New list member Kartono Wihardja from Singapore (welcome!) asks:

> I like and can enjoy almost all of the repertoires from composers from
> Baroque to Romantic Era... I'm still struggling to try to understand
> music from Modern era though.
>
> Currently, I'm trying very hard to understand Turangalila Symphony from
> Messiaen (mine is from Sir Simon Rattle)..  Is this good one?  Any other
> recording that can be recommended to make it easier to fathom the depth
> of gigantic Turangalila?

There's also a recording by Previn that's pretty good, although I don't
think significantly better than Rattle's.

Turangalila is an odd place to start for modern music, anyway.  It's
typical of nothing, really, but itself, as is its composer.  I'd start
with the beginnings of Modernism: Late Wagner, Debussy, Ravel, Mussorgsky,
early Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartok, Prokofiev, Neo-Romantics like
Vaughan Williams, Poulenc, Bloch, Barber, etc.  You might start investigating
by country, beginning with Russia, France, England, and the USA.  There's
plenty of time to get into Messiaen or Martinu or Malipiero, for that
matter.

Steve Schwartz

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