Your top 10 pieces of classical music

I think we should make HC the moderator of this thread.

Just sayin.....................

 

yeah.. found it and mentioned it three posts up...

 

I'm the biggest sucker for Rachmaninoff on the planet, and harbor soft spots for those Englishmen Elgar and Delius (and, yeah, I know FD mostly spent his time in France and the U. S., but he's music's still English). Will be more specific when I have more time, later.

 

Wagner's Flying Dutchman for me is always synonymous with "Best of the Football Follies".

 

JS Bach's Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello. Find the recordings made by Casals and Rostropovich. Yo Yo Ma does 'em up right, too.

 

Sorry Slappy. Didn't scroll up far enough.

 

For the longest time when I heard the opening to "The Final Countdown" . . . I thought I was listening to a classical piece.

 

40 I believe

 

40 is the better known and I love it too. Try 25 though. It's lovely.

 

Damn good thread, Simon.

1. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony -- the fourth movement ("Ode to Joy") simply being the greatest work of music in history
2. Rhapsody in Blue, Gershwin
3. 1812 Overture, Tschaikovsky
4. The Toreador Suite from Carmen, Bizet (this was my original cell phone ring)
5. Symphony from the New World, Dvorak
6. "Jupiter" from Holst's The Planets
7. Pictures at an Exhibition, Mussorgsky
8. Fanfare for the Common Man, Copeland
9. Polovtsian Dances, Borodin (better known as the "Stranger in Paradise" theme)
10. "O Fortuna" from Carmina Burana, Orff

Others receiving votes:
The Four Seasons, Vivaldi (heard the LA Phil play this -- with a different violinist soloing on each season -- five years ago)
Appalachian Spring, Copeland (Yes, Wicked, he's eminently classical)
Fur Elise and Wellington's Victory, Beethoven
Symphony No. 40, Mozart (nice call, Simon)
Porgy & Bess, Gershwin
Barber of Seville, Rossini (got this answer right on Win Ben Stein's Money/Ben didn't)
Brandenburg Concertos 4 and 5, Bach
Theme from Exodus, Ferrante & Teicher (does this count?)

I have a soft spot for most of the Russians, which drives my baroque-loving wife -- who considers anything but Tschaikovsky noise -- bananas.

 

Bird:

You and I seem to have similar tastes; a lot of the stuff on your list was under consideration for me, especially the Carmen stuff. I love that score. The stuff on your list that I haven't heard, I'm going to check out. If you haven't heard the Thomas Tallis piece, I'd recommend it -- it's not a long piece, somewhere around 14-16 minutes I think. if you saw "Master And Commander", it is used as part of the score.

 

Most of my favorites have been mentioned already, but I'll throw out Schubert's "Ave Maria." One of the most beautiful pieces of music ever put together.

Also, the old theme music from NFL Films, specifically "Up She Rises" and "A Season Awaits" always gets my blood pumping.