A lovely piece of piano for the wife

I am afraid i can tell you a lot about seventies rock music,but nowt about classical,and i now have a decent pair of speakers to enjoy,so...................the wife loves the theme tune to Brief Encounter,and we both seem to enjoy romantic piano pieces

any suggestions? nothing too heavy or orchestraI will return the favour if anyone wants to know the best UFO line/up and album

cheers

 

You want romantic piano stuff?

Solo:

Rachmaninov: 24 Preludes (plus the C sharp minor first one)
Chopin: Nocturnes

Orchestral/concerto etc:

Rachmaninov Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini: Especially variation 13 (you'll know when you get to it - the hairs on your neck will go into overdrive) - he inverted the theme and in so doing created something magical.
Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No1: Bit ott but nicely slushy in parts.
Rachmaninov: Concerto No3 - the biggy.

That should give you a good evening's listening.

 

thanks!

I have just read Tones and Grahams excellent guide to classical music,an excellent sticky and much appreciated

there is now many recordings on the shopping list

 

The theme to brief encounter is Rachmaninov's 2nd concerto. It's often paired with his third would be well worth your while getting

 

Seconded. To get even more specific, I believe the theme is just the 2nd movement of the 2nd concerto.

Tchaikovsky 1st piano concerto is good and has that great opening theme but after that gets a bit dull for me. IMO it's one of the great tragedies in classical music that Tchaikovsky never repeats the opening theme again . The first time I heard the concerto I spent the entire time wondering when it would come back. There are a few "ahh, at last, here it comes...." moments which only end up disappointing.

Grieg's piano concerto is another romantic classic.

More Rachmaninov - you MUST listen to his Suite No.2 (Op 17) for two pianos. The sound of the two pianos is so rich and lustrous and the big theme in the 2nd movement is as good as any that Rachmaninov wrote and it never fails to make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and frequently moves me to tears .

Rachmaninov's "Etudes-Tableaux" are also excellent.

OK, more piano music:

Debusy: Suite Bergamasque - which includes the extremely famous (and utterly sublime) "Claire de lune".

Ravel: "La Valse" - especially the version transcribed for two pianos.

The recordings I have of the Rachmaninov Suite and Ravel's "La Valse" for two pianos are on the same disc with Martha Argerich and Nelson Freire playing the pianos - it's on the Philips "digital classics" series. An excellent disc.

Also, pretty much anything by Chopin and Liszt will do the trick too

Michael.

 

...or the Paganini Rhapsody, as in what I consider the perfect romantic piano recording...Ashkenazy playing with the LSO, Previn conducting on Decca 4177022. This also appears on two double CDs for not much more - e.g. with the 3rd and some solo preludes. Please avoid his version with Haitink though (also on Decca), who takes all the romance out, replacing it with his signature control and focus :chunder: .

Thanks for the compliment Saab. On the whole I don't actually find solo piano particularly "romantic" (in the non-technical sense), needing the interaction with the swells from the orchestra to get the heart swelling. Maybe it's just that a romance is not really a solo activity. I'd certainly agree with the recommendation of the Rachmaninov Preludes though, and Michael's call on the 2nd suite too - I have that same recording coupled with Argerich's fantastic performance of the 3rd concerto, and it's one of my favourite piano pieces, although more for its invigorating outer movements than its romance. I'd also go with Michael's call on the Grieg (and I also find the Tchaikovsky particularly dull).

As you can see from most of the recommendations so far, Rachmaninov is clearly the man to start with. The next man is probably Chopin - the nocturnes have already been recommended, and I love the Etudes as well (Murray Perahia has recently issued a superb CD of those on Sony, SK61885). Depending on how you go for the orchestral accompaniments in the concerti, I would also heartily commend the Brahms 1st piano concerto. I like Kovacevich with Sawallish conducting (e.g. EMI 5756552, and he's even better live), or Barenboim with Barbirolli conducting (e.g. EMI 5726492). Both of those EMI issues are bargain 2 for 1 CDS, with the 2nd concerto (and some other pieces) as well.

You may also wish to consider some of the famous Beethoven sonatas: particularly the 'Moonlight' and 'Appassionata'.

There's an awful lot of Liszt - the most obvious to start with are the very famous Consolation No 3 and Liebestraum No 3; next I would probably go for "Sposalizio", the rather boringly named "Sonetto 123 del Petrarca", "Les jeux d'eau a la Villa d'Este", and possibly "Au bord d'une source". These latter pieces are all from "Annees de Pelerinage", three books of mostly fairly short pieces; I don't know them particularly well, but I'd count the 2nd book - "Italie" the most consistently soulful (and stunningly played on my discs by Jorge Bolet), whereas book 1 (Suisse) is more filligree and showy (and I really don't know book 3).

 

excellent stuff,lots of stuff to be going on with

i have just read the Bach thread,and I must say I do like my "Chill with Bach CD".I am not a bug fan of huge orchestral pieces,just simple quiet stuff.and i particularly like the BWV 974,a Harpsicord concerto but on this cd its performed with a guitar,quite wonderful.I am not huge on the choral pieces,but I will explore some of the recommendations in the other thread

what does BWV stand for by the way?

also just got Gorecki,inspired by Hannibal Symphony Of Sorrowful Songs,which it is,truly sorrowful,but wonderful all the same

 

As you like those why not try Jenkins The armed man, and Jan Garbarek and the Hilliard Ensembles CD's

 

BWV is the Bach Werke Verzeichnis - simply the listing of the works of JSB.

Mozart had K's (Kochel, named after Ludwig von Kochel who catalogged Mozart's compositions)

Most others had to put up with Opus numbers.

 

Rachmaninov's "Etudes-Tableaux" are also excellent

I have that,Eiji Oue and the Minnesota orchestra,on HDCD,it is indeed very good

and doh!! there was a BWV explanation in the first line of the thread i complimented

 

You foxed me with that for a minute - as the Etudes-Tableaux are piano pieces. If you're talking about this disc,
it's an orchestration by Respighi (one of the best/most spectacular) of those piano pieces. Sounds like it may be worth listening to (I have the Ashkenazy version of the Symphonic Dances).

And BTW - you may be interested to know that that Gorecki is going to be performed on June 27th at the Festival Hall. It doesn't say who the conductor or singer are, but the London Sinfonietta were the bunch playing on the best-selling CD. David Zinman was conducting and Dawn Upshaw the soloist on the CD, but I doubt either of them will be there, as they're pretty big names and would normally appear on the bill; I just hope it's not Morrissey!

 

yep,thats the one i have I wanted a classical piece on HDCD and just bought one that was reviewed favourably,its a very powerful piece of music,at least in my limited experience!

will check out the Festival Hall,cheers

 

bought it for 99p on Ebay,will give it a review soon

 

the theme music from The Piano, available on CD and a superb SACD

 

Just so long as it doesn't have the film on. That film must be the most pretentious nonsense that ever there was

 

I went to see Michael Nyman in concert the other day here in Lisbon and he played the theme music from "The Piano" (which he wrote) and was pretty underwhelmed. I've never really understood what people liked about that music. It's something that a child might play on the piano after graduating from "chopsticks" IMO.

Some of the other stuff he and the rest of his quartet played was quite good but I didn't know any of it. The PA was way too loud though and Sarah Leonard's voice was ripping my ears off

My favourite Nyman stuff is the music he wrote for the Greenaway film "A Zed and Two Noughts".

Michael.

 

Then there's the similar stuff for "Drowning by Numbers". If you like this (as opposed to it being his "least worst"), you may also like to try stuff by Steve Martland (which I like a lot) and Louis Andriessen (of which I've yet heard little, and like less)

 

Didn't he write the music for The Cook, The Wife, The Thief The Lover as well which is rather good. There's some pieces about trains the name of which eludes me at this instant something like Pieces Grands Vitesse or something. They're rather fun.

 

Utterly dreadful IMHO. It seems like he's going for the "repetitive is the new profound" angle, whereas in fact it's just repetitive. It's almost like listening to dance music or something

 

wife likes Einaudi,but i just want to smash the cd player whenevr he is on