Most achingly-beautiful music

Simon & Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water
Dusty Springfield-You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

K D Lang  "Wash Me Clean"

Oh, Lang's "Constant Craving" is another fav.

I'm afraid my selection is from the same pianist.
Liszt - Un Sospiro
Beethoven - Piano Sonata Op.109
Chopin - Nocturne in C sharp Minor Op. Posth.

Pianist - Claudio Arrau.
I have to listen to these pieces alone.

Playing Disraeli Gears this afternoon and decided this song MUST be on the list: Dance The Night Away - Jack Bruce at his finest...

Damien Rice / Lisa Hannigan  "Cold Water

Eva Cassidy   Autumn Leaves    makes me cry. Achingly beautiful....

@slaw ,

Great call.

Thank you sir.

The door which opened to me to the world of classical music by hearing Richard Wagners Siefried’s Funeral (Gotterdammerung). This music was so powerful, dramatic, alot of tension and so achingly beautifully put together, not only that, he introduced new musical nuances to the piece. When I heard it (and I listened mostly to heavy rock at the time) I knew I heard a masterpeice written by a musical genius. As to other ’classical achingly beautiful pieces’ there are to many very good contenders for me to pick second and third choices.

Leonard Cohen.....If It Be Thy Will... the Webb sisters

Lucinda Williams' "West".

Lamentations by Banco de Gaia.

Acquiescence by Banco de Gaia. Also, the same song's Tripswitch Remix.

Everything is Free by Gillian Welch.  A great song about how most artists are left with almost nothing in the age of free downloads.

I'm Not Afraid to Die by Gillian Welch.

April the 14th Part 1 by Gillian Welch, on the live Music from the Revelator album.  If this song doesn't get you, nothing will.

Revelator by Gillian Welch, also on the live album.  Exquisite guitar work by Dave Rawlings.

Coming up for Air by Patty Larkin.  Beautiful.

Make Me a Temple by Yael Illah.  Achingly beautiful is a fitting description.  Nearly everything on this album is like that.

Desert Tranquility by Michael Keck, on the Islam album.  Many beautiful songs on this album.

I've broadened my music horizons in recent years.

My favorite musician is Robert Rich.  I would describe a lot of his music as haunting, such as Beyond Part 1.  Not beautiful, but mesmerizing.  I think of that song as symbolizing a descent into hell or into a human-created hellish world.

Gotta get me some more Gillian Welch!

Here's another, as cosmic as lyrics come. I saw her do it live when she opened for Neil Young on his Greendale tour. What a show!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CywArYObn2U

Emmylou Harris  - The Pearl
This may not be the best version.

Marcin Wasilewski Trio: Austin
Mary Chapin Carpenter: Come on, Come on
New Queens Hall Orchestra: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
 

All the music from Shindler’s List by John Williams! Almost painful to listen too.

Brian Wilson: "God Only Knows" (heard on the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album), "Til I Die" (on their Surf's Up album).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLk6vqaxU1Y 


Listen to that and you will go into the abyss of the heart with a pianist guide playing as if like perfect playing was only child practice...This god is the best pianist I ever listen to...

Ones that move me

Gary Moore, Bathory, Overkill, thin Lizzy, Humble Pie, Venom, Sodom, Jackson Browne.

with several runners up.

Beatles. 

Almost anything by Roberta Flack; but I'll offer "The Impossible Dream" today because her interpretation is so unique. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H24wcLTj0BQ

Lemme know how you feel.

I must admit that the album by Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway has touch me very much indeed... Then I think that you are right for his "uniqueness"...And I am not a fan of "soul" music tough, but genius is genius... My best to you...

Pink Floyd's Great Gig in the Sky on the Dark Side of the Moon

@mahgister 
Thanks 4 the response.

Back in the early 70s I lived right across Pennsylvania Ave. from Mr. Henry’s, in DC, where Roberta Flack used to play a couple years earlier.

Lucky young man!

My roommate worked at Mr. Henry’s, no wait, he just drank at Mr. Henry’s. Roberta Flack sang there in the late 60s.

@geoffkait 

I heard her free concert on the mall in 1971 when I was at GWU. Did you ever go to the Red Lion pub? There was also a pizza place we frequented (if you can call anything they served in DC real pizza - I'm from NJ) but I can't recall the name. It began with an N I think. And a great deli down by Watergate.

Also heard Neil Young at a club in Georgetown. Someplace with a horse in it's name. And then there was the all-night bakery, Kumpits, when we got the munchies late at night.

I don’t recall the name of the Pizza place or the Red Lion. But it was the seventies. What can I tell ya? I also lived a couple blocks down from the Biograph theater on Pennsylvania Ave. on Washington Circle, the one with the statue of some dude on a horse. You’re from Jersey? I’m from Jersey. I was born in NJ.

I generally tend not to have much interest in unorthodox arrangements of familiar music, but I find the following arrangement for cello and piano of Puccini's famous aria "O Mio Babbino Caro," from his opera  "Gianni Schicchi," to be quite beautiful.

The talented young performers are pianist Marnie Laird and cellist Cicely Parnas.  Cicely created the arrangement.

Some may recognize the music from the wonderful 1985 film "A Room with a View," in which the aria was sung by the great Kiri Te Kanawa.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAZ2UUlQvbc

Regards,
-- Al

I love the way that Parnas physically interacts with her instrument. At one point she tosses her hair back to increase the intimacy with her neck.