The 50 Greatest Composers and Their 500 Greatest Works

Another epic guest playlist, from Jorge in Sweden. Jorge says:

"I have this book, written by Phil G. Goulding, called Classical Music: The 50 Greatest Composers and Their 1,000 Greatest Works. I don't know whether you know this book, but it's an excellent introduction to classical music. Here's the Amazon link for it.

Anyway, I made a playlist in Spotify based on his recommendations for each and one of the 50 composers listed. It's comprised of 10 major works. Some are missing, like complete operas from Verdi, Wagner and Puccini, reason being that I'm very well acquainted with them. Some other complete operas are there, though.

Initially, I also went after his specific recommendations regarding the recording itself, the conductor and orchestra and all that, but soon i gave that up. Just laziness, I guess. ;)"

Coincidentally, the Chinese translation of Goulding's book was one of the very first books I've read on classical music, and I think it's a good introduction too. If not for Jorge we would not be able to get this wonderful playlist that put the core repertoire of Western classical music in one place. Thanks Jorge.

Here's Jorge's Spotify playlist: Phil G. Goulding Classical Music (4685 tracks, 2 weeks) 10 major works each from 50 most important composers according to Goulding, a relatively conservative but very decent list, you will need to know these works well before you go beyond them. As The Dalai Lama says: "Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively."

And these are links to mreddington, piaf123456, jahart and bonving who have generously contributed guest playlists before, you can find lots of interesting playlists in their public profiles.

Entartete Musik: Music Banned By The Third Reich

Entartete Musik (Degenerate music), was a label applied in the 1930s by the Nazi government in Germany to certain forms of music that it considered to be harmful or decadent.

Some links: The official page on the Decca website. The Google timeline. Toward Entartete Musik on danajohnhill.org, an Amzon list that features most of the albums on the playlist, and a youtube playlist: Entartete Musik.

Wiki pages of the composers featured in this playlist: Alexander von Zemlinsky (1871-1942), Franz Schreker (1878-1934), Alma Mahler (1979-1964), Walter Braunfels (1882-1954), Emmerich Kálmán (1882-1953), Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942), Paul Hindemith (1895-1963), Karol Rathaus (1895-1954), Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957), Viktor Ullmann (1898-1944), Pavel Haas (1899-1944), Hans Krása (1899-1944), Ernst Krenek (1900-1991), Kurt Weill (1900-1950), Stefan Wolpe (1902-1972), Berthold Goldschmidt (1903-1996), Erich Zeisl (1905-1959), Franz Waxman (1906-1967), Ignace Strasfogel (1909-1994).

From the mid-1990s the Decca Record Company released a series of recordings under the title 'Entartete Musik: music suppressed by the third reich covering lesser-known works by the above-named composers.

Here's a Spotify playlist of Entartete Musik (461 tracks, 1.4 days).

I also wanted to use a photo of Hitler listening to a rehearsal in Nuremberg from The Rest Is Noise, but it is copyrighted. If you can find any online libretto of the operas in this playlist please leave a comment, I have listened Braunfels' ravishing Die Vögel two times and I really want to know what the birds were singing. Thanks.

Serenade: Music To Calm The Night Down

I love Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings so much that I have to do another playlist for it. So I did a playlist of serenades.

It opens with Mozart's signature tune: Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, little night music, and followed by an early Baroque serenade from Alessandro Scarlatti, Serenade for Violin, Viola and Cello by Beethoven, Serenades for Strings by Dvořák, Elgar, Tchaikovsky, and Suk respectively, Stravinsky's Serenade for Piano in A, Vaughan Williams' Serenade to Music, Bernstein conducts his own Serenade for Solo Violin, Strings, Harp and Percussion (after Plato's "Symposium"), Rodrigo's Concerto Serenade for Harp and Orchestra,  Arnold's Serenade for guitar and strings, a Scott Joplin piano rag called A Mexican Serenade, Haydn's serenade quartet - actually written by Roman Hoffstetter, and many others. I also put in some serenade movements from orchestral and chamber works, such as the serenade movement in Shostakovitch's last string quartet, No. 15

Here's the Spotify playlist: Serenade (181 tracks, 15.9 hours). It may grow as I will add in more stuff, and please suggest more recordings that you would like to be put in this playlist by commenting on this thread.

At the end of the playlist it's Mozart's Gran Partita, let's hear what Salieri had to say about this divine music.

And have you voted in The Spotties yet? Vote for Spotify Classical Playlists now for a chance to win three months of Spotify Premium. Here's the Vote page, and introductions to Nominees for Best News or Music Finder Site. Please help to spread the word, thanks:)

111 Years of Deutsche Grammophon

Deutsche Grammophon, arguably the most important classical label in the world, just started tweeting. And better news is that they are adding more and more music from their splendid catalog into Spotify. This box-set below will give you a good overview of DG, if you are a newcomer to classical music, great, let's start dancing to the very first track, the seductive Hungarian Dance No.5. If you are a seansoned listener, there should be many tracks in the box-set that you've missed out, even never imagined existing: like the exciting finale of Mozart's great G Minor symphony conducted by Richard Strauss.

(Spotify link, 6CDs 111tracks)

The official site of the box-set. Search for the whole DG catalog in Spotify: enter label:Deutsche-Grammophon in the search box.

P.S: It's great to see another blog that covers classical music on Spotify: Spotify Chart. Go and find more classical albums there. Happy listening and have a nice weekend.

Modern Ensembles on Spotify: Acoustic Aphex Twin & Many More

Last night I was triumphantly humming the opening of the 3rd movement of Rachmaninoff's 3rd piano concerto, then my wife said it made her feel sick. No not OMG-I-have-heard-that-tune-a-million-times sick, but literally sick. Well the next time when you are privileged to be in love with such a special personality, play him/her the playlist below instead of good old Rach. One of the rare moments that my wife appreciated the music I listened to was when I played Aphex Twin's 4, performed acoustically by Alarm Will Sound. I guess that little wicked violin tune is really sick, the man-that-trick-was-sick-yo sick.

Here's the list of contemporary classical ensembles on wikipeida, I chose one album per ensemble and made this Spotify playlist: Modern Ensembles (264 tracks, 21.9 hours)

Enjoy the music. If you want to suggest more ensembles or albums just leave a comment and I will add in, thanks.

Borrowed Playlist: The Swedish Romantic Composers

Spotify is a great service started from Sweden, so I always wanted to make a playlist of Swedish composers. This morning I found a wonderful playlist on Gehrmans' Twitter, and I've been listening to it all day, really love these lush orchestral pieces with soaring Nordic melodies! Here's the links to the biographies of the composers in this playlist:

Lars-Erik Vilner Larsson (1908-1986)
Hilding Rosenberg (1892-1985)
Hugo Emil Alfvén  (1872-1960)
Franz Adolf Berwald (1796-1868)
Karl-Birger Blomdahl (1916-1968)
Daniel Börtz (1943- )
Thomas Jennefelt (1954- )
Fredrik Högberg (1971- )
Eduard Tubin (1905-1982)
Nils Lindberg (1933- )

You can find the sheet music from the publisher Gehrmans Musikförla

Here's the Spotify playlist: Published by Gehrmans Musikförlag (172 tracks, 13.8 hours) Happy listening and have a nice weekend.

Pop Songs Based On Classical Works: An Open Spotify Playlist

This playlist consists of pop songs and the classical works they borrowed from.

To me some of the best examples are Paul Simon's American Tune, one of my favourite songs, which borrowed a tune from Bach's St Matthew Passion(OK Bach got this hymn from someone else and used it multiple times but this is probably the most famous one), The Orb's dance classic Little Fluffy Clouds, which sampled Steve Reich's Electric Counterpoint, Elvis' Can't Help Falling Love, which is based on Martaini's aria Plaisir d'amour, and Ella Fitzgerald's My Reverie, which took the tune from Debussy's Rêverie. I have collected 23 pop songs, so 46 tracks in total. For more information you can check out this wikipedia page.

Here is the Spotify playlist: Pop Songs Based On Classical Works. It's an open playlist so you can add tracks to it yourself. If you're going to add songs which sampled classical music, please only include songs in which the classical samplers is an important element, as Kelis' Like You in this playlist which sampled Mozart's famous Queen of the Night aria through out the whole song, on the other hand, Beatles' Revolution 9 won't qualified because of its one second sampler of Sibelius Symphony No.7. And please follow the format that I use: Put the pop songs before the classical tracks. Two more simple rules:

1, Mika's Grace Kelly is not allowed:)

2, No Pachelbel's Canon In D either. Reason? Watch the video below:

See full playlist below, or just click the link above to load it into your Spotify and browse from there. Happy weekend and happy listening.

Paul Simon – American Tune
Bach, JS : St Matthew Passion BWV244 : "O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden"
The Orb – Little Fluffy Clouds
Ensemble Modern – Electric Counterpoint - Fast
Tony Bennett – Stranger In Paradise
Paavo Jarvi – Prince Igor, Polovtsian Dances: Dance II
Elvis Presley – Can't Help Falling In Love
London Symphony Orchestra – Martini: Plaisir d'amour
Kelis – Like You
Mozart : Die Zauberflöte : Act 2 "Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen"
Barry Manilow – Could It Be Magic
Evgeny Kissin – Prelude No. 20 in C Minora
Mario Lanza – And This Is My Beloved - From Kismet
Borodin Quartet – String Quartet No.2 In D Major: Notturno: Andante
Tony Martin – Here
Kurt Eichhorn & Lucia Popp – Rigoletto: "Caro Nome" (Verdi)
Della Reese – Don't You Know?
Rolando Panerai – La Bohème: Quando me'n vo soletta
The Toys – A Lover's Concerto
Gustav Leonhardt – Minuet in G major, BWV Anh. 116
Van Cliburn – Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 18: Adagio sostenuto
Jem – They
Glenn Gould – Prelude & Fugue No. 12 in F minor, BWV 881: Praeludium
Eric Carmen – All By Myself - Digitally Remastered 1997
Annie Lennox – A Whiter Shade Of Pale
BWV 140 - Wachet Auf, Ruft Uns Die Stimme: Choral: Zion Hört Die Wächter Singen
Frank Sinatra – I'm Always Chasing Rainbows
Yundi Li – Chopin: Impromptu No.4 in C sharp minor, Op.66 "Fantaisie-Impromptu"
Eric Carmen – Never Gonna Fall In Love Again
St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra – Symphony No. 2 in E minor Op. 27: III. Adagio
Monty Python – Oliver Cromwell (Monty Python Sings)
Martha Argerich – Polonaise No. 6 in A flat 'Heroic' Op. 53
Ella Fitzgerald – My Reverie
Zoltán Kocsis – Debussy: Rêverie
The Crew Nuts – Mostly Martha
Orchestra – Martha (1997 Digital Remaster): M'appari tutt'amor
Perry Como – Hot Diggity (Dog Ziggity Boom)
The Philadelphia Orchestra – España
Jo Stafford – No Other Love
Murray Perahia – 12 Études, Op. 10: Étude No. 3 in E Major
Patti Page – All My Love
Daniel Barenboim & Chicago Symphony Orchestra – Ravel : Bolero
Xzibit featuring Dr. Dre – Symphony In X Major - Explicit Version
Ton Koopman – Bach, JS : Brandenburg Concerto No.3 in G major BWV1048 : I Allegro
Janet Jackson – Someone To Call My Lover (Single Edit)
Francine Kay – Gymnopedie No 1 (Satie)

Classical Music In The Films: An Open Spotify Playlist

Inspired by Alex Ross' latest blog entry Lo and Behold! I made a Spotify playlist of soundtracks and film scores.

It includes the soundtrack from Martin Scorsese’s new film “Shutter Island”. You can read about it on the page linked above. And Bernard Herrmann's classic scores for Hitchcock's Psycho and others, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. Of course there are film scores by Shostakovich and Prokofiev, and Nino Rota's fascinating sonic landscapes and circus melodies for the Fellini films. Also included are Piero Piccioni’s score for Francesco Rosi’s Hand Over the City and Roberto Gerhard’s score for Lindsay Anderson's This Sporting Life. In the end there's Takemitsu's Suite from Akira Kurosawa's Ran, one of the most memorable films and scores ever.

I think most of the original films scores in this playlist, especially Gerhard and Takemitsu's, are modern masterpieces. By modern I mean constantly seeking new technique of expression and reinventing the musical language, not just bigger IMAX screen and more bombastic surrounding sound system. Yes I do enjoy Avatar, but as long as we live on planet earth rather than Pandora, I think it is better to spend more time on the works of art that intrigue us to think about our relationship with the real world, instead of hiding from the, admittedly not that good, reality. That's what Woody Allen films do, aren't they? So I also put a complication of classical music used in Woody Allen films in it.

I cannot find Giovanni Fusco’s score for Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Eclisse. It's like the Pierrot Lunaire in films, watch the extracts below. Nowadays they don't make films like this anymore, and no one can carve another Pietà either.

And this joke just made my day:)

Why is Dmitri Shostakovitch the worst composer of the XXth century?Because he is the worst imitator of the twentieth century, imitator of Prokofiev and of Mahler and of Satie and of whoever else's scores he'd lay his paws on; and because his imitations are of poor quality, coarse, vulgar, thick, unimaginative, repetitive and narrow-minded: an artificious world he fabricated, imitated of the nineteenth century, in the image of the artificious society constructed by the Bolshevists.

You have successfully described John Williams!!!

OK, here's the Spotify playlist for Classical Music In The Films. I made this a collaborative playlist, so you can also add your favourite classical film scores and soundtracks into it. Looking forward to hear from you:)

Swan Songs of Great Composers

Last Sunday morning I enjoyed a rare moment of listening to music through the speakers at maximum volume, as my musically conservative wife, here conservative means music written by dead people are dead, had gone skiing. I played Schubert's last string quintet and piano sonata, and once again they made me speechless. Both are composed in the last months of Schubert's 31 years on earth, by that time his opus number has nearly reached 1000. Sometime the thriving vitality and the outburst of creativity in these last works just makes me sad. What if Schubert lived to Beethoven's age, that's just 56 but it will give Schubert another 25 years! What would you expect from that? Another thousand of lied? A string of symphonies and piano sonatas that exceed Beethoven's late masterworks? Something that would totally change the landscape of the romantic period? We will never know.

What we do know is, if Schubert lived to Elliott Carter's current age, he would have witnessed the premiere of Mahler's 3rd. Oh my, isn't it kinky just to think about that?

One thing that classical composers beat the pop acts is the lasting of creativity. Name me one pop musician whose works at age 60 is not hopelessly overshadowed by their works at 25. Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell's late works are fine, but they are also highly predicable if you know their early works well. And Bob Dylan doesn't count either, I'd rather consider him as a genius artist who accidentally, but not necessarily, adopted the form of pop music, rather than a pop musician. That's why he is the only one in pop that exceeded the break through albums from younger years. No one made better albums than a 25 years old Bob Dylan (Blonde on Blonde), except the 60 years old Bob Dylan (Love & Theft).

On the other hand, it is common in classical music that the final works of composers stand well besides their best compositions, if not they are actually the summit of their creative career themselves. Mozart's clarinet concerto and requiem, Bach's Art of Fugue, and Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances, that just to name a few. Time takes its toll on everyone, but I guess the old fashioned composers are lucky to keep themselves unharmed from groupies, drugs and endless tours of the same setlists;)

OK enough rant this time, here's the Spotify playlist of Swan Songs. Besides the aforementioned works, it also includes Tchaikovsky, Bruckner, Mahler, Sibelius, Lutoslawski and Schnittke's last symphonies, Berg's violin concerto in memory of Alma Mahler's daughter, Mendelssohn's last string quartet written after the death of his much beloved sister and female composer Fanny, and many others. It starts with Schubert's c major string quintet, and closes with Alfred Brendel's performance of Schubert's last piano sonata D.960 in his farewell concert in Vienna, 2008. I put two versions of Debussy's g minor violin sonata in it, one modern recording and one historical recording played by József Szigeti and  Béla Bartók. For Beethoven I chose the last movement of the b-flat sting quartet Op.130, the substitution of the Grosse Fuge.

You can load the playlist of the last works of great composers to your Spotify by clicking Swan Songs, and enjoy this video from 20 years ago while waiting for the farewell concerts to be released on DVD. Now we have a lovely answer when the kids ask why we listen to music written mostly by dead people, we can ask them this instead:

"When you are 64, would you prefer to try to yell out 'I hope I die before I get old' on stage like when you were 24, or be able to play, even write a piece of music like this?";)

2010 Grammy Winners for Classical Music on Spotify

Let's do a quick one, here's the full list of winners for classical music.

And here's the Spotify playlist: 2010 Grammy Winners for Classical

MTT's Mahler is not on Spotify yet, neither does Levine's Ravel nor David Lang's The Little Match Girl Passion which won him a Pulitzer in 2008. I collected all the available winner albums, plus three albums under the Classical Producer Of The Year catalog. The new recording of Bernstein's Mass from Naxos is such a treat, just listen to the Lord's Prayer you will know why Steven Epstein won the producer award.

I wasn't going to do this playlist, as I have posted about one of the favourite of my then nominees, and now winner, Higdon's Percussion Concerto, untill I saw this retweet:

#classsicalmusic Refresh your palates from the drivel of the #Grammys with a Britten fugue. Stunning from @BerlinPhil http://bit.ly/cIHIFF

So now enjoy these wonderful albums on Spotify, and this great fugue:)

Ad-free Playlist For Spotify's Free Users

First off, please consider buying a Spotify premium if you haven't. Listening to symphonies with ads in between movements is a crime. Both you, Spotify and the music makers will benefit from your subscription. Let's keep the best and most innovative online music service growing fast and reach more music lovers.

OK if you've decided to live with free Spotify for more time, here's a ad-free playlist for you. It consists of long compositions recorded in single tracks. Like Richard Strauss' Don Quixode, Steve Reich's Music For 18 Musicians, and Gavin Bryars' The Sinking of The Titanic. I only collected tracks longer than 45 minutes, so that you would not hear any Spotify ad in quiet a while once you put on this playlist. The only exception is John Tavener's The Protecting Veil, which lasts only 42 minutes and a half. I have to put it in as it's one of the most powerful yet purely beautiful modern composition I've ever heard.

In this playlist, Alvin Curran's piano piece Inner Cities No.10 is over 50 minutes long, but it's only a small part of the whole composition, so does Sorabji's Opus Clavicembalisticum VI, they both belong to the list of longest non-repetitive piano pieces. And if you want to be a purist of the highest order, try play the hour-long 42 Vexations from this playlist from start to the end, and repeat 20 times. Yes 840 repeats of the four-part theme, that's the way Eric Satie implied to play the Vexations.

Warning: you should never listen to Gary Sill's cheesy new-agey rendition of Satie and the Canon In D in this playlist, unless those are the only "classical" music your girlfriend/wife can stand. Well, maybe now you can guess why I put them in;)

You can read the full playlist below, or just click this link:No Ads For A While, to load the 32 tracks, in this case 1.3 day of music, into your Spotify and start your ad-free listening now:)

A Round-up of NMC on Spotify: The NMC Samplers & Songbook

To me NMC is the best independent classical label from the UK, only second to Hyperion, which is my most wanted label in Spotify. They have done wonderful recordings of some of the most interesting contemporary composers like Jonathan Harvey and Michael Finnissy.

Their catalog is dazzling, and luckily they have released a series of sampler CDs. Last year their 4 CD set The NMC Songbook has been voted Best Contemporary Release at the Classic FM Gramophone Awards. I created a Spotify playlist for these eight sampler CDs and the songbook collection. I'm sure every contemporary music fan will discover a lot of unheard gems in it. My personal favourite for now are Andrzej Panufnik's throbbing cello concerto played by Mstislav Rostropovich, and Ian Pace's performance of Christopher Fox's intricate piano music. Search for full recordings in Spotify when you find any sampler irritatingly bewildering:)

Here's the Spotify playlist for the NMC Samplers and Songbook: NMC Samplers & Songbook

Happy listening, and thanks the official Spotify twitter for twittering about this little blog:)

NPR Classical 50 on Spotify

Here's the Spotify playlist: NPR Classical 50

Please check out NPR's wonderful site for introduction to each recording.



For the recordings that are not currently avaialbe on Spotify, I have substituted them with the best different recordings of the same composition I can find.

Off every recording I chose the same track that NPR sampled on their site to add to the playlist, like most playlists on this blog, it should just function as an index, you are advised to click the album title in the playlist and listen to the full composition.

Kudos to NPR, and enjoy the music:)

Here's the playlist NPR Classical 50.

Chinese Contemporary Classical Music

I just made a Spotify playlist of Chinese and Chinese-born contemporary composers' works. These are not traditional Chinese music, just like Takemitsu's music are not Gagaku, though many of these composers did draw inspirations from the tradition.

Just for fun, I also included Der Abschied from the new BIS recording of Mahler's Song of the Earth, in which the vocalists sang the original Chinese text of the Tang poetry, in Cantonese. Der Abschied was based on Tang Dynasty poet Wang Wei's 送別 (Farewell), you can find more about him on this page, it also includes a translation of his poem Hut Among The Bamboo, upon which Zhou Long set the first movement of his orchestral suite: Poems From Tang. About other titles of the works: Tu for Orchestra is from Zhou Long's wife, China's leading female compose Chen Yi, Tu means the picture or the map. Meng Dong means haze or ignorant, Wu Xing means five elements.

Biographies of these composers:

Bright Sheng, Chen Qigang,Chen Yi, Ge Gan-ru, Lei Liang, Qu Xiaosong, Tan Dun, Zhou Long, Zhu Jianer, and the Butterfly Lovers(traditional).

Zhou Long – Out Of Tang Court
Orchestre National De France – Wu Xing: L`eau (Water)
Orchestre National De France – Wu Xing: Le bois (Wood)
Orchestre National De France – Wu Xing: Le feu (Fire)
Orchestre National De France – Wu Xing: La terre (Earth)
Orchestre National De France – Wu Xing: Le métal (Metal)
The Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto
Bright Sheng – H'un (Lacerations): In Memoriam 1966-1976
Shanghai Quartet – Poems From Tang: I. Hut Among The Bamboo
Chen Yi – Tu For Orchestra
Qu Xiaosong – Mong Dong
Tan Dun – Orchestral Theatre II, "Re"
Arditti Quartet – Lei Liang: Serashi Fragments
Chen Qigang – Three Laughs
Zhu Jianer – Symphony No. 4: Symphony No. 4 "6.4.2 - 1"
Ge Gan-ru - Chinese Rhapsody
Gustav Mahler – VI. Sung Bit - Der Abschied Ending Of Cantonese Version

Click here for the Spotify playlist. Check out their full works if you like the sampler, most of these composers have more than one album on Spotify, just search for them yourself. I hope Spotify will add some Wen Deqing and Wang Xilin's works soon.

Click here to read Alex Ross' article "Symphony Of Millions" on the Chinese classical music scene.

Alex Ross' 20th Century Limited

Alex Ross' bestseller The Rest Is Noise is a great read for music lovers of any genre who are interested in finding out what music is about and what "contemporary music" also means beyond "now that's what I can music!". He's blog, therestisnoise.com is one of the very first classical music blogs that inspired numerous readers and other bloggers. It seems that nowadays he mainly updates his New Yorker blog Unquiet Thoughts.

He posted a twentieth-century playlist here, originally for the iTunes store. I made a Spotify playlist after that, most of the tracks are available in Spotify, for the few ones that the very recording version he chose was not available, I substituted with the best recordings I can find.

Here's the Spotify playlist: Alex Ross' 20th Century Limited Kudos to Mr. Ross, and enjoy the music.