5 Pieces

[decantor]

decantor, Having mentioned your age at the first two spine-tinglers, you omitted that information for the rest! Come on....fess up.

ardcarp, your interest is flattering, but the information you seek is not precisely verifiable: at a guess, (in order) early teens, mid teens, mid thirties. Now, at what age did your spine first tingle to a classical piece? And what was it?

[doversoul1]

(in my childhood)
Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E minor
(in my youth)
Vivaldi Four Seasons performed by I Musici
Elizabethan Lute songs performed by Julian Bream
(much (much) later)
Bach St Matthew Passion
(as recent as last Friday)
Les Troyens: thanks to the link posted by mercia on the Royal Opera: Les Troyens thread
This was definitely more a ‘being blown away’ than a spine tingling experience.

[salymap]

I don't see why not! I am curious what your next set of choices will be. I am sure that it is quite possible to be "blown away" by something other than a big orchestral work.

Yes, I know, it's just sooo difficult. All I can drum up atm.

Schubert - Piano Sonata in Bb.D960
Mozart - Quintet for keyboard and winds K452
Strauss - Four Last Songs
Janacek - Mladi
Mahler - Kindertotenlieder

[Serial_Apologist]

ardcarp, your interest is flattering, but the information you seek is not precisely verifiable: at a guess, (in order) early teens, mid teens, mid thirties. Now, at what age did your spine first tingle to a classical piece? And what was it?

If it's not too rude to interrupt my answer to that one would unquestionably be the Schumann Piano Concerto, at the age of 6. Once my father overcame his considerable misgivings and let me play his first-ever LP on his precious, home-made radiogram, I just played and played it. It was the first of many works I came to know from start to finish, now stored in my memory.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Schubert - Piano Sonata in Bb.D960
Strauss - Four Last Songs

Oh, yes! Those, too!

[Petrushka]

Now, at what age did your spine first tingle to a classical piece? And what was it?

If I may answer this one for myself: I was thirteen days short of my 16th birthday, May 23 1970, and it was Wagner's Prelude to Act 3 of Lohengrin a chance hearing on Radio 2 of all places. Never forget it!

[Roslynmuse]

Chopin - Etudes Opp 10 and 25
Wagner - Parsifal
Ravel - L'enfant et les sortileges
Louis Andriessen - De Staat
Jeffrey Lewis - Memoria

and many more x5...

[Ebubu]

There now seems to be 2 questions in this thread

"5 Pieces that blew you away the first time you heard them. "

Well trying to filter through my memory :
Schmitt's Psalm 47 (recording) (I was 16)
Mahler 8th (live ! Wow, what a blow !)
Messiaen Turangalila
Wagner's Ring (Chereau prod on TV. I was scotched ! must have been 16 or 17)
Les Troyens (selection with Crespin, Pretre conducting).

"Now, at what age did your spine first tingle to a classical piece? And what was it? "
I started the piano at age 7, motivated by the son of my parents' friends, who, just a few years older than me was playing, the little prodigy Liszt's "Ronde des Lutins".... (I never achieved that level, but it's probably the first piano piece that "tingled my spine" very vividly.)
Then I discovered Tchaikovsky (Nutcracker and Swan Lake), and from then on many things, as I would listen to every classical vinyl that I could lay may hands on. I very distinctly remember the Chopin discovery, and sometime later, Offenbach, the Verdi choruses, Maria Callas.... (quite eclectic !)

"And the opening bars of both Bach Passions do it every time...... "
Yep, same here....

[Pabmusic]

Holst: Suite in E-flat
Butterworth: Banks of Green Willow
Suk: Fantastic Scherzo
Sibelius: En Saga
Finzi: Dies Natalis

These are pieces that awoke my sensibilities with a real jolt when I first heard them (1960s I think).

Here's five symphonic works that I've discovered in later years, that evoked the 'eureka' moment at the time and that still give pleasure:

Suk: Asrael
Kalinnikov: Symphony 2 (or else No. 1 - I can't make up my mind)
Elgar: Symphony 1
RVW: Symphony 5
Bartok: Concerto for Orchestra

[salymap]

If I may have a go at the age question - I loved a lot of music from the age of eight,Tchaik ballet music and popular pieces but the real thrill was walking into the empty RAH one coldmorning when the 10 oclock rehearsal had just started. A friend, studying at Trinity, had been advised to attend rehearsals and asked me to go with her. We were seventeen years old and school friends.

As we walked into the hall Berlioz' overture Roman Carnival filled the echoing spaces and I was well and truly hooked for life. Live music is best and I miss it still

[IRF]

Bach - 'Prelude' from violin sonata number 3 (all the Partitas and Sonatas, really, but that was the first bit I heard and it 'blew me away' all by itself).
Cage - Variations VII
Messiaen - Quartet for the End of Time
Sarasate - Zigeunerweisen
Deep Purple - Child in Time

[Beef Oven!]

Holst - The Planets
RVW - The Lark Ascending
Ravel - Bolero
Wagner - Tristan Und Isolde
RVW - Symphony #5

[Bryn]

Stravinsky: Symphony in Three Movements

Varèse: Déserts

Messiaen: Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum

Stockhausen: Carré

Cardew: The Great Digest, (as it was then called) Paragraph 2.

.

[edashtav]

Honegger Symphony no 5 Di Tre Re
Bach Mass in B minor
Sorabji Piano Sonata no 3
Messaien Chronochromie
Brian Symphony no. 6 “Tragica”

[Serial_Apologist]

Stravinsky - Symphony in 3 Movements (thanks for the reminder, Bryn!)
Koechlin - Symphony No 2
Bartok - Musaic for Strings, Harp, Celesta & Percussion
Bridge - Enter Spring
Schoenberg - Erwartung

Ooer - I could name so many others!