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.

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?

I'm listening to Beethoven's 1st & 2nd (Karajan 1962 recording) and I'm noticing that there is a lot of those noises on the recording. For me, they somewhat take away from my enjoyment of the piece - kind of like listening to a vinyl that has a lot of popping/static noises. You really hear them in the quieter parts of the recording, and for me it's pretty distracting.

Does this bother anyone else? Do you go out of your way to find recordings with less of these noises present? Are there any orchestras that are known to have very clean recordings of their works?

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?

Any Opera Fans out there?

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

Just wondering if any of them made it....

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!

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.

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?

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!

I am currently trying to identify the voices in fugue No. 8 from Czerny's Op. 400 before playing it. The images below show what I have so far (bass: red, tenor: green, alto: blue, soprano: yellow).

Is what I have so far correct? I honestly don't know too much about fugues.

More importantly, what are the voices in measures 33-39? Pay attention to the notes circled in brown (are they some sort of fifth voice?).

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

Hello! As the title suggests I’m looking for something beautiful, ethereal, and growing to walk down the aisle to. Violin and Cello in an outdoor setting in Europe.

Songs I like but either find tricky to walk to / the obvious queue in for bride to start down the aisle
- air on a g string
- Jupiter
- rhapsody on a theme Paganini
- flower duet

I’m trying to avoid the obvious wedding marches as I want something that feels unique to us on the day

Thank you so much experts!!

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

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 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 do you think of this AI composition?

I believe that in an ideal world, traditional live performers wouldn’t exist. Instead, they would be replaced by a new class of musician: "interpreters." An interpreter’s sole role is to translate notes on sheet music into refined sonic structures to broadcast a profound vision of a work. This way, the only measuring stick for a musician's worth is the depth and nuance of their creative vision, not their physical dexterity.

Why force musicians to sink decades into mastering physical instrumental technique just to avoid mistakes under the high-pressure environment of a stage? In my ideal world, like painter placing deliberate brushstrokes on a canvas, an interpreter’s job should be to meticulously calibrate every single note by adjusting timbre, volume, pitch, micro-dynamics, and timing to perfectly align with their creative vision.

In this paradigm, the primary instrument isn't a violin or a piano. Instead, it's a highly advanced DAW that grants total control over every parameter, with physical instruments existing purely as tools for audio sampling.

Why all of this you ask? Because live performances are inherently plagued by human error, stage fright, poor venue acoustics, and intonation slips. Studio-driven interpretation ensures the artistic vision is realized flawlessly every single time through the tiniest of margins. I don't really get why society remains stubbornly obsessed with the athletic spectacle of live execution and physical acrobatics?