That magical 'breakthrough' moment....

[Lat-Literal]

I didn't need to look that up, honestly! Everyone who knows me is aware that I do not forget dates and it's almost a wee bit obsessive sometimes. Dates, anniversaries of all kinds, birthdays, news events, I just soak it up. There was a time when I could have told you what day of the week a certain date fell between say, 1965 and 1990, quite quickly but as I get older it becomes a little more difficult. It's helpful, in my case, knowing that my birthday and Christmas Day always fall on the same day of the week and as my birthday is in June it's often just a case of working backwards or forwards. Like I say, a bit obsessive!

My birthday and Christmas Day also fall on the same day of the week.

Mine is seven days before.

It's definitely something in the air.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

My birthday and Christmas Day also fall on the same day of the week.

Mine is seven days before.

Mine is 7 days after, and the Vienna Phil gives me a concert every time.

[waldo]

There was TV advert for British Electricity in the early 1980s. It might have been something to do with privatisation........anyway, the advert played the opening to the Eroica. Bam!..... Bam!....... I didn't know what it was called, however; I didn't know any classical music at all. But weeks later, I stumbled over the score in the local library. I could read music (from playing the recorder), but God knows why I picked the score up or even tried to read it. Anyway - I read the first few bars and realised - this was the great British electricity advert music I liked! I got the tape (Karajan/BPO) soon after and that was my first record.

[Cockney Sparrow]

I could read music (from playing the recorder), but God knows why I picked the score up or even tried to read it. Anyway - I read the first few bars and realised - this was the great British electricity advert music I liked! I got the tape (Karajan/BPO) soon after and that was my first record.

Oh my goodness - Mrs CS went down fighting for primary recorder teaching, in ability groups in her school. Regarded as obviously antediluvian, it wasn't accepted that it was the key to reading music. 90-95% of children managing to read music as a result, and then go on to learn to play string instrument from violin to double bass in one of the surviving wider opportunity primary classes. (Or, being able to read music, the children were equipped with the ability and confidence to begin any instrument their parents or the school could resource).

[waldo]

Oh my goodness - Mrs CS went down fighting for primary recorder teaching, in ability groups in her school........

It certainly worked for me. I still play the recorder, in fact!

Where I grew up - in South Wales - we also went on yearly residential courses to play music. The "camp" was in Ogmore-by-Sea - dormitories, a main hall, a canteen and so on. Two or three hundred children would gather for a whole week, play music in "sections" all day, then put on a concert for the parents at the end. There were recorder courses for smaller children and orchestral ones for the older ones. I first went when I was nine and was taught to play the tenor recorder. At night, an old woman with a walking cane stalked the corridors listening out for bad behaviour.

I took my wife there not so long ago. I'd told her all about it, so we drove up one afternoon. Here it is, I said. Just around this bed on the left.

It was gone. Flattened. The land sold off for new houses. I felt like getting on my knees and bashing the earth like Charlton Heston at the end of the Planets of the Apes.

The library where I found the score to the Eroica is gone, too.......

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The recorder is much maligned.

We hear endless comments along the lines that young recorder players "play out of tune". 90% of the time, this is untrue. Other than variations in breath control, they are generally quite well tuned, but in a group of beginners, several are likely to be playing wrong notes, which is hardly the fault of the instrument.

[burning dog]

This very version on an EP - the build up to the main theme in the Intermezzo, at about four or five years old, playing on a Murphy radiogram I literally cut my teeth on

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Were you able to remove the scratches on the radiogram?

[gradus]

Ah, radiograms. Best of all I think was the Decca Decola, resplendent cabinetry and latterly fitted with the ffss pickup with Garrard 301. eBay has one for £4,000!

[french frank]

Ah, radiograms. Best of all I think was the Decca Decola, resplendent cabinetry and latterly fitted with the ffss pickup with Garrard 301. eBay has one for £4,000!

We had a radiogram. My parents kept their 78rpm record on the turntable - and a plant on top of the lid

This is the most similar one:

[cloughie]

This very version on an EP - the build up to the main theme in the Intermezzo, at about four or five years old, playing on a Murphy radiogram I literally cut my teeth on

...and now in the Sibelius Decca Great Performances box I bought a couple of weeks ago, a bargain at the price at the time, 11cd set for £11.99. I must say the CD sounds better!

[oddoneout]

We had a radiogram. My parents kept their 78rpm record on the turntable - and a plant on top of the lid

This is the most similar one:

Well you can't be too careful can you. Good heavens where would we be if all that culture was allowed to escape....

[oddoneout]

Interesting to see mention of breakthroughs as the result of hearing a short piece, aka bleeding chunk elsewhere......

[burning dog]

Were you able to remove the scratches on the radiogram?

filled in with boot polish I expect

[Joseph K]

Interesting to see mention of breakthroughs as the result of hearing a short piece, aka bleeding chunk elsewhere......

For me, it probably was not one single moment, but rather a series of moments...

Speaking of bleeding chunks, a moment that stays with me was during an after-school listening session with my music teacher, prep for those of us going on to do A-level music. One of the questions was on Turangalila Symphony, and the clip was of the first Turangalila movement. I couldn't believe my ears - the music was that monumentally awesome, so gloriously sumptuous and rich.

Not long after I ordered (probably the first time I'd ever ordered music online) Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony (Andre Previn) along with the Quartet for the End of Time and a CD of Xenakis' Metastaesis, Pithoprakta and Eonta.