three good reasons

You'll find here some of the best classic music ever written, and 3 good reasons to listen to it. It's not fair to think that almost anyone can enjoy a painting by Degas, but just 4% of the people listen classic music. We are here to make a change to this (even a small one will make a great difference)! Why you should try to listen to classic music? 1. It's a form of art of amazing complexity, that can express and strengthen any human feeling. 2. It's the product of some of the most brilliant creative geniuses of the last 400 years 3. The rest is (almost) noise

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MEFISTOFELE - BOITO

1. Tired of tenors' arias about their broken heaths? Listen to this one

2. Ramey's powerful, deep tone is perfect to impersonate Mefistofele

3. It might not be the most sober acting or scenic design, but it's pretty convincing!

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SONATA 3, BALLADE – YSAYE

1. Listen to Vengerov, one of the most talented, risk-taking, inspired and whimsical violin player, performing this 90-year old sonata by Ysaye

2. Wait till 1:50… an explosion of sound, passion and energy will strike you!

3. Reach the apotheosis with the virtuoso, hectic finale. And you were thinking that metal guitar solo player were the ones feeling better than God?! Look at Vengerov's face at the end and tell me!

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TOTENTANZ – LISZT

1. Liszt wrote this piece around a medieval theme for the Dies Irae (a Mass section). So inventive, virtuoso, and macabre!

2. The sense of inexorability @ 2:30, highlighted by constant repetitions sounding like bells

2. My favorite part? Don't miss the pianissimo variation starting @ 5:50, and then you tell me!

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Divertimento - Mozart

1. Because it makes me happy

2. Because the sun is shining

3. Because Mozart makes everything else shine

Enough reasons for 2 minutes of music!

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 Art to me is an anecdote of the spirit, and the only means of making concrete the purpose of its varied quickness and stillness

  - Mark Rothko

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UNA FURTIVA LAGRIMA (ELISIR D'AMORE) – PUCCINI

1. The emotion of Nemorino realizing that the elisir prepared to make Adina fall in love with him finally worked.

2. Pavarotti's tone here is fantastic.  Starting @2:00 the piano is so soft, and sweet, as if he was mumbling to himself… 

3. …before getting to the fortissimo in the finale, in which he declares with full power his happiness for the conquered love

A single furtive tear from her eyes sprang: As if of those playful youths envious she appeared to become. What more need I look for? What more need I look for? She loves me! Yes, she loves me,I see it. I see it.

Just for an instant the beating of her beautiful heart I felt! 

  Amor vincit omnia: a present to all lovers, and to my (striped) one

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CONFUTATIS AND LACRIMOSA, REQUIEM – W.A. MOZART

  1. Two of the most thrilling excerpts from Mozart's Requiem, his last composition, with wonderful vocal parts.

2. Listen to the constant contrast of forte and piano, which represents respectively the fear of the final judgment and the bet for salvation. It's full of desperation and hope…

3. …hope shared probably by Mozart himself since he died the day after having completed the vocal part of Confutatis. The parallel of writing a funeral mass while being already agonizing inspired one of the most incredible scenes of the movie Amadeus by M.Forman: a must see!

  So wonderful, intense, delicate, moving: what could he have written if he had lived another 35 years?

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FRATRES – ARVO PART

  Pärt, at a loss for inspiration, went outside into the snow one morning and asked the cleaner: "What should a composer do?" "Well, he should love every note," was the reply.

  1. When this piece was written the Beatles has already broken up. Find out what is the sound of classical music from the seventies

2. "Tintinnabuli" is the name of this minimalistic style that recalled the sound of bells. It's a typical feature of this famous Estonian composer, Arvo Part

3. In this piece there are sequences of chords played by the violin with a desperate, screamed, full-power tone interrupted by some nebulous sections in which the violin is sustained by the orchestra.

His music fulfills a deep human need.

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MUSIC WASHES AWAY FROM THE SOUL THE DUST OF EVERYDAY LIFE

 - Auerbach

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OVERTURE (NABUCCO) – G. VERDI

  1. This overture gives you a preview, a musical trailer of the most important themes of the opera. Don't worry, you'll recognize them immediately (for example @ 2:30)

2. The wonderful chorale at the beginning with the orchestra sneaking into the scene

3. The super-allegro finale with all the elements of the orchestra rushing to the end, that is just the beginning of Verdi's masterpiece

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HEROIC POLONAISE – F. CHOPIN

1. Enjoy the power of this polonaise that George Sand – writer and Chopin's lover - defined a symbol of the French Revolution and heroicness

2. This polonaise is at once heroic and elegant, lyrical and powerful, grandiose and tragic

3. The piano player is Rafał Blechacz, awarded with the International Chopin Piano Competition. After the concert a judge said "Blechacz so outclassed the remaining finalists that no second prize could actually be awarded".

Celebrate with us our first 200 unique visitors, and help us making another 2000!

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RECONDITA ARMONIA (TOSCA) – G.PUCCINI

  1. Recondita Armonia – concealed harmony - is the first aria of the opera Tosca (what a start!), in which the painter Cavaradossi recognize in his last portrait of Mary Magdalene the features of Tosca, his lover Tosca

2. Enjoy the warm, natural, round tone of the most renowned alive tenor, Placido Domingo, awarded with about 10 Grammys and even more honorary doctorates (including Oxford, NYU and Georgetown)

3. Don't miss the passionate end of this aria in which Cavaradossi declares his love for Tosca. Placido at his best!

Here is an English translation of the lyrics:

Art, in its mysterious way, blends the contrasting beauties together... But while I'm painting her, My only thought, My only thought is of you, Tosca, it is of you!

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SYMPHONY 9 (2nd movement) – L.VAN BEETHOVEN

  1. Beethoven's last symphony is considered to be the best piece of music ever written. It is so enormous that intimidated other great composers like Brahms: “You have no idea how someone like me feels when he hears such a giant marching behind him all the time”…

2. …and you can really hear giants marching in this movement. The underlying tension is sustained by the fugue style in which different instruments run after each others, like scary suspicious giants.

3. Beethoven wrote this symphony being completely deaf. Can you imagine what a brain you need to accomplish something like this? Well, Beethoven even conducted the premier, as recalled by the first violin: "at times he rose, at other times he shrank to the ground, he moved as if he wanted to play all the instruments himself and sing for the whole chorus!"

This piece is a passionate gift to humankind made by a free spirit genius. Thumbs up for Ludwig van!

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MUSIC IS A MORAL LAW. IT GIVES A SOUL TO THE UNIVERSE, WINGS TO THE MIND, FLIGHT TO THE IMAGINATION, A CHARM TO SADNESS, AND LIFE TO EVERYTHING. IT IS THE ESSENCE OF ORDER, AND LEADS TO ALL THAT IS GOOD, JUST AND BEAUTIFUL, OF WHICH IT IS THE INVISIBLE, BUT NEVERTHELESS DAZZLING, PASSIONATE, AND ETERNAL FORM

 - Plato

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PIANO CONCERTO 1 – P.I. TCHAIKOWSKY

1. The very beginning is a lyrical, magniloquent, romantic theme that you will struggle not to hum later on

2. This massive concert is also an astounding collection of very soft pianissimos: before leaving, check it @ 19’ and 29’. What a delicate sound!

3. The soloist is the Chinese virtuoso Lang Lang, who made his debut about ten years ago with this very concert. Listen to the finale @ 36:30 to see what I mean by virtuoso!

Just imagine for a second a world in which teenagers scream and cry for this instead of Justin Bieber...

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Without music, life would be a mistake

F. NIETZSCHE

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PASSACAGLIA - G.F. HANDEL/J. HALVORSEN

1. This Passacaglia will energize you for the rest of your life, as it keeps doing since it was written in 1894

2. The theme is exposed in the first few bars, everything else is a wonderful, constant variation on the original idea

3. The two players, Perlman and Zukerman, are widely known to be among the best violin players of XX century out of…how many people studied violin in the XX century again? Worth listening!