Here's hoping this turns out fine in terms of links and stuff.
Hey there, and Happy Holidays. I was going to post this sooner, but stuff happened and, well, you know how it is when stuff happens. In any case, this is part 2 of what could be a large number of threads where I recommend you classical music I like. Just that. I did a previous thread on French Composers here:
http://hubski.com/pub?id=112242
And forwardslash was kind enough to make a playlist of all the music here:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTB6yxkWeqXtk1nDHDiW06...
Big thanks to him for that.
Without further ado, we shall begin with this list of Russian composers I like by delving into the Romantic era, specifically the works of a group of influential Russian composers call The Mighty Handful, or The Five. The group was formed by composer Mily Alexeyevich Balakirev, and the goal was to create a kind of music that was uniquely Russian. The members of the group were him, Modest Mussorgsky, Cesar Cui, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Alexander Borodin; Some very big and popular names in classical! I'll post a few links of each composer, starting with the leader.
....Let's start off, however, seasonally relevant, with some holiday tunes by Tchaikovsky:
I'm sure we've all heard a lot of THESE tunes before, and truthfully I'm not the biggest fan of this piece but it's the holidays and we might as well get in the Holiday spirit. Here's another christmas piece:
Christmas Eve: Orchestral Suite
by Rimsky-Kosakov. This is actually based off an opera under the same name, which is based off a short story with the same name by Nikolai Gogol:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_Eve_(Gogol)
Which is one of the more interesting Christmas tales I've ever heard of. This was just a whim of mine. I really intended to start with the leader of The Five. We'll go back to Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikosky later.
A-hem, For now, I want to actually go into the music by the leader of the Mighty Handful, starting off with thisSymphonic Poem "Tamara", which is based off the poem by the Russian poet Lermentov. Here is the poem:
http://pmeyer.web.wesleyan.edu/nabokov/tamarapo.html
Which is well worth reading to get a better idea of what went on in Balakirev's mind when he composing the piece. On an unrelated note I feel it's worth mentioning that of all the composers in the Might Five, Balakirev was the only professional composer. The rest pretty much learned music while working their other jobs, most of them military related. I just found that little bit interesting and thought you'd might find it as well. Moving on, here's another composition by Balakirev simply titled Russia. The piece is made up of three other Russian folk songs, and it's a pretty neat piece. I guess we'll leave off with his popular piece Islamey, which is a really beautiful piece based off of eastern themes, which was very popular during those times, probably still is whenever someone wants to make a foreign sounding piece with ease.
Let's move on to the next member,
Cesar Cui - Kaleidoscope for Violin and Piano
He was pretty well respected among his peers for his time, while critics hated him for being uninspired, and he himself was a fierce critic of many famous composers. He didn't like Tcahikovsky or Mendelssohn, or Wagner, and, well, it goes on. His pieces are, in my opinion, pretty good. They are mostly serene and calm pieces, and they sound good to me, so that's all that matters. Here's a few of his works I liked:
And with that, let's move on the Modest Mussorgsky, famous for his
Ravel did the composition for this one, since a lot of his works were "fixed" by Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky dying before publishing most of his own work, and as it turns out his works were probably better left unedited. This piece was inspired by paintings his friend Viktor Hartmann. Sadly enough, most of the pieces that inspired this work are lost, but the few remaining pieces can be seen here:
http://www.stmoroky.com/reviews/gallery/pictures/hartmann.ht...
Just a few though; A few of those pics are just approxmiations of what Hartmann's pieces could have looked like.
Mussorgsky was also famous for this legendary piece:
Everyone should know this piece, or have heard it at one point. Fewer have probably heard the original one here, since it's rarely performed. The differences are important if one cares to hear the piece as the composer wanted it. We usually hear this one:
Night on Bald Mountain - Fantasia version
This is the one you've probably heard. It's quite different in many ways, right? The things we don't know.
Moving on, we'll go to his pal Rimsky-Korsakov and his piece Scheherazade performed by Egyptian metal band Redeemers
...¯\_(ツ)_/¯
...Okay, here's the original; I won't do that again:
Based somewhat loosely off of, as you can tell from the lyrics in that power metal band, The 1001 Nights. It's quite a popular piece so chances are you might have heard at least a part of it somewhere. This piece usually gets recommended to newbies wanting to get into classical music, along with Mussorgsky's Pictures and Bald Mountain. Some more great pieces by Rimsky-Korsakov:
This piece is based of the adventures of Arabic Warrior Poet (How many times in your life will you be able to say those two words together?) Antarah ibn Shaddad. Here's an english translation of one his poems:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/hanged/hanged2.htm
Two rather patriotic works, as expected from The Mighty Five, who as we remember, wanted to create a uniquely Russian kind of music. Rimsky-Korsakov is also famous for the, well, famous
Not a particular favorite of mine, but we might as well mention it. Rimsky-Korsakov has quite a lot of other pieces well worth your time to explore (As all of these composers really; I'm just recommending you pieces that I liked, and I haven't even begun to listen to all of their stuff), and I recommend that if there is any particular composer you like, continue to explore them. Youtube makes this as easy as pie, and you can go around Wikipedia for a complete list of their works. For now, let's move on to the last of the Might Five, my personal favorite, Alexander Borodin:
Ah, isn't this peaceful? Borodin is a great composer. I mentioned before that I'm not the biggest fan of the Romantic era of music, and while my large list of recommendations of music from that era might make one not believe that, well, wait 'till you see the non-romantic music I got in store for you! But Borodin I like. This Quartet is one such great example. What's interesting is, as that youtube comment noted, Borodin, like all of the other members of the Mighty Five sans Balakirev, did other things than compose; Borodin was a Chemist! I always wonder whether their jobs ever influenced the way they composed compared to someone who just composes for a living, and figure there must have been at least some influence, but I suppose that's to be left to more capable minds to figure out. For now, let's just enjoy more pieces by Borodin:
Borodin sure knows how to make some soothing pieces, huh?
An unfinished Symphony; Isn't it sad to have a composer die right when making some great piece? There's one Russian composer in particular who wanted to create the most craziest piece and died before being able to, and I'm sure that if he didn't die it would have been one of the most legenday pieces EVER. We'll go into him later, for now, more Borodin!
Polovetsian dances for Clarinet Duet
This piece is a particular favorite. This is actually a fanmade version. The real version is orchestrated, as you'll see here:
Polovtsian Dance 17 "Dance of the Maidens"
I like both versions, but that Clarinet Duet really speaks to me for some reason. It sounds more adventurous for whatever reason. Here's one more piece by Borodin:
In the Steppes of Central Asia
The east has always fascinated the west, and vice versa. There are a lot of western takes on that flair you find in Eastern music, and they all usually sound pretty good. In any case, with that, we're done with the Mighty Five. Let's move back to Tchaikovsky, shall we?
Symphony no. 6 "Pathetique" Op 74
Thgere's a lot of controversy about Tchaikovsky. He died shortly after premiering this piece, and many often speculate that his death was more of a suicide. Why would he kill himself? Well, Tchaikovsky, to put it bluntly, was gay. Worse yet, he never really came to terms with it, as you would expect from a person living in those times where homosexuality was frowned upon. People often try to find hints of his struggles with his sexuality in his works, but that's for scholars and real music buffs to argue about. I am just an appreciator of classical music, and Tchaikovsky's music is fantastic. In any case, his sixth symphony is quite popular and is quite a beautiful and oftentimes melancholic piece. Next up we have:
Just like Erik Satie's Je Te Veux and the NES game Binary Land, I actually knew this piece from an NES game. The beginning was used in an NES game called City Connection, as you see here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ1oA-QBflI
The NES, for whatever reason, liked to use a lot of classical music in the early days, or so it seems to me. When I was starting out with classical music and discovered that, I was pleasantly surprised. This is a pretty popular piano concerto, though it seems to me that Tchaikovsky in general is extremely popular, with his Nutcracker Suite, his Swan Lake, this Piano Concerto, his
Which I'm almost sure you've probably heard the ending @ around 14:00 at least once in your life since it's used all the time in all sorts of cartoons, movies, games, and so on. My most favorite piece by Tchaikovsky has to be his
Which is in the aforelinked Nutcracker Suite, but I feel stands on its own. I guess I'm a sucker for this piece as I love waltzes and harps, and this piece has both of them. This:
is also great, but most piano trios are good from my experiences. Let's make a quick stop to a rather obscure composer who is quite far away from the Romantic tradition
Alexander Tcherepnin: Suite for Cello
Truthfully I feel more at home with pieces like these, though oddly enough I find myself more at a loss for words for pieces like these. Tcherepnin actually came from a family of musically inclined people and met with a lot of great composers of his time. He travelled all over the world and incorporated the various cultures into his music. I always think of him having a rather impressionistic sound personally. He was also famous for having a movement in first symphony devoted solely to drum work, which I would post but is unfortunately incomplete on youtube. There isn't much of him on youtube, but here are a few pieces that I listened to and really loved:
This piece probably isn't Romantic in the love sense than it is Romantic in the Romantic era of classical music sense. It's still a great piece though, especially the part that plays at around the 7:00 mark.
Just as advertised: Ten short pieces for the piano. Tcherepnin's father Nikolai was also a composer and taught Sergei Prokofiev, who we'll hear in a bit. But I'm actually not as acquainted with his works as his son, so I'll abstain from recommending works by him. With that quick stop, let's go back to a late Romantic composer:
Sergei Rachmaninoff - Piano Concerto 2
Rachmaninoff makes some music that sound both beautiful and tragic. I knew someone who has this guy to thank for getting him into classical, I think this very piece in particular, and it's easily understandable why. An anecdote I once heard was that his piano pieces are difficult to play because Rachmaninoff had huge hands. Take your thumb and pinky over a piano and stretch it as far as you can. My reach is about 9 keys, Rachmaninoff I think could reach 11. That's some crazy stuff, and he made use of his reach. In any case, Some select pieces:
And that's Rachmaninoff. Let us move on to an incredibly interesting composer, one Rachmaninoff was friends with, and one of my favorite symphonies:
Alexander Scriabin - Symphony no. 3
...Sometimes I don't get the rationale behind the pictures people put up on the videos. The reason I chose this performance is because it's my personal favorite. Beggars can't be choosers. IN ANY CASE. Scriabin is one of the most interesting composers I ever had the pleasure of encountering. He fancied himself a kind of Ubermensch, had Synaesthesia and composed his music to that and to some arcane mystical mode that is deeply religious as it is philosophical. His music is heavily bombastic, emotional, arcane, enigmatic... Well, I'm a fan, to put it lightly. I mean, that Symphony is just beautiful. Just listen to it. But back to his weirdness, he once composed a sonata that frightened him so much that he refused to play it:
And if that wasn't enough, he was going to compose a piece to be played right before the Apocalypse, a piece that was going to be played at the Himalayas and would signal the dawn of a new race of beings to overtake mankind, and was going to be one of the largest musical projects of all time in which everyone takes part and the musicians dance and so on:
The video tells more details about it and talks a bit about his composition methods. Sadly he died before completing it and this is just improvisation on fragments. Scriabin was delightfully insane (not literally certifiably crazy IIRC) and we are better off for it, because his music is just fantastic. Some other great pieces by Scriabin:
One of my most favorite piano Sonatas. Enough Scriabin! If he interests you as much as he did me, youtube has a lot of his works around for your perusal. Let's move on to another Segei, but no, not Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev:
...I know; I just threw three hefty piano concertos at you. That's about an hour just there alone! They're all fantastic. Also, for some reason, there are a few classical music channels that use anime pictures. I like anime, so I don't mind, but I often wonder what a person who doesn't like anime would think of with what seems like at first glance this odd clash of western high brow culture with what is almost universally, barring masters like Ghibli and Miyazaki, seen as low culture, even in their own country. Oh well; I'm sure most people don't give a damn what the picture is as long as the music sounds fine. I only bring this up because there's going to be a few more pictures like that, so get ready for that. Prokofiev is one of my favorite composers. Just listen to those concertos, listen to how majestic each of their openings are... They're all just great. Most people know him based off this:
OR
Yeah, you've probably heard these somewhere. This is actually part of a larger Ballet, Romeo and Juliet. The other is also part of a larger ballet called Peter and the Wolf, both of which I won't link to, but you can listen to them on your own if you're so inclined. Moving on, here are 4 Sonatas by Prkofiev:
...I know, I just dumped all that on you. I try not to just dump stuff, but hey, it's there in one place, so you might as well listen. I think that's enough Prokofiev. You can probably seek out more if you like him, which I'm sure you will, since his music tends to be very popular. Let's move on to an infamous composer:
Igor Stravinsky - Rite of Spring
The legendary ballet that almost caused a riot, one of the few classical pieces that inspired a riot, as seen in this wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_music_riot
You can see our friend Erik Satie caused a bit of a ruckus as well as Edgard Varese, Varese being somewhat understandable as his music is really out there. In any case, you know that if your piece causes a riot, you're in good company. I believe that the people rioted because of the dancing, not necessarily the music, although since the dancing was in synch with the music I guess it was both. Whatever it was, it riled the people up. In any case, Stravinsky seemed to do a lot of ballets, and nearly all of my favorite stravinsky pieces are ballets, since his other works are a bit neoclassical in nature (I am not a fan of neoclassical), and I am not too acquainted with his serial pieces, so expect just the ballets! here's my personal favorite:
And you can watch a live performance here, since ballets should probably be watched as well as listened to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbWDG3LU4bc
Albeit in not that great quality, but that's how it is. Here's the ballet for the Rite of Spring as well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jF1OQkHybEQ
See for yourself whether it was worthy of a riot. Here's a rather famous piece:
The famous part of it is the ending here, composed by Stravinsky himself:
Firebird - Lullaby and Final Hymn
To think that we actually have footage and audio of the composer himself playing the music the way he wanted. That's nothing in today's modern age, but just imagine the great performances that you could only have heard if you were there... In any case, You'll see why exactly that part so famous. The sheer life-affirming majesty of the finale that will make any person believe in humanity, or something like that; It's a great piece. This seems like a good place to end with Stravinsky. Explore him at your leisure, although I personally like his early period music the best. Maybe you'll find something to like in his other works. Moving on we'll go to a rather obscure composer named Gavriil Popov:
This is an ANGRY piece. This piece caught the attention of the Soviet government and they basically told him to tone down his music or else, and he did. This piece was never played again in his lifetime. This piece was inspired by his father and the life of people like him in those times, specifially their struggles and failures. And the concentrated feeling of failure exploded onto the musical canvas resulting in a stunningly tragic piece. You can tell why the soviets did not like the piece. He didn't really produce as much work as other composers, and died at an early age. Shostakovich was inspired by him and said he wanted to make music like Popov. A real favorite piece of mine is his 6th symphony:
This piece is wonderful. I don't really have much to say about it, except that it's a piece that never fails to get me pumped and excited. The "Festive" subtitle really works here. We'll leave it off at this beautiful piece:
And with that, we'll move on to Shostakovich, and I look at what else I have to go through and wonder whether splitting this into two parts is worth considering. We'll just keep going:
This piece is infamous. Shostakovich often feared being taken in by the soviets since his earlier music wasn't popular among them at all, much like Popov's 1st Symphony, and a lot of his friends were taken and, well, disappeared. Taking notes from Mahler (Whom we won't go into since he's not russian, but he's a must-hear composer!) he decided to take subtle jabs while still maintaining the appearances of towing the party line, which was of crucial importance for him, since one wrong move... It was a hit among critics and the public, and his reputation was kept safe. People love to interpret his works and try to find irony or satire in his works. My personal favorite is this piece:
Funnily enough, no one seemed to like this piece. Shostakovich distanced himself from this piece, basically saying that he tried too hard to be original, the soviets didn't like the complexity of the first half and the rest of the world didn't like the uplifting Soviet Choral in the second half. It isn't his most popular work, but for some reason I really like the work in its entirety, especially the part at 16:00. If I were a citizen who needed to feel proud for his country, I would feel so damned proud when hearing that. Moving on:
Another great Symphony from Shostakovich. He never fails to impress, although some critics often call him too weary or too much a copy of Mahler, I disagree on both counts.
Shostakovich as did some pretty sweet Jazz suites:
And speaking of Jazz and Classical, let's move on to the next composer, who mixes the two styles:
This guy's work is just phenominal. The perfect mixture of Jazz and classical into a style that is just so fun to listen to. Just listen to his music:
Nealy Waltz for Cello and Piano Op. 98
Some really great stuff. He doesn't seem to be as popular as he should be. Well, that's why I'm sharing all these links. Let's move on to one of my favorite composers, a composer who is by far the darkest sounding in this giant list:
Alfred Schnittke - Symphony No. 3
Alfred Schnittke... If I could express just how much I love his music. His music is heavily eclectic, revisiting well-trodden ground and finding darker aspects to them; You'll see what I mean in the second movement in this piece, where it takes a spin in the classical and slowly deconstructs it to a nightmarish mess of dissonance. Later you hear something like Bach's Well Tempered Clavier and he just goes and turns that on its head. His style is one called polystylism, which needs no further elaboration if you listen to his works. His music was also influenced from his religiousness, as you'll see here:
All of Schnittke doesn't disappoint, in my opinion. It's the music, I like to think, for the end times. These times are filled with death everywhere: The death of books, television, nations, capitalism, music, art, and so on. Many people seem to retreat to older times (e.g. neoclassical music) while others try to do something like what Schnittke does with his polystylism.
Inspired by the Cathedral St. Florian where Bruckner made his symphonies. Schnittke was a fan of Bruckner (For good reason, as he's well worth a listen to) and decided to make this Symphony, which is just mind-bending. I really can't get enough of the kind of music Schnittke makes. The first movement is especially mystifying to me. When those violins play it just leaves me awestruck.
Concerto for Piano and Strings
This is perhaps my favorite Schnittke piece. It starts with a somber piano, slowly builds up, takes on Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and tosses it away, then hits a roller coaster ride into hell @ around 8 minutes in that is just stunningly frightening. The first time I heard Schnittke was here:
Concerto Grosso no. 1, mvt 5 "Rondo"
And this was a real trip. I could go on with Schnittke, but I think that's enough. The next is a composer that doesn't get as much praise, and truthfully I haven't heard a lot of her music since youtube doesn't have much, but this is one of my favorite Symphonies:
That's the thing about classical. You can spend lifetimes wading around the innumberable amount of composers out there, finding tons that just don't interest you at all (They might even be ones that I linked to; I'm sorry if so!), and you'll never hear them all, and you might even miss something like this Symphony.
I don't have much else to say, so I'll just end this off with Stanchinsky:
Stanchinsky - Prelude in the Lydian Mode
I'm always reminded of Debussy and friends, or rather I always return to Debussy and friends. Ah well, onwards
Well, I lied; I'll end it off HERE:
Samuil Feinberg - Piano Sonata 1
And that was a by no means exhaustive list of Russian composers I think you should listen to. There are more. So much more. You would not believe how longer this could be! But this is good enough for any regular person. I hope you find something, anything, here that catches your fancy. If not, Bah humbug!
Hopefully all of these links work! Next time, whenever that's going to happen, I think we're finally going to tackle this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsEtwW-W7z0
Yup. We're doing German next.