Eve has requested Chopin’s Prelude op. 28 / no. 4 – and some Albinoni. (not on the site until now)
Since my father was the ultimate  ‘Chopin freak’ – I probably heard this Prelude many times whilst still in the womb. And many, many more times after exiting! It’s exquisite… and SO Chopin.
Albinoni: His debut on jimsclassicalmusic (A simple oversight Eve) Eventually I’ll have EVERYBODY!
Let’s go with the ‘signature’ Albinoni. We’ve all heard it somewhere (the theme to the movie Gallipoli maybe?) but a great piece of music nonetheless.
I just read something really interesting about Albinoni. Apparently he was very rich and wasn’t much concerned with ‘hanging out’ with other musicians. Too busy being with the wealthy and aristocratic!
These are the sweetest little musical ‘squeaks’ I’ve ever heard!
4 squeaks starting about 4 minutes and 45 seconds in, up to 5:25 It’s a nice piece of music worth listening to anyway. But just dig those squeaks. (it’s the Oboe)
Johann Nepomuk Hummel / Introduction, theme and variations in F major / Allegretto Op. 102
Hummel introduction theme and variations for Oboe and Orchestra Op. 102 Allegretto
“All by Myself” by Eric Carmen. No wonder it was such a smash hit! Based on one of Rachmaninoff’s most rousing and gorgeous themes. (at the time Carmen thought the music was in the public domain … but it wasn’t! He had to come to an arrangement with the Rachmaninoff estate)
Rachmaninoff piano-concerto-no-2-in-c-minor-second movement
Besides the ‘inner prods’ to listen to Classical – which I ignored (*see ABOUT ME on the right); there were a few periods of false starts. One is when I was living in California in the late 70’s where I joined a Classical cassette club that lasted about 6 months – and the other time was way back in those innocent ‘hippie’ days – (during which I participated fully! Woodstock – yes I was there … but by accident!, Haight Ashbury, Greenwich Village, Psychedelic Utopianism etc.) In 1967 … or 68? – maybe 69! (*to quote the axiom: “If you remember the 60’s – you weren’t there”) So true!
Anyway …  I was living near the Ohio State University campus in Columbus Ohio and the other day recalled an incident where I’d planned days ahead to get “high” on LSD … and go to the campus music listening room. And listen to this! I did … about 5 times! There’s no escaping the fact that this is one of the most powerful, beautiful and dynamic pieces of music ever written. BUT – I used to turn it off after the super climax, (a bit over 2 minutes into this First Movement) and play those first couple of minutes again. NOW I realise that the entire first movement is wonderful and worth listening to! ..  And it belongs in the Perfect Music section where it now lives.
UPDATE: As a result of the two comments above (thanks again Taneyev!) – I’ve replaced the “sleeping pianist”! with the master Maurizio Pollini
If you Google stuff like: Greatest Piano pieces or Greatest Piano Compositions; you’ll find a wealth of information. And you’ll almost always find in the list: Beethoven’s Variations on a theme by Diabelli. It’s a really strange story.
This guy Diabelli who wasn’t exactly a shining star in the composition world at the time! – Asked all the “Greats” of the day, to compose some variations on this roughly 1 minute piece. Then he would use the proceeds for charitable donations. (perhaps a forerunner of Bob Geldorf!?)
So what does Beethoven do? He composes 33 Variations on this piddly little theme! (*the critics evaluation of Diabelli’s initial effort range from praise, all the way to this trashing by critic William Kinderman, who says: “Banal, trite, a beer hall waltz”)
(AND you get to listen to bits of Beethoven’s Masterwork)
First we have the original piece by Diabelli, followed by Beethoven. I’ve only included 6 of the 33 variations he did. Afterall … how many “Piano Freaks” are there out there?!
Diabelli theme
Now … here’s what “The Man” – The Big B … did with them. NOTE: Some of the variations are often included in the most difficult to play categorie.
My Dentist yet again! He already knew about my “thing” with Opera (see Opera apology on the Categories list) – but he still urged me to listen to this piece by Faure. My wife loves it and hopefully my sister in law will know it already and give me a pat on the back for posting it!
I’m going to put it in the “Exclusive” Perfect Music section. Any piece that can give you goosebumps after you’ve heard it about a zillion times deserves it! Honestly – when he hits the climax it never fails to bring up a primal rush.
I recently gave a two CD set of Classical music to a friend who wasn’t at all familiar with Classical.
He reported that Dvorak’s Humoresque “got him”
In the whole repertoire of those two CD’s  – including Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Liszt, Chopin, Schumann, Schubert etc. etc.
This is the only piece he mentioned that really moved him! So I went to jimsclassicalmusic.com and found there wasn’t a single Dvorak piece! Now there’s two.
Whilst sitting back having a root canal – my Dentist, Â who turned me on to Hummel (see Hummel under composers) – was playing one of those ‘compilations’. Something like “For meditation and relaxation.”
A piece came up and we both perked up our ears. “This is different … nice – wonder who this is.?”
A break in the spit vacuum and drilling comes and he reports, “It’s Spohr”
Neither of us had heard of him.
I had guessed Mendelssohn or Schumann and my dentist thought it was much later than that. Well I was closer to right! Louis (born Ludwig) Spohr was there when Beethoven was a baby and Mozart was a teenager! Mendelssohn and Schumann were not quite twinkles in the eye yet. But it wasn’t “Later” stuff. Earlier actually.
Here are some snippets from his biography:
Spohr was a noted violinist, and invented the violin chinrest, about 1820. He was also a significant conductor, being one of the first to use a baton and also inventing rehearsal letters, which are placed periodically throughout a piece of sheet music so that a conductor may save time by asking the orchestra or singers to start playing “from letter C”, for example). Spohr’s best works are his wistful, elegiac minor-mode first movements, hailed by many of his contemporaries as quintessentially Romantic and inherited by Mendelssohn; his deft scherzos whose influence was felt as late as Brahms; his expressive slow movementswith their chromatic alterations which, on occasion, become cloyingly sentimental; and his light-hearted finales which are able to avoid the trap of trivial thematic material.[3]
The ‘wistful, elegiac, and cloyingly sentimental’ bits get me … because sometimes cloyingly sentimental, elegiac and wistful …Â can come across as just plain moving! Like in this piece.
Thanks to a comment by Jess (see “Almost Perfect Music” on the right and look in comments) We now have some Schubert! It was quite an oversight on my part since I’ve plenty of his works; and the fact that Liszt said he was ‘the most poetic of them all’ (that’s how I remember the quote of Liszt’s on Schubert) Passionate, poetic and emotionally stimulating me says!
Schubert’s Impromptu D 899 no. 3 Andante
from a famous series of songs, played here on guitar
Schwanengesang, D 957 no. 4 Standchen
Schubert’s piano sonata b-flat-major-d960 second movement
I didn’t know anything about Johann Nepomuk Hummel until my Dentist mentioned him the other day. My dentist is a Classical Music buff and I’d given him a 2 volume CD Set titled: In the Dentist Chair:
(It was all the music I thought folks might like to hear midst the trauma of drilling and vacuuming spit!)
As a result I’ve been on a Hummel Hunt.
At first it was like listening to a student of Mozart (as he was!) – but the more I listened and researched, the more I realised he was an accomplished and important composer in his own right. He’s one of those who went out of fashion shortly after they died, and are making a “Comeback” as I type.
The Great composers he actually ‘hung out’ with, and/or influenced by teaching them is amazing. Then if you add the composers who taught or influenced him … you come up with a Who’s Who of the “Classical to Romantic Bridge Period.”
Beethoven, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Haydn, Czerny, Liszt, Schumann, Schubert and the list goes on.
Here’s to a Hummel comeback! Next time you hear of a Hummel concert in your area – GO!
Later – P.S. – just found this on a music site: Historians tell us that pianist and composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel was spoken of in the same breath as Mozart and Beethoven in 1820 — but not for long…
ANOTHER “Underdog” Luigi Cherubini (1760-1842) Italian composer who spent most of his working life in France.
Talk about being cheated out of fame and posthumous recognition!!! Just read what was said about him … by “Them” – back then! And then listen to a movement from that vocal piece “They” raved about.
Posterity has a habit of elevating the obscure and neglecting the famous. Thus it is that Cherubini, hailed by Beethoven as ‘the greatest living composer’, is today often forgotten; ‘If I were to write a Requiem, Cherubini’s would be my only model’, Beethoven continued and the work was performed at his funeral in 1827. Schumann’s opinion was that it was ‘without equal in the world’. Berlioz considered that ‘the decrescendo in the Agnus Dei surpasses everything that has ever been written of the kind’.
