Sasha Castel, in talking about the most popular operas in North America (as measured by the number of productions mounted), talks about her top-ten operas. It's not a particularly surprising list (well, to me, at least, since I've talked to her about it), though I did find it interesting that she went with Italian Girl in Algiers and L'Elisir D'Amore.
(if you want to find out my top ten, check the comments)
But that brings up an other question: what are the top ten all time pieces of classical music? Certainly everyone has their own idosyncratic list.
Here is mine:
- The Marriage of Figaro (Mozart)
- The Rite of Spring (Stravinsky)
- Don Quixote (R. Strauss)
- Four Last Songs (R. Strauss)
- Einstein On The Beach (Glass)
- Passcaliga & Fugue in c minor (J.S. Bach)
- Symphony #9 in d minor (Beethoven)
- Requiem Mass (Mozart)
- Solo Cello Suites (J.S. Bach)
- Piano Sonata #29 in B-flat major "Hammerklavier", Opus 109 (Beethoven)
There are other obvious candidates, too:
- Piano Sonata #32 in c minor, Opus 111 (Beethoven)
- 4'33" (Cage)
- In C (Reilly)
- The Art of Fugue (J.S. Bach)
- The Well-Tempered Klavier (J.S. Bach)
- Music in 12 Parts (Glass)
- Anything he wrote past the age of 18 (Mozart)
- Symphony #1 in c minor (Brahms)
- Piano Concerto #1 in d minor (Brahms)
- Symphonies #1-8 (Beethoven)
- Piano Concertos #3-5 (Beethoven)
- Music For Airports (Eno)
And so on. I could go on like this all night.
What's your list?
Bartok!
(Ya gotta tag a guy who used to live down the street, after all..)
But which one? The Piano Concerto #3? Concerto for Orchestra? The string quartets?
Dvorak Symphony no. 9, "From the New World"
Why not Mikrocosmos?
Too many choices for him. But still, you should put him down.
well, why don't you put him on your top ten list?
Schubert - cello quintet
Mozart - viola quintet(s)
Mahler - des knaben wunderhorn (or any other of his lieder cycles)
how can you choose? there are too many...
The whole point of the exercise is to make you choose.
Not that I'm much good at it myself. I once drew up a list of my top ten movies, and discovered to my chargrin that it was about 15 titles long -- after editing.