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Classical ♫ Music only | Some you listen now or recently, some you love...

SMc

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TLEDDY

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Heinz Holliger - Thomas Zehetmair

I am having entirely too much fun following this thread!!

The horizon of musical experience has suddenly expanded... thanks be to the hive for the revelation!

“Old dog... new tricks!”
 

Boris Badinov

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I only have 1 classical album - Karajans Adagios. I can't say I listen to classical though I'm familiar with some from hearing it in sound tracks etc. Then I saw "Gallipoli" and heard Albinoni's Adagio In G Minor and this was probably the saddest piece of music I ever heard. A few yrs. later I found out what the piece was called and got the album. Probably my favorite piece of classical music although there are others I like on the album. I should try to listen to more but the classical my mother listened to at the time I thought was just busy music and I was listening to Hendrix at that age
 

North_Sky

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Snarfie

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Janos Starker Cello Bach suites Mercury recording. Incredibly detaild to hear him working with his breath, feet etc. Comes close to a real intimate experience
 

JustAnandaDourEyedDude

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J.S.Bach Partita no.2 BWV1004 - Shoji Sayaka, vn (The Chaconne/Ciaccona begins about 17 mins in)
Julia Fischer and Goto Midori have excellent accounts of the chaconne on YT as well.

Ana Vidovic (gtr) plays Asturias by Isaac Albéniz

Carlo Domeniconi Koyunbaba suite by Ekaterina Pushkarenko (classical guitar). There's also a really evocative recording of the same piece by Lily Afshar on YT.

Mozart Violin Concerto No.5 in A major KV.219 - Kim Bomsori, vn This was part of the 2015 Queen Elisabeth competition. The teenage Mozart. Five violin concerti, fairly conventional though engaging period pieces, but in the last movement of the last one, beauty shakes off the prettiness and the magic begins to peek through.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Clarinet Concerto in A major, K.622; Arngunnur Árnadóttir, clr The soloist has such a beautiful tone.

Brahms Violin Concerto in D major, Op.77 - Kim Bomsori, vn The end of the finale brought tears to my eyes. She ends it in almost the same poignant way that Erica Morini ended it on a treasured LP that I listened to for many years as a pre-teen and teenager.

Vincenzo Maltempo (pno) plays Alkan: 12 Études dans tous les tons mineurs Op 39 (Complete) Once upon a Saturday in Yokohama, there was a piano concert ... If you are a fan of Alkan and Sorabji. Hamelin played a weekend concert at Oberlin College once (in the 90s, in his prime) (and perhaps more than once), a half hour's drive from where I lived in Cleveland at the time. I was unaware, and only saw the concert flyer a couple of days after he had come and gone. The audio quality of Hamelin on YT is generally poor, being older videos. This recording of Maltempo has decent SQ, but the performance is superhuman and really musical, and the studio CDs are in excellent sound. There was the old guard, Lewenthal, Jack Gibbons, Ronald Smith, Hamelin, and others, and now there's the new guard, Maltempo, Mark Viner, Stephanie Elbaz and others.

Stéphanie ELBAZ plays ALKAN Concerto for solo piano in live A poetic and powerful account of etudes 8-10 of Alkan Op. 39.

XAVER VARNUS (Org) PLAYS BACH'S TOCCATA & FUGUE BWV 565 IN THE BERLINER DOM As a teen, I listened for years to another treasured LP, one of Albert Schweitzer playing Bach organ pieces in a church in Germany, including BWV 565. There's also a very good version on a harp by Amy Turk on YT, her own transcription.

I have no idea how you folks get the YT video to play within the post. Does it need YT/Google membership? (Which I do not have)
 
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guildenstern

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I'm enjoying Grieg's Violin Sonatas. I was introduced to them some years back by a DG recording with Augustin Dumay (violin) and Maria Joao Pires (piano). Lovely readings. But two more recent recordings bring new passion to these sonatas: fiery performances from Franziska Pietsch on audite, and (my current favorite) idiomatic, colorful readings from Eldbjørg Hemsing on BIS. I'm streaming them on Qobuz--both superb recordings--and pretty sure you can find them on Tidal, Spotify, etc.

[Links below lead to YouTube previews.]

Franziska Pietsch

Pietsch.jpg


Eldbjørg Hemsing

Hemsing.jpg
 

Ceburaska

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I'm enjoying Grieg's Violin Sonatas. I was introduced to them some years back by a DG recording with Augustin Dumay (violin) and Maria Joao Pires (piano). Lovely readings. But two more recent recordings bring new passion to these sonatas: fiery performances from Franziska Pietsch on audite, and (my current favorite) idiomatic, colorful readings from Eldbjørg Hemsing on BIS. I'm streaming them on Qobuz--both superb recordings--and pretty sure you can find them on Tidal, Spotify, etc.

[Links below lead to YouTube previews.]

Franziska Pietsch

View attachment 64822

Eldbjørg Hemsing

View attachment 64824
Another version released this year. I’ve not yet heard it, but it has good reviews.
F8EB77AA-8ED6-4A29-8BD0-41B87E25E09E.jpeg
 

Feanor

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Yes, it {Tidal} is a subscription service. For the equiv. cost of one CD a month, you get to stream everything they have. I can't recommend highly enough Bob. Even if you still want to buy music, you can use it to quickly sample content at CD quality as I do with you all's recommendations.
I tried Tidal recently and, as a mainly Classical fan, found it rather wanting, especially after all the effusive praise.

For example, 'Composer' is conflated with 'Artist', that is, if you want to search for a composer's works or recordings you have to search 'Artist'. I did that for 'Shostakovich', (him being a favorite composer of mine though not everybody's cup of tea). I got back a scattering of "songs" and albums. Asking for all Shostakovich's I got a rather short list including multi-composer albums and a remarkable number of albums with "Shostakovich performs Shostakovich" -- not that Shostakovich was a remarkable performer or conductor: he wasn't.

... I deem this treatment of Classical music to be worthless.
 
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Alexanderc

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I tried Tidal recently and, as a mainly Classical fan, found it rather wanting, especially after all the effusive praise.

For example, 'Composer' is conflated with 'Artist', that is, if you want to search for a composer's works or recordings you have to search 'Artist'. I did that for 'Shostakovich', (him being a favorite composer of mine though not everybody's tea). I got back a scattering of "songs" and albums. Asking for all Shostakovich's I got a rather short list including multi-composer albums and a remarkable number of albums with "Shostakovich performs Shostakovich" -- not that Shostakovich was a remarkable performer or conductor: he wasn't.

... I deem this treatment of Classical music to be worthless.
My experience with both Amazon HD and Qobuz have been similar. There are plenty of options if you know exactly what you’re looking for, but trying to discover new things is frustrating.
Also, Shostakovich is awesome.
 

Robin L

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I've got a simple set-up [plug headphones into headphone jack on laptop] to stream Amazon's Music. Tons of Bruckner [proper weight designation], have been listening to cycles and stand-alones. Recent favorites include:

 
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