Bill Pirkle asks:

>If you had to select 10 compositions to introduce someone to classical
>music which ones would you choose? Remember, you don't want to turn
>them off with works that are hard to understand.

What's considered hard to understand nowadays may not be the same as
a hundred years ago.  IIRC, an arrangement of Janacek's Sinfonietta was
successful as pop music, so it's possible that someone who liked that will
also like the real thing.

You might also want to dispel any preconceptions that CM is dull and
humourless.  One or other of the Shostakovich Piano Concertos should do
that.

A friend who tried to introduce people to CM found that two of the really
hard cases who refused to like anything were won over by Wagner's
Meistersinger Overture and Rachmaninov's 2nd Piano Concerto.

OTOH, an attempt to introduce CM chronologically, starting with Bach,
failed dismally when someone liked Bach's Double Violin Concerto so much
he just wanted to hear that over and over again.

Grace Williams's Fantasia on Welsh Nursery Tunes was composed to persuade
people that CM isn't anything esoteric.  It's quite effective locally (I'm
not sure how well it would travel).

Four to go, and no symphonies so far? Well, once someone has got the hang
of listening to a piece for half an hour or more, and understands that
no-one likes everything, you could try Beethoven's 6th and 7th symphonies
and Tchaikovsky's 4th and 5th.

Peter Varley
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