I know how I got into classical music: through my dad playing piano concertos by Grieg and Tchaikovsky, some Wagner and Gershwin when I was little in the 1940s, on 78rpm records. But I've wondered how younger people would come to it. The same pop classical route I took? I'd never heard of either Nyman or Einaudi until tonight. I checked tracks by both on iTunes. Where they're similar, they're contemplative, the music I sometimes hear on a U.S. public radio program, Hearts of Space.
My early route was through the European composers of the late 1800s, Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Ravel, Faure, Debussy, Wagner, then backward to Handel, Beethoven, Bach, forward to Stravinski, Schoenberg. I think I shed tears at the beauty of some Wagner music while I was still little, and later at music like the closing of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition and the waltzes from Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier. The classical music I love makes me wet-eyed on the first few hearings. I've been absolutely blown away by a chorus singing, percussively and in a Brazilian Indian language, about a dam across a river. It's called Itaipu, but it's by Philip Glass. And I wasn't the only one blown away by the Symphony #3 by Gorecki, with soprano Dawn Upshaw. It was a best seller when it first came out. I began to like some chamber music when I first heard the Quartet in F by Ravel, and opera in part through watching New York's Metropolitan Opera live in HD.
I think Paul's knowledge is broader and deeper. I'll be interested in what he has to say.
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Topic: Classical shmassical (Also I need some advice) (Read 7662 times)