Hello New Visitors From The U.S.

I just noticed that within the first 24 hours after Spotify launched in the US, the traffic of my site went tripled. Most new visitors came in through googling different variations of Spotify and classical music.

I'd like to say hello to new visitors of this blog in the U.S. Spotify is amazing for classical music: decent sound quality (comparing to most other streaming services), comprehensive catalog (which other service has six complete sets of Bach Cantatas?), great user interface and super fast too. Try it for yourself, it even has a free version. If you are still looking for an invite, we have over a dozen here, thanks to Sven. It would be much appreciated if you can leave a comment in that post after taking an invite, so others will know which one is already used.

If you are already amazed by what you saw on Spotify so far, lo and behold, the best is yet to come. I have tried a Spotify US account yesterday, and based on what I saw, Spotify is still adding many contents into their US library. In some of my playlists, up to two thirds of the tracks are currently not available in the US. Like: New Yorker: Songs of the Years 1925-2010. See what it looks like in a US account in this picture. However, I think there's no need to get frustrated too soon. Spotify may need a bit more time to sync all contents to their US servers. You can still subscribe to the playlists that you are interested, and see if more tracks will become available in the future.

I have published more than one hundred playlists on this blog so far, below are some of my favorite ones that I want to recommend to new visitors:

Classical Music Used In Stanley Kubrick Films

Classical Music Inspired By The Sea

Deutsche Grammophon and Decca Series and Editions

Complete Chronological Catalogue of Mozart and Beethoven

An Index for 2011 New Classical Releases (nearly 700 recordings and growing)

NPR Classical 50 and 50 Great Voices

A Brief History of Post-World War II Music

Pop Songs Based On Classical Works

And all closing credit songs from HBO's The Sopranos (yes I occasionally cover pop and other good music as well)

Happy exploring and listening. If you have any problem regarding using Spotify for classical music, feel free to drop me a line. I hope Spotify will make good music easier to access for more and more people.

Complete Works of J.S. Bach - Hänssler Edition on Spotify

"When the angels play for God they play Bach; to each other, they play Mozart." - Isaiah Berlin

"Now there is finally music from which a man can learn something." - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, upon hearing a Bach motet in Leipzig.

What's in this playlist: The complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach, recorded under the artistic direction of Helmuth Rilling, released by Hänssler Classic, first as 140 individual volumes, then as a 172 CDs box-set in 2000, the 250th anniversary of Bach's death.

The albums in this playlist are arranged by volume numbers, from Vol.1 to 140, and grouped by genres as listed below. The volumes themselves are arranged, though not strictly, by BWV numbers.

Vol. 01-60 Church cantatas
Vol. 61-68 Secular cantatas
Vol. 69 Motets
Vol. 70-73 Masses, single mass movements, Magnificat
Vol. 74-77 Passions & Oratorios
Vol. 78-85 Four part chorales, hymns and arias
Vol. 86-101 Organ works
Vol. 102-117 Clavier works (harpsichord)
Vol. 118-124 Chamber music (Including works for lute)
Vol. 125-132 Orchestral works
Vol. 133-134 Canons, Musical Offering, The Art of the Fugue
Vol. 135-140 Other works

139 of the 140 volumes, or 169 of the this 171-CD (the 172nd CD is a CD-ROM) edition is available on Spotify. The missing ones are the Goldberg Variations, Six Sonatas and Paritas For Solo Violin and the Brandenburg Concertos. I used other Hänssler recordings of the first two works and Jordi Savall's Brandenburg to fill in the blanks.

How to use this playlist: 1, Set your Spotify to Shuffle Mode, and double click this playlist. Radio Bach is on the air. Since the playlist contains over 175 hours of music, you are not very likely to encounter the same piece twice in a day, even if you play all day long. 2, If you have a particular works in mind, say BWV 1007 the first Cello Suite, go to this playlist, press ctrl (CMD) + F to bring out the filter bar, input 1007 or cello suite, find the work and play. You will hear the music within a couple of seconds after the piece comes to your mind, much faster and more convenient than going through the physical box-set, and your don’t have to spend at least 30 GB of your hard-drive to store the digital files either. The beauty of Spotify and the cloud.

When I first put the completed playlist on shuffle, it played the 6-voice ricercar from Musical Offering. I guess it's like leafing through a Bible and the first thing you see is the Lord' s Prayer.

Here' s the Spotify playlist: Bach: Complete Works - Hänssler Edition (3526 tracks, total time: 1 week). It works better in Album view.

For those who are looking for an introduction to Bach, check out this excellent Naxos Audiobook on Spotify: Life And Works: Johann Sebastian Bach. Click here for a larger photo of Bach taken with Mr. Spotify.

And Hänssler, if you are reading this, please make the 5000 pages text material and two books accompanying this edition available for purchase or as free PDFs. You know that makes sense. Thank you.

2012 Update: I compiled a new playlist for complete work of Bach, using non-Hänssler recordings.

American Recordings: Covers And Originals

Another playlist to celebrate Spotify's expansion to the US, here are the songs Johnny Cash, one of the most distinctive voices of American music, covered on the American Recordings series he made with Rick Rubin, both the cover version and the originals.

It contains songs from all six volumes of the American Recordings release so far, and the Unearthed box-set. I put the Cash covers right after originals, including the songs that he covered himself, like Delia's Gone (though the first Cash recording of this song, which dates from 1962, is not yet on Spotify, the other early version in the compilation Legend sounds different enough to me to be included). For traditional songs like I'll Fly Away, I tried to use the earliest recorded versions available. In the case of Wichita Lineman, though it's first and most famously recorded by Glen Campbell, I think it's more interesting to use the author Jimmy Webb's own recording as the original. I also chose to use Cash's early recordings of Hank Williams songs as the "originals" here, if possible - I assume people who are interested in this playlist already know Hank Williams well enough.

I only kept the songs that I the originals could be found on Spotify, because the aim of this playlist is making it easier to compare the difference between interpretations, if you want to fully appreciate Cash's album on its own, click the album title and listen to it in its entirety. I highly recommend you to do that as well: A Singer of Songs from Unearthed, one of the most moving performance from the Man In Black, is not in this playlist (I don't even know if an original recording exists, is this a song written for Cash?).

Here's the Spotify playlist: Johnny Cash: American Recordings & The Originals (194 tracks, total time: 10 hours) If you find other original songs become available or want to recommend a more suitable version than the one I chose as original recording, please leave a comment. Thanks.

Hello America

To celebrate Spotify's entrance into the biggest music market in the world, today let's listen to EMI's American Classics.

Here's the Spotify playlist: EMI: American Classics (612 tracks, total time 1 day) It may work better in Album view. Check out this Presto page for discography and introduction to this series,  and my previous post for the even more comprehensive Naxos American Classics.

Classical Radio and Games on Spotify

Does the absence of a classical tag in Spotify's radio page ever bother you? Well, I don't think that will change soon. Classical music is often in multiple movements, playing random movements from different works just doesn't make too much sense. Besides, the current radio interface, which categories recordings according to recorded date such as 80s/90s/00s, doesn't make sense for classical music either. Spotify will need to tag their classical catalog in different periods like: Early Music/Baroque/Classical/Romantic/20th-Century/Modern. Obviously they haven't done that yet. Thirdly, real radio with human hosts is much more fun! Why you'll ever need a Spotify radio when you have Radio 3 and BBCify?

Still, there are hidden classical radio stations on Spotify, including Mozart FM and Beethoven FM, with a gaming system. Here's how to tune into and play it in Spotify's desktop client:

1, Subscribe to this Mozart playlist: Complete Chronological Catalogue.

2, Put your Spotify in Shuffle, double click the playlist.

3, The music starts to play, do you know which piece? Can you guess it's from the early, middle or late years of Mozart's creative life? To be more specifically, the chronological position of the playing piece in Mozart's output?

4, Click the album cover at bottom-left, Spotify will go to the playing track and highlight it. Since the playlist is Mozart's complete works arranged in chronological order, the position of the scroll bar will tell you the answer.

It's the same for my chronological Beethoven playlist, and I find the Beethoven game much easier. His style had gone through sea changes and the difference is distinctive, while in Mozart, that divine instinct graced both early Salzburg works and late masterpieces.

I find this kind of "radio" more rewarding than randomly playing my whole classical collection, you can try my other composer playlists to create your own composer FM, though they are not in strict chronological order.

Other playlist that might be good to play in shuffle as a radio: 2011 New Classical Releases, Arthur Rubinstein Collection, and Classical Library For Dummies. I'm also considering creating collaborate playlists for different periods of classical music. Stay tuned.

Dear Spotify, Please Give Us Premium Users 320K Quality

An Updated version of this article is here: Spotify Bitrategate, The Story So Far

Operas and Songs Without Words

"Fruitless effort to separate the two. Words and Music are fused into one … bound in a new synthesis. Secret of the hour… one art redeemed by the other!" - Countess Madeleine's soliloquy at the end of Richard Strauss' final opera Capriccio.

That being said, the language barrier is still keeping many classical music fans, including me, from fully appreciating the art of opera. Attending opera performances, watching operas in DVD/Blue-ray with subtitles, or at least listening to recordings with a libretto at hand seem to be required for understand the medium, so we cannot listen to operas while reading or rearranging furniture. Before I can find more time to dig into operas, I listen to operas without words occasionally, simply because there are some of the best orchestral music ever written among them.

Here's the Spotify playlist: Opera Without Words (311 tracks, total time: 22 hours) Highlights including Tannhäuser Without Words - A symphonic synthesis by Lorin Maazel, String Quartet version of Mozart's Don Giovanni, and Arturo Toscanini's rehearsal of Die Walküre without singers. It may work better in Album view.

I also included some arrangements of famous lieder cycles. The difference with Liszt's piano transcriptions is here an instrument, other than the piano, sings the vocal part. Try this playlist if you fancy hearing a cello singing Schubert's Winterreise or a viola singing Schumann's Dichterliebe.

Do You Know You Can Subscribe To My Playlists?

Instead of copying them into a new playlist of your own?

Pros:

1, I update my playlists constantly. New releases or newly available recordings in a series, new works that fit into a themed playlist, I add them once I find them on Spotify. For example, for the Michael Gielen Mahler cycle playlist, the Symphony No.2, 3, 8 were made available on Spotify after I posted that playlist, and Das Lied von der Erde was released just recently, I updated that playlist accordingly. If you subscribed to it, all those newly added recordings will appear automatically.

2, And if you use Spotify Social, your friends may discover my other playlists through your Spotify profile once you subscribed. You can help me spreading the music by simply doing less. Clicking Subscribe is actually easier than "select all, copy, create new playlist, input name, paste", isn't it?

3, You can also browse other subscribers' profiles, to look for their interesting playlists. I discovered Harry Partch through one of the subscribers mreddington.

Cons:

1, You cannot update the playlists yourself (except for collaborative playlists) . 2, Cannot change their names either.

Unless you do that a lot, I suggest you to subscribe. You can always leave a comment to suggest a update for certain playlist that I overlooked, or just send the recording you want to add into my Spotify inbox. Since all playlists are stored in the Spotify servers, I don't think there will be any performance difference (loading speed, etc.) between subscribing and copying into your own playlists.

And here's how to for those of you who don't know (believe me, one of this blog's most ardent supporters just told me that he didn't know he could subscribe). OK, click a playlist link: Radiohead Office Charts, to open it in Spotify, as you see  in the pic above, to the right of the playlist image (a mash-up of album sleeves most of the time), under the playlist name, in this case, "Radiohead Office Charts", there is a "Subscribe" button, click it and, done. By the way, the Radiohead playlist is a great mix of classical, world music and contemporary pop, and updated regularly, well worth subscribing.

Piano Transcriptions of Famous Symphonic Works

 "To compare Gould's piano version [of the Beethoven 5th] to an orchestral version would be like comparing a great wine to a great meal." - an Amazon reviewer

Well they are not all symphonic works, but Piano transcriptions of famous works for a solo instrument or voice, an ensemble of instruments and/or voices, or even a piece originally for solo or ensemble piano doesn't look like a more adorable title.

This playlist features piano transcriptions of Beethoven's nine symphonies (by Liszt), Dvorak's New World Symphony, late symphonies of Mozart and Schubert, Mahler's Symphony No.1 "Titan", Bruckner's 2nd, Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, Debussy's La Mer and his arrangement of Wagner, Tchaikovsky's Symphony No.4 and 6 "Pathétique", Stravinsky's Rite Of Spring, Prokofiev's Symphony No.1 "Classical", Smetana's symphonic poems My Country, Shostakovitch's Symphony No.10 (played by the composer) and his piano arrangement of Honegger's Symphonie Liturgique. And Glenn Gould's last recording, his piano transcription of Wagner.

As well as chamber works such as Mendelssohn's Octet, Franck's Violin Sonata (by Cortot), Richard Strauss' Serenade For 13 Wind Instruments (by the composer), Schumann's piano quartet (by Brahms) and quintet (by Clara Schumann). Amazingly, there are even piano arrengments (reductions?) of Fauré and Verdi's requiems, Mozart's Masonic Funeral Music, and Beethoven's Missa Solemnis.

Too many Liszt transcription of romantic lieders out there, so I only put in some hightlights, for Bach it's the same (virtually all Bach played on piano are transcriptions). In my other playlists you can find Brahms's own transcription for most of his symphonic and chamber works, and piano four-hand version of Mozart and Beethoven operas. I left them out of this one to avoid duplication.

I don't think there would be an organ transcription playlist so I also included organ transcription of the Mahler 5th and Bruckner 8th.

Here's the Spotify playlist: Piano Transcriptions (335 tracks, total time: 1 day) It may work better in Album view (easier to tell one piece from another) If you find other interesting transcriptions please leave a comment or send to my Spotify inbox. Thanks.

If you find this one too overwhelming, go to the end of the playlist and listen to James Rhodes play the solo piano version of the Romance from Chopin's Concerto No.1.

100 Greatest Rock Debut Singles

I was listening to Liszt's piano transcription of Beethoven symphonies while reading the Guardian Music blog today, until this post, Readers recommend: debuts, and the Ramones album sleeve gave me a sudden craving for Blitzkrieg Bop. I held out until the end of second movement of Symphony No.9, and... "Hey ho, let's go!" I wonder if Beethoven himself will get some kicks out of blasphemy at such scale too.

I made a playlist for debut singles according to this Digital Dream Door page, their choices are excellent, dominated by pre-rock stuff and obvious choices are few (even no Brown Eyed Girl). Much more interesting than the Guardian playlist (maybe that's why it only has 30 subscribers while the number of comments is approaching 2000).

Here's the Spotify playlist: DigitalDreamDoor: 100 Greatest Rock Debut Singles (112 tracks, total time: 5 hours.) 100 singles plus 15 Honorable Mentions, only three are missing. I used single versions of the tracks where possible. Click the playlist to browse in Spotify or read the complete list below. Don't worry, more classical playlists are on the way.