Best chamber music according to redditors
We found 526 Reddit comments discussing the best chamber music. We ranked the 426 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 526 Reddit comments discussing the best chamber music. We ranked the 426 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
![Brahms Complete Edition [46 CD - Limited Edition]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61hz-ieWDfL.jpg)
![Oliver Messiaen Complete Edition [32 CD Limited Edition]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51jfuA7tOxL.jpg)
Vladimir Horowitz's Chopin can be controversial, but this collection is widely accepted as being among his best (from what I've seen, at least) and is a personal favorite.
For the nocturnes, I'd go with Rubinstein, and he also had very good recordings of the waltzes. For Chopin, it's hard to go wrong with Rubinstein - his 11 disc Chopin Collection is a pretty essential collection and is one of the best overviews of Chopin's music.
I personally like Maurizio Pollini for the preludes, but there are some who think that his interpretation lacks emotion (I'd obviously disagree completely). His interpretation of the etudes is unmatched, I think.
EDIT: I'd also like to add a recommendation for Vladimir Ashkenazy, who interprets Chopin very intelligently, as well as Ivo Pogorelich (though the latter could be inconsistent throughout his career and his playing was very controversial and unconventional).
A few to consider, some more affordable than others:
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.
Well, yes
And now to finish what I've started...
Robert Schumann - Schumann tended to compose in phases. As a result, the vast majority of his piano compositions were published n the 1830s - and every single opus from 1 to 20 is a piano piece. Most of his best-known piano music comes from this early phase of piano music - Carnaval, Papillons, Kinderszenen, Kreisleriana those guys. And of course, all of those are worth listening to. My own personal recommendations for early Schumann piano music would be the Toccata (hard to believe this piece was written in 1832 - when it was first published, it was considered by many to be the most difficult piano piece ever written), Kinderszenen, and the op. 12 Fantasiestucke.
But what I really wanted to address was a couple selections of his later piano music - in particular, the Waldszenen ("Forest Scenes"), a beautifully composed and highly evocative suite. The other piece I wanted to recommend was the Gesange der Fruhe, op. 133 ("Songs of Dawn"), one of his last compositions, written by an older Schumann who was well into his emotional and mental decline. It's always been his most intriguing piano piece to me - odd chord changes, unpredictable and frustrated cadences everywhere, and just overall an incredibly thick work to wrap your ears around. It has a unique sound. Clara wrote of these songs in her diary - "dawn-songs, very original as always but hard to understand, their tone is so very strange."
Interesting that I went on so long about Schumann. To be perfectly honest, he's never been one of my favorites. But there certainly is a lot to say about his music.
Frederic Chopin - Wait, I already talked about that guy, didn't I? Silly me. Go listen to some Chopin! There's never a good reason not to!
Felix Mendelssohn - You may know some of his Lieder ohne worte - op. 19 no. 1, op. 30 no. 6 ("Venetian Boat Song"), op. 62 no. 6 ("Spring Song"). I like [op. 30 no. 3[(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RJ9vHBZIFs), "Consolation". I use it as an encore piece sometimes.
What you may not have been aware of, however, are his Preludes and Fugues. Mendelssohn was an avid admirer of Bach (often credited with bringing his music back into the public eye and performance canon). As, I'd assume, something of an homage to Bach, Mendelssohn published his Six Preludes and Fugues, op. 35 in 1837. They're all great, of course, but if you wanted my suggestion for a single one to use as an introductory work, I'd say definitely the second one, D major (9:49 in the video).
Richard Wagner - in a post about piano music?
Well, yes. He was not a particularly prolific piano composer (his entire piano works typically fit on two CDs), and his piano music is almost never played or heard of. The earliest of his piano music, for example the first piano sonata (1831) is...not quite what you'd expect from Wagner. Relatively "classical" sounding. He wrote a few other piano pieces around the same time. Then, 20-someodd years later he made a return to the piano and wrote this A-flat major sonata. It sounds much more Wagner-esque, and also peculiarly like Beethoven. He also wrote an Elegie a few years after, in which he definitely pushes the envelope of tonality, which he did often.
Charles-Valentin Alkan - for a long time, Alkan's name was uttered rarely, and almost exclusively in circles of pianists. In recent years, he's become better known in general, but he's still best known for being unknown. Marc-Andre Hamelin has, in my opinion, played a huge hand in validating his music. He's the only "A-list" pianist I can think of who has recorded a sizable amount of Alkan's music. And the lack of recognition isn't necessarily because his music is bad - it's that a lot of it is diabolically difficult, and he doesn't have quite as much a penchant for memorable melodies as say, Chopin or Liszt.
I've always loved his etude, Le Vent. Apologies for the amateur recording (no idea what happened to the upload of Hamelin's recording). This pianist does an absolutely stellar job with the piece of course, it's just lacking in terms of video and sound quality. Alkan wrote some enormous pieces - the Concerto for Solo Piano is a really cool piece. He also wrote a Symphony for Solo Piano. For another shorter piece, take a listen to his "Diabolic Scherzo". Diabolical indeed!
Cesar Franck - more an organ composer than a piano composer, which you can certainly hear in his Prelude, Chorale and Fugue. He had another similarly structured piano piece - the Prelude, Fugue and Variation in B minor.
That's really all I had to say about him, but both pieces are stellar. If you're curious about chamber music, I'd also say to explore some of Franck's.
Franz Liszt - You could do a whole other post and thread on Liszt alone. In recorded form, his piano output takes up nearly 100 CDs. A large part of this is because of the huge amount of transcriptions he wrote - including a sizable chunk of Schubert and Schumann's songs, Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique and all nine Beethoven symphonies. Most people associate "Liszt piano music" with big, bombastic displays of technique and flair, and while that is true to an extent, there's a whole lot more to Liszt's piano music than that.
If you haven't already, listen to his B minor piano soanta - a novel approach to the sonata form, and one of the most dazzling pieces in the repertoire. It's quite famous, but hey, I never heard it until my first year of college, everyone needs a first introduction at some point. Beyond that, the best of his piano music, in my opinion, comes from his *Annees de pelerinage ("Years of Pilgrimage"), a set of three different publications he made, each depicting a year of travel. The first book is marked "Swiss", the second book "Italian", and the third book is not marked with a location. My favorites from each book are Cloches de Geneve (never have I heard bells better represented on the piano), Sonnet 104 - a transcription of one of Liszt's own songs, and Jeux d'eau de la Villa d'Este, sometimes referred to colloquially as the "first French Impressionist piece". Lazar Berman's studio recording of the entire Annees de pelerinage (from which all three of the recordings I linked to are taken), is one of my all-time favorite recordings.
Alexander Borodin - Another composer who is better known for other types of music (orchestral, chamber, and Prince Igor, one of his operas). Fascinating piano music though - his Petite Suite is really cool. (Not the complete suite, but Sofrinitsky is fantastic with Russian music so I went with his recording). He also wrote a Scherzo in A-flat major, a fun little piece that totally deserves more recognition.
Modest Mussorgsky - As long as we're in Russia...From what I understand, Mussorgsky has more piano music than just Pictures at an Exhibition, but shamefully I've never heard any of it. But if you haven't yet heard the piano version of Pictures (Ravel's orchestration is vastly more popular), definitely make a point of doing so! Here is Mikhail Pletnev playing the piece. A somewhat idiosyncratic interpretation, but one of the best I've ever heard.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky* - another name that you don't often hear associated with piano music. Admittedly, his piano sonatas (the Grand Sonata, for instance), are not the best piano music out there, but I've found a lot to love in his miniatures. His most popular piano work is The Seasons, a suite in which each movement represents one of the twelve months. I am a fan of May: Starlit Nights, and October: Autumn Song.
Among his other piano music, his Meditation, op. 72 no. 5 is easily my favorite. I also enjoy his Berceuse, op. 72 no. 2. I'm deliberately avoiding concerti and piano/orchestra pieces, but were I to include them, obviously Tchaikovsky's concerti are among the most important - especially the first one in B-flat minor.
I'm approaching the character limit again* (those damn youtube links take up a lot of characters), but if there's any interest, from OP or otherwise, I'll happily continue with a post wrapping up the romantic era and tackling the 20th century.
Good news! Chris Thile (mandolin not banjo) just put out an entire album of Bach.
What!? no!
I was in the Portland State University Chamber Choir and we got to work with Mr Tormis to record his works in english: https://www.amazon.com/Veljo-Tormis-American-Shores/dp/B000XLQGM2 .
He was truly a beloved composer in the choral community. He will be missed.
https://youtu.be/HPerWq-hnhE?list=PLMMsZ_leBbZLslMuK1aRg4V-SztuOgi4q
You might try Chopin's Nocturnes.
It certainly is! The Art of the Bawdy Song came with one. My wife ordered it in to a local record store, the guy at the counter said he'd never seen one of a "classical" disc. No outright vulgarity, no explicit descriptions, it's all artful word play and innuendo.
Edgard Varèse sketched a piece that basically did/does exactly what the OP is describing. It was 'realized' (completed) and recorded finally on this set, called "Tuning Up".
"Tuning Up" for orchestra (sketched 1946; completed by Chou Wen-Chung, 1998)
A couple more to add to what people have already mentioned:
Rubinstein - Chopin's Nocturnes
Horowitz Plays Liszt (especially the Sonata in B and the Mephisto Waltz)
Hilary Hahn Plays Bach (especially the Chaconne in Partita No. 2)
I'm not a Mozart expert by any means, but I do enjoy this Hilary Hahn/Natalie Zhu album of violin sonatas: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0009JAENU/
If you like Folia, he has two CDs of it. (Sorry for amazon links, I don't know how else to refer to them. Find them elsewhere if you are so inclined)
For standard repertoire works, I like his Brandenburgs and Orchestral Suites as well as his Royal Fireworks/Water Music.
He likes to push the envelope which can sometimes be fun. His Eroica is interesting, but I wouldn't want that to be my only recording. Same with his Mozart Serenades CD. It sounds like an exciting concert, but the unexpected parts don't work as well on repeat listens.
He's mostly known for early music and early baroque though. I enjoy these recordings but this is not my era of expertise, so I don't know how it compares to other performances.
The Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos have a classic album called Chant.
If you don't mind a cleaner, more professional sound, the group Chanticleer released a fantastic album of chants called Mysteria.
Some people enjoy the chant albums created by the group Ensemble Organum. They are high quality but not for everyone.
Another excellent album done by professionals (as opposed to monks) is 12th Century Monophonic Chant by Paul Hillier / Theatre of Voices.
For an authentic chant sound, recorded in a monastery, check out Salve Regina by the Benedictine Monks of the Abbey of Saint-Maurice and Saint Maur, Clervaux. On Amazon it's listed under the generic artist name "Benedictine Monks."
If you're looking for propers, a good one is Alberto Turco's Adorate Deum / Gregorian Chant from the Proper of the Mass.
Another good chant album that contains a couple of Masses, including the sublime Missa de Angelis, is a 3 CD set sold on Amazon.
One more. Chant - Music for Paradise (also known as Music for the Soul) is very good. The antiphon for In Paradisum, the first track, brings me to tears.
You can find a lot of these on YouTube.
JS Bach wrote 6 solo suites for cello for cello. Suite is just a fancy word for a group of peices, often in the style of popular dances of the day, that are considered a gropu of music. Consider a suite something like an anthology of short stories- enjoyable individually, but when viewed as a whole, epic themes and ideas emerge.
The prelude to the g major suite is probably the most famous bit from the suites, but don't over look the rest of the G major suite, or the other suites. They are as strong as each other.
I adore the bach cello suites, I feel that all the ideas of western music are distilled into these 6 suites.
When listening to a recording of the Bach cello suites which performance you choose is going to have massive impact on what you hear and what you take away from the suites.
For a more traditional interpretation of the suites, you can not go past Pablo Casals while for a more modern interpretation have a listen to rostropovich
These two sound like they are playing different music completely, even though they are reading the same black dots on the page.
Happy listening.
Arvo part is great and all, Imma let you finish, but Tormis is my favorite. I sang on the premiere english-translation recording of some of his works (http://www.amazon.com/Veljo-Tormis-On-American-Shores/dp/B000XLQGM2). Don't blame us, he wanted it done in English! Still haven't made it to Laulupidu but maybe the next one :-)
Wow, looks like somebody found their parents' Chant CD!
This is excellent advice. Custodianship of memories is as important as custodianship of the eyes, if not moreso. You must replace the sinful memories and experiences with the sacred and bury the sinful past as much as possible. Buy a couple CD's of Gregorian Chant:
https://www.amazon.com/Chant-Benedictine-Monks-Santo-Domingo/dp/B000002SKX
https://www.amazon.com/Sæcula-Sæculorum-Selections-Perennial-Chant/dp/B0089FI7I0/
https://www.amazon.com/Adventus-Gregorian-Chants-Sundays-Advent/dp/B001C98EN8/
https://www.amazon.com/BENEDICTA-Marian-Chant-Norcia-Monks/dp/B00V66GNMQ/
Listen to it whenever you would listen to other things. Watch movies like The Passion of the Christ, Ben Hur, etc.
Read the classics, ideally stuff before the 1960's, if not before the 20th century. Especially this: https://books.google.com/books?id=3PkYNcU0k94C&pg=PA3
Confession, early and often. Weekly or bi-weekly until you can break it. Mass as often as you can. Ideally, daily Mass but that might not be practical. If you can do that for a month, you should break the hold.
Obviously pray. You are not strong enough alone. I certainly wasn't. You can and should be begging the intercession of Our Blessed Mother. Pray the Rosary daily. Get formally invested in the brown scapular and wear it to remind you to pray your daily Rosary.
Pray before bed and when you wake up. An examination of conscience followed by a Confiteor and at least a decade of the Rosary. If you make it a habit, you will replace your lustful habits...
You ever listen to this album by Chris Thile doing Bach?. It's really wonderful. Great recording, his 1924 Gibson F5 mandolin sounds like it's right in the room with you.
Don't know what to say about the expensive CD player, but the 2004 remaster CD is quite good and inexpensive: https://www.amazon.com/Ambient-Music-Airports-Brian-Eno/dp/B0002PZVH0
Scott Ross' Complete Scarlatti's Keyboard Sonatas.
do they have to be prog?
Conan the Barbarian soundtrack by Basil Poledouris - possibly the best soundtrack I've ever heard.
The Bones of All Men by Phillip Pickett and Richard Thompson - like a medieval rock band
and just for fun, The Art of the Bawdy Song by the Baltimore Consort
Not sure if this is within your price range, but Liszt: The Complete Piano Music might be an idea? Leslie Howard is a phenomenal pianist and this set is absolutely amazing!
Brian Eno is often credited as the father of the ambient genre. His 'Music For Airports' certainly was one of the first albums to define 'ambient'. I prefer Eno's 'Neroloi', 'Thursday Afternoon' and 'Lux' long form works for relaxation/meditation however, whatever aural environment you like is fine.
That a marketing campaign introduces a piece to wider listenership is just another form of communication. Drug companies have been rigging research for centuries.
Unlike aural stimulation which you can switch off will no ill effects, pharmaceutical companies and their doctor endorsed nostrums are responsible for hundreds of thousand deaths every year.
Chant, by The Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos
http://www.amazon.com/Chant-Benedictine-Monks-Santo-Domingo/dp/B000002SKX/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370448388&sr=8-1&keywords=chant
It's been used at least once for an album cover too.
Gardiner has a new anthology that's ridiculously cheap (less than $3/disc!) and unbelievably good, but it sounds like it's redundant with what you've already heard (except in a completely different style), so I'm mostly posting it here for other redditors' benefit.
I recognized this from the cover of a Steve Reich album...
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00004SUVK/howardstokarmana
The music is also probably not his to distribute
| | |
|-:|:-|
|name|Steve Reich|
|about artist|Stephen Michael Reich (born October 3, 1936) is an American composer. He is a pioneer of minimalism, although his music has increasingly deviated from a purely minimalist style. Reich's innovations include using tape loops to create phasing patterns (examples are his early compositions, "It's Gonna Rain" and "Come Out"), and the use of processes to create and explore musical concepts (for instance, "Pendulum music" and ""Four Organs"). ([more on last.fm](http://www.last.fm/music/Steve Reich))|
|album|Phases, released Sep 2006|
|track|Drumming: Part I|
|images|album image, artist image|
|links|wikipedia, allmusic, discogs, imdb, official homepage, myspace, track on amazon, album on amazon|
|tags|minimalism, neoclassical, classical, experimental|
|similar|Terry Riley, John Adams, John Cage, Nico Muhly, Morton Feldman|
|metrics|lastfm listeners: 232,336, lastfm plays: 4,287,923, youtube plays: 560, radd.it score: 8.5|
Please downvote this comment if this data is incorrect!
I am a bot by radd.it data services. I have been requested to post these reports.
If by barbershop you mean a capella and by Druids you mean monks, try Chant by the Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo
Srs cat with a srs post here. The majority of stuff by E.S. Posthumus.
Here's the first album Unearthed.
I guarantee you've heard almost all of those songs in an epic trailer, movie, or tv show before. It's also a fantastic album for testing your home theater system. =)
edit: html fu
Oh god OP, that Kleiber beethoven 5 is crazy intense. Good choice.
Mahler's Symphony No. 5 - Bernstein
Mahler's Symphony No. 8 "Symphony of a thousand" - Sinopoli The greatest recording of this ever. And yes I have heard Solti and Horenstien.
Schumann's Fantasie in C major If you know Richter's Schumann, no explanation is required. If not, you need to hear this.
Scriabin's 10 Piano Sonatas - Ashkenazy I've heard people call Ashkenazy bland. He definitely isn't here.
I really don't want to limit my choices, but I think maybe I should keep it at 5 or this list will become too big..so for something completely different..Phases - Box set of Steve Reich's music on Nonesuch label
I also like the Double Concerto more, although afaik, it's not a popular opinion.
His German Requiem is a great piece of choral music as well, and so is his chamber music. You might as well buy this - can be found cheaper elsewhere.
The symphonies are great as well. 1 is the best, but so are all the others (especially the opening on the fourth - exhilarating.)
So many they almost make up a whole genre. Though most of them tend to be popular songs as opposed to the more refined and aristocratic music that we know as classical.
The Art of the Bawdy Song is one CD that came up in a search. I have another but can't seem to find it at the moment.
Two books I would suggest are
The Bach cello suites. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhcjeZ3o5us
Sheet music. [2] http://www.amazon.com/Bach-Cello-Suites-1007-1012-Starker/dp/B004610HD4/ There are many out there (some cheaper than this) But this is the copy that I have. I like the fingerings and the bowings.
CD [3] http://www.amazon.com/Bach-Cello-Suites-Johann-Sebastian/dp/B0000CG8EF/ I like Pablo Casals’ recording (of the several I own) because he takes the pieces faster. Yo-Yo Ma and Jacqueline Mary du Pré have good recordings as well.
This has already been mentioned many times on this thread because it’s truly a classic. If he doesn’t have a collection of all 6 then this is a good choice. The first suite is the most commonly heard. It might be a bit hard in the beginning but it’s a collection of pieces he can really grow with. I got a book of the six suites when I was nine and I still play them. I remember the prelude of the 2nd suite got me into the Phoenix Youth Symphony.
Every Body’s Favorite Cello Solos. Sheet music. [4] http://www.thejuilliardstore.com/browse.cfm/cello-solos-(everybodys-favorite-series-volume-40)/4,31636.html Sorry not an Amazon link, those guys only had a used version for $75 (wtf). Either way the link includes a list of the songs that come in the collection. You also get a piano accompaniment, but no worries the piano part has no melody, only supporting harmony. He should find some of the songs easier and other songs will be too overwhelming. Looking through my copy, it ranges from around year 1 to year 3 music. Another book that should last over the years.
Man this is hard. Cello music for the first few years is the hardest to find. There are a lot of different series intended to teach like Suzuki with the “Suzuki method” and the Essential Elements series. I played a few of each of those books and they weren’t bad, but I never really liked them. I had and loved a printed version of the e-book for “Music Book 1 - Cello Part A (melody)” [5] http://www.celloonline.com/cellomusicbooks.htm but can’t find a printed version now. It might not be a bad idea to take him to a music store and have him look around to find something his level (maybe on the day of the anniversary ) I wish I could be of more help, tell me how it goes.
Hilary Hahn plays Mozart Violin Sonatas:
http://www.amazon.com/Violin-Sonatas-Hilary-Hahn/dp/B0009JAENU
If you want the good stuff, you're going to have to pay for it.