Suites / Rostopovich
Bartok / String Quartets / Takacs Qt
Brahms / Piano Trio No. 1 & String Sextet No. 1 / Casals et al
Beethoven / Symphony No. 5 & 7 / Kleiber and BPO
Chopin / Nocturnes / Rubenstein ('60s recordings)
Haydn / London Symphonies (two budget two-CD sets) / Davis and RCO
Mozart / Piano Concertos Nos. 18 and 20 / Richard Goode and OCO
Schubert / Sonata No. 21 op. 960 / Uchida
Shostakovich / Symphony No. 10 / von Karajan and BPO

I like lots more 20th century stuff--Shosti and the other big Russians, Ives, the Vienna clique, Stravinsky--but given only 10 to start, these are all killer, no filler.

Mozart 4 great String Quintets ( don't have the k numbers to hand but they're the last 4 out of the 6 he wrote) are essential. This is the the greatest example of music produced in sonata form. The Grumiaux Ensemble's recordings on Phillps are the ones.

I second Jody's rec. of Rostropovich Bach Cello Suites, he brings the most exuberance. Mahler's 9th i prefer Barbirolli or the classic Bruno Walter '39 performance (recorded in Vienna weeks before the Nazis moved in and banned Mahler's music). It's on Naxos or Dutton, Barbirolli on EMI.
Mozart's Piano Concertos - save up for Murray Perahia's set on Sony , it can't be beat for the spontonaeity he exhibits in a studio. Beethoven's 9th is obv. another one no-one should be without, get Furtwangler's performance on EMI or Harnoncourt or Gardiner for more 'authentic' interpretations. For the Eroica get Klemperer's 1955 recording on EMI.

When it comes to classical, I have a very distinct bias towards piano music, so I'd add Debussy's Preludes Books I and II. The only recording I know well is the Giesking one, which may not be in print and is an extremely dim recording at that, but its dimness is almost evocative, in a way -- the audio nimbii in the background sounds like a summer shower outside the studio. The music itself is French exoticist miniatures. (Daft Punk comes to mind for reasons I can't justify.)

The Vox Box of misc. short Mozart piano pieces played by Walter Klien, if only for the Gigue in G, Minuet in D and Adagio in B Minor, which, taken together, both look back to Bach and ahead to Schubert, Wagner, Mahler and Berg.