Musically Speaking

Quote from the Musically Speaking official site: "Out mission: To present classical music of the highest quality performed by internationally recognized symphony orchestras and to produce educational products that encourage more people to appreciate and enjoy the art form." "The original series of CD packages, each covering a different classical composer, was developed in the early 1990's by Maestro Schwarz and musicologist, Paul Schiavo".

Here's the Spotify playlist: Musically Speaking (101 tracks, total time: 14 hours) To keep the playlist neat I only included the Listener's Guide, for full length recordings of the works in discussion, click the album title. Also check out my previous post for Leonard Bernstein music lectures playlist and an excellent video lecture on Mozart's Symphony No.40.

Bernstein's Music Lectures: On Bach, Jazz and Symphonies

Here's the Spotify playlist: Bernstein's Music Lectures (146tracks, 13.6 hours). And here are the Amazon links to the two albums listed above, 1, 2. Other recordings featured in this playlist are Bernstern's lectures on Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, Beethoven, Ives, and Bach's Saint Matthew Passion. My favourite part is Bernstein's analysis on Schumann's Symphony No.2 and his defense on Schumann's orchestration. Lenny's Schumann cycle with NYPO using Schumann's original orchestrations are fantastic, especially the 2nd.

Best Place To Get Started: Naxos Educational

"Naxos sees it as its mission to promote the appreciation and understanding of classical music and has produced a wide range of educational texts and recordings.
There are the lives and works of the great composers; analyses of the most important works of classical music; introductions to all the most popular operas; A-Z of Classical Music and A-Z of Opera; an introduction to the instruments of the orchestra; and many others." - Naxos.com

The Naxos Educational series offers a very informative and enjoyable listening experience for both the new comers to classical music and veteran concert goers.


Here's the playlist: Naxos Educational: An Index (81 tracks from 81 albums). One track off every album, so that the list won't get too long. You can click the album title in the list to access any of the full album. In the A To Z of  Pianists, You can hear the pianist who had heard Chopin himself play and played with Liszt, the French master Francis Planté who was born in 1839, playing piano, not on a roll! The Classic Explained and Life And Works series by Jeremy Siepmann(official site, his Spotify catalog) are surprisingly charming, you got to hear him sing the opening of the Pastoral Symphony.

Happy listening.