The Essential Classics

The raison d'tre of this compilation is to include the

works I like best and are compellingly listenable. I dont
like piano, for example, so you will not nd Chopin,
Debussy, Liszt, Satie; I also dont like German lieder or
German opera, so no Schubert or Wagner. The
compositions t no discernible oeuvre or epoch, though,
if pressed, I would probably say my favourite period is
the Baroque. In any case, I like early music performed
on period instruments best. And Italian opera...
Some of this music belongs to our family history: Your
grandfather, Robert John Hinke, was president of our
local orchestra, the Nutley Symphony, for several years.
Your grandmother, Carola Maynard Loos, sang Bachs
Christmas Oratorio from the stage at Carnegie Hall;
Brahms Ein Deutsches Requiem was played at her
funeral.
My abiding love of Bach, The Unparalleled Master, is
largely due to the inuence of my lifelong friends,
George and Vesta Putnam. Put was a true audiophile
and was always tinkering with his impressive stereo
systemthis was before most people even knew about
stereo! Put also had an amazing collection of records;
his family played Bach for him as he was dying. My
other dearest friends, Max and Maxine Hoffer, had a
Steinway grand piano in their living room and Max
played the most beautiful ute.
There was never enough money for Mama to take piano
lessons in Peterborough. When we were rst together
and living in Rochdale College, she carried a load of
hash to Montral on the train to buy an Artley silver ute.
A good part of our inspiration came from (well, the
hash!) but also from hearing the famous Dutch autist,
Frans Brggen. You attended a performance of Handels
Messiah at Massey Hall with us when you were just 17
days old; needless to say, you was the star of the show.
Later, Mama made sure both you and Simon had piano
lessons. I grew up with a German upright which my
maternal grandmother, Amy Maynard Loos, a Lutheran
preachers wife, played acceptably well. I cannot
remember my mother playing, though she must have
had lessons.
As I mentioned above, I dont particularly enjoy piano
music, though that is not a hard and fast rule; I simply
much prefer the delicacy of the harpsichord. One of my
earliest musical memories is being taken by my parents
to Carnegie Hall to hear the foremost modern interpreter
of Bachs original vision, the Polish harpsichordist,
Wanda Landowska. (She is now considered very old-
fashioned.) I was perhaps three years old. Landowska
was a tiny, ancient gure in a oor-length black gown;
she glided from the wings to her instrument as if she
were on wheels! One of the rst books I bought myself
when I was a teenager was her epic Landowska on
Bach. Ive never learned to play an instrument or read
music so this was like having a book in a foreign
language and I got precisely nothing from reading it.
Another of my earliest musical memories was being
taken to the old Metropolitan Opera house to see Aida
when I was four; the director came on stage to
announce a delaythe camels were stuck in trafc
coming from the Bronx Zoo!
Full house at the old Met
Murals by Marc Chagall at the new house, 1966. Left is
The Triumph of Music, right The Sources of Music. Each
measures approximately nine by 11 metres.
Swarovski crystal chandeliers, called Starburst or
Sputnik, at the new Met. Designed by Hans Harald
Rath, they were gifts of the Austrian government.
When I was 14, I camped out on the sidewalk on
Broadway with a few other diehards to hear the nal
performances in the old house, a gilt jewel-box with the
best acoustics I have heard in any hall. During the
farewell gala performance, roses rained down on the
stage for Renata Tebaldi who is, of course, to be heard
in this collection. I was the youngest person involved in
the movement to save the old house from demolition. I
climbed the crane the night before and locked myself to
the toprescued by remen and cut loose, in both
senses, by police! Although I loved the old place, I
availed myself often of two-dollar standing room (behind
the orchestra seats, with a brass bar on which to rest
your butt) at the new house at Lincoln Center. It doesnt
have the charm of the old Met but the Chagall murals
are so beautiful.
I have tried to give a brief glimpse of my favourite artists
in the Xtras section. In many cases, I was not able to
nd a musician I especially liked or a particular album or
piece of music. Music is a journey of exploration and
discovery and you will nd others who speak to you. I
have also included a few virtuoso musicians playing not-
classical music, including the composers for lms
Bernard Herrmann and Philip Glass. And I have grown
partial to the range of the versatile ddle as our house is
often lled with its many styles of music.
I hope this music will give you as much pleasure and
satisfaction as it has me, over a lifetime of listening. I am
including video of a small Polish orchestra playing
Vivaldis The Four Seasons directed by Nigel Kennedy
outdoors at le Citadelle in France; it is the best concert
performance on video I have ever seen.
Keith Emerson (Emerson, Lake & Palmer) on the Moog
Synthesizer
I hope I have imparted in you the deepest, abiding love
of music, in your blood and in your genes. It is the best
religion I know of and sustains me when I have grown
too old and lazy to practice yoga. Perhaps this quote
from a musician in the New York Philharmonic says it
best: We worshipped Toscanini but we love Lenny.
I love you
as high as the sky
and as wide as the earth,
your
Papa
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO
A note on le formats. Many of these CDs are MP3s at
the highest bit rate I could nd (320kbps is CD quality);
VBR stands for variable bit rate which I think gives the
richest sound quality. However, others are in lossless
formats such as FLAC or OGG or APE. Whether these
produce sound of better quality, of course, depends
entirely upon the quality of the equipment on which they
are played. If you want to get serious about this, you can
connect your computer to a high-delity amplier, even
an old one, and use high-quality speakers for playback.
None of this is expensive and was a fun and satisfying
project for the old man. The video formats MP4 and
MKV should be playable on your home DVD player. I
highly suggest you listen to all formats on computer
using VLC.
^^^^^
Bach (1685-1750) - The Master: All compositions
Beethoven (1770-1827) - The Symphonies, Concertos &
Sonatas
Berlioz (1903-1869) - Symphonie Fantastique, le Nuits
dete
Bernstein (1918-1990) - Mass, Peter Pan, West Side
Story, Young Peoples Concerts (video)
Bottesini (1821-1889) - All works
Brahms (1833-1897) - Ein Deutsches Requiem,
Symphonies, Triple Concerto
Britten (1913-1976) - American Overture, Saint
Nicholas, The Young Persons Guide to the Orchestra
(narrated by Dame Edna Everage)
Copland (1900-1990) - Appalachian Spring
Gershwin (1898-1937) - Porgy and Bess, Rhapsody in
Blue
Glass (1937- ) - les Animaux amoureux, la Belle et la
bte, Passages (with Ravi Shankar), Songs for a Trilogy,
The Ultimate Philip Glass
Handel (1685-1759) - Cantatas and Arias, Wind
Sonatas, Flute Sonatas, Messiah, Violin Sonatas, Water
Music
Haydn (1732-1809) - Complete Masses, The Creation,
Stabat Mater, String Quartets, Complete Symphonies
Herrmann (1911-1975) - The Film Scores
Ives (1874-1954) - Orchestral music
Mendelssohn (1809-1847) - Complete chamber music
Mozart (1756-1791) - All compositions
Mussorgsky (1839-1881) - Pictures at an Exhibition
Pachelbel (1653-1706) - Canon
Paganini (1882-1840) - Complete works
Poulenc (1899-1963) - The Story of Babar, the Little
Elephant (narrated by Barry Humphries)
Prokoev (1891-1953) - Cinderella, Peter and the Wolf
(Narrated by Dame Edna Everage)
Puccini (1858-1924) - Essential operas, Requiem
Ravel (1875-1937) - Bolro, ma Mre de la oye (Mother
Goose), Shhrazade
Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) - Shhrazade
Saint-Sans (1835-1921) - le Carnaval des animaux
(The Carnival of the Animals), Danse macabre, Oratorio
de Nel
Strauss (1804-1849) - Also Sprach Zarathustra
Stravinsky (1882-1971) - The Firebird, le Sacre du
printemps (The Rite of Spring), The Nightingale
Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) - The Sleeping Beauty, Swan
Lake, The Nutcracker, Symphonie Pathtique
Verdi (1813-1901) - Complete operas, Missa de
Requiem
Vivaldi (1678-1741) - The Four Seasons, Recorder
Concertos, Stabat Mater, Magnicat
Weill (1900-1950) - Die Dreigroschenopera (The
Threepenny Opera)
XTRAS - Vocal; Bassoon, Cello, Guitar, Harpsichord,
Oboe, Organ, Viola, Violin; Requiem Masses-Allegri,
Berlioz, Biber, Brahms, Campra, Cherubini, Dvorak,
Faur, Gouvy, Mozart, Ockegheim, Penderecki, Puccini,
Rutter, Verdi; Stabat Mater-Dvorak, Gouvy, Jenkins,
Palestrina, Pergolesi, Scarlatti, Vivaldi; Leonard
Bernsteins Young Peoples Concerts series (video).
Leroy Neiman, The Metropolitan Opera, 1978