Classical music for Rockers


I grew up in a non-musical household, so everything I heard was from the radio when my parents weren't listening. I quickly went from AM to FM, and from Pop to the AOR stations in Milwaukee at the time. I was raised (in a sense) on rock and roll radio.

It wasn't till much later that I was introduced to classical music. I have since been adding Bach, Mozart, Tscaikovski, and other to my regular playlist The last two things I bought were Mozart's Requium and Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. I hope I spelled those right.

What I am curious about is if there are others out there with the same experience, and if so: What Classical music are you listening to regularly?
nrchy

Showing 1 response by sean

Wanna hear a weird one ? How about Dave Lombardo ( ex drummer from Slayer and now playing with Fantomas ) playing with a bunch of classically trained musicians covering Vivaldi ??? It can be had on Thirsty Ear Records THI 57066.2 if you are interested. The sound is not bad but the drums are definitely too far up in the mix. Might have been more enjoyable to see how well he could have blended in with the small orchestra rather than listening to him come over the top of them.

Other than that, i found a 20 disc boxed set put out by Delta Entertainment that was pretty interesting. It has mixed selections from 20 different composers, kind of a "greatest hits" for each composer on their own individual discs. The list of composers is kind of a who's who in Classical music i.e. Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Johann Strauss, Wagner, Richard Strauss, Rachmaninoff, Liszt, Ravel, Dvorak, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Grieg and Schumann. While i'm sure that others may think that this left out a few worthy composers, it is none the less a very good introductory to a lot of different styles and performers. If you like what you hear by one specific performer, you can simply pick up individual discs of music written by that artist.

For the "record", i found this at Best Buy a few years back at Christmas time. The twenty discs were something like $45, so it was a real eye / ear opening bargain without breaking the bank for someone like me that was not real "up" on all of these dead guys : )

As a side note, Antony Michaelson of Musical Fidelity did some nice recordings. The best one ( in my opinion ) is titled "Mozart Clarinet Concerto K622 in A Major". While i'm not much of an expert when it comes to ANY type of Classical music, what i hear when listening to this disc is very nice sounding "Chamber music". The other one that i have is titled "Johannes Brahms Clarinet Quintet Opus 115". Audio Advisor used to sell these and may still have a few lying around, but i would not count on it. Sean
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