u/Valuable_Turnover219

My first foray into Wagner's music was maybe 25 years ago when I bought a recording of Die Walküre (Haitink). Loved it then and still love it now. There's a reason it's the most popular and most frequently performed of his operas. I then bought Haitink's Götterdämmerung and loved that too. I was a skint student at the time and although, in my head, I was always going to buy the rest of Haitink's Ring cycle, lack of funds got in the way and I never got the other two.

Fast forward a decade or two and I found myself singing in the chorus of a performance of Tannhäuser at the St. Endellion Music Festival. I was completely wowed by the whole experience. The overture might be a concert favourite but for the maximum emotional effect try singing that glorious tune at the end of the whole opera. Unforgettable.

Having now had a proper job for a while I don't have the same restriction on CD-buying I had when I was a student and have recently got hold of the Solti ring cycle. I was a bit sceptical that something from the late 50s and early 60s could be the greatest recording of all time. Then I listened to it. They were right. It is.

After that I set about further expanding my knowledge of Wagner and bought recordings of Tristan und Isolde and Lohengrin, both of which I've very much enjoyed, especially Tristan.

Most recently I got a recording of Parsifal (Gergiev), and this is where I (finally) come to the point of my post because I'm struggling to get to grips with it.

I feel sure this a me problem rather than a Wagner problem, so I'd appreciate any suggestions you might have about how to approach this opera. Do I just need to hear a different recording? I love Wagner's orchestral writing so perhaps I need to hear a version where the orchestra kicks ass more? I just don't know. Let know know what you think!

My boxed set of the Suzuki/BCG Bach vocal music arrived this week. I now have 78 CDs to work through and that's going to take me a while. To get me started, can people who know these recordings please suggest some of the best performances? I'm specifically looking for suggestions of which ones in this collection are great rather than what cantatas are good more generally.

I've made a few posts now looking for suggestions about composers I don't know at all well (Haydn), or well enough (Mendelssohn), or at all (Scriabin). People have been generous enough to contribute plenty of suggestions and I'm happy to have got to know a ton more music thanks to Redditors (especially Haydn - consider me a convert!)

So in view of how useful those previous posts have been, I thought it would be interesting to ask about Robert Schumann. For me his music has tended to be the filler on a CD of something else. So for example I have a CD of Mendelssohn's Italian symphony plus Schumann's first symphony (Karajan, Berlin Phil). Or Mendelssohn 3 + Hebrides + Schumann piano concerto (Eliot Gardiner, LSO, Maria João Pires).

It's probably not a coincidence that record labels decide to put Schumann with Mendelssohn since they were contemporaries but Schumann seems to be the junior partner on those CD pairings.

I have a CD of Mitsuko Uchida playing Kreisleriana and Carnaval which I love. I confess I bought it (maybe 20 years ago when people still bought CDs!) mostly because I like Mitsuko Uchida. Still, that's the Schumann I know, plus of course the 'filler' 1st symphony and piano concerto I mentioned previously.

What other Schumann should I get to know? I realise as soon as I ask about Schumann some people will tell me to listen to Clara. In this post I'm specifically asking about Robert Schumann, but if you're a big fan of Clara then go for it and tell me what music of hers I should listen to as well!

I heard in the news this week that some music by Mozart for flute and harp was recently 'discovered' and has recently been premiered (see this reddit post). It had been in France's national library. I say 'discovered' in quote marks because it seems it was there for a long time and only recently did someone realise it was Mozart. It reminds me of the discovery of the Handel Gloria in 2001 in the library of the Royal Academy of Music which, similarly, had been there for a long time before anyone realised what it was.

That got me wondering about other things scholars know must have existed but are now considered lost.

I'm a Bach nut so I would always wish for more of his music to be found. From what I've read there are many cantatas that Bach scholars are confident he wrote but we don't have today. Plus we only have two passions but there are four gospels. The lost cantatas and the other passions would be top of my list. After his death his manuscripts were divided among his family members, and it seems his skint son Wilhelm Friedemann might have sold the ones he got to make ends meet. So maybe they exist somewhere in someone's attic.

That's probably also true for lots of composers. I realise Bach isn't top everyone else's list, so what lost music would you really want to be found?

I like to think I have a well-rounded musical palette, enjoying music from the renaissance and baroque periods through to the 20th century. I admit to having a bit of a blind spot when it comes to the classical period, and that's something I'm trying to do something about e.g. by asking redditors to help me with Haydn, for example. But as time goes by (and now being more active on Reddit), I'm coming to the conclusion that I'm probably wrong about my "well-rounded" musical palette. There are tons of important composers I hardly know, or don't know at all.

One of the comments on my post asking for help with Haydn (thank you u/saltmallow) referred to the modern world "where we can enjoy Scriabin, Mahler, Rachmaninov etc." That got me thinking that I know absolutely no Scriabin. Nothing.

The only times I ever even heard his name was when my old piano teacher (now no longer with us: RIP, Simon) would talk about having to learn Scriabin pieces when he was a conservatoire student. And that's how he phrased it - "having to" learn Scriabin. The clear implication was that he wouldn't have chosen to learn any Scriabin if he could have helped it.

As a result the picture in my head is of a Scriabin who's a bit complicated, hard to understand and difficult to love. A bit of googling says I'm wrong about that.

I found a youtube video of great Scriabin moments and am listening to it as I type. What I'm hearing doesn't at all fit the stereotype in my head so it's clear I have plenty to learn about him.

So, to all the lovers of Scriabin out there, please could you suggest some pieces and recordings that will teach me to love his music? Thank you.

Having recently discovered an enthusiasm for Mendelssohn's music, I thought it would be good to join a subreddit where people chat about how great his music is. I joined r/Mendelssohn, only to discover it's a bit of a ghost town. So I'm posting here in the hope of getting more feedback.

I've loved 'classical' music since I was pretty young, let's say the last 40 years or so. In all that time the only Mendelssohn I knew was the octet and the violin concerto. I always thought the octet was fantastic, especially for a 16-year-old, and who doesn't like the violin concerto, right? But I never made the effort to get to know more of his work.

More recently I decided to listen to more of his music and have been very glad I did. So far I've listened to the symphonies, Midsummer Night's Dream and string symphonies and now I'm hooked.

I still love the octet, but my new favourite is the third symphony (I have the Eliot Gardiner LSO recording). I'm also really impressed with the string symphonies, especially the 9th (Swiss). He was 14 for goodness' sake!

So where are all the Mendelssohn fans? Why is r/Mendelssohn empty? What other Mendelssohn is worth exploring? What particular recordings/interpretations do people out there like and why? I think I read somewhere that it wasn't just Mozart who memorised and wrote down the Allegri Miserere after a visit to the Sistine Chapel but Mendelssohn did too. Is that true? Tell me why you love Mendelssohn (or don't) and where to go next. Thank you!

About five years ago I bought the Eliot Gardiner CD boxed set of the cantatas, from the 2000 Bach pilgrimage. I hardly knew the cantatas before that and it was the best £100 I ever spent. I've hardly listened to any other music for the last five years. There are loads in this set that I absolutely adore, but also some that I'd like to love but I just don't care for the soloists. I love the performances from James Gilchrist, Nathalie Stutzmann and Jonathan Brown in particular. I won't name the soloists I don't enjoy; suffice it to say there are several, not least because of their poor German.

Since that time I've found plenty of performances of Bach cantatas online. The Netherlands Bach Society has some good ones and I've enjoyed plenty of recordings on youtube from the J.S. Bach-Stiftung under Rudolf Lutz. But I'd like to get another complete set.

So what set should I buy next? I'd love to hear your opinions on the various sets of the cantatas that are out there.

Of all the major, well-known composers, Haydn is probably the only one that's just never clicked for me. I've tried listening to a few symphonies (the Paris ones - English chamber orchestra, Barenboim), I've sung in the chorus in the Creation and I've tried to play a piano sonata or two. So far I just haven't connected with Haydn's music. I love the renaissance and baroque periods, and very much enjoy romantic and some 20th century music. So the classical period is kind of my blind spot. There's plenty of Mozart I really enjoy but also some I find a bit dull. I know it's a cliché which will annoy some people, but to me what little Haydn I've heard sounds like Mozart without the secret sauce, and if I don't even like Mozart all the time then that means I'm not going to like Haydn.

I used to feel similarly about Schubert, then I heard the great C major symphony and that unlocked him for me. So I'm open to the idea that my issue with Haydn is just that I haven't heard the right stuff played by the right ensemble under the right conductor so go ahead and suggest some things!