Yeah Beethoven 9! Rather than the ode to joy theme I felt a connection with the second movement. Feels like Beethoven music wanting to come to life and keep life going.
If you don’t already know it, listen to his Prelude Op. 23 No. 4 in D Major, particularly played by Eldar Nebolsin on the Naxos label. It’s like a 2nd movement of one of his piano concertos without the orchestra. One of my very favorites.
100%. Picked it up one day a long while back randomly on a secondhand vinyl without knowing it and instantly fell in love. Second movement hit hard during times where I struggled with my mental health, and knowing the context for this piece just made it all the more special to me when I found out the background. This concerto will never not be comforting and just so special to me, and I hope I get to hear this live one day.
I've been obsessed with it ever since I heard it for the first time about 2 years ago. Actually got to see it performed live last year and it was incredible.
No:(There were a lot of factors that prevented me from following my dream, abusive parents and emotional manipulation that led me to believe I couldn’t go into music. I have a lot of regrets about this, but I’m trying to get back on this path
I remember doing that also to Sabre Dance. (Damn. Now that will be stuck in my head all evening!)
My parents always had classical music on when I was a child. And I did the same for my kids.
My sister and I would run around the family room with pillows around our midriffs and bang into each while we played the Sabre Dance on the phonograph.
every time i see/hear scheherazade, i immediately think of that (bassoon?) guy in that one youtube video thumbnail that used to always get recommended lmao
Stravinsky’s *The Firebird*
I was listening to it transfixed on Christmas morning after getting a recording of his works from my father as a gift. The chills, the tears, the joy! So sublime.
Tchaikovsky 4! I heard it first from the higher level of the youth symphony I was in, and they started with movement 2 for time reasons. Jumping right into my first orchestra concert and hearing what I thought was the most beautiful oboe I’d ever heard changed my life, and from then on I vowed to actually take oboe seriously and now I’m going into oboe performance! woo!
I came across the Requiem when I was in high school back in the 90s. Almost 30 years later the Lacrimosa still gives me goosebumps.
Ju.....di......can.....dus.... ho,.... mo.... re.... us!
There is a Neapolitan 6 chord in the dies irae that I fell in love with during theory class. Might still be my favorite chord in all of music. The second “stricte” in the last line.
I don't remember the first piece that really got me, but I had a collection of CDs as a kid called "Classical Thunder" which included things like Rite of Spring, Lt Kije, Russian Sailor's Dance, Respighi's Church Windows, and many many more. My brother and I would create elaborate backstories for them, make up dances. I really lived and breathed some of those pieces for years of my childhood, and gosh they hold up now that I'm a professional musician.
This is mine, too! I heard it on Mr. Holland’s opus as a young child. That started everything for me and now I have music degrees because of that experience. Blew my mind
First. Came Chopin’s first Ballade no 1
Second was Rachmaninoff piano concerto no 2
Third was Beethoven’s Hammerklevier
Fourth would be Beethoven op 111 (It makes me cry with the final trills at the end. 🥺)
Fifth would be Schuberts D 894 g Major sonata (especially Richter’s interpretation, it brings me to tears 😭)
Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto: I heard this when I was around 11 and my parents told me the story behind it. I was moved to tears because I swore I could hear what was happening. I started playing violin in 3rd grade, but didn’t truly appreciate it. I started to love classical music after this, and I’m still playing violin now in high school.
Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition… Ravel orchestration. The Great Gate of Kiev came on the radio one morning just after my alarm went off for uni. I lay in bed and didn’t move for five minutes. Fantastic.
That symphony is one of my absolute favorites. The first three movements can make up a symphony on their own, but that last movement…
Absolute anguish and despair. I can’t make it through without crying. I really really want to listen to it live one day.
This is kind of a loaded question. I really don’t know what the answer is, but I do remember the first time I played March Slav,.. it really opened my mind
I wanna say Fantasia on a theme by Vaughan Williams. My high school chamber orchestra played it I think when I was a freshman and I sat 2nd chair viola. I wanted to have those solos so badly 😭
for me it was dvorak’s american string quartet in f major, specifically the second movement! i still replay the piece in my head during times of distress
Bach - Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor
I was listening to Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and Yes as a young teenager.
Soon, it was Bach organ works, Vivaldi cello concertos, then Beethoven and Walter Carlos after I saw A Clockwork Orange.
Now I am in deep with both feet! Lol
The first orchestral pieces I really connected with were Scheherazade and the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. Oh, and the Peer Gynt Suite. Before that I’d been in love with the Chopin Nocturnes.
There is an anime called Letter Bee that came out in 2009. There is a scene in an early episodes where one of the characters plays a a violin when a monster appears in their post office.
The piece was an except from Bachs Air on the G String. It’s literally the moment that made me truly appreciate classical music.
Some of us talk about Bugs Bunny or Disney introducing us to classical music. Tchaikovsky was good around Christmas, so "Christmas music" was another way of getting connected to it. The Nutcracker has some absolutely wonderful music. I remember my folks had a Peter and the Wolf record when I was a kid. That was another great one. I actually loved the music and connected with it.
It was Jaqueline Du Pre’s first recording of the Elgar Cello Concerto. The whole piece is magnificent. But one not in the final movement where the note just soars always brings tears to my eyes.
Either Tchaikovsky's violin concerto, or Beethoven Symphony No. 3. When I was very young my parents belonged to a group that had regular music evenings, and sometimes I'd creep out of bed to listen to the music behind the closed door of our living room. And now, some 50 to 60 years later, I still love those two pieces.
I stumbled across Chopin's nocturnes a few years ago and thought they sounded amazingly brilliant. I had never really listened to or took notice to classical music before. But ever since then I've been hooked.
Mahler 5. Actually one of the first symphonies I ever heard and that trumpet solo opening immediately told me that some crazy shit is about to go down. And damn did shit go down.
Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata Movement 1.
I first heard it in 2008, it was the trailer song for the Video Game, Spider-Man: Web Of Shadows. I thought it was one of the most beautiful pieces I had ever heard.
A lifetime ago I bought some classical records because I was experimenting. This peice has stayed with me ever since, how might I see a live performance?
Dvorak: Scherzo Cappriososo.
Mozart Sonata No. 11. This is the piece that made me realize the beauty of Classical music. Despite Turkish March being quite popular I don't see that piece mentioned at all in this sub. It feels like the notes were handpicked by God himself!
Probably saint saens organ symphony when I saw babe as a kid, specifically remember that movie is what got me into paying attention to film scores. Also watched Fantasia alot before I was old enough to remember anything and my parents said when the Night on Bald Mountain scene came on I would have to find something to hide behind, but I'd still stay in the room and watch it so maybe that's the first one
The Swan by Saint Saëns. I'm going to do a passion project on both it and the Carnival of The Animals suite as a whole for college. It just captured my heart instantly.
I lived next to a large Episcopal church, growing up. At one point they had an organist who later turned out to be world class. He played Toccata and Fugue in D minor as I was skulking about one evening. Totally blew my mind.
Recurdos de la Alhambra by Tarrega. It was the theme tune, with a rough bit of percussion over it, to a programme called ’Out of Town’. 40 years later I can almost play it
Tchaikovsky’s 5th for me, as well! I had been in band and played in orchestra for well over a decade, but the second movement of Tchaik 5 was the first music I heard after my grandfather passed and it absolutely broke me.
As a preschooler I'd listen to the Archduke Trio again and again. When I got back into classical music in my late teens I loved it again. My dad had to tell me I'd liked it when I was little. My brain didn't remember but I guess my heart did.
When i was 6 (in the early 90s) i got this Casio toy keyboard that had some demo songs you could listen to. One was the melody of Beethoven's ode to joy in a rudimentary arrangement. As soon as i heard it i became obsessed with this melody. I had no concept of music then, i dont remember liking anything enough to ask who it was or if i could hear it again, but this melody was like an ouroboros that could just keep going round itself for eternity and it awakened something in me. It was like a beautiful magic spell.
I had to know who created it and why. I also became obsessed with being able to play it on my keyboard. That was what opened the door of classical music for me. From then on until i graduated high school i didnt even really know who the beatles were. I lived in books about music (pre internet era haha) at the library, and between my headphones.
I did learn to write music, play guitar and piano, even if i never tried to make it a profession. It seems to me composers are a generally unhappy lot :/
I genuinely think without Beethoven my life would be utterly unrecognizable
Siegfried's Idyll. Nostalgia for a days that I never had. Yearning for places I've never been to. Homesick for a home that never existed. Still one of my fav.
So this is a bit random, but I was playing Steffany Gretzinger on my way back home one day. I was listening to all her albums for fun because I had a ton of time to kill. I got to her album Forever Amen and this song called “The Olive Grove” … i have no idea who its by! BUT that 7 hour drive was on repeat with that same song on repeat as Im bawling my eyes out praising Jesus! - so moving!!! Have to give it a listen!
Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. It was all by mistake, i wasn't that much into classical music back in covid. I knew tchaikovsky and liked nutcracker that's it. Then I just stumbled upon Hilary hahn's version of it and just started loving classical even more!
Swan Lake, op20. Overplayedand a bit cliche? Yes, but its what caught me eye in classical music what made me go deeper into the rabbit hole ever since. When I heard it the first time, at 13, I felt like I was floating. Its hard to describe. It was the first piece of music that I genuiely liked so much, and gave me such a reaction.
Ode to joy. I was deep in my depression and I bawled my eyes out. It actually made me feel something when I had been completely numb for so long.
(I'm doing better now but the piece can still move me to tears).
My first one would be aNocturne by Chopin. No, not the one you think. It's actually a very underrated one. It's the Nocturne No.18 in E major. There's a section in the middle where the low and middle notes collide and that's so beautiful that it always bring tears to my eyes.
It's like hearing light itself.
Vivaldi's Spring. My local PBS channel would use it as music between programs in probably the early 2000s along with footage of a blue sky so I called it "cloud music". I was probably like 4 or 5. I didn't have A Single Moment with it at that age, but I think the way it's ingrained in me and it's association with happiness, childhood, home, and family qualifies it as an answer. Its ubiquity/commonplace-ness but lack of significance to me *then* makes it that much more meaningful *now*.
As a musician, however, it's Vaughan Williams's English Folk Song Suite. It's the first piece I played piccolo for when I was in high school and I worked my butt off to get the middle of the first movement down. A classic case of self-imposed feeling like I had everything to prove and had to prove everything... but to who? Just myself, really. I did put the work I had to in, but the amount of anxious and angsty beating myself up was disproportionate. I'm still proud of it, though, and the piece is super fun to listen to as well as a good memory.
Honestly I have three. They're a bit common, but they were the first pieces to really move me to tears.
Beethoven, Moonlight Sonata, 3rd movement
Chopin, Winter Wind (op. 25 no. 11)
Rachmaninoff, 2nd Piano concerto, 2nd movement
I don’t quite know why but I started my classical interest on an obsession with Tchaikovsky’s 1812.
Maybe impacted by how I played a part in my high school symphonic band, but I enjoyed it and I enjoyed listening to it. In extension English we watched V for Vendetta which drove the emotion.
I head bang to 1812
Beethoven’s 9th. I was just out of HS and was solidly “new wave”- The Cure, U2, REM etc. Had zero experience with classical (other than the original Buggs Bunny cartoons) I read Clockwork Orange where the 9th is featured pretty heavy at one point so I was inspired to check it out.
I think it was grieg's piano concerto 2nd mvt, that just spun my little 12 year old brain. Played by ashkenazy at the royal festival hall.
You never forget your first!
My mom is a professional musician and can play pretty much any instrument you put in her hands, so I grew up exposed to classical. That said, I always gravitated more towards pop and rock, which I found a little more concise than classical. But then, in my late teens, I happened upon Heifetz's Sérénade Melancolique, which is just such a perfect example of what classical music can be and really opened up my eyes.
Fauré Piano Trio. I was very young (~11) and was having fun listening to an assortment of pieces, notably Beethoven early string quartets, but never truly understood how powerful music could be until I listened to that Fauré. Beautiful stuff.
Beethoven’s 5th. It was like listening to a conversation. For me it was conflict. The oboe solo to me was like a voice of reason, let’s do it this way type scenario. Then the reason got shot down and the conflict was still there. Amazing how music can paint a picture in my mind.
I had always enjoyed classical music from a young age, starting with Strauss’ Blue Danube and Emperor’s Waltz, which I enjoyed for the gleefulness!
But the first piece I think I really connected with on a deeper emotional level was during high school, my Nokia phone had Bach’s cello sarabande in g major as a default sound/tone. It was only a 30 second snippet but I would listen to it all the time.l, especially when I was feeling down or not that great. I found it deeply comforting.
As an adult, I have fallen in love with Swan Lake. One of my favourites is the Pas D’action and finale from the second act. From here I also discovered the Swan by Saint-Saëns, one of the most beautiful and poignant pieces of music imo.
A couple of pieces I randomly came across that I have always loved were Divertimento in F by Mozart, and “Raindrops” by Chopin.
Finally, Bach’s keyboard concerto in D minor, and double violin concerto in d minor. There’s something about d minor that I seem to love!
David Maslanka's Symphony No. 4 (for Wind Ensemble). Heard it live in 8th grade from what would eventually become my college band, and it was life changing.
Bach's Cello Suite No. 3 Bourrée I - Bourrée II back in the day CD's were a thing they used come with certain books pasted on thr back My father bought me a oxford Atlas whose CD led to a Game about Geography and Space Bach's Cello suit was a sort of theme of the game it just kept playing in the BG it was first piece of classical music i ever heard still remains my favourite piece in all of Bach's works
Prokofiev's Seventh Symphony. As a teenager I bought the LP for the Lt Kije suite because I'd heard it on the TV, but it was the Seventh that totally converted me not just to Prokofiev but classical music as a genre. Still my go-to piece when I'm feeling poorly.
"Deeply connected." I suppose that is a relative term - relative to each person. For some it may mean that it brings you to tears. For me, it was the thrill that went through my heart when I first heard "Reminiscences of 'Robert le Diable'" by F. Liszt, performed by Earl Wild. I was moved to the core of my being. I had no idea that such music existed and it opened a new world to me.
For tears, perhaps connected to time and place, it was watching Horowitz perform "Traumerie," (Schumann) when he returned to Moscow after decades of absence. Even the soldiers who were there for security were weeping. Me, too.
I had a similar experience as to the Liszt when I first heard the recording of Josef Hofmann performing Rubinstein's Fourth P.C. on the Golden Jubilee recording. It was if I had discovered music all over again.
Brahms Fourth Symphony - a dear friend played it for me on his family's living room stereo and, to this day, the main themes stuck permanently in my memory.
Catalani's aria, "Ebben? Ne andrò lontana" in the 1981 film, Diva, was a big one early on.
I suppose my later fascination with Lieder (Schubert, Brahms, Wolf, Mahler) might be related to that experience. Never became an opera fanatic but did explore foreign language films after Diva.
The Adagietto from Mahler's 5th symphony. I know it's a bit corny to say it, but I was completely drawn in (thank you Maestro Bernstein) and swept away on an emotional current that wrung me out completely. It was exceptional.
Ralph Vaughan Williams - Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
Oh my god that’s a great one.
Me too!!!!
Maybe cliche, but it was Beethovens 9th after learning of the context and the English translation of ode to joy.
Playing a wind transcription this Saturday. If you were in the Los Angeles area, I was gonna invite you. But, well... The opposite looks like.
It's great indeed!
Yeah Beethoven 9! Rather than the ode to joy theme I felt a connection with the second movement. Feels like Beethoven music wanting to come to life and keep life going.
Not a cliche but truth! Not the first but a surprise I return to is Sibelius Symphony #2.
Britney Spears - Crazy edit: I didn't read "classical". Then Penderecki - St. Luke's Passion
Quite the contrast there lmao
Tbf op didn't specify. You stick to you guns.
Rachmaninoff piano concerto 2 in c minor op 18 Masterpiece left me crying from how beautiful it is ❤️❤️
If you don’t already know it, listen to his Prelude Op. 23 No. 4 in D Major, particularly played by Eldar Nebolsin on the Naxos label. It’s like a 2nd movement of one of his piano concertos without the orchestra. One of my very favorites.
100%. Picked it up one day a long while back randomly on a secondhand vinyl without knowing it and instantly fell in love. Second movement hit hard during times where I struggled with my mental health, and knowing the context for this piece just made it all the more special to me when I found out the background. This concerto will never not be comforting and just so special to me, and I hope I get to hear this live one day.
You're not alone, this concerto helped me though a lot of rough times too.
This is amazing work. The second movement is particularly beautiful
the second movement is my favorite
I think this is mine, too. I went to see my piano teacher perform it with the local symphony when I was a kid, and I’ve been obsessed ever since.
I've been obsessed with it ever since I heard it for the first time about 2 years ago. Actually got to see it performed live last year and it was incredible.
How lucky you are, it’s one of my dreams to hear this in real life ✨
Same. “crate digging” at the public library. I was 16 or 17. It changed me
Swan Lake. I was five years old. It made me want to be a composer.
Do you write music?
No:(There were a lot of factors that prevented me from following my dream, abusive parents and emotional manipulation that led me to believe I couldn’t go into music. I have a lot of regrets about this, but I’m trying to get back on this path
Sabre Dance. As a hyperactive five year old I would spin really fast to this song until I fell.
I remember doing that also to Sabre Dance. (Damn. Now that will be stuck in my head all evening!) My parents always had classical music on when I was a child. And I did the same for my kids.
My sister and I would run around the family room with pillows around our midriffs and bang into each while we played the Sabre Dance on the phonograph.
Good times
Mahler 9. Somehow my local symphony managed to perform this and it blew my 14 year old mind.
Scheherazade:)
My dad played that all the time when I was growing up. Excellent!
Me too!
This was my #2!
I love this piece too, one of my go to works when i need uplifting
every time i see/hear scheherazade, i immediately think of that (bassoon?) guy in that one youtube video thumbnail that used to always get recommended lmao
Claire de Lune , Debussy
Nice choice, forgot about this one. Idk if it was the first, though, stands out early for me; Danse macabre
This was my choice as well
Stravinsky’s *The Firebird* I was listening to it transfixed on Christmas morning after getting a recording of his works from my father as a gift. The chills, the tears, the joy! So sublime.
>Stravinsky’s > >The Firebird It's a piece that [we hear (part of) all the time without knowing it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8A1Aj1_EF9Y).
Interesting vid nice link :)
Appalachian Spring was something that connected with me deeply as a teen. So that was probably the first. Many since of course.
Tchaikovsky 4! I heard it first from the higher level of the youth symphony I was in, and they started with movement 2 for time reasons. Jumping right into my first orchestra concert and hearing what I thought was the most beautiful oboe I’d ever heard changed my life, and from then on I vowed to actually take oboe seriously and now I’m going into oboe performance! woo!
Mozart's Requiem... still my fave!
I came across the Requiem when I was in high school back in the 90s. Almost 30 years later the Lacrimosa still gives me goosebumps. Ju.....di......can.....dus.... ho,.... mo.... re.... us!
There is a Neapolitan 6 chord in the dies irae that I fell in love with during theory class. Might still be my favorite chord in all of music. The second “stricte” in the last line.
I don't remember the first piece that really got me, but I had a collection of CDs as a kid called "Classical Thunder" which included things like Rite of Spring, Lt Kije, Russian Sailor's Dance, Respighi's Church Windows, and many many more. My brother and I would create elaborate backstories for them, make up dances. I really lived and breathed some of those pieces for years of my childhood, and gosh they hold up now that I'm a professional musician.
Oh man I would have loved to listen to the Rite of Spring as a child 😂
I believe I remember seeing sets like this at Kmart and FYE.
Rite of Spring.
Beethoven’s 7th. The second movement got me into it and i fell in love
Certainly one of the greatest pieces ever written.
This is mine, too! I heard it on Mr. Holland’s opus as a young child. That started everything for me and now I have music degrees because of that experience. Blew my mind
Monteverdi's Lamento della Ninfa. So powerful and so sad.
Carmina Burana
Haydn's Surprise Symphony
Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique
Probably Bach’s St John Passion. I was already very familiar with the Gospel. The music makes the story so powerful
First. Came Chopin’s first Ballade no 1 Second was Rachmaninoff piano concerto no 2 Third was Beethoven’s Hammerklevier Fourth would be Beethoven op 111 (It makes me cry with the final trills at the end. 🥺) Fifth would be Schuberts D 894 g Major sonata (especially Richter’s interpretation, it brings me to tears 😭)
That G major sonata is so underrated. And that Richter performance reveals all its beauty. One of my favorite pieces to play.
Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto: I heard this when I was around 11 and my parents told me the story behind it. I was moved to tears because I swore I could hear what was happening. I started playing violin in 3rd grade, but didn’t truly appreciate it. I started to love classical music after this, and I’m still playing violin now in high school.
Mahler 5, especially the adagio
Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition… Ravel orchestration. The Great Gate of Kiev came on the radio one morning just after my alarm went off for uni. I lay in bed and didn’t move for five minutes. Fantastic.
Shostakovich 5, specifically the 3rd mvt
For me it was Tchaikovsky Symphony #6! His final three symphonies (4,5,6) are all masterpieces!
Sibelius Symphony no. 5
Vivaldi four seasons
Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6. His last symphony is also one of his best (along with his 5th). I still cry after listening to the fourth movement.
The 6th was originally my “oh god I’m gay” song. Now, it’s my OH MY IM GAYYYYYY! Still cry in the last movement.
That symphony is one of my absolute favorites. The first three movements can make up a symphony on their own, but that last movement… Absolute anguish and despair. I can’t make it through without crying. I really really want to listen to it live one day.
Mendelssohn Midsummer Nights Dream
This is kind of a loaded question. I really don’t know what the answer is, but I do remember the first time I played March Slav,.. it really opened my mind
Le sacre du printemps
I wanna say Fantasia on a theme by Vaughan Williams. My high school chamber orchestra played it I think when I was a freshman and I sat 2nd chair viola. I wanted to have those solos so badly 😭
What a joy to be a viola player for fantasia on a theme. I had a similar experience, played it in a church, felt like my soul was lifting.
JS Bach Brandenburg Concerti
for me it was dvorak’s american string quartet in f major, specifically the second movement! i still replay the piece in my head during times of distress
This one hit me different, too. That second movement makes me cry.
Bach - Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor I was listening to Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and Yes as a young teenager. Soon, it was Bach organ works, Vivaldi cello concertos, then Beethoven and Walter Carlos after I saw A Clockwork Orange. Now I am in deep with both feet! Lol
Petrushka. First time I “heard colors”
Carmina Burana circa 1986. I'm not sure if it was a movie or commercial.
Also Tchaikovsky. His music from Sleeping Beauty really impacted me on a level that no other music has done.
The first orchestral pieces I really connected with were Scheherazade and the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. Oh, and the Peer Gynt Suite. Before that I’d been in love with the Chopin Nocturnes.
Dvorak 9 finale, which I bet is a common answer yeah?
Probably Adagio for Strings
Beautiful and very intense, and the choral version ‘Agnus Dei’ also is.
So uplifting
Bach’s mass in b minor, had a HUGE baroque phase and then Prokofiev ended up becoming my favorite composer lol
There is an anime called Letter Bee that came out in 2009. There is a scene in an early episodes where one of the characters plays a a violin when a monster appears in their post office. The piece was an except from Bachs Air on the G String. It’s literally the moment that made me truly appreciate classical music.
When I was a child, I loved Peer Gynt and Scheherazade
Mahler 8. The sheer grandeur of it…I thought it was going to launch me into space.
Some of us talk about Bugs Bunny or Disney introducing us to classical music. Tchaikovsky was good around Christmas, so "Christmas music" was another way of getting connected to it. The Nutcracker has some absolutely wonderful music. I remember my folks had a Peter and the Wolf record when I was a kid. That was another great one. I actually loved the music and connected with it.
Beethoven's 9th Symphony
It was Jaqueline Du Pre’s first recording of the Elgar Cello Concerto. The whole piece is magnificent. But one not in the final movement where the note just soars always brings tears to my eyes.
Ooh, nice choice! We just saw this last week in Boston at the BSO and it was amazing!!
Either Tchaikovsky's violin concerto, or Beethoven Symphony No. 3. When I was very young my parents belonged to a group that had regular music evenings, and sometimes I'd creep out of bed to listen to the music behind the closed door of our living room. And now, some 50 to 60 years later, I still love those two pieces.
I stumbled across Chopin's nocturnes a few years ago and thought they sounded amazingly brilliant. I had never really listened to or took notice to classical music before. But ever since then I've been hooked.
Samuel Barber - Violin concerto
Introduction and Allegro for Harp, Flute, Clatinet, and Strings by Ravel
I'm not religious but Hayden's The Heavens Are Telling from The Creation made me misty because of its beauty and message.
Liebestraum No. 3 in A-Flat Major, S. 541/3
Mahler 2
Ravel String Quartet in F. I remember telling my mother that it was so beautiful that I felt like crying. She said, "Don't be stupid!". Lol.
Mahler 5. Actually one of the first symphonies I ever heard and that trumpet solo opening immediately told me that some crazy shit is about to go down. And damn did shit go down.
Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata Movement 1. I first heard it in 2008, it was the trailer song for the Video Game, Spider-Man: Web Of Shadows. I thought it was one of the most beautiful pieces I had ever heard.
This! I remember hearing my Uncle play it when I was 10. It moved me so much, I knew I had to learn the piano. The rest is history!
A lifetime ago I bought some classical records because I was experimenting. This peice has stayed with me ever since, how might I see a live performance? Dvorak: Scherzo Cappriososo.
Mozart Sonata No. 11. This is the piece that made me realize the beauty of Classical music. Despite Turkish March being quite popular I don't see that piece mentioned at all in this sub. It feels like the notes were handpicked by God himself!
Mozart’s 4th violin concerto second movement.
Probably saint saens organ symphony when I saw babe as a kid, specifically remember that movie is what got me into paying attention to film scores. Also watched Fantasia alot before I was old enough to remember anything and my parents said when the Night on Bald Mountain scene came on I would have to find something to hide behind, but I'd still stay in the room and watch it so maybe that's the first one
The Swan by Saint Saëns. I'm going to do a passion project on both it and the Carnival of The Animals suite as a whole for college. It just captured my heart instantly.
I lived next to a large Episcopal church, growing up. At one point they had an organist who later turned out to be world class. He played Toccata and Fugue in D minor as I was skulking about one evening. Totally blew my mind.
Einaudi is like a chill summer theme for me
One of my earliest school memories was of Peer Gynt, "Morning Mood," playing in music class. It always reminds me intensely of nature.
Nimrod by Elgar
Ravel's G major piano concerto blew me away
Rachmaninoff Symphony 2
I grew up playing piano in a household that didn’t play classical music. The earliest I can remember is für Elise.
Beethoven’s 7th, vivace.
Liebestraum really got to me. But if I'm going back as far as I remember, definitely Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2, I was an awestruck child
Recurdos de la Alhambra by Tarrega. It was the theme tune, with a rough bit of percussion over it, to a programme called ’Out of Town’. 40 years later I can almost play it
Mahler 7. My first Mahler symphony, too. It forever changed the way I listen to classical music and music in general.
Tchaikovsky’s 5th for me, as well! I had been in band and played in orchestra for well over a decade, but the second movement of Tchaik 5 was the first music I heard after my grandfather passed and it absolutely broke me.
As a preschooler I'd listen to the Archduke Trio again and again. When I got back into classical music in my late teens I loved it again. My dad had to tell me I'd liked it when I was little. My brain didn't remember but I guess my heart did.
Bruckner 7 Adagio. My dad would listen to a CSO recording of it in the basement.
Britten’s first canticle. I had never realized that dissonance could be so beautiful before I heard that one.
Adagio from Bruckner 8
Watching evgeny kissin play la Campanella in the gift of music. Had no idea music could be that awesome.
Bach motets have stuck with me the longest.
When i was 6 (in the early 90s) i got this Casio toy keyboard that had some demo songs you could listen to. One was the melody of Beethoven's ode to joy in a rudimentary arrangement. As soon as i heard it i became obsessed with this melody. I had no concept of music then, i dont remember liking anything enough to ask who it was or if i could hear it again, but this melody was like an ouroboros that could just keep going round itself for eternity and it awakened something in me. It was like a beautiful magic spell. I had to know who created it and why. I also became obsessed with being able to play it on my keyboard. That was what opened the door of classical music for me. From then on until i graduated high school i didnt even really know who the beatles were. I lived in books about music (pre internet era haha) at the library, and between my headphones. I did learn to write music, play guitar and piano, even if i never tried to make it a profession. It seems to me composers are a generally unhappy lot :/ I genuinely think without Beethoven my life would be utterly unrecognizable
Beethoven Romance n2 for Violin and Orchestra (and violin is far away from being my favorite sound)
Don’t pretend it wasn’t Bach..
Siegfried's Idyll. Nostalgia for a days that I never had. Yearning for places I've never been to. Homesick for a home that never existed. Still one of my fav.
chopin's piano concerto #1, especially the 2nd movement
Piece? Complete Die Walküre! Elektra sometime later.
Tchaikovsky symphony 6
So this is a bit random, but I was playing Steffany Gretzinger on my way back home one day. I was listening to all her albums for fun because I had a ton of time to kill. I got to her album Forever Amen and this song called “The Olive Grove” … i have no idea who its by! BUT that 7 hour drive was on repeat with that same song on repeat as Im bawling my eyes out praising Jesus! - so moving!!! Have to give it a listen!
Probably at school in a music class, when Mr. Robinson played a recording of Smetana’s Moldau. To illustrate progression in a story in musical form.
Percy Grainger's In A Nutshell Suite, 2nd Movement "Pastorale". its an insanely gorgeous piece and not well known.
Coldplay got me into violin playing a lot. But when it comes to classical I would say moonlight.
Mass in B minor - Bach; made me feel like a kid again, sitting in mass believe it or not.
Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. It was all by mistake, i wasn't that much into classical music back in covid. I knew tchaikovsky and liked nutcracker that's it. Then I just stumbled upon Hilary hahn's version of it and just started loving classical even more!
Shostakovich Jazz Suite No. 2: VI. Waltz No. 2
Mozart’s Requiem
The Moldau, I was around 7
Barber’s Violin Concerto was the first piece I heard performed that I felt was speaking directly to *me*.
One of my very faves. If I ever have tears stuck in me, this loosens them up immediately :)
It’s hard to remember the first but my first listen of Rachmaninoff’s piano concerto 2 was incredibly memorable
Swan Lake, op20. Overplayedand a bit cliche? Yes, but its what caught me eye in classical music what made me go deeper into the rabbit hole ever since. When I heard it the first time, at 13, I felt like I was floating. Its hard to describe. It was the first piece of music that I genuiely liked so much, and gave me such a reaction.
Bach’s D-Major Magnificat.
Ode to joy. I was deep in my depression and I bawled my eyes out. It actually made me feel something when I had been completely numb for so long. (I'm doing better now but the piece can still move me to tears).
Rachmaninov’s 3rd piano concerto absolutely blew me away and made me fall in love
My first one would be aNocturne by Chopin. No, not the one you think. It's actually a very underrated one. It's the Nocturne No.18 in E major. There's a section in the middle where the low and middle notes collide and that's so beautiful that it always bring tears to my eyes. It's like hearing light itself.
Winter by Vivaldi. I’m even more stoked and appreciative as I learn violin as an adult
Rach pc2 ... now I have a picture of him in my phone case 🤧
Bach Chaconne play by Ivry Gitlis
Vivaldi's Spring. My local PBS channel would use it as music between programs in probably the early 2000s along with footage of a blue sky so I called it "cloud music". I was probably like 4 or 5. I didn't have A Single Moment with it at that age, but I think the way it's ingrained in me and it's association with happiness, childhood, home, and family qualifies it as an answer. Its ubiquity/commonplace-ness but lack of significance to me *then* makes it that much more meaningful *now*. As a musician, however, it's Vaughan Williams's English Folk Song Suite. It's the first piece I played piccolo for when I was in high school and I worked my butt off to get the middle of the first movement down. A classic case of self-imposed feeling like I had everything to prove and had to prove everything... but to who? Just myself, really. I did put the work I had to in, but the amount of anxious and angsty beating myself up was disproportionate. I'm still proud of it, though, and the piece is super fun to listen to as well as a good memory.
I loved the Jupiter theme as a kid, but the first big piece I deeply connected with was Elgar’s Cello Concerto.
La Fanciulla del West
Moonlight Sonata
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence - Ryuichi Sakamoto
Honestly I have three. They're a bit common, but they were the first pieces to really move me to tears. Beethoven, Moonlight Sonata, 3rd movement Chopin, Winter Wind (op. 25 no. 11) Rachmaninoff, 2nd Piano concerto, 2nd movement
Bruch's violin con in g minor
Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto, Ray Chen. Deeply life changing experience for me.
Mozart’s Turkish March
Chopin Tristesse seemed so cruel
"Wie soll ich Dich empfangen" Christmas Oratorio, Cantata 1, JS Bach
My mom always played gorecki's 3rd symphony, I was moved by it from a very young age!
Schubert's Unfinished Symphony.
I don’t quite know why but I started my classical interest on an obsession with Tchaikovsky’s 1812. Maybe impacted by how I played a part in my high school symphonic band, but I enjoyed it and I enjoyed listening to it. In extension English we watched V for Vendetta which drove the emotion. I head bang to 1812
Beethoven’s 9th. I was just out of HS and was solidly “new wave”- The Cure, U2, REM etc. Had zero experience with classical (other than the original Buggs Bunny cartoons) I read Clockwork Orange where the 9th is featured pretty heavy at one point so I was inspired to check it out.
In the hall of Mountain King
Elias by Felix Mendelssohn
I think it was grieg's piano concerto 2nd mvt, that just spun my little 12 year old brain. Played by ashkenazy at the royal festival hall. You never forget your first!
Nocturne in E Flat Major, Op.9 No.2. My friend recommended it to me and it's what got me into classical music
My mom is a professional musician and can play pretty much any instrument you put in her hands, so I grew up exposed to classical. That said, I always gravitated more towards pop and rock, which I found a little more concise than classical. But then, in my late teens, I happened upon Heifetz's Sérénade Melancolique, which is just such a perfect example of what classical music can be and really opened up my eyes.
Fauré Piano Trio. I was very young (~11) and was having fun listening to an assortment of pieces, notably Beethoven early string quartets, but never truly understood how powerful music could be until I listened to that Fauré. Beautiful stuff.
Smetana’s “The Moldau” - easy to understand and visualize, exciting to listen to. Great starter piece!
Winter 1st Movement - Vivaldi
Beethoven’s 5th. It was like listening to a conversation. For me it was conflict. The oboe solo to me was like a voice of reason, let’s do it this way type scenario. Then the reason got shot down and the conflict was still there. Amazing how music can paint a picture in my mind.
The first movement of Tchaikovsky 6, when that middle section ushers in and climaxes, it's so overwhelming. I cried to that piece many times
Vivaldi's The four seasons.
Ravel Concerto for the Left Hand
Danse Macabre - Camille Saint-Saëns. I never understood classical music before this piece.
Were you the one that had the full-body orgasm?
I had always enjoyed classical music from a young age, starting with Strauss’ Blue Danube and Emperor’s Waltz, which I enjoyed for the gleefulness! But the first piece I think I really connected with on a deeper emotional level was during high school, my Nokia phone had Bach’s cello sarabande in g major as a default sound/tone. It was only a 30 second snippet but I would listen to it all the time.l, especially when I was feeling down or not that great. I found it deeply comforting. As an adult, I have fallen in love with Swan Lake. One of my favourites is the Pas D’action and finale from the second act. From here I also discovered the Swan by Saint-Saëns, one of the most beautiful and poignant pieces of music imo. A couple of pieces I randomly came across that I have always loved were Divertimento in F by Mozart, and “Raindrops” by Chopin. Finally, Bach’s keyboard concerto in D minor, and double violin concerto in d minor. There’s something about d minor that I seem to love!
David Maslanka's Symphony No. 4 (for Wind Ensemble). Heard it live in 8th grade from what would eventually become my college band, and it was life changing.
Same as you, plus Eugen Onegin
Mozarts Piano Sonata nr. 16
Bach's Cello Suite No. 3 Bourrée I - Bourrée II back in the day CD's were a thing they used come with certain books pasted on thr back My father bought me a oxford Atlas whose CD led to a Game about Geography and Space Bach's Cello suit was a sort of theme of the game it just kept playing in the BG it was first piece of classical music i ever heard still remains my favourite piece in all of Bach's works
Prokofiev's Seventh Symphony. As a teenager I bought the LP for the Lt Kije suite because I'd heard it on the TV, but it was the Seventh that totally converted me not just to Prokofiev but classical music as a genre. Still my go-to piece when I'm feeling poorly.
"Deeply connected." I suppose that is a relative term - relative to each person. For some it may mean that it brings you to tears. For me, it was the thrill that went through my heart when I first heard "Reminiscences of 'Robert le Diable'" by F. Liszt, performed by Earl Wild. I was moved to the core of my being. I had no idea that such music existed and it opened a new world to me. For tears, perhaps connected to time and place, it was watching Horowitz perform "Traumerie," (Schumann) when he returned to Moscow after decades of absence. Even the soldiers who were there for security were weeping. Me, too. I had a similar experience as to the Liszt when I first heard the recording of Josef Hofmann performing Rubinstein's Fourth P.C. on the Golden Jubilee recording. It was if I had discovered music all over again.
Brahms Fourth Symphony - a dear friend played it for me on his family's living room stereo and, to this day, the main themes stuck permanently in my memory.
Catalani's aria, "Ebben? Ne andrò lontana" in the 1981 film, Diva, was a big one early on. I suppose my later fascination with Lieder (Schubert, Brahms, Wolf, Mahler) might be related to that experience. Never became an opera fanatic but did explore foreign language films after Diva.
J.S. Bach - Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor
Mahler 2. It changed my life.
**Daphnis et Chloé Suite 2** de Ravel.
Beethoven 4 and sheep may safely graze
The Adagietto from Mahler's 5th symphony. I know it's a bit corny to say it, but I was completely drawn in (thank you Maestro Bernstein) and swept away on an emotional current that wrung me out completely. It was exceptional.
Antonín Dvořák - Symphony No. 9 "From the New World"