What are you listening to? Classical tips & reviews

[gregory]

Thanks guys. Yeah, I am familiar with Arnold and Moeran. I like them too. My tastes have usually run toward that kind of modernism; but what surprises me is how I've lately been enjoying the more 'stuffy' music of Stanford and Parry-- practical Brahmsian icons of the establishment. I'd like to think my tastes are just expanding :-)

You have very distinctive taste, Reach! I wish I'd be as well informed as you in English classics. Arnold I like very much, I have his Piano Concerto on CD, good, imaginative music.

[Dodie]

Well, I find something of interest in most periods, but the stuff I love most is late Renaissance through to late baroque. So, from Lassus to Handel via Gabrieli, Monteverdi, Schutz, Purcell, Bach, Vivaldi and Rameau. I actually listen to a lot more of this range of stuff day-in, day-out, than I listen to prog.

[Fracktured]

With the Christmas season upon us I usually listen to several works of classic. Most notably would be Bach's Christmas Oratorio. Never cared much for Handel's Messiah, but I'd spin it once. There's Vaughan Williams Fantasia on Christmas Carols and Hodie. Britten's Christ's Nativity. There's many more.

Rick

[Finn_McCool]

Rebecca Clarke is a really interesting and obscure composer whom I like a lot. Frederick Delius is another British composer who spent time in America whose output I really enjoy. I love his operas, chamber works, vocal works, choral works, tone pomes, etc. A vastly underrated composer.

[Dodie]

With the Christmas season upon us I usually listen to several works of classic. Most notably would be Bach's Christmas Oratorio. Never cared much for Handel's Messiah, but I'd spin it once. There's Vaughan Williams Fantasia on Christmas Carols and Hodie. Britten's Christ's Nativity.

Ironically, Handel's Messiah isn't a Christmas work; it was designed for (and always performed by Handel) during Lent, and leading up to Easter; sometimes he gave charity performances a few weeks later in mid-May. I adore Handel for lots of reasons, but I tend to avoid Messiah at Christmas like the plague. It only became associated with the Christmas season posthumously, during the 19th century, particularly in the USA at first, but then quickly all over the western world.

I actually enjoy Bach's Christmas cantatas more than the Christmas Oratorio, which was designed to be performed on six different days during the Christmas period. In one sitting, it doesn't quite hang together and hold my interest. But BWV 63 (a Christmas Day cantata written during the earlier Weimar years) is a knock-out. Other great baroque Christmas music: Corelli's Op. 6 No. 8, Praetorius motets, bits and pieces by Alessandro Scarlatti, Schutz, etc.

And I absolutely agree about Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on Christmas Carols. In fact, I've been known to listen to it when it isn't even Christmas. The first 7 minutes or so are right up there with my absolute favourite music.

Today I was listening to song cycles by Leighton and Britten sung by the tenor James Gilchrist. Wonderful stuff.