Jee-Sun Huh wrote: >Just wondering how you guys started enjoying classical music the way you >do today. Spent most of childhood in Coolidge, Arizona except for 5 years in Phoenix. Began violin at age 5; had a few classical recordings (78 RPM) at home: Beethoven's 5th, Brahms's E-flat Clarinet Sonata (Benny Goodman--remind me to tell you a story about my experience with that set sometime!), Romeo & Juliet Overture-Fantasie (Tchaikovsky), Chopin's A-flat Polonaise, Grainger's Country Gardens, Music of Victor Herbert, Tubby the Tuba, and later Finlandia, Schubert's Unfinished, Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite and Mozartiana, one or two Caruso recordings, and some Fritz Kreisler. Watched Liberace every week. Nothing very systematic. Played in Orchestras from 5th grade on. Mother took me to Phoenix Symphony concerts and also to New York Philharmonic tour to Phoenix (Mitropoulos). Saw Szigeti, remembered my teacher playing the Bruch G Minor, also Piston's Incredible Flutist (I know why I remembered that, because of the cheering part!). None of this had too much conscious impact at the time. Went to music camp after 8th grade. Started to get seriously interested in composers and composing around age 16. Bought 9 Beethoven Symphonies cond. Toscanini ($3.98 special offer for joing the "RCA Victor Society of Great Music.") That started my record buying--those were good times for classical music on record! Also learned most of the late Beethoven quartets in the Budapest recordings while in high school, as well as a lot of symphonic music. Beethoven's 9th (Toscanini) had a tremendous impact on me and was probably the thing that influenced me to major in music. So no matter what you say about Toscanini, he did me some good! I was a Jekyll-Hyde type. Hyde liked Elvis and Fats Domino mostly, and rock and roll in general. I still do--not the stuff now so much, but the old stuff. The good stuff. I think it helped me to understand that the life-force exists in ANY good music, not just classical. I would never put it on the same level as classical though. You know, in those days classical music was more respected even by people who didn't listen to it, I think. That was when people who didn't have class perhaps aspired to it. Now the attitude seems more to be "ignorant and proud of it." Chris Bonds