March is the month in which my brother, David, is allowed to receive CDs at the prison. He gave me a shopping list of good contemporary stuff — Coldplay, Outkast, Jet, et cetera — and also asked me to burn him some mix CDs. So I burned him a disc of mellow contemporary electronica (Kruder & Dorfmeister, Peace Orchestra, Dzihan & Kamien, Tosca, DJ Krush & Toshinori Kondo, Tricky) and a disc of classical piano (Glenn Gould’s second run at the Golberg Variations, Serkin’s Moonlight, Ashkenazy’s Chopin Nocturnes, Eschenbach’s Mozart) and a disc of orchestral standards. That last was the hardest to do: how do you give someone who doesn’t much know classical music eighty minutes of the best orchestral music you know?
You leave out a lot, is what you do. Here’s the disc I sent David:
1. Karajan conducting Sibelius: Finlandia
2. Boskovsky conducting Strauss: The Blue Danube
3. Karajan conducting Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody Number 4
4. Bernstein conducting Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue
5. Solti conducting Beethoven: 4th movement, 9th symphony
6. Jochum conducting Orff: O Fortuna
So here’s my request for advice: what are the best recordings ever of classical orchestral music that you know? If you had eighty minutes, how would you make a second classical disc for David, before the end of March?
Well, I might start by responding to all the kind feedback I’ve received lately.
Hm.
Not sure about conductors, but Vaughan Williams’ Lark Ascending and Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis are pretty accessible. The Rite of Spring (Claudio Abbado?) and some Copland (maybe Clarinet Concerto conducted by Bernstein?).
Re Vaughan Williams: if Adrian Boult is the conductor, I’d go for it. He was a friend of Vaughan Williams and, IIRC, premiered many of his major works.
Other faves:
Bartok, Concerto for Orchestra, Fritz Reiner, Chicago Symphony
Bartok, Music for Strings Percussions and Celesta, also Reiner and Chicago.
Bach, Partitas, Glenn Gould, piano
Hindemith, Mathis der Mahler symphony. I have Szell and the Cleveland Orch. doing this, but I think it’s impossible to mess up.
Hindemith, Piano Sonatas, Glenn Gould. I like the 3rd the best. Might be hard to find.
Could burn some of this and send it your way if you’d like.
D’oh! Orchestral music. My bad. Pitch the piano stuff from the above.
Do you like Bach’s Brandenburg Concerti or have they been done to death for you? If your brother doesn’t know classical music, he might like regardless.
Beethoven, 7th symphony, 1st mvmt. Who can mess it up?
Brahms, Variations on a theme by Haydn. I have Harnoncourt w/the Berlin Phil doing this. Fun piece of music. I used to listen to it at the gym—when I was going to the gym, that is…
Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony
Mahler’s Symphony #2 (“Resurrection”) or #5 (There’s a great version with Bernstein conducting out there somewhere)
Prokofiev’s Romeo & Juliet Suite
Some P.D.Q. Bach (Peter Schickele), just for the whimsy of it. His “Grand Serenade for an Awful Lot of Winds and Percussion” is a hoot, often literally.
Thanks for all the excellent suggestions. Definitely some of the Brandenburgs, Brahms, Bernstein’s Stravinsky, Dvorak, and Profokiev, but I’m actually much more partial to the second movement of Beethoven’s 7th than the first — maybe just a taste thing? I’ve got Bernstein conducting Mahler’s 4th, and Mehta conducting the 5th, but I’m not familiar with the Williams — I’ll have to seek it out. At the risk of cliché, I’m also thinking of Furtwängler & Menuhin’s wonderful rendition of Mendelssohn’s violin concerto, and maybe some of Rostropovich’s Tschaikovsky, both with the Berlin Philharmonic. The compilation is, after all, intended as something of a primer or introduction.
Being a sucker for stories, I’d give him an opera. Easy, varied, dramatic music, voices and orchestra, and exitement and action.
Good to see you back!
If you have room for a little bit of Early Music, I can recommend the selection over at magnatune.com. They won’t be the best recordings ever, but they’re pretty good and easy to get. Also, sometimes EM demonstrates the connection between pop music that people enjoyed just as they enjoy pop now and the more complicated stuff that evolved out of it.
For instance, I like the Dufay Collective and I think the song/dance “La Rotta” might be fun even for a non-enthusiast… lots of rhythm.