Let the Games Begin: The Classical Music Draft, Part I

[DoctorD]

How many people get to vote? Just the 8 or so of us who put in all 10 choices, or anyone reading the thread?

[Haole]

This has been a lot of fun. Kudos to everyone who's been in and special thanks to Sachsen for driving this along - nice job!


My selections:

1. Le Sacre du Printemps .......... I. Stravinsky
2. Prelude a l'apres midi d'un faun.......... C. Debussy
3. Piano Concerto No. 2 .......... S. Rachmaninoff
4. Concerto for Orchestra.......... B. Bartok
5. Five Preludes for Guitar........... H. Villa-Lobos
6. Trois Petites litugies....Divine.......... O. Messiaen
7. Polovtsian Dances.......... A. Borodin
8. Symphonic Dances........... S. Rachmaninoff
9. Etudes Simples.......... L. Brouwer
10. Fantasia X.......... A. Mudarra


I simply trusted my instincts for the majority of selections. There's so much to exclude in a short list that I was fairly frustrated by the time of my last two choices - there's a whole heck of a lot of important pieces we haven't looked at yet.

I would always have to throw in some Renaissance lute or vihuela music into a survey. The Mudarra piece is over 450 yrs. old and still has that snap and crackle that just jumps off the page. That's the magic of great music.

[Sachsen]

My program speaks for itself.

Piffle. You can do better than that. ;)

[Sachsen]

How many people get to vote? Just the 8 or so of us who put in all 10 choices, or anyone reading the thread?

The 16 participants can vote.

I don't expect all 16 to do so, just like it doesn't look like all 16 are going to finish drafting. (Why did you ask to play, if you weren't going to play???)

[Panfilo]

1. J.P. Moncayo Garcia Huapango
2. F. Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2
3. C. Debussy Suite Bergamasque
4. G. Puccini Turandot (esp. "Nessun Dorma")
5. M. Mussorgsky A Night on Bald Mountain
6. S. Joplin Maple Leaf Rag
7. W.A. Mozart Symphony No. 40
8. L.v. Beethoven Missa Solemnis
9. F.M. da Silva Hino Nacional Brasileiro
10. F. Chopin Fantaisie Impromptu

Mexico, Hungary, France, Italy, Russia, USA, Austria, Germany, Brazil, Poland. 10 different countries and 10 different composers.

Mass, Opera, Symphonies, piano pieces, huapango influenced, national anthem, and the ultimate ice cream truck song. ;)

I tried to spread the love around, and not pick 3 or 4 Bach pieces. :p

I think I accomplished that.

[sardus_pater]

01. - W.A. Mozart - Requiem
02. - M. Mussorgsky - Pictures at an Exhibition
03. - L.v. Beethoven - Piano Sonata No. 14 (Moonlight)
04. - G. Rossini - William Tell (esp. the Overture)
05. - P. Glass - Music in Twelve Parts
06. - J.S. Bach - Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 (highlight - 2nd movement - adagio)
07. - G.P. da Palestrina - Missa Papae Marcelli
08. - S. Prokofiev - Romeo and Juliet
09. - G. Ligeti - Lux Aeterna
10. - J.S. Bach - Little Organ Book (esp. BWV639 - Ich ruf zu dir)

I think I covered much of music history from GP da Palestrina to Glass, renaissance, baroque, romanticism, contemporary, avant-garde.

But the main motive why you should vote this musical program is the greatness of the compositions itself.
Listen (again) to this music and you'll know why. :D

[scottinkc]

In the meantime, let's start shilling for votes! Try to convince me why your draft deserves my vote.

[hushed backroom voice]

Psst. Sachsen, if you vote for me I promise to vote for you.

[/hushed backroom voice]

[Sachsen]

I'll update the Big Board tonight. Let's commence voting at 11:31am Greenwich Mean Time on Sunday, Oct. 1.

In the meantime, let's start shilling for votes! Try to convince me why your draft deserves my vote.

The Big Board has been updated.

Voting will commence in approximately 21 hours.

Everyone has finished drafting except for GringoTex, Michael K., YankHibee, Ghost, and Sbry. You'd think those mods would know better than to leave us hanging like this. ;) Sending them another PM.

[Sachsen]

Composer Tally thus far:


Beethoven 12
Bach 11
Mozart 8
Prokofiev 5
Tchaikovsky 5
Schubert 4

3 each:
Chopin
Copland
Ravel
Stravinsky
Wagner

2 each:
Borodin
Brahms
Debussy
Desprez
Dvorak
Gershwin
Handel
Mendelssohn
Mussorgsky
Puccini
Rachmaninoff
Rossini
Sibelius
Strauss R
Verdi

1 each:
Albinoni
Bagley
Bartlet
Bartok
Berlioz
Bizet
Brouwer
Buxtehude
Cage
Clarke
Corelli
Corigliano
da Palestrina
da Silva/Estrada
Elgar
Ginastera
Glass
Grieg
Haydn
Hildegard v. Bingen
Holst
Hovhaness
Ives
Janacek
Joplin
Legrand
Léhar
Ligeti
Liszt
Mahler
Marcello
Messiaen
Moncayo Garcia
Mouret
Mudarra
Orff
Pachelbel
Respighi
Rodrigo
Saint-Saëns
Schoenberg
Schumann
Shostakovich
Strauss J
Stravinsky
Vaughan Williams
Villa-Lobos
Vivaldi
Williams

[DoctorD]

Here are my selections again.

Josquin Des Prez – Missa Pange Lingua
J. Bartlet – Of All the Birds that I Do Know
D Buxtehude – Jesu Meines Lebens Leben
A. Corelli – Violin Sonata Op. 5, No. 12 “La Folia”
J. S. Bach – St Matthew Passion
J. S. Bach – The Musical Offering
L. v. Beethoven – Symphony No. 7
F. Lehar – Gold und Silber Waltz
E. E. Bagley – National Emblem
A. Copland – Appalachian Spring

Although I've included some classics, but my draft does not rely on warhorses. I have selections from the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. I have vocal pieces, orchestra pieces, chamber music, and mixed vocal-orchestral pieces. I have the only madrigal in the draft, the only band piece, and the only march.

BigSoccer is a primarily American soccer internet forum. Any American who likes soccer has to be independent. He or she has to follow his own conscience instead of going with the crowd. Similarly my draft has a lot of novel, personal choices instead of a selection from the traditional "Boston Symphony Orchestra" repetoire

So a vote for my draft is a vote for soccer.

[Haole]

Future music drafts?


Orchestras.......repertoire, strength/weaknesses of sections, conductors
new music outreach etc.

Individual artists......voice, instrumental, period specialists etc.



Visiting LA? Check the new 1,700 seat Segerstrom Hall at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa. 30 mins. south of LA.

Opened a few weeks ago. We've been lucky to have two major concert venues open in s.caliornia in the last three years: Disney Hall in LA and now the Segerstrom.

Coming up in October: Kirov Opera, Orchestra and Ballet
Valery Gergiev, director
Programs will include: Wagner (complete Ring cycle) and Boris Godunov

http://www.ocpac.org/countdown/mariinsky.html

[Sachsen]

Let the voting begin!

Send a PM to bmurphyfl with your votes.

As soon as he has posted the results, feel free to start listing the works you WISH you could have picked but didn't have room for!! :)

[Norsk Troll]

I can't recall - are we barred from voting for ourselves?

[Sachsen]

I can't recall - are we barred from voting for ourselves?

Sorry, yes, I should have mentioned that.

No voting for your own draft :)

Send bmurphyfl your choices for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. Big Board is currently up-to-date.

[Michael K.]

I'm sorry to all, but especially sachsen, that I ran out of gas on this one. There came a point where I just didn't have anything more to draw on....just about everything I have experience with got picked off, and I didn't want to just pick stuff I've never heard of blindly off some "great works" list. My background is as a casual, learning listener - I haven't got any musical background to speak of. The good part is, I learned a hell of a lot following along.

Ironically, off to Cleveland to see the symphony right now. I'll have my votes in later on tonight.

[Karl K]

Here are my picks.


F. Schubert--Symphony No. 9
P.I. Tchaikovsky--Violin Concerto
F. Chopin--Polonaise, op. 44
A. Dvorak--Symphony No. 9 "From the New World"
E. Elgar--Cello Concerto
6. H. Berlioz--Symphonie Fantastique
L.v. Beethoven--The Late String Quartets opp. 127, 130-133, 135
D. Shostakovich--Symphony No. 8 "Stalingrad"
J.S. Bach--Sonatas and partitas for solo violin
J. Corigliano--Symphony No. 1


I really didn't necessarily try to choose some set of representative works, but rather pieces that have special meaning to me personally -- either they were key pieces of music in my own life (like first being exposed in High School to Dvorak or hearing the CSO do Corigliano.) The only piece that I didn't have on here that I did want was Beethoven's Emperor, because the night I saw Pollini do it was a memory I will take to my grave (or creamation rather).

They are also pieces that have records which I have always listened to regularly and have enjoyed, like Solti doing the Schubert with the Vienna Philharmonic. And Kissin's Chopin records are just astonishing -- and as I said, the Poloniase 44 he did at Carneige just sends chills up your spine. Same with Jacqueline Du Pre doing Elgar, or Perlman doing Bach, or Chung or Heifetz doing the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto.

I also like complex music, music that in some way represents genre busting. Chopin's Etudes are great, but they are a kind of technical exercise -- challenging, of course, but where the focus is solely on emotional execution. Give me the adventurous technical pieces every time. That's why Symphonie Fantastique, even though it was written in the early part of the 19th century gets programmed over and over again: it's riveting in its intricacies and modern in its temperament.

The concerts I have enjoyed going to and records I enjoy listening to are ones where the performers have to play out of their minds. When Galeano says he goes about the soccer stadiums of the world like a beggar, asking, "A pretty move for the love of God!" -- well that's my feeling about music too. I want to be wowed by performances of the gifted.

So, there you have it. It's been a blast to do this and re-live some of these memories.

[Sachsen]

I'm sorry to all, but especially sachsen, that I ran out of gas on this one. There came a point where I just didn't have anything more to draw on....just about everything I have experience with got picked off, and I didn't want to just pick stuff I've never heard of blindly off some "great works" list. My background is as a casual, learning listener - I haven't got any musical background to speak of. The good part is, I learned a hell of a lot following along.

Ironically, off to Cleveland to see the symphony right now. I'll have my votes in later on tonight.

Hey, no problem - thanks for participating. I hope all of us got intrigued by some new possibilities. For instance, I was very familiar with the Greig Peer Gynt suites, but had never heard the entire incidental music with the songs. Thanks to someone picking it (Norsk Troll?) I went to the library and found a great recording by the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Paavo Järvi - wonderful stuff!

http://cover6.cduniverse.com/MuzeAudioArt/590/590731.jpg

A couple other of my "discoveries" during this draft:

http://www.naxos.com/images/cds/550237.gif

http://cover6.cduniverse.com/MuzeAudioArt/250/253909.jpg

[bmurphyfl]

The votes are coming in fast and furious. So far, I have eight complete set of votes.

Two questions:

1) Do you want to wait until everyone has voted? Set a time limit for voting? Set a number of voters like say 10 or the 16 before tallying the voted? Whatever way you choose is fine with me.

2) What is the point system? 3 for first, 2 for second and 1 for third? Or perhaps weight the top slots more heavily by using 5, 3 and 1 for first, second and third? Or some other system? Let me know.

[Smiley321]

My picks

1. S. Prokofiev Symphony No. 1
2. J.S. Bach Mass in B minor
3. L.v. Beethoven Symphony No. 5
4. J.S. Bach Toccata and Fugue in D minor
5. S. Prokofiev Lieutenant Kije Suite
6. R. Schumann Piano Quintet
7. I. Stravinsky Les Noces
8. C. Saint-Saëns Danse Macabre
9. A. Ginastera Piano Concerto No. 1
10. F. Schubert String Quintet in C Major

The ones that got away (favorites of mine picked by someone else)

Bartok - Concerto for Orchestra - I wanted a Bartok, and probably should have gotten Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste instead of Lt. Kije

Stravinsky - The Rite of Spring - oh well

Beethoven - Moonlight Sonata - probably my favorite Beethoven piece (either that or his ninth symphony), I picked his 5th symphony just because it's famous (and a pretty good piece of music, too, but I must admit I don't listen to it much)

Tchaikovsky - 1812 Overture - alas, no Tchaikovsky for me.

The one I'm happiest with is probably the one nobody else cared about - Stravinsky's "Les Noces" is an oddball piece of music that exemplifies Stravinsky's extraordinary creativity.

I also neglected my favorite Prokofiev piece - Piano concerto no. 1, because nobody ranks it very highly, but it's his first major work and just one of my all-time favorites.

No opera for me, I don't like opera much. You won't have to fight me for the last Wagner extravaganza.

This was a good experience for me, too, I've dusted off some old LP's that I haven't listened to in many years, and some of the picks are standards that I hadn't bothered to get - like the Goldberg variations - that I went out and bought. Great stuff.

[Norsk Troll]

While we await the vote tally, thanks to Sachsen for runnning this, and remembering that I was interested and sending me a PM, since I would have undoubtedly overlooked the forum until it was too late.

(And thanks to Karl K as well, whose posts have been quite enjoyable - further proof that music can transcend even the greatest gaps in politics or other beliefs)