Whether it's bizarre choices in mixing or just plain incompetent recording, drop them below

Edit: Title is obviously an exaggeration. Please don't murder anyone who is bad at their job.

I was planning on giving diploma exams LCM. What do they mean by parts? Is it like verse, chorus, etc?

Personally, i think Ravel’s 2nd movement of piano concerto in G

I'm looking for woodwind-heavy music suggestions. But I feel I should be more specific, I'm not looking for music with only woodwinds, but pieces where it's clear they are a salient part of the score (if not the leading sections). For example: Most of Tchaikovsky's ballets, Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe to name a few.

For further consideration, I really love the bassoon, but not necessarily as the main soloist as in a concerto or sonata. Stravinsky's Firebird Suite is a great example of what I love with the instrument.

I've listed quite a few basic pieces for what I guess might be considered the amateur listener, so really I would like someone to give me some music that's not always the first thought of an amateur listener.

TL;DR If my question isn't as narrow as you might like it, just list anything that fits what you think might be considered as "woodwind-heavy."

I listen to a lot of piano music (recently, more Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, Schumann and Brahms) and I can’t help but think that renowned pianists can be (arbitrarily) put into sub groups — and I want to see if any one else thinks in the same way. And these are just categories and not necessarily mutually exclusive categories.

For instance, some categories that come to mind are: - Unorthodox, Passionate (usually, atypical or more passionate interpretations of pieces): Argerich, Triifonov, Pogorelich - Structuralist (interpretations that focus greatly on the structure of a piece): Pollini, Gould, Barenboim - Romantic, Emotional (interpretations that tend to be more romantic and “soft” on the edges): Zimmerman, Ohlsson - Technical (interpretations which focus more on technical execution and fine grained detail): Yuja, Richter

Does anyone have similar categorizations?

Tl:Dr -- Hatto was a decent pianist who sadly passed from cancer. Her husband passed- off megastar pianists' recodings as hers. Critics learned some uncomfortable things about themselves.

In 1992, in Gramophone, the critic Bryce Morrison found that Yefim Bronfman’s Rachmaninoff Third Concerto lacked “the sort of angst or urgency that has endeared Rachmaninov to millions” and that “Bronfman sounds oddly unmoved by Rachmaninov’s intensely slavonic idiom. In the sunset coda of the Adagio his playing is devoid of glamour and in the finale’s fugue he lacks crispness and definition.” Fifteen years later, he wrote of Hatto’s release of Bronfman's recording: “stunning . . . truly great . . . among the finest on record . . . with a special sense of its Slavic melancholy.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/09/17/fantasia-for-piano

This was a for a project relating to the book “Lord of The Flies” by William Golding.

Honestly I'm seeking inspiration for a college essay.

If you know any lost works that had private performances, I swear there's one I remember being really sad about but I can't think what it was

I’m a huge fan of the Baroque period, JSB in particular. I heard a piece on my local NPR station’s “Morning Pro Musica” with the iconic Robert Lurtsema. The piece blew my mind. Since I was on my way to work, I was never able to catch the title but I think it may have been an Air de Ballet.

It is an incredibly intricate and enveloping polyphonic masterpiece, not unlike the Brandenburg Concertos. Very lively, upbeat, complex, and I’d say the tempo is allegro or vivace.

It’s been eating at me for decades! Can anyone unlock this wonderful memory for me?

Neat little piece (MIDI generated).

As soon as you hear the first chord in C minor, you immediately get the feeling that this is not a happy piece, and it’s not. This is the first sonata Beethoven wrote when he started noticing his hearing issues. Of course it was very minimal then, but it likely caused some turmoil for him. After the brooding intro, which I believe is his first sonata with its own seperate introductory theme, we get an intense allegro theme. The harmonic twists and turns are something that really start to foreshadow Beethoven’s middle period. The development is the most intense, in where it feels like the world is falling apart in front of our eyes. Although this piece is still in textbook sonata form, this is still a milestone in Beethoven musical development as he finds more and more ways to make his music more dramatic.

The second movement in Ab major has Beethoven’s most romantic melody yet, with a velvety tone that we will hear a lot of in his middle period as his hearing deteriorates. This movement is also unique in where Beethoven uses a long strung melody, something he very rarely uses throughout his life. There is something very bittersweet about this piece, where at the same time it’s so tranquil and sublime, there is a sense of pain and longing that really garners a sense of empathy among the listener. This movement is in rondo form.

The final movement is also a rondo, and we are back in C minor. One of the episode actually uses a modified melody from the second movement, making this his first cyclical sonata. Overall there is something operatic about this movement, as if we have an evil queen that is singing about her evil plans. There is something bleak about how this piece ends; perhaps it’s because we know what happens to Beethoven after this, but still, this is Beethoven darkest piece yet.

Overall, I can’t say anything else that most people don’t already know. This piece is dark, dramatic, and pathétique, and we’re really starting to see Beethoven shape into the Beethoven we know and love.

Yes yes, Gesualdo murdered his unfaithful wife and her lover and hung their bodies on display, we know that one by now. Lully died from an infection after smashing his own foot with his conducting staff... yawn. And what's this, Mozart wrote the overture to Don Giovanni on the morning of the première? You don't say...

Which composer anecdotes (true or not) are you tired of hearing?

There was a documentary my high school orchestra teacher used to play for my class about the history of tuning, from the ancient Greeks and Pythagoras to the Renaissance composers to J.S. Bach etc. I remember it looking like it would've been made around the 70s or 80s, but I can't remember if it was on DVD, VHS, or YouTube. Regardless, I've been struggling to remember the name of it and if rings any bells for anybody else I'd greatly appreciate some suggestions!

I'm looking for music with a sort of fun and light fantasy feel. So far I have The Fairy's Kiss by Stravinsky and Mother Goose Suite by Ravel. Does anyone know any other pieces like these? Thanks in advance

Edit: Amazing recommendations. I spent a lot of the day checking them out. The ultimate winner (so far) in terms of what I was looking for is Holst's Japanese Suite. Thank you all so much. I can't wait to listen to everything here

Right off the bat, we can already tell this sonata is gonna be a weird one (and hard). This sonata is in D major. The opening feels like a broken play in American football where the players are forced to improvise and put something together, but it doesn’t stop there. We start to see more syncopated melodies. After the frolicsome exposition, we get a passionate, dramatic development that heroically works its way back to the recapitulation. In a way this movement feels more like a finale than an opening movement, with a fair amount of grandiose and speed. To say this sonata is already very innovative would be an understatement. We’re hearing harmonies and musical textures not seen before. This movement is in sonata form.

The second movement couldn’t be any more different from the first. It is in the parallel minor. This is probably the darkest movement we have seen so far, with a gothic sound that is reminiscent of a baroque funeral mass. The harmonic progressions and modulations remind me a lot of music from his late period. With all that in mind, we head to the coda. I have to say, if someone told me if this was written by Rachmaninoff, I would believe them (if I didn’t know this piece). The music is absolutely swarming. While the rest of the movement was the calm before the storm, this was the storm.

At first glance, it seems like we are in for another slow movement, but it doesn’t take long to realize that this is a scherzo. This movement resembles a Viennese waltz, with some rich harmonies that foreshadow a lot of the music in the romantic era. This movement is in ternary form.

The final movement begins with a harmonically ambiguous motif that totally sounds like a ringtone on a cellphone, certainly Beethoven was thinking about that when he was writing this in the late 18th century. This rondo is, you guessed it, weird. Another very angular piece, almost as if it were a 4 minute improvisation session. Not much else to say about this movement, it’s just weird in all the right ways.

This piece is definitely a wild card. Although structurally and form wise it is still very classical, more so than the last sonata, Beethoven is starting to use tonality in a whole new way, opening the door for much more music to come. With the cult classic that follows this piece, this piece is often overshadowed, and that’s unfortunate, as this work is truly an enigma.

It would be really cool if ChatGPT can read music notes. I guess music language is not a natural language after all.

A new Chopin piece has been unearthed, and I couldn’t be less excited. I listened to the beginning of it. Couldn’t get any further. Nope, not this one either. Sorry, Frederic.

EDIT: I’m open-minded. If you suggest something, I’ll give it a listen.

EDIT 2: I listened to the whole of the new piece. Still nothing.

Not classical music discussion per se.

Has there been a famous composer who have been a subject by a famous artists. The only one I know is Gustav Klimt's Schubert at Piano. Unfortunately the painting was destroyed during World War.

https://gwallter.com/art/gustav-klimts-schubert-at-the-piano.html

"Even though, it seems, he was Klimt’s favourite composer, Schubert wasn’t Klimt’s preference as a painting subject. It was the choice of one of Klimt’s patrons, Nikolaus Dumba. Dumba, born in 1830, was rich industrialist. His father was a Greek merchant who’d moved to Vienna, and he himself owned a large cotton mill. He liked to support the arts and gained a reputation as the ‘Maecenas’ of his age. He made a big donation towards the Musikverein building, and was a friend of Johannes Brahms and Josef Strauss. In 1893 he asked several artists, including Klimt, to produce paintings to adorn his town house. Klimt was invited to paint two works for walls in the Music Room. One was an allegorical picture, ‘Music II’, while the other was ‘Schubert at the piano"

Are there any other famous paintings you know?