Best classical dances music according to redditors
We found 28 Reddit comments discussing the best classical dances music. We ranked the 19 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 28 Reddit comments discussing the best classical dances music. We ranked the 19 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
![Complete Webern [6 CD Box Set]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41GDs2T07pL.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.
These two albums are cornerstones of my collection:
Others to supplement, that I don't feel as strongly about.
Get these recordings.
These may not be the best known works of classical music, but they're each incredible works, and if the least they do is make you want to hear more classical music, then they've done their job.
I tend not to like piano roll recordings - they're very incomplete pictures of the nuances of a performance. Of course in some cases they're the best thing we've got, but Rachmaninoff recorded most of the things he put on rolls on actual audio as well, and the grainy early recording technology is worth it to be able to hear the organic sound IMO.
Zenph Studios put together a CD of "Rachmaninoff Plays Rachmaninoff" a while back that's actually pretty well-done. C-sharp minor prelude and his Lilacs song transcription are the only samples I can find on Youtube. You can read about the "re-performance" process here. They've done re-performances of some Gershwin too (this is news to me, must be a relatively new release), Glenn Gould's 1955 Goldberg Variations, and some Art Tatum songs.
If you're interested in Rachmaninoff's actual audio recordings, there is a 10-disc box set (digital, CD) available of his complete recordings. Some absolutely fascinating stuff on there. But even 10 CDs doesn't even come close to touching the breadth of his repertoire.
EDIT: spelling
Somehow, somewhere, sometime soon, you need to listen to Christian Zeal and Activity from Adam's The Chairman Dances. It's weird. But trust me. Listen to the whole piece. Even if you don't like it at first. You can thank me later.
Alipus San Andres
Espadin daily drinker here.
San Andres Miahuatlan, Oaxaca; 47.5% ABV; ~$50; electric shredder; copper alembic; double distilled; joven; Don Valente Angel; Smetana: Complete Czech Dances
Nose: grapefruit peel, lime, grass clippings, something floral, mildew, leather, some kind of cooked grain, a bit minerally, maybe a little bit of caramel...kind of maple-y. Definitely on the fruity/floral side.
Taste: fennel, melon, something a little earthy/cardboardy, agave (cheap, I know), slightly yeasty, a bit of green tomato--sorta that bright acidity.
Mouth-feel/Finish: Feels like 47.5% would feel. Ends with something caramelized, agave and a little citrus I think.
Other: Man, describing mezcal is really, really hard if you're mostly coming from the bourbon world. I hope to flesh out my vocabulary over the next year or so. I've been sipping my way through the 5 basic Alipus espadin expressions and I think this is my favorite. Would highly recommend, especially if you can find it at a sub-$50 pricetag.
Look at that, it's even on the Internet!
The fine Italian pianist Sergio Fiorentino was slimed in the Hatto Fraud. Fiorentino's Franck is very good:
https://www.amazon.com/Piano-Works-FRANCK-CESAR/dp/B00095L8YS/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1494267529&sr=1-1&keywords=fiorentino+franck
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.
I would start with a "greatest hits" CD from each of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven and Chopin.
http://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Hits-F-Chopin/dp/B0001AP19Y/
http://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Hits-Beethoven-L-V/dp/B000002A1D/
http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Mozart/dp/B00005A8JZ/
http://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Hits-J-S-Bach/dp/B000002A1B/
From there you'll get an idea whether you like the classical period or the romantic period, etc. Also, whether you like solo piano, strings, or orchestra. At that point you can google similar composers from the same period, similar pieces using the same instruments, etc.
Believe it or not, Strauss wrote more than just the Blue Danube; I think this is a pretty good collection of his music.
There's also SETI, if you're down for some low-bpm ambient. .beacon14 off of that album is pretty good; you'll love it if you like the music in Eve. In fact, if you're at all interested in astronomy, you should have a listen to SETI; a lot of the samples they use are from radio telescopes: pulsars, CMBR, stellar radiation, and such.
Can't comment on the opera, but Ades is also a very good pianist. His Grieg folk dances on this album are unmatched (rest of the album is top notch too; I wish he recorded more as a performer):
https://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Ad%C3%A8s-Piano-Leos-Janacek/dp/B00004W47B
It may be a track from Phillip Glass' Violin Concerto.
Pierre Boulez’s “Complete Webern”, and the LaSalle Quartet's set of Second Viennese School quartets.
Also, Mitsuko Uchida's complete Mozart Sonatas.
I was actually thinking about making this piece its own thread later, but this seems like a great place to put it! I normally stick within the canonical "top 50" classical composers list so it was a huge discovery for me to find that the Ukrainian composer Viktor Kosenko had written a beautiful and inventive set of piano pieces titled "Eleven etudes in the form of old dances".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Kosenko
They came to my attention because of this [raving review on Amazon](
http://www.amazon.com/Eleven-Etudes-Form-Old-Dances/dp/B000IAZNJA). The whole set can be found on Spotify.
Here is one of the most tender of the pieces - a very pretty Gavotte.
One of the more wistful is this Minuet.
OK, so these are pretty but who cares? There's lots of pretty music out there, does anything make this special? Well, the second to final dance is a monumental, 18 minute long epic Passacaglia. It's fantastic. I'm a huge fan of the form, from Bach's second violin partita to Handel to Brahms and Shostakovich. For my enjoyment this Kosenko Passacaglia equals the Handel. Here it is.
This is the one I have. Bernstein, NY Phil. Includes more Dvorak.
You can't go wrong with Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, or John Williams (discussions about what is actually classical aside). I went through my classical music and picked out some of my favorites. I tend to group some of these composers loosely together into a large genre. Thank goodness for used albums!
My playlist
Chip Davis - Holiday Musik
Respighi - Ancient Dances & Airs
Bizet - Carmen - one of the few operas which has a nice plot and orchestral music that can stand on its own throughout its entirety.
Orff - Carmina Burana - the first and last pieces are overplayed, but that's just because it's a phenomenal opus.
Holst - The Planets, Strauss - Also Sprach Zarathustria
Grieg - Peer Gynt/Holberg Suites
Rimsky-Korsakov's greatest hits
Itzhak Perlman - A La Carte
A list of great operas - Pay attention to the top 8. Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen is about 9 hours of opera, though not in one sitting. It has some fantastic pieces (Ride of the Valkyries), but it's a style of opera that I don't much appreciate: it's a hard pill to swallow when you're new to it.
No list here will be complete. I know this is a lot of music for one post, but it should have some good artists to build from.
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|name|Galantis|
|about artist|Featuring Christian Karlsson of Miike Snow and Linus Eklöw from Style of Eye, Galantis are a Swedish superduo who represent the place where EDM and pop meet. Karlsson (the man behind hits like Britney Spears' "Toxic") met Eklöw (the man behind hits like Icona Pop's "I Love It") at the Robotberget studio in Stockholm. Their mutual admiration society turned into a project once they began discussing a more poignant style of EDM that retained pop's passion. (more on last.fm)|
|album|You, released Feb 2014|
|track|You|
|images|album image, artist image|
|links|track on amazon, album on amazon|
|tags|edm, house|
|similar|Zhu, Vindata, Le P, Sylvan Esso, Wave Racer, Oliver Heldens X Becky Hill, Max Elto|
|found in|r/listentothis, r/listentothis|
|metrics|youtube plays: 269,909, lastfm listeners: 29,877, lastfm plays: 166,532, radd.it score: 4.75|
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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
Here is a 10 CD set of all of the recordings that we have of Rachmoninoff playing - http://www.amazon.com/Sergei-Rachmaninoff-Recordings-Sergey-Rachmaninov/dp/B000003FB7
You can buy individual songs from the collection, as well.
The sound quality is a bit shallow and there are some pops and static in some songs, but that's to be expected, I guess.
I actually bought this entire collection back about a decade ago, IIRC, back in the days when you couldn't buy a couple songs here and there. :-) I enjoyed listening to it for some time, although the poor (by today's standards) sound quality was always in my consciousness when listening. Also, he played many of his solo piano pieces way faster than more modern renditions I had heard, and I prefer the slower versions, personally.
I don't know man, we put on a good 2500+ person free show, maxed the out the venue.
Also for the outdoor concerts we can get a few thousand people.
Since orchestras can't tour easily doing free media everywhere isn't going to help them as much as a band that tours.
Band tour models don't work well for orchestras, because of cost of transportation. Also most orchestras don't do CD sales. Once again it's to expensive. Unless you are one of the big 5 orchestras in the US it will probably be a significant loss of revenue, and since new market members have a hard time differentiating between all the information such as, orchestra, guest artist/soloist conductor composer, it alternatively doesn't' bring that many people in. Free concerts are more effective for that and costs a significant amount less, and generates more revenue, and gets people to fill the seats and tell their friends about it.
PS:
Here is an example of why CDs can be confusing for new audience members:
John Adams: Harmonielehre / The Chairman Dances / Tromba lontana / Short Ride in a Fast Machine by Jonathan Holland, Wesley Warren, John Adams, Simon Rattle and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (1994)
What that says is: Composer: name of piece/ name of piece/ name of piece, soloist, soloist, composer, conductor, orchestra.
That's not going to be great promotion for people to go see shows, particularly since the orchestra might only play that show with that conductor 4 times.
Vs. a band CD that says: Band name, Album title. The band then goes on tour with the release of a new album, and promotes it. Simple easy to remember, and the band will play your area only once.
Everyone here will recommend classical music written between from 1650-1850, but you owe it to yourself to check out Renaissance and Medieval music while you're at it. There was so much neglected but amazing stuff written before 1600.
Ronn McFarlane has some fantastic solo lute albums. If you prefer quiet beautiful introspective melodies, DEFINITELY pick up his albums "The Renaissance Lute" and "Between Two Hearts".
He's also a member of the Baltimore Consort, and their work is quite good if you find you want more of this genre.
If you want beautiful music to wash over you and bring you to tears, listen to THIS album of Renaissance choral music. Crank it up LOUD! It's like angels tickling your insides.
Medieval music has more dissonances in it, so you may or may not like it, but give it a shot. I like the quieter meditative pieces that sound like a twisted music box. Here are some decent CDs:
Of course, on the Rock side of things, just buy the entire Led Zeppelin discography. Sitting through Led Zeppelin IV is a religious experience!
Oh, and The Beatles post 1965 - sooooo many colors in their sounds ... Sgt Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour, Abbey Road, hell buy those too!