Just back from the Usher Hall where I went with Madame, her father and her sister for Royal Scottish National Orchestra evening of Russian classics. I realise that when I have conversations with people about music and smugly say I prefer this or that which is more obscure and less middle-of-the-road than what they like, I’m in exactly the opposite side of the table with classical music. The stuff I like, with one exception, is purely ‘popular classics’ – tonight, for example, the 1812 and excerpts from Pictures at an Exhibition and Swan Lake. But I found my attention wandering during the other, less familar pieces, while of course I marvelled at the musicianship. So less of the musical snobbishness, Lamont.
My favourite classical music:
- Parsifal Overture (Wagner)
- Meistersingers Overture (Wagner)
- Pictures at an Exhibition (Mussorgsky)
- Pavane (Faure)
- Planets (Holst)
- Thomas Tallis (Vaughan Willams)
- Symphony no3 (Gorecki)
- Gymnopedies (Satie)
- Some strange thing with an out-of-time snare drum (Neilsen)
- The second movement of a piano concerto whose name I don’t know (Ravel)