Classical Music Appreciation Thread

[papermoon.lady]

 I love classical music, and I know the Countess likes it too. Maybe there are also lurkers who like it. 🙂

Anyway, maybe some will like to post classical music here (or listen to it).

You can post opera arias, piano recitals, orchestra concerts... - anything you like. Classical music is used in its broader meaning in this thread.

Please post links rather than embedding videos because sometimes the videos won't load.

Let's start...

Luciano Pavarotti - Una furtiva lacrima/lagrima (from L'Elisir d'Amore by Gaetano Donizetti)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2J7JM0tGgRY

[countessalmirena]

And here she is singing the lovely aria “Glück das mir verblieb” from Korngold’s Die tote Stadt. Elisabeth Schwarzkopf: 1952.

https://youtu.be/ZoGQd1dsAlw

[papermoon.lady]

Debussy's Clair de Lune played by Debussy himself in 1913

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yri2JNhyG4k

[papermoon.lady]

Clara Schumann (Robert's wife) - Romance No. 2 in G minor (from 3 Romances, Op. 11) (played by Jozef de Beenhouwer)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ4iu9yeqM0

[countessalmirena]

I woke up with pain in my shoulderblades, and after trying to re-read an old Georgette Heyer mystery (Envious Casca) and still tossing and turning, I thought... aAAAAgh, I might as well stagger down to the office, check my emails, make cracking sounds in the back of my neck, and listen to some Sibelius.

Sibelius: Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 43. Herbert Blomstedt conducting the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wb3gsiKBAjA

Spoiler

It's hard to choose my favourite Sibelius recording of his Second Symphony. It is one that I dearly love, and I want it to sound quintessentially Finnish, with the cold clear landscape glimmer-sledding through the music. I am uncomfortable if it's too slow, too bombastic or loud or overly romantic; it can't be plodding and metronomic, but it also can't race away like an escaping pack of dogs. I do think my favourite conductor for Sibelius is Herbert Blomstedt - but believe me, it's very hard to pick! I've just been going through all of the Sibelius symphony recordings in my CD collection (which is huge <-- gloating boast, "My preciousssss!"), and it's hard to choose between Berglund, Maazel, Sakari in some moods, Vänskä, and Bernstein... but yes, it's Blomstedt who is making me feel the aching distances and brittle air and lonely snow, as well as the sense of struggling hope and indominitable sense of Finland itself.

[countessalmirena]

Aaaaaaand... the best performance of Don Giovanni I have ever heard or seen.

https://youtu.be/gBgnuxif4fY

This is semi-staged in The Netherlands, Concertgebouw Amsterdam. The conductor is John Eliot Gardiner, and stars Rodney Gilfry as the gorgeous, sexy, gorgeous, gorgeous, GORGEOUS Don Giovanni. His voice, oh God, his voice! And ... yes, the rest of him, the handsome athletic sensual physicality, the tremendous skills... This is Don Juan to the life. He's like a selfish greedy child, which was a revelation to me in explaining the Don's personality. He switches between his haughty aristocratic self and the adept ability to portray whatever character has the best chance of seducing yet another woman to add to his huge list of conquests.

Everyone else in the cast is exceptionally good. Ildebrando d'Arcangelo is Leporello (and he's also played a darned good Don in other performances); Orgonasova is a fine Donna Anna; Charlotte Margiono is very good as Donna Elvira (although not a patch on Bartoli who has no peer in this role... If I could change one thing in this performance, it would be to nudge Margiono out and Cecilia Bartoli in); Prégardien is a most excellent Ottavio; Eirian James is the most adorable minx of a Zerlina that you could imagine.

The whole thing is just under 3 hours long. I was beyond pleased to find it on YouTube, as the non-commercial video I'd been given about 15 years ago was showing signs of its repeated watching... stretch signs, sort-of! It's sung in Italian of course, but the subtitles are in Dutch, sorry... but I'm sure the full lyrics to the score are available online.

This is not available on DVD, but is available as a CD boxed set.

[papermoon.lady]

Johann Sebastian Bach - Gleichwie der Regen und Schnee vom Himmel fällt (BWV 18)

Netherlands Bach Society

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFftxZNUiew

[myoclon1cjerk]

Max Bruch - Scottish Fantasy.

https://youtu.be/YpX8DoS2hr8

[countessalmirena]

Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet is replete with great music. The Dance of the Knights is particularly striking, especially when seen with the dancers in this Royal Ballet performance. It is extraordinarily beautiful while also being extraordinarily menacing.

https://youtu.be/SyDo3h1Tu7c

Also, here's the Balcony Scene, with Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn. It's heartbreakingly young and tender and passionate, and those Nureyev leaps! And Fonteyn's astonishing delicacy of movement, while everything she does must take the most enormous strength and control... but it seems so effortless.

https://youtu.be/HtBRN5BXt6o

[countessalmirena]

Schubert: Symphony No. 8 in B minor ("Unfinished Symphony"), with Trevor Pinnock conducting the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.

This is one of the best recordings I've found of the Unfinished. I love this piece... and I think it shows what Schubert was capable of composing orchestrally, as opposed to the "Great" which I cannot fully like.

https://youtu.be/HtBRN5BXt6o

[countessalmirena]

Ralph Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis

https://youtu.be/P04yfGRNebM

Conducted by Neville Marriner with Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields

I first heard this in school, and fell instantly and fathoms-deep in love with it. The interplay between the two string orchestras and the string orchestra is magnificent, achieving an organ-like quality, great reverence, high vaulting antiphony soaring to the rooftop and beyond. This is my favourite recording of it. The entire recording is on my "Picnic music" playlist.