Reddit mentions: The best ballets music

1. Read a lot of fiction. It's the closest thing to telepathy we have. You can pick up the point of view of someone long-dead or from a vastly different culture. The more widely read you become the better. Don't feel you have to suffer, though. If you like reading romance, go and read it. Read things that lead onto other things. Learn to read and your horizons will be infinite.
   
   
2. Take up a martial arts class. I recommend something like Aikido rather than kick-boxing. Your primary goal isn't to learn to fight but rather to straighten your posture and gain calmness and confidence. Hence, consider the more "art" based martial arts first.
   
   
3. Meditate. This will help you gain confidence and put you more at ease with yourself. I recommend Zen, but there are many good ones. It's basically taking quiet time to let yourself see your own flaws.
   
   
4. Make a list of activities that people from higher social classes do, and investigate them. This isn't to become something you're not - I actually think you should be proud of your desire to improve, and I think it's a bad idea to hate your upbringing, too. No, this is about making a list of all those things you've never been exposed to, so you can try them and find out for yourself if you like them. By systematic. I've put an example list at the bottom of the post.
   
   
5. Speak into a recorder and listen honestly to your voice. If it seems to bind you to a particular place and class, consider paying for lessons to change your accent. Actors do it all the time. Again, this shouldn't be about becoming something you're not, just softening any disadvantages. Accents are cute, you don't need to lose it, but if you find it a disadvantage, it will help to soften it.
   
   
6. Learn to do public speaking. Toastmasters are everywhere, and remarkably cheap. Just knowing you can stand in front of a crowd and deliver a speech will change the way people see you and you see yourself.
   
   
   Recommended activities (to see which you like):
   
   Art Go to an art gallery and take a look around. There are all sorts of paintings and statues that people have created for thousands of years. See if any appeal. This is best done with knowledge, so try reading an easy book like this, or a more in-depth one like this
   
   Theatre Try going to the theatre and watch a play. I recommend you pick a classic, but for your first one it might be better to pick one in your natural language rather than Shakespeare. Bear in mind, though, that when you get into it, there's a reason Shakespeare is considered amazing.
   
   Cooking Seriously, learn to cook. It's a life skill. You can take classes, but nothing beats picking up a good book and practicing. I'm English, so I don't know much about American cookery books. The one I learned off is this one, by the English cook Nigel Slater, and I heartily recommend it.
   
   Music I'm not personally a fan of classical music, but the aim is to see for yourself what you like. You could do worse than look at this online course. You could also get a cd, like this
   
   Cinema Go buy DVDs of classic film and extend your repertoire. For example, try watching Hitchcock, for example, and ground yourself in a major part of world culture. Note that this, like all the above, will give you a breadth of conversational topics.
   
   Finally Creativity Go and do something that makes you a creator rather than a consumer. I like writing, but you could equally take art classes or learn to play a musical instrument. Being creative will transform your life. If you want to try writing, I recommend nanowrimo and for science fiction writing, this book
   
   Notice what I'm saying with all of the above. The intention is to open your horizons to what other people enjoy, and give you the ability to converse with them fluently. It's also getting rid of the main markers that might hold you back. Ideally, you'll also find something you love, as well, that you might never have considered.
   

To be honest, moving away from the monkey coffin format was a mistake.

Certainly a lot of them were downright bad and maybe these C-V's fall into that category, but competent "monkey coffin" speakers reveal how ridiculous a lot of modern gear is.

The amplification requirements and crossover gymnastics required to get reasonable output and extension from cute little bookshelf and slim tower enclosures with 5" and 6" woofers are absurd, and ultimately you need to add subwoofers anyway if you hope to match the kind of full range audio that a big monkey coffin with a 12" or 15" woofer can handle with ease.

While we may all laugh at the Cerwin Vega name, imagine if (insert your favorite modern audiophile speaker builder here) decided to really bring their resources to bear on an affordable modern speaker in this form factor.

I have the Cerwin Vegas' spiritual descendants, [the BIC RTR-EV15s which are similarly sized with 15 inch woofers that are somehow even more visually obnoxious](http://bicamerica.com/showpage.php?brand=3&type=15&spkrID=120
). Don't worry, they come with grill covers that hide the cones.

They are not bad at all. BIC claims 24Hz-20kHz +/- 3dB and my measurements agree, as long as you play around with positioning a bit. They are not the last word in resolution, but they aren't bad either. They are tonally correct and have dynamic range that more modern audiophile gear can only dream of.

Ironically, given their "please blast some Slayer" appearance, they are great for reproducing classical music with massive (DR17 in this case, I think) dynamic range like this recording of the Firebird Suite with output levels and bass extension approaching an actual performance. That's not something easily accomplished with modern audiophile-targeted gear, at least not for less than the price of a pretty decent car.

They sound great blasting Slayer too.

Everyone here will recommend classical music written between from 1650-1850, but you owe it to yourself to check out Renaissance and Medieval music while you're at it. There was so much neglected but amazing stuff written before 1600.

Ronn McFarlane has some fantastic solo lute albums. If you prefer quiet beautiful introspective melodies, DEFINITELY pick up his albums "The Renaissance Lute" and "Between Two Hearts".
He's also a member of the Baltimore Consort, and their work is quite good if you find you want more of this genre.

If you want beautiful music to wash over you and bring you to tears, listen to THIS album of Renaissance choral music. Crank it up LOUD! It's like angels tickling your insides.

Medieval music has more dissonances in it, so you may or may not like it, but give it a shot. I like the quieter meditative pieces that sound like a twisted music box. Here are some decent CDs:

• Music For a Medieval Banquet
  
• Medieval Dance Music
  
• Songs and Dances of the Middle Ages
  
• Trouveres
  
• Sinners and Saints - older recording, and more 'orchestral' (with a few less good vocal pieces) but some really good spots.
  
  
  Of course, on the Rock side of things, just buy the entire Led Zeppelin discography. Sitting through Led Zeppelin IV is a religious experience!
  
  Oh, and The Beatles post 1965 - sooooo many colors in their sounds ... Sgt Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour, Abbey Road, hell buy those too!

A good starter list of a few different styles, with links to Amazon to get some samples...

• Barber: Adagio For Strings Op.11 - Slow yet intense string piece.
  
  
• Dvorak: New World Symphony - Good symphony with a wide range, from slow moving parts to more bombastic parts. (at times, you can hear similarities to the score from Star Wars/Imperial March)
  
  
• Rachmaninov: Vespers - One of my personal favorites. Choral music - intense, haunting at times, interesting harmonies founded on that trademark Russian low bass.
  
  
• Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro A very accessible opera, and one of Mozart's most famous, perfect for a beginning opera listener.
  
  
• Beethoven - Symphonies 5 and 9. Easily two of Beethoven's most famous symphonies. Beyond the parts you hear in movies and commercials, very moving and complex pieces. The 9th is incredibly deep, particularly the 4th movement. I literally have over a dozen recordings of this piece alone, and hear something new every time I listen to it.
  
  
• Vivaldi: Four Seasons. You'll recognize this in quite a few places. I'm fond of the Winter suite, especially the third movement.
  
  
• Bach: Brandenburg Concertos. A good example of Bach's counterpoint style in Baroque string music
  
  
• Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto #2. Intense and melodic, this piece transitions from sweeping melodic lines building to full frenzy - almost chaotic at times.
  
  
• Beethoven: Piano Concerto #5 - Emporer. You could call this a "fancy" piece - several running lines across the piano, including heavy ornamentation and embellishments, particularly in the 1st and 3rd movements. The 2nd movement is more reserved, and it's tranquility bridges the more lively movements.
  
  
• Stravinsky: Rite of Spring. Fascinating, driving intensity - asymmetrical rhythms make this very interesting, unconventional.
  
  
• If you're feeling adventurous and want to delve into a longer piece of a different style, Handel's Messiah or Mendelssohn's Elijah are two great oratorios.

Sorry, I don't have that particular CD. Looks like it is pretty cheap on Amazon, though: http://www.amazon.com/Mozart-Your-Mind-Wolfgang-Amadeus/dp/B0000041CB/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1212181026&sr=8-1

I was lucky enough to receive the complete works of Mozart as a gift ( http://www.amazon.com/Mozart-Complete-Works-170-Box/dp/B000BLI3K2/ref=pd_sim_m_img_1 ). It took me months to listen to it all, and I was going at a very fast pace. Great recommendation for anyone that is interested in classical music, and almost all of it is great "thinking" music. Mozart's music is very structured (practically everything he wrote is considered "perfect" in an objective musical sense), and yet it is beautiful and elegant at the same time, so I find it to be very conducive to programming.

The Top 100 Box Set is a pretty good collection of a wide variety of compositions over the course of several hundred years.

A few other pieces of music I'd recommend:

John Adams has some pretty cool pieces. It's more accessible than a lot of the atonal and minimalist stuff you see in modern music.

I'm also a fan of Alan Hovhaness, who is also considered modern; one of the most notable features of his music is the blending Eastern and Western styles to produce beautiful pieces.

I'd also check out eclassical.com, which I use for a majority of my music file purchases, since the prices are pretty good and you can buy tracks individually, as well as having a very wide variety of music to choose from.

Coworker: I immediately thought she should get a really graphic Batman poster. You could even get it framed if you have enough left over. Here are some from Etsy: 1, 2, 3, 4, this one's a little different.. but it's video game related so.. here! 5
____

Boss: A nice photography book would probably be a safe bet: 1, 2, 3, 4, last one is $5 over budget, but 5
__

Professor: I'm sorry I don't have more original ideas for him but here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
__

GOOD LUCK!!

A few to consider, some more affordable than others:

• Complete Webern
  
• Complete Varese
  
• The DG Complete Beethoven Edition (if you can find it anywhere)
  
• The Philips Complete Mozart Edition (if you can find it anywhere)
  
• Steve Reich
  
• Philip Glass
  
• Handel - Orchestral Works
  
• Bach - Orchestral Works
  
• Ravel - Complete Edition
  
• Debussy - Complete Edition
  
• Shostakovich Edition (one of the few Brilliant Classics box sets I can wholeheartedly recommend, unlike many of the others which can be a bit patchy)
  
• Strauss - Complete operas
  
• Wagner - Complete operas (Solti)
  
• Boulez - Bartok
  
• Boulez conducts Schoenberg (far from complete, but this about the best you can do)
  
• Boulez - Stravinsky
  
• Various Bach choral stuff - Gardiner
  
• Stravinsky
  
• Alban Berg Collection
  
• Berlioz - Complete orchestral works (Davis)
  
• Brahms - Complete Edition (absolutely superb collection)
  
• Britten conducts Britten + operas 1 and operas 2 + Complete Britten
  
• Sibelius - Symphonies and tone poems
  
• Elgar - Collector's Edition
  
• Vaughan Williams - Collector's Edition
  
• Barber - orchestral works (Alsop)
  
• Scriabin - Piano works
  
• C.P.E. Bach Edition
  
• Corelli - Complete Works
  
• Telemann - Tafelmusik
  
• Schubert - Masterworks (Brilliant Classics - not always the best recordings, but for the amount of stuff you get, worth the money
  
• Poulenc - complete works
  
• Messiaen - complete edition
  
• Mahler - complete edition (the symphony recordings here are a representative cross-section, you might want to supplement it with another complete cycle, e.g. Solti, Bernstein, Abbado, etc.)
  
• Liszt - Complete piano music
  
• Janacek - Operas
  
• Haydn - Symphonies (Hogwood), not complete, but as close as anyone has come to it
  
• Mozart - Symphonies (Pinnock) - an alternative to Mackerras
  
• Bartok - Piano works
  
• Debussy - Piano works
  
  If you need anything more specific than that, let me know and I'll try to recommend something.
  
  If you have a look in the "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought" section for any of these, you'll find many more.

I guess I don't get it. The Sacrificial Dance is muddy and disorganized (it almost sounds like the percussion are in their own world...) - I'd call it a disaster. Maybe because I've played the piece and have listened to it probably 1000 times, but meh...

They went balls to the wall with stereo separation, which is common with early stereo recordings.

I was in love with Dutoit's performance with Montreal, but the miking was really bad.

I discovered SFO's recording with Michael Tilson Thomas and I haven't turned back. Simply amazing. Great recording and great performance.

I agree with everybody, you have to listen, listen, listen! It's like any other genre of music, you need to listen to a bunch of stuff before you find a style that you enjoy and then it is easier (in my opinion) to dig deeper and listen to other composers related to the style you enjoy. I would suggest you get an anthology like this one for example https://www.amazon.ca/Grands-Classiques-Dedgar-Fruitier-Various/dp/B000N3AVPS (that's the one I had but there are many more!). It is divided by genre so you know what period you are listening to and its has a lot of different composers for you to discover. You could also try to listen to classical radio once in a while just so you don't have to think about choosing a song to listen to (they sometimes make a list of what's been played on their site so you can go back to check what you were listening in your car for example). Finally, keep it fun! You won't like classical music if you make yourself listen to everything Bach wrote in one sitting ;)

Snobs and purists will turn their noses down at the suggestion, but Naxos has tons of collections and boxed sets to get you into the various sub/genres.

Naxos actually uses a lot of well regarded, but out-of-print or older recordings that have been superceded by a new performer. A new performance by Yo-Yo Ma will sell better than something from 20 years ago.

An article on Stereophile on Naxos. Worth the read as an intro to the music.

FYI, Naxos is to classical what Vaynerchuk is to wine. The product is still great, but the Old Guard is offended by the new marketing.



There are also the mega-collection boxed sets of different composers:

Beethoven

Mozart

Bach

Composers in Person is a massive collection of composers performing and conducting their works. Many of the recordings sound as old as they are, but it's still pretty amazing, if only for historical interest.

Have you guys done a review of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring? Seems like it would be a good fit for Pitchfork readers. There are dozens upon dozens of recordings, including a hard to find version for Pianola (a player piano) performed by Rex Lawson and released on the Music Masters label (which is now defunct). It's massively entertaining to hear it and Petrushka in their piano roll versions, each of which was created by Stravinsky himself.

You will find no shortage of opinion about what the best performance of the Rite of Spring is. Ozawa, Gergiev, Boulez, Abbado, they've all done interesting things with the piece.

It's on Phil Smith's excerpts cd! He talks through and plays many of the excerpts you'll ever need to know for an audition. It's my orchestral bible. It's only one interpretation of this stuff, but you can't go wrong with following the principal trumpet of the NY Phil. That being said, I actually do American in Paris differently from him. It's one of those excerpts that you can really explore lots of interpretations with and get creative with how you play it.

Here's a link to the album on Amazon if anybody is interested: http://www.amazon.com/Orchestral-Excerpts-Trumpet-Philip-Smith/dp/B0000038JG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417017461&sr=8-1&keywords=phil+smith

The best Khatchaturian Gayaneh Suite I know, not to mention Spartacus (!) is the composer's own on EMI with the LSO, NOT the early one with the Vienna Phil. The sound and climaxes just expand into the infinite. Please tell me you've heard the Adagio from Spartacus. This recording sends me into convulsions of ecstasy.

https://www.amazon.com/Spartacus-Gayaneh-Suites-Aram-Khachaturian/dp/B00000DOJW/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_15_t_1/137-2062635-8715012?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=CCJKK95HFWP0HPCV0BJD

That DG set looks awesome. Might have to be a Christmas present this year.

Some of my favorites are the EMI Elgar and Vaughan Williams sets, the Stravinsky collected works, and the big RCA Toscanini set.

Yes. Classical and Heavy Metal (seriously). I can't stand boring music. I usually listen to Chopin, Bach, and Brahms, and I don't like modern classical.

I highly recommend you buy this CD, it's pretty amazing.

Time Life had a popular collection known as Classical Thunder that you may want to check out. Such collections of excerpts are great introductions, IMO. The list of tracks on this jacket will probably closely match responses on this thread.

https://www.amazon.com/Classical-Thunder-Richard-1-Strauss/dp/B00081U6XC

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yes. This book. while you're at it get this CD.

http://www.amazon.com/Orchestral-Excerpts-Trumpet-Johann-Sebastian/dp/B0000038JG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1346559158&sr=8-1&keywords=phil+smith+trumpet+excerpts

Mozart will last me a long time. (Now imagine how huge that collection would be had he lived to be, say, 70.)

Oh, never mind. I just thought you were into electronic music, maybe a DJ or producer, or something like that. Not to sound stuck-up or anything, but part of the reason I thought that was that 150 albums didn't seem that many. 1 complete set of just Beethoven's, Mozart's, and Bach's music comes to 410 discs already.

http://www.amazon.com/Orchestral-Excerpts-Trumpet-Philip-Smith/dp/B0000038JG

Do what he does.

I would recommend Michael Tilson Thomas' recording with the San Francisco Symphony. Clear, crisp, modern sound, but totally maintains the savagery. It's an exhilarating performance.

fuck that, I'm listening to Classical Thunder!



oh yea Gustav make me want it bad, real bad, make me beg for it bring war to my fertile red surface.

and Grieg I want you to mountain king me in the hall

Oh Ravel, I think you got the key to unlock my Great Gate!

Strauss my sweet Strauss my Hero I want you to ravage my Battlefield.