Mendelssohn symphony #4
-Imp
Paganini and Bach.
blasted On HALL 2 on my stereo.
give em the Chills baby… chills
Anything with a good violin while im playing First person shooters.
Starwars Battlefronts online.
Paganini.
Darktrooper.
Magical herbs.
Oh baby.
I suggest more choral music for all
I don’t like the religious link of choral music, that’s why I prefer the terminology to be recognised as song. I listen to songs more often than instrumental. My favourite songs are among Beethoven, Schubert, Shostakovich and Gershwin. I also like many folk songs, Russian and Chinese especially. I have a strict taste on song recordings, unlike instrumental, I usually prefer several recordings for one piece.
To anwser The Underground Man: my favourite symphonies are Mozart’s No 41, Beethoven’s No 7 and Tchaikovsky’s No 4. I also like many piano pieces.
I’m a big fan of Romantic Era and Baroque. Some of my favorites:
Gayan Suite- Katchaturian
Piano Concerto #2- Rachnmaninov
Nordic Symphony- Howard Hanson
Death & Transfiguration- Richard Strauss
Symphony #9 (From the New World) - Dvorak
Danza Espanola No. 5- Granados
Piano Concerto #2- Chopin
Scheherazade, Op. 35 - Rimsky-Korsakov
Flight of the Bumble Bee - Rimsky-Korsakov
Night on Bald Mountain - Mussorgsky
Pictures at an Exhibition - Mussorgsky
Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune - Debussy
There are tons more, these are just some off the top of my head. Didn’t even get any Bach in there…
Piano Concerto 3 Rachnmaninov
emanual Defalla(not sure if his stuff is considered classic, but i likem)
well tempered bach.
brandenberge concerto bach
antonio vivaldi’s guitar piece.
and many more.
-excuse me for bad spelling. 
never was any good at it.
Thanks smooth for resurrecting this post.
Thanks polemarchus for the net radio call… really nice stuff. (I listen to too much new/weird music and definitely need a break)
Re my fav’s: Lots of pieces from Vivaldi… Rachmaninov… Debussy… Tchaikovsky… but I’m not sophisticated enough to know more than the popular classics – hey, there’s only so much one can fit into increasingly smaller gaps called “free time”.
PS Don’t like Opera… no… no… no… (just an overly indulgent pantomime wiith as much depth as child’s swimming pool) and I hate chamber music! If each of the players arrived at differnet times and started playing from the beginning, I wouldn’t notice. Its the devils music… play it backwards and llisten to the subliminals. “boooooring…boooooring…”
Opera’s entire point of attraction is not cnstrained in intellectual depth, this is the same for many other forms of music, many other forms of art, including poetry.
To judge music according to their intellectual depth (the nature of that is a highly ambigious matter anyway), is commiting artistic suicide.
This is what I mean about pantomime… now there’s a piano in the forum? I’m sure if I wait long enough, there’s bound to be “tree” stroll by…
km2_33, let’s hope your taste of music doesn’t fully reflect your taste of life, otherwise, I say you are close of becoming inhumane… I could be wrong though, but check this out -
Three years ago, a classmate shouted to us that he disliked opera because he thought it was “childish”, he said “real mature people hate opera”. Those were his original words, and this is his true story two weeks after making those remarks: he physically attacked the professor of composition in our conservatory with a kinfe, because his graduation essay was marked as “fail”. He’s now in prison serving a four year sentence, after being found guity of attempted manslaughter. He’s coming out this september, but none of us will go to see him. His idea of aesthetic beauty reflects his lack of humanity.
Hi Piano,
Just a thought, but I’m thinking that you and your friends ought to go see him. Some friendship might make a world of difference in his life about now.
Btw, I hear they’re in production of a film version of Mozart’s, The Magic Flute. I’m planning to be first in line. 
Regards,
Michael
Only joking piano man – each to their own. Its just that I spent 7 years of my early life working in an opera house and got to the stage where I was on the verge of helping out in the (compulsory) final death scene just to hasten the end.
If aesthetic beauty reflects humanity, doesn’t Hitler’s adoration of Wagner worry you?
Wasn’t it Wagner’s operas that feed Hitler’s mad mind with the idea of recreating Germany’s glorious past with its Teutonic myths, age of chivalry, romance, power and beauty?
Wasn’t it Wagner’s opera that Hitler used as a propaganda tool to whip the German people into a jingoistic craving for a new golden age with golden people?
Doesn’t it bother you that Stalin and Mussolini were opera lovers too who also used opera to propagate myths about cultural superiority and grand visions (while they were slaughtering millions.)
I don’t see how a persons idea of aesthetic beauty (in this case hating opera) reflects on a persons lack of humanity. I don’t eat meat because I can’t bear the thought of having an animal slaughtered to satisfy my taste buds… I think that’s a better indication of humaneness than liking a particular type of western art form?
Anyway, you’re the who is getting pleasure from it and I don’t – so you win
That’s simply retarded. If Saddam likes Pepsi does that mean it’s bad? You need to use a little logic occasionally. When someone postumously latches onto something it doesn’t really touch the original artifact.
Phaedrus who are you refering to? If you are refering to me, then you should read the posts again.
I’m saying hating opera does NOT equal lack of humaness any more than loving opera (as Hilter did) equals having lots of humanness.
Polemarchus, your advise is very kind. I have been involved in a friendship with him for almost 6 years befire the incident. He’s changed himself over the time and already far beyond recognisation. He saw professional consulors well over several times and each time, come out unchanged. He’s been described as “highly manipulative in response to adjustment”, frankly, I don’t even care to know what it really means. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I won’t go to see him. He always manages to live a “nice” life, money, girls, cars, “coolness”, given his family background, he lacks none. btw, Mozart’s operas are my favourite - full of lucid humanity, touching and moving indeed.
km2_33, nobody ever said something like “people who dislike opera are cold bloodied”. It’s just your comment on opera inevitably reminds me of the accident that happend so recently. “His taste of aesthetic beauty relects his lack of humanity”, by that I refered to “him” and him alone, again, please don’t read into it too much. A low-life such as Adolf Hitler’s musical preference is simply irrelavent here. Anyway, Richard Wagner’s operas are never much to my liking.
This is already off topic now. It started when I commented: “judging music according to its intellectual depth is commiting artistic suicide”. km2_33, anyone, do you have something to say about that?
Sorry, I totally misunderstood you. No offense meant! BTW, I’m not a huge opera fan, but I like some of it. I prefer instrumental music & choral works. Wagner is great, though.
Polemarchus wrote: “… I’m planning to be first in line.”
I noticed earlier in this thread, you stated that you liked Mozart’s Symphony No 43, please let me know what do you like about it. You might think this question here is irrelavent, but I’d like to know who I’m talking to first. If it’s someone who’s a musical novice, then I can’t expect that person to comment on my earlier statement about the preference of music.
Phaedrus wrote: “Wagner is great…”
I noticed earlier in this thread, you made no mention of Wagner. Personally, I dislike Wagner operas, because of the pretencious nature of them. Take Siegfried Idyll for instance, the strings of disscordant cords in the begining, intended to create a sense of desperation. Nobody I ever know, likes it the first time. Some of them grow to like it only after being informed about Wagner’s individual way to manipulate sound, which I think is a way that will eventually leads to artistic death. I also noticed you quoted Nietzsche as your signature, I suppose you wouldn’t quote any of his aesthetical statements?
I have several hundred classical CDs, so of course the list I gave is just a smattering of the first composers to come to mind. Overall I’m not a big opera fan, but as you say, Wagner grows on you. Plus, I like the themes of his works. Musically I like Wagner very well; his music is much more interesting to me than most. As for the words, without a libretto I can’t understand opera anyway. 
I wonder what brought you all to like classical music. Ive seen people who absoutley love it and i want to see the same beauty in it that you all do. Im sure I probally havent come to the maturity or understanding to appreciate it fully. I just dont get the same feeling as i do when i listen to Don Mcleans Vincent or Empty Chairs. What got you’ll hooked?
I guess the MusAp class I took as a freshman in '87. I’d dabbled a bit but that really exposed me to the depth of classical music, or rather how deep it was. In the 18 years since then I’ve been hooked. 