[quote]horsepuss wrote:
artw wrote:
The soundtracks to A Clockwork Orange and 2001: A Space Odyssey have some great classical compositions on them, especially 2001. A personal favorite is Requiem for Soprano, Mezzo Soprano from 2001.
I love the fact that your talking about classicaly inspired music and all I can think of is O.D.B. listening to 2001: a space Odyssey.
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“I be droppin’ rhymes like girls be droppin’ babies”
One of my all-time favorite albums is Sketches of Spain by Miles Davis. It’s not a classical album, but it was inspired by the Spanish composer Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez”. Davis does his own arrangement of it to start the album, and the rest of the songs are his take on Spanish folk music. A must-have. Check it out and check out Rodrigo’s original version of "Concierto de Aranjuez.
Okay, I assume you like the stirring stuff given that you mentioned the movie music.
Some of my favorites:
Prokofiev, Alexander Nevsky. (Actually, this is a soundtrack; Prokofiev wrote the music for Eisenstein’s movie. It’s beautiful. The Battle on the Ice is the mother of all battle scenes.)
Mahler. As much Mahler as possible. My favorite is Symphony #5. Actually I have this ringing in my head as motivation for lifting.
Mussorsky’s Boris Godunov (an opera.) Check out the Bolshoi’s version of the Coronation Scene on Youtube.
Rimsky-Korsakov, Russian Easter Overture. (The Seijo Ozawa version is astounding, and also on Youtube.)
Know all your Beethoven symphonies and your Tschaikovsky symphonies – there aren’t that many, and if you want to be knowledgeable about music it’s a good idea to have them pretty much by heart. Tschaikovsky #2 (the Little Russian, I believe) is probably my favorite, though Tschaik 5 is the biggest orchestra standard. Beethoven – well, you should just have them all. I choke up over the Leonard Bernstein version of the Ninth, because it was 1989 in Berlin, and if you watch the video he’s close to weeping through the whole thing. “Freedom, glorious spark of heaven.” It’s a good thing, and it will always be a good thing, even if people call it corny.
For movie music, Ennio Morricone. Nobody has ever compared.
There are also bits of the LOTR soundtrack that are amazing, but you may not be as big a geek as I am.