Am I the only one or its usuall to cry with classical music?

Personally I love the 1992 Anner Bylsma recording with the Stradivarius "Servais" (1701). There is some fascinating history behind the instrument also.

I listened this recording growing up as my parents often played it. Then in the mid 1990s my mother gifted it to a friend who was moving overseas, thinking she's simply buy another set. For the next 10 or 15 years she tried to find this recording, to no avail!

I managed to find one for her online selling at a premium, and eventually bought myself a set too.

What are Shostakovich's most consonant / joyful pieces—in other words, the ones that sound the least like Shostakovich?
I'm thinking specifically of works like the second movement of his Piano Concerto No. 2

So I went to the bbc proms on monday to see beethovens ninth and felt a bit underwhelmed afterwards. For context, I am a sound engineer, and while i knew rah acoustics were far from perfect, I was pretty disappointed.

I was sat center to stage in the stalls section toward the back. First thing i noticed was the strings sounded quite muddy with very little clarity. The brass section seemed to reflect onto the left side of the hall so much so it sounded as if it was coming solely from my left. I expected long reverberation due to the size of the hall, but the woodwinds in particular had an awful delay of about .5s which made every note sound doubled, fast passages were unintelligible and everything sounded mushy.

Choir probably sounded the best which was some consolation but the satb soloists suffered from the same delay as the woodwinds. Almost felt like i had phase issues the whole time.

Bear in mind i wasnt that far from the stage, being in the stalls and dead centre I thought I'd have better sound quality. I'm aware that its not a symphony hall but was baffled at how bad it sounded.

Anyone else find this in RAH?

Which of Shostakovich's string quartets are the most accessible and easy to listen to?

I've been struggling a lot with Shostakovich's string music (chamber music or concertos), but I recently discovered the first movement of his Second String Quartet. I found it less austere than usual and was wondering if there are other string quartet movements like it.

Hi all, I know musicians can write off things like recordings, concert tickets, sheet music, etc. However, with all the AI slop out there, I'm having trouble finding a good reputable source for this information that I can reference when advocating for myself. Any help would be appreciated - thank you!

Does anyone feel like a piece of music feels less magical when you finally get to practising and performing it, compared to discovering it and listening for the first few times? I feel this with almost every piece I learn. Are there any exceptions for you?

Greetings. I am finally incorporating classical music regularly again into my life, and I am finding most modern music severely lacking in something that to me can only be described as divine. I am, however, a metal fan - but even that is no longer enough anymore. I am also a musician. Not classically trained but I can re-imagine similar structures.

Anyway, I am looking to make friends. And also finally build my classical collection properly. I feel as if somehow I have taken a wrong turn somewhere and this is not the reality I was built for.

My favorite classical period is baroque, followed by the classical into (some of) the early romantic period.

I'm looking for friends who also seek that fire within these sacred structures, who find the complexity and passion of such pieces just as compelling as I do.

I strongly dislike excessive, showy ornamentation for its own sake - But rather intensity through sound that is truly genuine, profound, real...

I'm not exactly a typical person. (And I am on the autism spectrum, if it was not already apparent by now). I value empathy, rationality. It would be nice to meet other aliens too (I speak metaphorically, of course). If you are out there, we should connect!

I (18M) used to play flute and aspired to be a professional flute player, ideally in an orchestra. After a 1.5 year break, I decided to come back to it, and have been practicing for 5ish days returning back to my old playing, strictly running through fundamentals. Also, please don't get me wrong, I absolutely ADORE the flute, but I think my mindset is what turned the love in obsession. I don't ever plan on going back into it fully professionally, strictly as a hobby, but still I notice my mindset falling back into that "I'm behind," or "Is it worth it if I missed 1.5 years worth of good practice?"

I want to go back into it like I did and relearn music theory, ear training, technique and all of that stuff, especially since I'm going to head off to college, but I feel so awkward trying to find that middle ground of enjoying it strictly as a hobby. I find myself looking through colleges trying to orient my future on best areas for flute teachers/professors, and later realize I was going more overboard than I should've.

How do I enjoy classical music as a hobby??? How do you all do it?

Kirill Spivachevski-were born in Ukraine in Kiew, and he moved in Kharkiv where he plays in the piano over 13 year in music school by Rimskiy-Korsakov, his first time that he start to play the piano were only 4 years old, he surprised a teachers because he had absolutely hearing, when he was 7 years old he started to playing at the biggest theatre in his city Kharkiv name KHATOB (ХАТОБ)

And then he started improvising by himself without teachers-composers and classic theory, and after it he brought his first piano piece, but it was very bad and teacher refused him and a little bit critic
In 2022 year he moved to Germany where he met with Jazz-intellectual Ukrainian composer-teacher Yuri Seredin, and once afternoon his teacher Yuri improvised in class room, and Kirill were surprised and then he asked by him for lesson from composing and improvising

Lot of time they’re both improvised some melodys, and once Kirill listened any classical composers like Frederic Chopin, Franz Liszt, and Sergei Rachmaninoff…and he were influenced by them, one week later he wrote his first piano piece calls Nocturne no.1 (A-Dur) and he performed it in Strasbourgh Euro Parlament were he met with Oleksander Goncharenko and he highly praised the talent of 15-year-old Kirill! And also @Joshua Kyan Aalampour saw his Nocturne no.1 and also he highly praised him

At his 16 years he wrote a cycle of his Etüdes from young ages Etüde no.1 full filed with deep love emotions and influence by Franz Liszt and Camille Sen Saëns and he finished writing it in 00:30
Etude no.2 Winter he wrote at the next day after first Etude in school floor
Etude no.3 he wrote it after depression and that full filed a virtuosity and influencing by Sergei Rachmaninoff
After gave a concert in a house where people came to listen to all sorts of stories in one of the books, and Kirill performed the works "Spruce Tree (Le Sapin) by Jean Sibelius", "Turkish March by Mozart", "Czardas by Vittorio Monti", and finally his "Etude No. 3", which was written after his month-long depression and self criticism, and after concerto he earned 50 euros

Now Kirill is trying hard to write something new and masterful, and is squeezing out all his strength and abilities

May he rot.

Thanks to this unfiltered transfer, his tonal palette and his polyphonic treatment of the piece are much more apparent than in the famous released take. After listening to this recording, someone brought to my attention that the manner in which he plays the coda resembles that of a tarantella. Then I checked and realized the two pieces (tarantella and this ballade) were composed in the same year, 1841.

The Austrian conductor Hans Rosbaud was born on this day in 1895. He built his reputation on new music: as early as his Frankfurt years he was programming Schoenberg, Bartók, Stravinsky, Hindemith, and Krenek, at a time when few conductors would.

His signature achievement is Schoenberg's Moses und Aron — Rosbaud led the concert premiere of the (unfinished) opera in Hamburg in 1954, and he was also a trusted interpreter of Boulez and the postwar avant-garde. What people valued in him was clarity: he could make genuinely difficult scores legible on first hearing.

Beethoven: König Stephan, Op. 117 — Overture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x30YRJbi01k

Hans Rosebud - The Greatest Recordings
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZbukSlHOkYRryI03g2ZxOhIj0ZMWp9Eu&si=Ih1AAHT0-auWSevj

This was my first time hearing the Dvořák opera. The English subtitles are great, as is the performance. Here's the link — https://youtu.be/IoaeN-ppHUI

And any with more than 25-30 percent selection rate?

From D. Wilson Ochoa’s Facebook account (choosing not to link the other site reporting on this):

As Principal librarian, a tenured musician position with the Boston Symphony, I wanted to post my questions and concerns about the direction of the orchestra. These were supposed to be delivered at a meeting between the board and musicians a week ago, but I was not given the opportunity.
* *
The musicians of the Boston Symphony have been told that the current situation with Maestro Nelsons only came about as a result of a meeting where he was not in support of a “new vision” for the organization, a vision that is becoming increasingly clear involves less and less classical music concerts. But is this really a recent turn of events as has been portrayed, or is it all part of the long game by the BSO’s CEO and board where Andris’ firing is just the latest in a list of actions over years designed to lead exactly to this moment?
Let’s start a few years back, with the decision to totally redesign our logo and the way the BSO brands itself. We were told that the orchestra needed to spend an incredible amount of money to “update” the image of the orchestra in order to make it “more relevant.” Was that really the reason? And curiously, why was there a need to create a logo specifically for Symphony Hall itself, separate from the orchestra (something that has never been needed before)? If the CEO and board were so concerned with the financial numbers, why was this expensive rebranding greenlit at that time?
It seems clear now that this was all part of the plan to downgrade the importance of the orchestra, and the beginning of the process to elevate the “BSO Inc.” as a venue management corporation (the reason for the Hall logo), at the expense of the 145-year classical orchestral music mission of the orchestra. The resulting logos have been almost universally panned, but they accomplished getting the name of the music director out of the logo, probably the real reason of the redesign (years ahead of the current situation).

Following that was the idea that the hall needed to be “refreshed” with an expensive “new look” for the hall. But after it was finished, an alternative reason became clear when it was discovered that every one of the displays that detailed the history of the orchestra was removed from the hallways and lobby areas. A bust of Arthur Fiedler was gone; portraits of previous music directors disappeared from the 2nd floor intermission bar and break room; founder Henry Higginson’s portrait was moved out of the main lobby area; displays that tied the history of the orchestra to repertoire in the current season were all taken out (much to the disbelief of both our archive department and our volunteer tour guides who now have nothing to reference for the visiting public tourists). Did the hall really need a refresh, or was it all part of the plan to purge it of references to the orchestra?

Subsequenlty, were told that a new software was going to be implemented to run the organization, replacing the long-time OPAS software, which was designed specifically to run orchestras, and used by orchestras around the country. The artistic staff and the musicians in the library were not consulted on this change (we would have been against it)—it came as a complete surprise. It was to be replaced with software designed specifically for VENUE MANAGEMENT (currently being used by Carnegie Hall, which does not manage or run an orchestra). Why was this very expensive decision made to completely change how the organization operates?
It soon became very clear that the new software was not only completely inadequate for running an orchestra, but was also completely unworkable for personnel, for the library, for the Tanglewood Music Center and for the archives. It also became apparent that a planned six-month timeline to switch from one software to another was not even remotely possible, and here we are, over 2 years later, licensing and running two complete and very expensive software systems simultaneously, unable to switch to the new one until, finally, this September. (It will only be usable going forward due to the heroic efforts of BSO staffers and musicians in the library, who spent probably over a hundred hours in Zoom meetings with the software developers intricately detailing what their software needed to do and testing every single update to see if things were improving. The BSO even had to hire an additional staffer whose sole purpose was to work with the programmers to get this software to a workable condition, and yet, we have still not been able to get every function as needed. And what of the online archive search feature of our website (“Henry”) which is populated with information from OPAS? Is eliminating OPAS just another way to erase our history?
If our finances are so bad, why was this totally unnecessary change of software needed? What is the justification for paying ongoing expensive licensing fees for software that doesn’t meet our needs? Could this be part of the long-term plan to elevate the venue, and downgrade the orchestra, no matter the cost, for the “new vision” for the organization which could entail renting the symphony hall (and the Tanglewood venues) out from under the feet of the orchestra? It all seems part of the long game.

And when the CEO “needed” an expensive redecorating of his office in the middle of what is being sold to us as a financial crisis, why was that greenlit? In a building where space is at a premium, why were two office spaces directly outside of the CEO’s office completely removed when a waiting area already existed? Could it have been that workers in those spaces were uncomfortably close, within earshot of the “unique” management style of our CEO, which has been driving away longtime staffers who have institutional knowledge of the organization, once again erasing the history of the orchestra?

All of these highly expensive moves seem designed to manufacture the situation we are currently in, where we are being told that the current numbers are “unsustainable.” Is Andris Nelsons really the cause of this, or just the convenient fall guy for the plan all along?
* *
And now the public is being sold the story that the orchestra isn’t inclusive enough, despite a healthy record of performances in recent years of works by women, black and immigrant composers, and composers of multiple nationalities. The management hadn’t seemed concerned about this until very recently, when this suddenly became a talking point in their public campaign against the orchestra. I can tell you from personal experience that I have been campaigning for several years now for the BSO to release discs (and streaming) filled with recordings of our already-existing performances of works by women and black composers. I even went through the repertoire of recent performances and made a list of likely candidates. There were more than enough great options to release the equivalent of several discs, even while still being choosy to pick only the best repertoire. The only response I heard from the CEO was a dismissive “will it make money?” even though it is well known that classical music recordings rarely make money. Recordings are made to raise the visibility of the orchestra, to show our quality and versatility and hopefully spur future ticket sales. (And they provide a rich legacy for this storied institution.) This would help demonstrate our inclusivity, but our CEO didn’t seem at all concerned with that.
I have even been campaigning for a Juneteenth concert for the past couple of years, something many orchestras already do. This would fall comfortably into a sixth week of the pops season (a week we thought was only temporarily lost during the pandemic, but has yet to return). If the management is concerned with adding pops concerts, this would be a prime place to add back, without displacing any classical concerts. Once again, the suggestion was met with silence. But our CEO feels comfortable in publicly trashing our organization with charges of not being inclusive? Who is the one who is not receptive to such suggestions?
What he really seems to mean by “inclusivity” is replacing many orchestral dates with other non-classical music. The CEO and the board don’t seem to want to work hard enough to support the full schedule of one of the longest-existing world-class orchestras in the United States (the job they signed up to do), so it seems they are just giving up. It makes one question their commitment to classical music.

The events since March seem to be only the latest events in their long-term plan, years in the making, designed to exactly lead us to this point. But make no mistake, if we continue along this path with a management that is working so hard against the success of the orchestra in deference to their new desire to concentrate on venue management and being a presenting corporation, then the board is making the choice that the Boston Symphony is to no longer be a world-class orchestra, and the 145 years of quality and commitment to classical music will be set aside and forgotten for the “new vision” to glorify the corporation over the musicians of the orchestra.

The theme we're going for is a short progression through various composers over the centuries.
Unfortunately, as the weakest player in the group, I have to be a bit conservative about the difficulty.
Fortunately, I am moderately proficient with MuseScore and can do some of the quartet arranging myself.

I would like to include a female composer or two but I don't know enough classical music to find easy-ish pieces without having to listen through most of their repertoire.
Something more modern from the 1800s and 1900s wouldn't go amiss as well.

So far I have:

• Fantasia No.1, Robert White (1538-1574)
• Quadro Pavane / Galliard, Richard Allison (1570?-1600?)
• Gigue in D P.37, Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706)
• The Four Seasons: Winter (Mvt 2), Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741)
• Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring, J S Bach (1685-1750)
• Piano Sonata Op.13 No.8 Pathetique (Mvt 2), Beethoven (1770-1827)

All suggestions welcome. I suppose I could see what ChatGPT suggests - but I'd rather not, on principle.

What a great piece of music

I’m playing my first ever solo recital in NYC tomorrow evening (July 22, 2026) at Tishman Auditorium in Greenwich Village, 7pm

Tickets are free and the recital includes music by William Grant Still, Claude Debussy, Gabriel Fauré and Robert Schumann. If you’ve got a free evening I’d be honored if you stopped by!