This site is aimed at people who want to get into classical music. It’s hopefully just right for someone who can recognize a couple of pieces (the da-da-da-dum of Beethoven’s fifth for example), and who might stick on a CD for a pleasant background to work to, but would basically consider themselves a beginner when it comes to classical music.

To get started you can take a look at why you should listen to classical, or if you want to get right on with it the first steps. If you are having difficulties, or want to prepare yourself for them take a look at common complaints. I’ve got a list of suggested pieces to start with if you just want to get on with listening to some music. If you’d like to narrow down your choices by finding out a bit about the style of each composer, have a look at my guide to the composers.

I switched to classical at 23 (well actually about two weeks after I turned 24, but it sounds catchier this way) and I hope that I can help other people make the same satisfying switch. I’m here to convert you to classical.

On Friday I did one of those guess the piece competitions, which was guessed almost immediately, so in revenge I did one which seemed like it would probably be a lot harder. And it was. No-one guessed it. Well the answer is the opening notes of Prokofiev’s 2nd piano concerto, one of my favorite pieces:

Now, I wanted to put up a bunch of other Prokofiev openers up for me to blab on about. However, the ease of doing this is greatly reduced by it all having to squeeze down the rather small and rather invisible tubes connecting my laptop to the internet through my cellphone. So that’ll have to wait.

The point I wanted to make was that the 2nd piano concerto is one of Prokofiev’s fairly rare calm openings. A lot of his pieces start out totally in and all over your face, sort of like he wants to ensure that you get how wild he is right from the get go. Some of those I enjoy (e.g. the 5th piano concerto and the 2nd and 4th symphonies) but sometimes it feels all a bit too… well, predictable in all it’s deliberate unpredictability.

Unpredictability isn’t quite right. Barely in control is perhaps more accurate. Prokofiev liked to make his music sound all wrong notey, like tonality is barely holding a slippery grip on a piece (and according to the authoritative source of “some book I flicked through in the music library” he would in fact write out a “regular” melody and then adjust some of the notes afterward to wrong them up).

That technique makes me like a lot of his stuff, but it also prevents me from loving it. Most of my favorite pieces of his are ones which use it in a more restrained fashion, R&J, the 6th symphony, and the 2nd PC above. Conversely though, I love the all-out fury of it in the 2nd symphony, a piece which no-one ever seems to talk about.

Man, this would be so much more awesome with samples to listen to. I need a 3G phone, pronto.