How did your enthusiasm for classical music begin?

Given the response to the recent classical music thread. I thought I'd try another. Several people on that thread, including myself, noted works and/or performances that triggered their interest in classical music. This is an opportunity for nostalgia - my introduction goes back to the late 60's - but it also may provide a gateway for others who are currently in the situation I was in then - ignorant.

There are several recordings that stand out for me:

Beethoven's 7th Symphony - the second movement of the Bruno Walter recording from my dad's LP collection. Thate was the first time I just sat and listened to orchestral music and went "oh, wow." I was deeply moved.

Mozart's 35th Symphony - Szell and the Cleveland orchestra. The energy is incomparable. I still bounce to the music whenever I hear it.

Bach Orchestral Suites - Harnoncourt (playing right now on my iPod). My first experience with original instruments. I loved the astringent sound.

Brahms Piano Trio Opus 8 - Stern/Istomin/Rose By the time I heard this I was already developing my passion for chamber music and for Brahms' chamber music in particular, but this sealed the deal.

The last time I checked, the first three were easily found, but I don't think the last one made it to CD.

 

Band classes in school. From elementary through high school.

jerol

 

Bugs bunny, and it went from there...

 

I played the violin growing up, but did not really connect with the music until I was about 13. My orchestra was working on the Adagietto from Mahler's 5th Symphony, and during one rehearsal, I became positively entranced by the beauty of the music. It was a different feeling than I had ever had even though I'd been playing music for many years already by that point. In fact, it was almost a feeling of intoxication.

I also remember looking around afterwards and seeing most of my fellow musicians bored to tears playing this slow, slow piece of music.

 

At 2 years old...

 

My took a college course in music appreciation and I helped her with her homework. Shortly thereafter my aunt got bored with her classical collection and gave a lot of it to me. As a kid I was far more interested in classical music than rock'n'roll or anything else. At one time I had Aida memorized (in Italian). I didn't set out to memorize it, it just happened.

 

I like the second movement in Beethoven's 7th as much as you do. I seem to recall hearing it for the first time in a B&W WWII movie, but I was so young, I don't know if it's a memory I can trust.

I used to buy the occasional classical LP of something that was featured in a movie (Vivaldi's Mandolin Concerto 425 from Kramer v. Kramer, Schubert's Piano Trio op. 100 from Barry Lyndon, a whole lot of things from Woody Allen movies), but I found shopping for classical music impenetrable. And there was so much pop and rock to buy then, I didn't have the money to delve very deeply.

But I didn't become a compulsive classical collector until CDs came out, and I heard Schubert's last Piano Sonata (960) one afternoon in 1987 at the Georgetown Olsson's Records in DC. It was the one by Alfred Brendel on Philips' mid-price Silver Line. A friend was with me, and she picked out Mozart's PCs 23 & 27, also by Brendel on Silver Line. For good measure, I bought the 1977 HVK Beethoven 9th on DG Galleria (they were having a "3 for $25" sale on Polygram).

 

Hearing Bizet's Carmen Suite in it's entirety (it's a whole side of an LP) when I was a kid.
Much of that suite has become "standards" now, but I just loved the melodic and haunting quality of the whole thing.

The Leonard Bernstein version on Sony Classical (SBM) is wonderful!

 

Carl Stalling. I loved the Warner Brothers cartoons as far back as I can remember; Both parents were musical (not classical) and I was always into music, had started collecting records by age seven or eight, and Stalling's scores were noticed and enjoyed.

Fast forward about eight years. I'm fourteen and spend most of my free time listening to records in my room. British Invasion primarily. The next door neighbor was a single man who played classical piano at all hours of the night. Drove my parents crazy, but my room was closest to his house and I loved listening to him. It reminded me of Warner Brothers cartoon music.

That was when I realized that I really liked classical music.

Interestingly, I found myself servicing that neighbor's piano twenty-some years later, and observed that he was a very accomplished pianist. No wonder I liked it so much.

We shared memories. I told him how he influenced my musical life. He told me how much the idiot teenager next door (me) had driven him nuts playing that awful music, and how, twenty years later, the one sound bite that was still etched in his brain (and still made him clench his teeth) was....

"Second verse, same as the first!"


Discuss.

 

The movie Amadeus really opened my eyes to classical music...

 

Watching A Clockwork Orange at age 13

 

Mom forced violin lesson on me. Hence I was always around the music, which I dig.

 

Carl Stalling for me too. Liszt's "Hungarian Rhapsody #2" and Braham's "HR #5", as well as many others were ingrained in my head at a young age thanks to him.

Fast-forward to recently and I'm just getting back into "classical" music, although I hate calling it that because that lumps the romantic, classical, and baroque eras all into one. Taking piano lessons has made me appreciate this music much more then I ever have. I enjoy the romantic era the most and am consistently moved by those great composers and their wonderful compositions, especially Liszt, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, and Schubert.

 

It was all Larry David's fault.















Seriously, Beethoven, Beethoven and more Beethoven. Szell's recordings of the symphonies and Kempff's DG CD of the famous Piano Sonatas.

 

When I was in second grade my music teacher played The Nutcracker for us. I came home all excited and told my mom about it. Santa brought the Andre Previn version on LP for me that year for Christmas.

 

I too graduated from the the Carl Stalling / Looney Tunes Kollege of Musical Knowledge.

Also had exposure to Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Prokofiev by way of the venerable RCA hifi console (we're talkin' 1950s here) that my folks invested in... they were hardly music-heads, but I'm sure they deliberately added the above classics to the pop they enjoyed (Les Paul & Mary Ford, Frankie Laine)... just to sprinkle some class and culture on us.

Of the above, Tchaikovsky and Les Paul not only stuck, but burrowed to the core of my being... to this day, I can – and do – easily put aside 2:34:47 to listen to Swan Lake, beginning to end, and hang on every note.

 

As a teenager, two words: KUBRICK FILMS!

 

Various trigger events. As a child I heard the William Tell overture as the theme music to The Lone Ranger". The as a teenager another British TV series used Wagner's Tannhauser Overture as it's theme. I bought both of these pieces as a result.
The next watershed moment was seeing 2001 and A Clockwork Orange - that latter started my subsequent passion for Beethoven and specifically the glorious ninth.
Next came the film Amadeus. This got me both into Mozart and also into opera. It came at a time when popular music was doing worse than nothing for me (the 80's) and my exploration of classical music began in earnest. I went to the local library and borrowed dozens and dozens of albums, using the indispensable book - the Penguin Guide (Greenfield etc etc) as a reference. I would pick a new composer and explore a selection of his work. Anything I liked I went out and bought.

 

Syravinsky-Rite Of Spring(Stravinsky)
Bartok-Piano Concerto No.2(Richter/Maazel)

 

My love for classical music started when I obtained a good turntalbe, a Linn LP12, and discovered RCA Living Stereo and Mercury Living Presence records.

 

Leonard Bernstein used to have a TV show that introduced children to classical music which ran in NYC. I remember Peter and the Wolf as one of the first pieces I learned about. We had some classical music exposure in elementary school.

For the most part, my classical music interest really picked up in college. I took several classical music classes and rather than go to the music library to do my listening, I tried to buy as many of the records as I could. I aced all those classes.

Btw, that was the first place I ever heard of needledrops. In one of the classes, the tests consisted largely of the professor dropping the needle on various pieces and we had to identify them.

 

My grandmother took me to hear him in person. I suspect I fidgeted all the way through.

 

Just very recently listening to Frank Zappa!

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=165130

 

Gosh I don't remember when or why I started listening to classical. Probably owe some thanks to film scores, Fantasia and an old Boston Pops record in the family.

 

My dad and his dad, both classical music fans. I have some of my grandfather's 78 sets, though most of them are incomplete now.

Some of my most cherished childhood memories are of me sitting with Dad and listening to classical on his stereo.

dan c