Thread: Album with Violins and Celos only?

I'm pretty new to classical music. Honestly, I listen to metal mostly, but I love metal for the same reason I love classical music: the technicality. Most songs in these genres have enough complexity to warrant many, many listens, and it's not uncommon to discover something new in each listen due to layers and layers of complexity.

Anyway, I was just wondering if any has any recommendable CD's that have just violins and celos (and maybe violas too)? I love the mellow, almost melancholy sound of these instruments combined, and I think they complement each other wonderfully. Unfortunately I have no idea where to look to find music like that, so if you have and website references that will clue me in on the good violin/celo music, then please share.

Thanks.

Hi Tbab, here are some suggestions

Brahms: he composed sonatas for violin-piano, cello-piano, viola-piano.
For solo cello you can get works by Bach, Ernest Bloch and Benjamin Britten (they are not only very, very good, but also challenging works (the technicality you are looking for).
Bach also composed suites for solo violin: three sonatas and three partitas.

I love the mellow, almost melancholy sound of these instruments combined

Try to get something from this list:
Tchaikovsky: Trio Op. 50 in a minor for piano, violin and cello
Maurice Ravel: Trio for piano violin and cello
String quartets by Jean Sibelius and Bedrich Smetana.

If you like the sound of the viola, you will like violinist Gioconda de Vito in her Brahms' violin concerto recordings. Her tone is dark and somber; and gives the concerto a new (or at least different).

As you come from the metal this are composers you may enjoy:
Sergei Prokofiev: Get his third piano concerto, and his Romeo and Juliet suites
Dmitri Shostakovich: his first violin concerto and both piano concertos*
Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky: try his violin concerto, 1st piano concerto and fourth symphony.
This are some of the works I ask people to listen to dismantle the idea that classical music is all about relax and tenderness.



*If you use P2P do a search for mp3 in this string "shostakovich violin concerto" and download the Scherzo and Burlesque (2nd and third movs of the first violin concerto). They are awsome.

Originally Posted by Tbab

I'm pretty new to classical music. Honestly, I listen to metal mostly, but I love metal for the same reason I love classical music: the technicality. Most songs in these genres have enough complexity to warrant many, many listens, and it's not uncommon to discover something new in each listen due to layers and layers of complexity.

Anyway, I was just wondering if any has any recommendable CD's that have just violins and celos (and maybe violas too)? I love the mellow, almost melancholy sound of these instruments combined, and I think they complement each other wonderfully. Unfortunately I have no idea where to look to find music like that, so if you have and website references that will clue me in on the good violin/celo music, then please share.

Thanks.

If you enjoy listening to metal and classical for the complex, technical nature of it, then you MUST give Beethoven's Grosse Fugue Opus 133 String Quartet a listen.

I used to listen to metal music (not the thrashy kind, but technical masters such as Van Halen, Black Sabbath). String Quartet music is definitely the path you should follow. It's beautiful, intricate layers will indeed hook you in.

Awesome, guys, thanks a lot. I'll look into all of these. ^_^

I don't have any classical music with only these instruments, but I love them with other instruments such as Shostakovich's violin concertos which have already been mentioned.

I have alot of music which combines rock and classical influences along with jazz, avant-garde and folk.

Art Zoyd's Musique Pour L'Odyssee is a good starter because the violin, viola and cello are used quite predominantly there, especially in the track called Bruit, Silence-Bruit, Repos.

These instruments are also used to good effect in Univers Zero's Heresie, 1313 and Ceux du Dehors; King Crimson's Starless and Bible Black; Stormy Six's Un Concerto, Un Biglietto del Tram, and L'apprendista; Mahavishnu Orchestra's Birds of Fire, Apocalyse and Visions of the Emerald Beyond.