1812 Overture

Tchaikovsky rocks! I've loved Light Classical music since I was a young teenager. Especially the stuff with droopy dreary violins - Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, and anyone named Strauss. .

I picked up this album for $1 at the used-record store. I have no idea who Bernard Haitink is (although he is listed at Wikipedia); but his Amsterdam Orchestra is up to the task.

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This album appears to have been issued in 1973. Three Tchaikovsky opuses, with one common denominator - they all have at least a couple bars of the Russian national anthem incorporated into them. 49 minutes of great music. And a kewl album cover to boot.

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The conversion was relatively painless. No skips, and only a few major scratches. I was fortunate to find jpegs of both the front and back covers on the Internet. I burned it to CD, and listened to it on the way to work a couple mornings last week. At 80 decibels, it gave me goosebumps. 9*/10.

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Track listing : (01) Overture 1812, Op. 49 (15:51). (02) Slavonic March, Op. 31 (9:30). Francesca da Rimini, Op. 32 (24:08).

Best Chopin 100

You say you just can't get enough of Classical Piano in general, and Chopin in particular? Then this is the collection for you. A whopping 6 CD's, cleverly packed into one box, and all the disks are easily accessible. How's that for excellence in Mechanical Engineering? . What's To Like... This is a recent release (January 2010) and all the CD's are packed to capacity, so you're getting about 7 hours of Chopin. Wikipedia says there are 230 surviving works of Chopin, which means almost half of them are included here. . Chopin (1810-1849) of course is long gone, but about a dozen great pianists are here, including luminaries like Arthur Rubinstein, Dinu Lipatti, Claudio Arrau and Martha Argerich. The first two are among my personal favorites, and they don't disappoint. . I've never listened to this much Chopin at once (actually, over the course of a week), and what particularly surprised me was the diversity of his works. Fast stuff, slow stuff, stuff with an orchestra, stuff without. Stuff that will humble most pianists, and even something called "Fantasy on Polish National Airs". Chopin was one of Poland's ardent nationalists. . None of the music was bad, but naturally I found I liked some types of compositions better than others. In rough order of preference : . Yeah!! The polonaises, piano concertos, piano sonatas, scherzos, and the aforementioned Fantasy on Polish Airs. . Well, okay. The mazurkas, rondos, impromptus, and most of the waltzes. . Meh. The preludes, etudes, and a lot of the nocturnes. . Shoppin' for Chopin... You can get Best Chopin 100 for a mere $14.99 at Amazon. Not bad for 6 disks. Barnes & Noble also stocks it. It's not a best-seller at either outlet. Indeed, you can be the first person to write a review about it at Amazon. . We'll rate this 7½* out of 10, because I liked this collection a lot more than I expected. It doesn't alter my basic views - nocturnes are the cure for insomnia, and all classical piano sounds better when an orchestra is accompanying it - but I'm still developing a taste for this type of classical music (I much prefer Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Wagner, and anyone named Strauss), and this was another step along the path.