Lovely. I'll have to check out more of his works. The pictures on the youtube clip make me want to visit Britain so much. One of our dream trips is to visit Cambridge at Christmas and attend the King's College Choir Christmas concert. Darn finances.

Just for the record, I resent the implication that I was "bagged" by anyone. Watch yourself John, or I'll make you sleep with the chinchilla.

Mr and Mrs 17, suggest away on Vaughan Williams please. I particularly like the oboe concerto, lark ascending (durr) and the wasps. I'm hit and miss with his symphonies but then again I'm not an enormous symphony man beyond chamber symphonies and the odd selected full orchestra offering. Though London Symphony i enjoy. So, recommendations besides this would be much appreciated.

...have you heard "daphnis et chloe"? "mother goose" suite? "jeux d'eau"?



here's "empress of the pagodas" from "mother goose" suite... on guitar, because everything sounds better on guitar... (-:


pavane of sleeping princess + empress of the pagodas
(mindblowing sound for unamplified classical guitar)

rogerson, that shosta piece is very purdy, i agree! i generally don't care for his stuff, so i've avoided hearing him much...
i could name a few piano concertos i like more, though


not sure, but i don't think so, at least we've never discussed it.



well done, johnny...

Go on then, that's the point of the thread isn't it?

"The little Ravel I've heard" = Bolero, which is an amazingly boring piece of music.

edit: those two you linked were far superior to Bolero

hmmm, you are amazingly wrong on that, but yeah i think i've also delayed exploring ravel for many years because that was his "big hit" and i didn't particularly think much of it then...


absolutely, nick! just gimme a moment to recall the names, as my brain is quite fried after a long day at school...

romantic for the romantic

I ended up going with Renaissance and Romantic

Daphnis et Chloe is really good.

Bolero is probably my least favorite Ravel piece I've heard.

My favorite by him probably. Also if you've ever heard the orchestral version of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition Ravel orchestrated it (as it was originally for piano). It is one of the most brilliant orchestrations ever.

Thinking about my choices I'd say a lot of the two I selected has to do with my greater familiarity.

I have heard and love the orchestral version of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. I think I knew at one point that Ravel was behind it, but I had forgotten.

In any case, my Bolero-informed negative opinion of Ravel is no longer. And apparently Ravel himself was not particularly fond of Bolero (I feel like I remember a quote in which he called it "stupid" or some such). In any case, I shall be looking further into Ravel.

comments and selected favorites from each of these periods:

Medieval--From the earliest chant through the Ars nova (wherever we draw the line between medieval and renaissance), this music has the ability to transport me through time/location like little else can. A good chunk of this music was sacred vocal music, but some of the non-sacred vocal music is also among my favorites.




. . . and then the mrs just called me away for movies and homemade hummus. More later maybe.