Thread: Please Share Music Suggestions!!

Hello! I am very new to this site, and vaguely familiar with classical works and their composers.

I was hoping that someone could suggest some music for me to hear, just to expand my minuscule library of tunes.

I enjoy really lush, passionate, legato orchestral pieces. You know... things like Spartacus-Adagio and Barber's "Adagio for Strings". Any suggestions of that style would be appreciated, but I'd certainly be open to hearing different styles!

You might like Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings. Certainly the first movement has the kind of qualities you described.

Here are some suggestions : Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov _ Scheherezade. A colorful and exotic orchestral suite which is an evocation of the Arabian Nights, and the voyages of Sinbad the sailor.

Ravel: Daphnis & Chloe . (Suite or complete ballet score ). A lush and sensuous evocation of an ancient Greek myth about young lovers in pastoral Greece.

Claude Debussy : La Mer.(The Sea). An incredibly vivid and evocative portrait of the sea in all its moods .

Ottorino Respighi . The Pines of Rome. An incredibly colorful evocation of various sights in Rome .

Bedrich Smetana : The Moldau . Another vivid descriptive piece, from a six -part series of tone poems about
Bohemia, or what we now call the Czech Republic. A description of what it's like to travel along th e course of
a river which flows through the Bohemian countryside .

Richard Strauss; An Alpine Symphony . A thrilling depiction of what it's like to go climbing in the Bavarian alps ,
complete with waterfalls, glaciers , and a torrential thunderstorm .

Igor Stravinsky : The Firebird . (Suite or complete ballet score ). Another fantastically colorful work, this time a depiction of an old Russian fairy tale about a prince who wanders through a forest, and finds a magic firebird which helps him free a beautiful young princess who is being kept by an evil sorceror .

You'll love these !

You might also like Mahler's Adagio for the 10th Symphony (and Mahler adagios in general), R. Strauss' Metamorphosen, Sibelius' Andante Festivo...

I'd imagine these would fit your tastes very well:

Bruckner 8 Adagio


Mahler 9 Adagio


Beethoven 7 Movement 2

William Walton - Touch her soft lips and part and The death of Falstaff (both from 'Henry V' film music)

Alan Hovhaness - Celestial Fantasy for strings

Frederick Delius - Two Acquarelles: No. 1 and No. 2

Michael Tippett - Concerto for Double String Orchestra: Second Movement: Adagio Cantabile

Film music by Toru Takemitsu as well (for something with more 'contemporary' feel) -
Waltz ; Funeral Music ; Training and Rest

Vaughan Williams--Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. I also think his 5th and 6th Symphonies would be very much to your liking {RVW'S, that is}, as well as Mahler's 5th and 6th {"Tragic"}. In my less than expert opinion, these are all big, bold and full-throated emotional works which have never failed to move me when I have listened to them.

Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht (preferably with a big string orchestra rather than a sextet)

And Rachmaninoff's 2nd symphony