Tuesday 24th November 2009

Here are today's ears! (at long last, I seem to be managing to keep up - just hope I can keep at it).

In the car for a couple of short trips:
Haydn - Concerto in F Major for Violin & Harpsichord

This morning, at home, felt in need of something comforting & familiar:
Mozart - Piano Concertos K488 & K466

Then following a tweet that I read:
Saint-Saens - Organ Symphony

After reading another tweet (question from @bcpiano):
Buxtehude - Praeludium in G Minor BuxWV 149 (in many different versions, a couple from tape, and all that were on Spotify - link here)

That got me in the mood for a favourite old organ tape:
Bach - Toccata & Fugue BWV565, Fantasia & Fugue BWV542, Prelude & Fugue BWV548, Passacaglia & Fugue BWV582

Then, for a reason mentioned in the comments, back to Spotify to save tape hunting:
Boellman - Toccata from Suite Gothique (link here)

Then to a bit more organ music, since I was still feeling organish:
Bach - Orgelbuchlein

Comments
1. The Mozart was supremely comforting. A very good choice.
2. The Fugue from the Buxtehude BuxWV149 was the music to which the Wonderspouse & I left the church after our wedding. I chose it for two reasons 1. it has a very nice chord in it that I get excited about every time and 2. it was the first piece of music the Wonderspouse & I ever heard together. The Wonderspouse wouldn't have known it, and it would have had very little impact upon him, but it was played to us as we sat in the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford waiting to matriculate, rather many years ago. Of course, what a chemistry matriculand like me was doing obsessing over the chords in the Buxtehude they were playing to us was another question altogether (and probably explains why I didn't last long as a chemist & went off to study music instead) but, nevertheless, the experience stuck in my head!!
3. The old Bach tape has been one of my favourites for years. It came on the front of a partwork called "The Great Composers" (in its first edition, issued with either records or cassettes, long before the later CD edition came out). The Passacaglia is a particular favourite of mine, although the opening of the "Wedge" fugue is pretty groovy too.
4. Since I'd heard the going out music from our wedding, I thought I'd listen to the coming in music too - which was the Boellman. I insisted upon the whole lot being played. Not sure whether it's exactly "cheerful bride approach" music! Judge for yourselves!