Can you remember the occasion which sparked your first interest in music?

[rauschwerk]

I clearly remember a second epiphany when I was 11. On a Butlin's holiday, I found myself in front of a jukebox and discovered early Elvis (Hound Dog, Heartbreak Hotel), Rock Around the Clock and, if not modern jazz, then something akin to it: Elmer Bernstein's title theme from The Man with the Golden Arm.

This was all new to me because you couldn't get Radio Luxembourg properly on the one and only radio in our house.

[Colonel Danby]

I suppose it was my mother's record collection that started me off on the long wonderful journey which is classical music: Schuricht in Beethoven 5 on Ace of Clubs; Grieg's Piano Concerto with Gina Bachauer and George Weldon etc etc.

Then my brother was selected to sing the role of the shepherd boy at the beginning of the 3rd act of 'Tosca' at the CBSO Prom in Birmingham Town Hall in 1980: Felix Kok was leader, and a whole host of great instrumentalists too, who all tapped their bows when my bro was introduced to them in rehearsal. The soloists were Elizabeth Vaughan and Kenneth Collins, with the marvellous David Lloyd Jones conducting. By the end, I had Puccini coming out of my ears, and have a passion for opera as a result.

But it was the appointment of Simon Rattle as chief conductor of the CBSO in the same year that was really crucial in my musical education: he was there for 18 years, and basically he taught me everything I needed to know. I shall be for ever in his debt. Stockhausen and Birtwistle hold no fears for me now!

[vinteuil]

i think I was about nine or ten - perhaps 1960-1961 - taken to a concert at the Guildhall in Bath - front row, left hand side, feet away from the performers - Monteverdi's il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda - I was completely entranced by the noise of the harpsichord (in hindsight, a completely anachronistic 18th century Kirckmann - but for Bath in 1960, not bad... [harpsichordist - Edward Malins, a friend of my father... ]) - and from then onwards a complete convert to plucked instruments, the early music movement with all that it implies (as Kipling put it*)...

* As Easy as A.B.C. [1912]

[Mahlerei]

Anna Moffo in Lucia di Lammemoor; heard on my brother's improvised stereo c. 1968. In the dry heat of a Kalahari summer, too, with not a breath of wind for days on end.

[Segilla]

[A page from my biographical notes, compiled because I regret that none of my ancestors left any written record of themselves or their times].

The Great Exclamation. Haydn’s Symphony 104 (The London).

On the 29 December 1949, when listening to the BBC Home Service, a concert was broadcast which included symphony No 104 (The London), by Haydn. We weren't a particularly musical family but the radio was usually on for much of the day. In the night, I must have been dreaming and partly awoke, sat up and could clearly 'hear' bars 20 - 23 of the first movement. By a strange coincidence, (for music was not so readily available then and we had no gramophone), the symphony was played the very next day on the Light Programme and I heard it again. It was to be, and not for the only time in my life, a kind of Great Exclamation, that is all at once, the revelation of a new vision and the transformation of the familiar into the unforeseen. From that day onwards I became obsessed with classical music and remain intensely interested to this day. I started to read and listen to all I could, listed all I heard, borrowed books and scores (and later records), from the library in the Marylebone road. My school work suffered, so it was a miracle that I recovered from that wasted opportunity and managed to get a reasonably good job at age 17.

My initial interest was in the classical works of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven but all was a fog; I didn’t even know the difference between a concerto and symphony, but knowledge grew rapidly.
I bought my first biography of Handel at WH Smith in Baker Street London near where I went to school and it took a lot out of my pocket money. I read it twice but it was difficult to relate to as I then had so little idea of the perspective of history, an essential to the understanding of how we got where we are and our connection with past times.

[gamba]

The love seems always to have been there although one major influence was the film 100 Men & a Girl ( 1937). This included Stowkowski conducting a variety of items, the most impressive & memorable being ' the big tune ' from the last movement of Tchaikowski's 5th. symphony - I thought I was going to burst with a sort of delirious excitement & had tears running down my cheeks. I would have been sitting in the cheap front seats of the cinema looking up at the screen towering steeply above me & the sound quite deafening ! You don't ever forget moments like that.

[BBMmk2]

I think my love of music has always been there too. Buit that was when I was at Prep School, really spurned it on! Had a very good MD there, which helps?

[Angle]

The love of music came to me through wartime radio - Children's Hour used Elgar's "Chanson de Matin" as the signature tune for the Bunkle plays, and Paul Temple which, when I was nine, was still using Rimsky's "Scheherezade" as its signature tune.

It was pure co-incidence that at the first concert I ever attended was a Children's Hour concert at the Milton Hall, Manchester, the only work was "Scheherezade", played by the BBC Northern Orchestra conducted by Charles Groves. The second concert was at the King's Hall, Belle Vue, with the Halle under Barbirolli playing an all-Beethoven programme. Both Joyce Aldous and Maisie Ringham, mentioned in another thread, were already prominent members of the orchestra.

O, such happy and uncomplicated days.

[gurnemanz]

As a child I must I must have heard quite a lot of classical music because my father had LPs, but the experience was just that - hearing not listening. It was someone else's music, not mine and in the late 50s and early/mid 60s my music was pop. The good old BBC loftily broadcast very little pop music so I used to listen almost exclusively to pirate radio stations and Radio Luxemburg. On one occasion, aged about 15 or 16, I took my transistor radio with me as usual to provide background entertainment as I luxuriated in my evening bath. As I cruised the medium wave, looking for a pop station I happened upon some other music that "blew my mind" as we might have said in those days. It was "An die Freude" from Beethoven's Ninth. I stayed tuned... and the rest is indeed history. I remember being very impressed with myself that not only had I actually tuned to the BBC Third Programme, I had also found the experience rewarding. I suppose it was the first time I had listened to classical music as the result of an autonomous choice.

[visualnickmos]

I think it was really hearing 2 of my Dad's records as a kid in the early/mid 60s: an LP of Struass waltzes, and a 45 (EP, I think?) of 2 of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies - and a 78 of Chopin's Polonaise - the 'famous' one....
I have no idea who the performers are/were, but I will now check next time I'm 'home'....
Eventually, I must have been about 12, I decided to listen to them myself - my very own 'grown up' decision...!

PS I also have never heard Walton's BF - looking forward to BaL.

[gradus]

First time? The occasion that sticks in the mind is hearing a 78 record of The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy at primary school. Later it was Hi Fi - the thrill of hearing(feeling) simultaneous bass drum and cymbal on Beecham's recording of Roman Carnival, courtesy of a friend's Wharfedale/Leak gear. Singing in a church choir helped but my feeble attempts at piano and cello did nothing to excite my musical interests.

[salymap]

Apart from what I've written earlier on this thread, the one thing Ishall always remember is the sound of Berlioz' Roman Carnival overture being rehearsed by Sargent with the LSO, one foggy morning. The wonderful music filled the empty, echoey space and the RAH still had flickering gas lamps in 1947.
I still love all Berlioz' overtures, that is still my favourite.

[Barbirollians]

Rather more prosaically - when twiddling through the radio on my Sanyo music centre in the early 1980s as a teenager a few bars of K271 on radio 3 caught my ears and I stopped it . Within a few second I pushed a tape into the player and started recording it and ended up having to turn it over at the end of the second movement and missed the opening bar of the finale .

All I remember was that Malcolm Binns was the soloist . It made me fall in love with Mozart at once and I played it all the time and went the local WH Smith that weekend and bought the Flute Concertos with Zabaleta on the harp and did not look back .

For years until I bought the Schiff/Vegh record none other of K 271 seemed to come close and when that tape eventually wore out I was distraught !

Thank God it was K 271 that was playing and not some Armenian nose flute music ...

[Nick Armstrong]

Apart from what I've written earlier on this thread, the one thing Ishall always remember is the sound of Berlioz' Roman Carnival overture being rehearsed by Sargent with the LSO, one foggy morning. The wonderful music filled the empty, echoey space and the RAH still had flickering gas lamps in 1947.
I still love all Berlioz' overtures, that is still my favourite.

Magic, saly!!!!

[Biffo]

I can't remember one particular spark, it just grew on me. The music lessons I had at school were not very inspiring even though we had a conscientious and musically gifted teacher. We were taken to an afternoon concert given by the Halle; it was a mixture of short pieces and explanation. By and large it was casting pearls before swine and most of us thought it bit of a laugh and an escape from normal lessons.

I started listening a bit more seriously when my older brother started buying classical LPs (I'm not sure why he did, we weren't a musical family at all) and in the end I listened to them more than he did. When I was about 17 I went to my first real concert - the Halle again, this time conducted by Sir John Barbirolli. The main work was Berlioz/Symphonie Fantastique and it hit me like a bombshell. Fortunately I have never recovered.