Classical Music for Beginners

Sometimes people ask me advice on where to start with the frightening world of classical music recordings. They heard bits here and there, they are curious, they imagine they would probably enjoy it when they are involved, but they would not know where to look if they went in - oops, I mean connected eMusic. com and started messing around. My strategy is to always offer a handful of proposals, in as broad a spectrum as possible. "Try these," I said. "See what you take, and we'll work from there."

That's the idea behind the dozen. Here are 12 recordings chosen to attract people who have had little exposure to classical music, but who know they want more. I carefully designed the list to include a wide range of colors and styles, instruments and moods, shapes and sizes. Some pieces are light, some heavy metals, some charming, some impressive, some dramatic, meditative, love, tragic, sublime, Goofy. Overall, the choices include the 1200 years of music history - and they were all chosen to make a good first impression and arouse your appetite. They are the "gate" only works if you want. I would be surprised if there was anyone who could not find anything on this list, pleasure and curiosity them. Think of it as a sampler, a tapas menu: If you do not mind stuffed olives / Renaissance Mass, try the garlic string quartet shrimp/20th-century.

These are twelve major works never before? No, although some of them could legitimately claim a place in that list. Most of these are books that really brought the people and their well received. Others I have seen rely on novices in ways I never expected. Others are just a few personal favorites that I do not proselytize, whenever possible.

Gregorian Chant for Easter

Artist: Capella Antiqua, Munich

Release Date: 2006

The history of classical music "Western" art "tradition (although many of these terms are so problematic) began in medieval times to the music composed for church use - settings of sacred texts in Latin for the choir singing in unison, one note at a time. Quiet contemplation of Gregorian chant (named after Pope Gregory the liturgical reform, 540-604, who began the practice, according to legend) became popular in recent years, used as a backdrop for everything from yoga the post-rave cool. There are many CDs out there singing, with some of the best containers, but the actions of the male voices of Capella Antiqua, Munich, surrounded by a halo of reverb cathedral, have a beautiful and magnificent.

Daughters Island Lonsome

Artist: Margaret Leng Tan

Release Date: 1994

While the insertion of screws, erasers and other delights of the strings of a piano, John Cage (1912-1992) succeeded in transforming the instrument into a percussion orchestra in miniature. It was just one of many pioneering innovations before. On this album, keyboardist Margaret Leng Tan, toy piano virtuoso of all, a tribute to Cage's experiments, rhythmic vitality and spirit of Zen inspiration led him to ask questions about the depth conceptual music. But even when Cage challenged traditional notions of music is not difficult to find a great beauty, wit, depth and spiritual sweetness in their work. It is not possible, for example, not to fall in love with pulse Cage Bacchanale genomic or elegiac On behalf of the Holocaust, demonstrating that the instrument he called a piano "prepared" was as capable of the intensity of Stark.

Reich: Different Trains

Artist: The Duke Quartet, Andrew Russo & Marc Mellits

As a child early '40s, the composer Steve Reich traveled by train across the United States each year. In thinking about a real "train differently", he could be riding a Jew, grew up in Europe, the Reich was inspired to compose this powerful work for string quartet and tape. Small recorded interviews with employees of the railroad in real intertwine between the string parts in rapid churning, their licks echoing the speaker vocal inflections. Also included in this phase of Reich's 1967 Plan, which was a pioneering work already being used in the composition of technology captured his imagination: a complex rhythmic effects to achieve subtle changes in the temporal coordination of musicians to create a trance- ripple effect.