Yes. Classical and Heavy Metal (seriously). I can't stand boring music. I usually listen to Chopin, Bach, and Brahms, and I don't like modern classical.

I highly recommend you buy this CD, it's pretty amazing.

Snobs and purists will turn their noses down at the suggestion, but Naxos has tons of collections and boxed sets to get you into the various sub/genres.

Naxos actually uses a lot of well regarded, but out-of-print or older recordings that have been superceded by a new performer. A new performance by Yo-Yo Ma will sell better than something from 20 years ago.

An article on Stereophile on Naxos. Worth the read as an intro to the music.

FYI, Naxos is to classical what Vaynerchuk is to wine. The product is still great, but the Old Guard is offended by the new marketing.



There are also the mega-collection boxed sets of different composers:

Beethoven

Mozart

Bach

Idiots Guide to Classical Music features 99 <1 minute clips of classical music. The liner notes identify what the clips are and where you may have heard them.

A few to consider, some more affordable than others:

• Complete Webern
  
• Complete Varese
  
• The DG Complete Beethoven Edition (if you can find it anywhere)
  
• The Philips Complete Mozart Edition (if you can find it anywhere)
  
• Steve Reich
  
• Philip Glass
  
• Handel - Orchestral Works
  
• Bach - Orchestral Works
  
• Ravel - Complete Edition
  
• Debussy - Complete Edition
  
• Shostakovich Edition (one of the few Brilliant Classics box sets I can wholeheartedly recommend, unlike many of the others which can be a bit patchy)
  
• Strauss - Complete operas
  
• Wagner - Complete operas (Solti)
  
• Boulez - Bartok
  
• Boulez conducts Schoenberg (far from complete, but this about the best you can do)
  
• Boulez - Stravinsky
  
• Various Bach choral stuff - Gardiner
  
• Stravinsky
  
• Alban Berg Collection
  
• Berlioz - Complete orchestral works (Davis)
  
• Brahms - Complete Edition (absolutely superb collection)
  
• Britten conducts Britten + operas 1 and operas 2 + Complete Britten
  
• Sibelius - Symphonies and tone poems
  
• Elgar - Collector's Edition
  
• Vaughan Williams - Collector's Edition
  
• Barber - orchestral works (Alsop)
  
• Scriabin - Piano works
  
• C.P.E. Bach Edition
  
• Corelli - Complete Works
  
• Telemann - Tafelmusik
  
• Schubert - Masterworks (Brilliant Classics - not always the best recordings, but for the amount of stuff you get, worth the money
  
• Poulenc - complete works
  
• Messiaen - complete edition
  
• Mahler - complete edition (the symphony recordings here are a representative cross-section, you might want to supplement it with another complete cycle, e.g. Solti, Bernstein, Abbado, etc.)
  
• Liszt - Complete piano music
  
• Janacek - Operas
  
• Haydn - Symphonies (Hogwood), not complete, but as close as anyone has come to it
  
• Mozart - Symphonies (Pinnock) - an alternative to Mackerras
  
• Bartok - Piano works
  
• Debussy - Piano works
  
  If you need anything more specific than that, let me know and I'll try to recommend something.
  
  If you have a look in the "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought" section for any of these, you'll find many more.

I would recommend Michael Tilson Thomas' recording with the San Francisco Symphony. Clear, crisp, modern sound, but totally maintains the savagery. It's an exhilarating performance.

Go watch Fantasia. It's got a pretty good selection of songs.

Also, The Idiot's Guide to Classical Music has 99 short clips of classical music and a booklet listing who and what they are and where you may have heard them before. There's quite a few Bugs Bunny cartoons in there. Kill the Wabbit, Kill the Wabbit.

I guess I don't get it. The Sacrificial Dance is muddy and disorganized (it almost sounds like the percussion are in their own world...) - I'd call it a disaster. Maybe because I've played the piece and have listened to it probably 1000 times, but meh...

They went balls to the wall with stereo separation, which is common with early stereo recordings.

I was in love with Dutoit's performance with Montreal, but the miking was really bad.

I discovered SFO's recording with Michael Tilson Thomas and I haven't turned back. Simply amazing. Great recording and great performance.

Mozart will last me a long time. (Now imagine how huge that collection would be had he lived to be, say, 70.)

The Top 100 Box Set is a pretty good collection of a wide variety of compositions over the course of several hundred years.

A few other pieces of music I'd recommend:

John Adams has some pretty cool pieces. It's more accessible than a lot of the atonal and minimalist stuff you see in modern music.

I'm also a fan of Alan Hovhaness, who is also considered modern; one of the most notable features of his music is the blending Eastern and Western styles to produce beautiful pieces.

I'd also check out eclassical.com, which I use for a majority of my music file purchases, since the prices are pretty good and you can buy tracks individually, as well as having a very wide variety of music to choose from.

https://www.amazon.com/Ravel-Daphnis-Valses-nobles-sentimentales/dp/B002OLTASG/

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Composers in Person is a massive collection of composers performing and conducting their works. Many of the recordings sound as old as they are, but it's still pretty amazing, if only for historical interest.

Putting the Nutcracker near-constantly on is a December tradition of mine. I really like this recording, as the sound quality is fantastic, opening could be taken at a faster tempo, but solid otherwise.

http://www.amazon.com/Tchaikovsky-PREVIN-LONDON-SYM-ORCH/dp/B002Q85A22/ref=pd_sim_15_4?ie=UTF8&dpID=51VSeYaAUML&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR160%2C160_&refRID=0NJCNEVVRVR33DM3NYBK

here's the reissue.

Beethoven - Piano Concertos
Vladimir Ashkenazy, Chicago Symphony, Georg Solti

http://www.amazon.com/Beethoven-Piano-Concertos-Ludwig-von/dp/B0000041K9/ref=sr_1_1

Stravinsky - Le Sacre du Printemps
Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Antal Dorati

http://www.amazon.com/Stravinsky-Petrushka-Le-Sacre-Printemps/dp/B00000E3CJ/ref=sr_1_1

Wagner - Tristan und Isolde
Jon Vickers, Herbert von Karajan

http://www.amazon.com/Wagner-Tristan-Und-Isolde-Richard/dp/B000002SDZ/ref=sr_1_1

Prokofiev - Romeo and Juliet
London Symphony Orchestra, Andre Previn

http://www.amazon.com/Prokofiev-Romeo-Juliet-Sergei/dp/B002Q85A2C/ref=sr_1_2

Mahler Symphonies
Bernstein, New York Philharmonic
or Vienna Philharmonic on DVD

http://www.amazon.com/Mahler-The-Complete-Symphonies-Gustav/dp/B005SJIP1E/ref=sr_1_1
http://www.amazon.com/Mahler-The-Symphonies-Lied-Erde/dp/B000BDIY3G/ref=sr_1_4

Respighi- Pini di Roma (Pines of Rome)

Ravel- Bolero

Shostakovich- Symphony No. 7

Stravinsky- The Firebird

Márquez- Danzón No 2 (one of my favorites)

Adams: Harmonielehre

Well, really... let's try to figure out what this should cost. If we accept that $100 is the correct price for tickets to his show (and it probably isn't, but we'll accept it for the time being) and then factor in the following:

• It was not a full show that she stayed for (guessing)
  
• The venue was not great--possibly the acoustics of the room were okay, but it was not excellent circumstantially
  
• Although the performance was excellent, it was made unasked for (thus the duty to pay for it is reduced)
  
• The musician in question is in no way in need of money--the $20 would be quite likely of much more value to the giver than to Bell
  
  All of these things, in my view, would reasonably take off the price. Does that mean $20? That's a bit harder to say. I feel like $20 is maybe around the low end. It's a difficult call to make. Expecting $100 (the normal ticket price) is too much.
  
  Put another way: $20 is more than a CD of Bell would cost.

Sorry, I don't have that particular CD. Looks like it is pretty cheap on Amazon, though: http://www.amazon.com/Mozart-Your-Mind-Wolfgang-Amadeus/dp/B0000041CB/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1212181026&sr=8-1

I was lucky enough to receive the complete works of Mozart as a gift ( http://www.amazon.com/Mozart-Complete-Works-170-Box/dp/B000BLI3K2/ref=pd_sim_m_img_1 ). It took me months to listen to it all, and I was going at a very fast pace. Great recommendation for anyone that is interested in classical music, and almost all of it is great "thinking" music. Mozart's music is very structured (practically everything he wrote is considered "perfect" in an objective musical sense), and yet it is beautiful and elegant at the same time, so I find it to be very conducive to programming.

This list should get you started

Classical Music for People Who Hate Classical

yes. This book. while you're at it get this CD.

http://www.amazon.com/Orchestral-Excerpts-Trumpet-Johann-Sebastian/dp/B0000038JG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1346559158&sr=8-1&keywords=phil+smith+trumpet+excerpts

It's on Phil Smith's excerpts cd! He talks through and plays many of the excerpts you'll ever need to know for an audition. It's my orchestral bible. It's only one interpretation of this stuff, but you can't go wrong with following the principal trumpet of the NY Phil. That being said, I actually do American in Paris differently from him. It's one of those excerpts that you can really explore lots of interpretations with and get creative with how you play it.

Here's a link to the album on Amazon if anybody is interested: http://www.amazon.com/Orchestral-Excerpts-Trumpet-Philip-Smith/dp/B0000038JG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417017461&sr=8-1&keywords=phil+smith

That DG set looks awesome. Might have to be a Christmas present this year.

Some of my favorites are the EMI Elgar and Vaughan Williams sets, the Stravinsky collected works, and the big RCA Toscanini set.

Oh, never mind. I just thought you were into electronic music, maybe a DJ or producer, or something like that. Not to sound stuck-up or anything, but part of the reason I thought that was that 150 albums didn't seem that many. 1 complete set of just Beethoven's, Mozart's, and Bach's music comes to 410 discs already.

I'm not aware of those. I'm a big fan of Herbert von Karajan's Decca recordings, though.

fuck that, I'm listening to Classical Thunder!



oh yea Gustav make me want it bad, real bad, make me beg for it bring war to my fertile red surface.

and Grieg I want you to mountain king me in the hall

Oh Ravel, I think you got the key to unlock my Great Gate!

Strauss my sweet Strauss my Hero I want you to ravage my Battlefield.

Time Life had a popular collection known as Classical Thunder that you may want to check out. Such collections of excerpts are great introductions, IMO. The list of tracks on this jacket will probably closely match responses on this thread.

https://www.amazon.com/Classical-Thunder-Richard-1-Strauss/dp/B00081U6XC

http://www.amazon.com/Orchestral-Excerpts-Trumpet-Philip-Smith/dp/B0000038JG

Do what he does.