by BenG » Fri Feb 09, 2001 4:23 pm
I remember when I was in my teens, I came across some Tchaikovsky on the radio and falling in love with it. I didn't know exactly how, but I 'knew' the music like an old friend. Turns out that when we were very little kids my mom had a record player and a few classical records. The record player disappeared, but my love of the music had been instilled. I remember listening to a cassette tape of Beethoven's Emporer Concerto No. 5 by Otto Klemperer and Daniel Barenboiem.(sp?) I listened to it over and over and over and over and over endlessly. I particularly liked Tchaikovsky's Francesca Da Rimini. I liked all those great works of Romanticism...including Liszt, Dvorak and Chopin. I remember how difficult it was for me to understand Brahm's music at first. His music seemed very refined, enigmatic and restrained to me. I bought his first symphony and couldn't 'get it' at first. But since I was determined to get my money's worth, I stuck wth it. Eventually I 'got' it and bought all his major works. When I was in college I came back home one day to find my mom had bought herself a rickety old piano. I was shocked to see that she could play Strauss waltzes and Franz Liszt without too much effort. She had played when she was younger but never told us about it. I have her to thank for my interest in classical music. --Ben
