Classical music - do you listen/enjoy it?

Yes I do . I love opera too, especially Puccini. I’m very bad though at “remembering “ to listen to music.
Bruch violin concerto is one of my favourite pieces

yes, but recently i tend to have speech radio on more.
though even on that there are snippets of music, often classical, desert island discs etc.
when i was a nipper the light programme was on in the background, and it had a good mix of music among other entertainment.
so when i heard pieces later, i had a feeling of familiarity.
i went to a performance of tchaikovsky in st martin-in-the-fields, by candlelight, years ago with my brother. afterwards i said how good it was. he said, ii was ok if you like that kind of thing; scratching around looking for a tune.
which i thought was a marvellous phrase.
he would not recognise tchaikovsky as classical.
he would look to bach.
i like all sorts of things.
except modern classical, atonal. not for me.

Me too. I have classic fm on the radio when I am driving.
I sometimes cry when I hear sad classical music like Mozart's Requiem Mass or some Elgar compositions.

Yes. I like most music with the exception of a couple of genre but mainly Classical. Couldn’t live without Beethoven but do love Bob Dylan. Classic FM is on permanently in our house.

Yes I do: listen and enjoy, mainly orchestral and piano, mainly ballet(I love Tchaikovsky) but also some Mozart and Handel; due to Classic FM I am expanding my choices. I know they are all lollipops, but I enjoy them.
Increasingly tired of Radio 4, so tune in more and more to music. Don't enjoy live concerts very much, which is sad, as there is a very good professional orchestra close by.

This is one of the reasons I love Alexa. I can just have a song/ piece of music drop into my head and ask her to play it.
I played a lot of Cajun music today.

Wow! this is good to know, that so many people enjoy it. It has been interesting reading people's comments. I also have Classic FM on a lot of the time. Back in the 1980s I lived in Birmingham for 10 years and used to go to live concerts at the Town Hall, when Simon Rattle (for those that know of him) was the resident conductor.

Since coming back to Devon (30 years ago) I have gone to live concerts by the Bournemouth S.O. which have been very good. Sadly that pleasure has been killed off (temporarily I hope) by Covid. I am constantly finding new composers and new pieces that I like. Whilst I love their music, there is so much beyond Mozart and Beethoven and I love exploring it.

Yes we love it too. When you're in the mood there's nothing better.

Yes it has always been top of my pops. DH is an opera enthusiast. He has been an opera performer all his adult life, singing, producing and set designing. He has also done two degrees in the subject since retiring. So I have seen many, many operas.

Classical music is the background of my life and have recently graduated from Classic FM to Radio 3.

I listen to Scala Radio or Classic FM these days. When I was younger I listened to Radio 2 and local radio.

I've always had a love of classical music which I inherited from my Dad. I grew up listening to Beethoven, Rossini, Verdi and many other composers.

I was brought up with classical music, at home and at school. My mother played the piano and had Radio 3 (then the Third Programme) on the radio (wireless!) all the time. I sang quite well, very much encouraged by my grandfather who had been a choir master. I was no good at the piano, for some reason.

We had a very active school music department, and in those days ((1940s and 50s) singing was an important part of the curriculum. The school orchestra wasn’t very good, but we had a couple of star violinists, both of whom went on to be professionals. Some very good pianists, too. We did a school opera (Hansel and Gretel). I had a dancing part in that, an angel. I did ballet, too.

So I was steeped in music all the time, all what would now be called classical, but was then just called music. In the 60s I was aware of the pop scene, the Beatles and so on, but it never meant much to me. I found it rather funny, if anything. My friends were the same.

As an adult I have sung in good choirs, and been to many concerts, ballets and operas. I can’t get to these things now, but it’s all there in my head. I’m grateful for that.

I think it’s a great shame that most children don’t sing daily at school the way we did, hymns and folk songs. Classical music should be part of every child’s education. It’s just as important as literature.

Yes, we listen to classical music. Often DH plays records, or his own playlists, and I have learned to enjoy lots.
By the way, our DD was born at home, to the sounds of Brahms violin concerto. She now plays violin.

The mention of Classic FM reminds me of the time Clarkson, Hammond and May got their mums to review cars on Top Gear. The mums' most pressing questions were "Does it start in the morning?" and "Can I get Classic FM on the radio?" I think they were speaking for a lot of us !

Sometimes on the school run with my minded children we have Radio 3 on and play "guess the instrument."

I like many kinds of music, but my first love is classical - always has been. Lots of opera, but piano mostly; Brendel, Freddie Kempf, Helen Grimaud, Argerich. We have Classic FM on the car radio a lot and DH gets fed up of me groaning every time the same pieces and the same composers seem to go round in a loop. You know as soon as someone says Holst it’s going to be Mars or Jupiter, and Vaughan Williams it will be The Lark Ascending and so on..... even worse with Bach. Perhaps I’m just listening at the wrong time!

I wish I did enjoy it but unless it's rousing music I find it just makes me feel sad. Always has done. I remember as a small child being in tears over a piece of music on the radio (was probably the wireless then!)

As collections go my classical music is quite limited, but I have been very fortunate to see many operas. My cousin's son, is a trained opera singer, so many of his concerts have we been to:

www.mattbuswell.com/#overview

Yes I do, probably sparked by my Dad’s love of opera which I didn’t share as a young one but came to enjoy as I got older. I miss live performances hugely.

I used to listen to radio 4 while driving. The news and comments wound me up so much I often ended up shouting at the radio. When I switched to Classic FM my driving improved as I was much calmer.

I don’t think I’ll ever like opera but I’d be grateful of recommendations of what classical music I should listen to.

Classical music is my life - singing, listening, running choirs.
I love it all and listen all the time - Radio 3 is on endlessly.

I have very wide tastes in classical music, being very wedded to the composers of the twentieth century: Britten, Finzi, Holst, Vaughan Williams. I also love early music and Mahler too - so a wide spread. I have recently been researching women composers and have discovered some gems.

MayBee70 - when it comes to opera it is best to start with arias rather than a whole opera which can be hard work if you are not used to the styles. Spotify is the place to go. To find some lovely music as a starting point I would also recommend Radio 3's Sunday afternoon programme "Words and Music" because the music is from all sorts of composers alongside poetry and prose readings - so it creates an atmosphere that you can get lost in. You can then go onto the website and look at the playlist to find things you have enjoyed, then find them on Spotify.

Classic FM has done classical music and musicians a great service by bringing it to a wider audience. But I get fed up with the ads; and also the evening/dropping to sleep programmes do repeat the same music over and over again! If I hear the Intermezzo from Cavaliera Rusticana once more I might go mad!!! - although it is of course a gem.

Here is one of the women composers I found - this is lovely: www.youtube.com/watch?v=K20DyRo3-wc

The composer is called Joan Trimble.

I love classical music ( Is anything else really music?) I adore choral music, both singing it and listening to it, especially early music ( Palestrina, Tallis, Victoria, Lassus and many more) then the great JSBach, but also the standard repertoire of Handel’s Messiah, Haydn’s Creation, Verdi’s Requiem, Brahms’ German Requiem, Mendelssohn’s Elijah and various Elgar works. Beethoven wrote some pieces which are so hard on the voice especially sopranos, so I am not keen on them. I am not keen on much 20 th century work, though there are great pieces by Durufle, Rutter and popular works like Karl Jenkins’ The Armed Man. I could go on. The list is endless. I sing in three choirs regularly and am missing them enormously. zoom rehearsals are not the same. Singing in a huge choir with orchestra and soloists in a packed concert hall is not going to happen for a long time, but it is just as moving to sing in a small group, ensuring the voices blend and balance.

I am not sure I would use arias as an introduction to opera Better start with some of those composers that straddle the gap between operetta and opera, Die Fledermaus by Johan Strauss (not to be confused with Richard Strauss. a very different opera writer), Offenbach (Belle Helene and Orpheus in the Underworld, possibly Tales of Hoffman), Cendrillon (Cinderella) by Rossini and La Traviata by Verdi.

All have plots you already know or can quickly understand. All are full of hum-able tunes and all should be readily available online, and probably sung in English. Either way you can always down load a summary of the plot.

I absolutely adore Cendrillon in a version with Felicity Lott playing Cinderella. No Christmas is complete without this Opera and the Muppet Christmas Carol.