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Good classical music on YouTube

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A short piece for tonight from my favourite orchestra - Tchaikovsky's Waltz of the Flowers from the Nutcracker Suite. The conductor, Nejc Bečan, is a composer and is also the conductor of the 60-piece Slovenian Police Wind Orchestra. The Wind Orchestra perform at various official functions and have also given concerts all over Europe, including England. Married with a young family he lives in Ljubljana and his dog is, of course, a Dalmatian! Here's his day job:-
Slovenian Police Orchestra.jpg
Enjoy.

Maurice :cool:
 
I have many vivid memories of Classic music. My Dad (God bless him) was a concert pianist, we had a Bluthner grand piano in the front room and Dad was constantly playing all the classics. The Warsaw Concerto was his favorite I took Piano lessons for years, he even locked me in the room to practice, I HATED IT!!! Later on, after my two years in the RAF, I did take up music and started paying Alto Saxophone and clarinet. Of course, I spent hours playing the scales and getting proficient on the horns, I had already been interested in Opera, So I did have a good background in Classic music. This is one reason that I never became a JAZZ musician, I was always strictly a play the charts as written musician. But I still love classic and opera and also jazz now. When my Dad passed away my poor sister Joan had to dispose of the piano, when they tried to remove it FELL APART!!! from all the rot in the house!! Beautiful piano worth nothing. Dad would have looked down smiling I think!!!
 
sospiri said:
A short piece for tonight from my favourite orchestra - Tchaikovsky's Waltz of the Flowers from the Nutcracker Suite. The conductor, Nejc Bečan, is a composer and is also the conductor of the 60-piece Slovenian Police Wind Orchestra. The Wind Orchestra perform at various official functions and have also given concerts all over Europe, including England. Married with a young family he lives in Ljubljana and his dog is, of course, a Dalmatian! Here's his day job:-
View attachment 151483
Enjoy.

Maurice :cool:
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Thats a lovely one Maurice, almost like Strauss in parts, and how beautiful is the sound of the harp
Lynn.
 
John,

A great story - it was your Dad's piano and I guess he tried to take it with him, but at least made sure no one else would! There's nothing wrong in playing the charts. I spent years getting my reading up to scratch when I was young. I would go to the library and come back with the maximum 6 volumes that you were allowed to take out at any one time, largely within my playing capability at the time. I would attempt to play straight through them just once. I would make mainly technical (fingering) mistakes and they were not that important if you were trying to improve your reading. The main thing is not to know what notes are coming at you!

Next day I would take them back and get six more. My reading really improved with backing cabaret in Bournemouth. Rarely did we get a rehearsal. The singer - Elaine Delmar & Lita Roza were a couple that I remember - would arrive, give you a pile of dots and that was it. If there was the odd bum note, that was the singer's problem - should have arranged a rehearsal, but I can't remember any time that it didn't go off OK, even if it might have been a bit hair-raising. The worst were bad hand-written copies, generally bits of a larger orchestral arrangement and we were only a quartet! Now there's all these notation programs that propduce the perfect printed copy. I have a couple myself, but I can still write quicker by hand even with my arthritis!

Jazz is a different kettle of fish and is something that develops with your playing. But there are still lots of good musicians that cannot improvise. I remember seeing Stephane Grapelli and Yehudi Menuhin together on something like Parkinson, and Menuhin, a very capable classical violinist, was struggling to improvise. Yet you had people such as Andre Previn who could do the lot, excellent composer, conductor, pianist (both classical & jazz). I loved that guy's performances whatever he did - always first class.

Opera is something that I enjoy too, especially Puccini or Verdi, but it's not everyone's cup of tea. I'll dig out an aria or two for this thread later on.

Lynn,

Glad you enjoyed it and thanks for the Emperor. More food for thought for this thread, but later!

Maurice :cool:
 
sospiri said:
And finally for tonight another for maypolebaz - Sibelius' Finlandia with some lovely shots of Finland and its wild life.

Maurice :cool:
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Lovely stuff ! Thanks Maurice.
My personal favourite version of "Finlandia" is the one played on Last Night of the Proms a couple of years ago. The conductor was Finnish. Incidentally, I chose "Be Still My Soul" for my mother's funeral, back in March.
 
maypolebaz,

I'm pleased you enjoyed it. I'm trying to include a bit of everything and not go to "highbrow". If it's got a few nice melodies, it will always appeal. There's generally a dozen versions of most things on YouTube. so I try to pick the best recording and one that has some visual appeal if possible.

Opera has been mentioned, and I'm spoiled for choice here with this one, as almost every soprano has recorded it. But I decided on Renee Fleming with the Berlin Philharmonic - Puccini's Oh my beloved father from his opera "Gianni Schicchi"

Maurice :cool:
 
I had to struggle to find a decent recording of this one as this composer's work is so rarely performed nowadays, which is a great pity because he wrote some lovely stuff. I first heard it as a child when it was the signature tune to a series on Children's Hour. It's the Intermezzo from Act 3 of "The Jewels of the Madonna" by Wolf-Ferrari.

Maurice :cool:
 
Ah, Pedro, you got me there because I don't watch TV so don't know the series or the music. Sounds OK though.

Maurice :cool:
 
Thanks, Lynn, I've been busy all day, so time to catch up on this thread. First, a little Bach with Sheeo may safely graze...
and now from when I was much younger and it was always on Family Favourites. Henry Litolff's Scherzo from his Concerto Symphique No. 4

Maurice :cool:
 
Another one that doesn't get played very often - the Spinning Song from Mendelsohn's Songs Without Words

Maurice :cool:
 
Lynn,

The Merry Widow is my favourite operetta of that period, though I also like those of Emmerich Kalman too. If you fancy sitting down and watching the whole operetta, then watch this one, done by the Lyons Opera for French TV. Scotsman Robert Horn, who has lived in France for many years, not only plays a minor part, but also does the links in English between the various acts. Skip the first 2 minutes if you want to avoid all the credits, which were added together with subtitles after it was originally posted to You Tube:-
It's much better than the American and Polish versions online and has great cast.

Maurice
 
Thanks for the suggestion Maurice, I've never really given operas much attention but it's never too late to start ! Especially at the moment with Lockdown giving us a bit more time than usual!
Lynn.
 
Trust me, Lynn, it is anything but highbrow! You don't even need to know the story, because it is so obvious and the best version of Vilja I have heard. Unfortunately, it was not available as a separate song when I posted the previous version. Enjoy!

Maurice :cool:
 
A nice bit of string writing - Albinoni's Adagio

and another from my earlier days - another Children's Hour series "Said the Cat to the Dog" with Mompty & Peckham - anyone remember it? The music was the Popular Song from William Walton's Facade Suite:-

Maurice :cool:
 
Just a little bit of history about that last item. Said the Cat to the Dog was adapted from the book by Martin Armstrong and written in 1945. The actual series went out in early 1950 and here's the cast:-

Production By: Josephine Plummer
Mompty, the cat: Vivienne Chatterton
Peckham, the dog: Stephen Jack
Dad: Wilfred Babbage
Mum: Mary O'Farrell
Diana: Ann Hills
Ronnie: Colin Campbell
Narrator: Lionel Gamlin

The book has long been out of print, and a used copy today will set you back £50 - not a bad investment. :)

Maurice :cool:
 
Keeping it light-hearted and back in Vienna, everyone knows this one, but how many could put a title to it if I didn't tellu that it is the Annen Polka by Johann Strauss II? And who better to play than the Vieena Philharmonic.

Maurice :cool:
 
Yes, nice change from minor to major in that first few bars, Lynn, and then he uses that same device thoughout that piece. Here we go with a Russian-born Austrian pianist playing Polish music on an Italian piano! This one used to drive me crazy in my younger day because you're playing, in the first and last parts, eight notes with your right hand against six notes with your left hand and the natural thing for the brain is not to want to do that. So here is Anastasia Haupmann playing Chopin's Fantasie-Impromptu on a Fazioli piano:-

And now a friend sent me this today. It's a 15 year old aspiring concert pianist playing a few bars of 8 different pieces by Rachmaninoff, each one getting progressively more difficult. I think that he seems a very capable performer, and, in general, I think many of these young performers lack sensitivity, but not this one and I wish him all the luck in a very competitive profession.

Maurice :cool:
 
And here's the same young man with his 8 Levels of Chopin video - you will, of course, recognise the second piece as you posted it yourself, Lynn :)

Maurice :cool:
 
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