h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Sorry, Gosho (and Whisky), I dunno where I got Whisky from...

Must have one too many

S'ok

I'd stay and talk more but I've got to for a

Albinoni's adagio.
Although...

Adagio
Tomaso Albinoni, Remo Giazotto
c1700-30, revised 1945


'The Adagio of Albinoni
Is largely phoney
And is a musical risotto
Cooked up by Giazotto.'

- so goes a clerihew (quoted in Fritz Spiegl's book 'Music Through the Looking Glass'). If Albinoni were to hear 'his' work at a concert today, he'd recognise very little of it. The music is based on a fragment of manuscript found in Dresden State Library. (How it got there isn't clear, though Dresden and Venice had lots of musical exchanges in Albinoni's day.) The surviving scrap of music consisted of just the bass line, and six bars of melody, from the slow movement of a trio sonata survived; like most of Albinoni's 50 operas, the rest had simply got lost, recycled as wrapping paper for fish and soap.

But Remo Giazotto (born 1910), a Milanese musicologist preparing a collection of Albinoni's music, liked it so much, he reconstructed the piece in 1945. To him it suggested a piece that would be played in church, so he added an organ, and turned it into a very stately and elegant piece with a strong melodic line. The rich sound of the result is very modern, and for authentic musicians the piece presents a quandary: how do you play, in a style and on instruments correct for the time of the composer, a piece that was started off nearly 300 hundred years ago, and finished after the second world war?

Seamus

No over-ridding favourite but several:

Symphony No.9 Beethoven
The Four Seasons Vivaldi
The Rite of Spring Stravinsky
Svyati John Tavener
Brandenburg Concertos J.S.Bach
The Marriage of Figaro Mozart

Are amongst my favourite "classical" (which is a very loose term) music.

As an ex-cellist, cello concertos in general really get me, but Elgar (who I love anyway) does something special.

Oh and The Firebird is also one of my favourites.

This thread's reminding me of loads of pieces I haven't heard for ages since my dad moved out and took his massive collection of classical vinyl with him

Yes, it's nice isn't it? Not your Dad moving out, but being reminded of some great stuff.

I have to say that most of the time my classical music taste revolves around whether it has a good bass part, on which subject my all time hate piece would be Tavener's Protecting Veil, which induces neck spasms whenever I hear it (thankfully not often).

Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyrie"

Hey, Napnod, I didn't know you were an ex-cellist! The Elgar concerto is gorgeous, isn't it...
It's really hard to choose one (or even a few) favourites, but Stravinsky's Rite of Spring springs to mind... Also Mahler's Symphony no. 5, all the Bach cello suites, the Britten cello suites, Debussy and Ravel string quartets, some Puccini arias, Cæsar Franck's violin sonata....etc etc....

M (present cellist)

I forgot Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet (the ballet music)! If any one piece should be at the top of my list, that's the one!

Mahler...I've played that a few times. Lovely piece. looking forward to when I finish uni and I can take up the cello again (it's a bit much to keep ferrying it to and fro, sometimes I wish I'd taken up something more portable like the flute ). There's something about the cello that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up on end.

People (especially air hostesses) keep telling me I should have taken up the flute instead, but it just wouldn't be the same! A teacher I've had at chamber music courses has a sticker on his cello case saying something like:

No, it's not a guitar
No, I don't wish I played the flute, and
NO, I will NOT play you a tune!!!

I've been thinking about getting one of those...

Toccata & Fuge in d-minor, J. S. Bach - especially when you are visiting the Strasbourg Cathedral for the first time, just open the door and at this very moment somebody starts to play it on this unbelievable organ there... it just took my breath completely.

Not my only fav's but...

Samuel Barber - Adagio for Strings (newer classical)
Aaron Copland - Fanfare for the Common Man, Appalachian Spring
Charles Ives - The Unanswered Question
Philip Glass - Metamorphoses
Stravinsky - Rite of Spring, Firebird
Mozart - Magic Flute, K 40
Debussy - Clouds
Beethovan - Sonata #14 in C# minor ('Moonlight')
Ravel - Bolero
Holst - the Planets (all 7, though specifically Mars and Jupiter)
Bach - Brandenburg Concerto (just cause it's interesting...)

If you're up for finding a rarely recorded newer piece - "October" by Eric Whitacre is marvellous.

...and still, although they used it for too many TV-ads in Germany: Carmina Burana, Carl Orff

Yes Carmina Burana (spelt wrong)

Wulfric - Tavener! one of my favourite of the recent classical composers. Mark-Anthony Turnage I also really like, esp. Dispelling the Fears.

Impossible to pin down a favourite, so I'll probably just keep chipping in tunes as they occur to me! Depends on ones mood too.

Old stuff: pretty much anything by Bach. The complexities are stunning and hypnotic too. The Art of Fugue, the Passions, the Goldbergs...you name it. Ooh, the violin concertos, mwa!
Plus lots of sacred music, requiems are ace but then I'm a Joy Division fan too...
Beethoven 4th Piano Concerto, Rite of Spring, Mahler symphonies, Bartok string quartets...

New stuff: I lurv Arvo Part - the choral stuff and the instrumental eg Tabula Rasa. Phillip Glass. Michael Gordon. Japanese bloke whose name I can never remember without looking it up on the CD...

My favorite pieces would include:
Toccata and Fugue in D minor ( though you should hear the major keyus as well, different sound altogether.)
Debussy's Clair de Lune
Pachabel's Canon
Ravel's Bolero (simply for the cheeky reasons that he wrote it)
Aria de Capo from the Goldberg Variations.
Also Ride of the Valkeries, and Ave Maria, if you want to count from opera/religious sources.

I have programmed one of my robots (go mechatronics engineering!) to play either the Toccata in D minor or the Aria when it starts up. Not a fun thing if you have to program each note, its frequency and duration, but it was fun and it turns heads, so I guess thats all that matters.

Thats my input,
TUUUYUSCS,
Duece.

Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture
Tchaikovsky: Symphonies 4 and 6
Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin (Opera)
Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto
Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No 2
Schumann Piano Concerto
Grieg Piano Concerto
Dvorak Symphony No 9
Mozart: Great Mass in C Minor
Verdi: Requiem
Bernstein: Candide
J S Bach: Sonatas and Partitas
Elgar: Enigma Variations
Saint Saens: Organ Symphony
Sibelius: Violin Concerto
Sibelius: Symphony No 3

@ Narapoia: "The complexities..." Sometimes I suspect Bach to be more maths than music...