Snapped up me tickets, you're right they've pretty much disappeared for the special performances.

Still got me 2 front-row seats inna box!

While driving I nearly always listen to Radio 3 since I figure I hear enough popular music roundabouts elsewhere in my life. Last night I caught a long piece that really took my attention, and when I parked up I stayed in the car till its conclusion. Went onto iPlayer this afternoon and discovered it's actually an opera, Michael Tippet's The Midsummer Marriage. Which being a pleb of course i'd never heard of before.
Anyway, awesome session of music.

John Wilson and his orchestra are awesome yet again with their celebration of Hollywood. Seriously brilliant playing, masterfully conducted. You'd be hard pressed to hear this stuff done any better anywhere in the world.

Where do I start? Glenn Gould was one of the most unconventional, eccentric and often reclusive pianists the classical world has seen. Undoubtedly a genius, his most famous recordings are the two of the Goldberg Variations that you mention above.  The first, recorded in the early days of his career, is (often astonishingly) fast, virtuosic, flamboyant, youthful, exuberant and mind-blowingly brilliant. The other, recorded just a year before his untimely death at the age of 50, is entirely different but arguably no less important or brilliant. His tempi are this time though extremely slow and ponderous in places and it's a particularly contemplative recording. As for the singing etc... Gould had a habit of humming along with himself and other such eccentric traits but so what? It's perhaps not what Bach might have intended but his playing is simply incredible. The recording quality isn't perfect either, but as far as I'm concerned, it only adds to the authenticity of the playing, like that magical pop and crackle that you get from an old LP recording.

Anyhow, I have the edition you're talking about and it's the one to get. It makes for a fascinating comparison between someone at either end of their professional career.

The music itself is quite simply peerless. It's JS Bach, the daddy of all western music, at his sublime best. If ever you wanted an example of the beauty of mathematics, you need only listen to the Goldberg Variations. The simplest and most economical of themes (the opening aria) is spun into 32 variations, all mathematically perfect and beautiful within themselves, and all completely different.

It was written for some Count who had insomnia, to be performed to him by the virtuoso harpsichord player something something Goldberg to help him to sleep. It works on me too - there's something wonderfully soporific about the same themes going around and around in every conceivable combination.

Flagged in the general music thread but Stravinsky's Concerto in D is the bollocks. Also I think Wendy Carlos ripped it the fuck off in a couple bits on the Tron OST.

Goldberg variations features in Silence of the Lambs - the scene in with Lector escapes from his cell.

krs is spot-on. Bach's WTC is probably the most important and significant work of keyboard music in the entire history of western music. It's a wonderful celebration of the advent of equal temperament, which in itself is a rather fascinating mathematical-musical concept.

Stravinsky's also one of my favourite composers. You could choose important works from different phases of his life and they would all represent entirely different aesthetic/stylistic approaches and yet all are masterful in their conception and execution.

As for that John Wilson prom that I linked back there, if nothing else you should check out the 6 minutes starting from c1:29:00 where they do Tom & Jerry. It's utterly brilliant.

This page is officially full of win.

There are some pretty cool YouTube videos of Gould playing this stuff and much more too.

They're a good band too; A small and financially precarious orchestra but well worth supporting. I did some work with them a couple of years ago at their home in the Ulster Hall.

Oh, you have one of those doodads below the bass side f-hole; are they a wolf note thing? I noticed Natalie Clein has one on hers.

Wolf notes are cool.

The wolf bit is the clue (cool animal)

Every young person in Britain should be made to study classical music

The beta-blocker thing immediately made me think about whether it's rampant on pro videogaming tourney circuits yet.

I don't know how many people really use them in the classical music world to be honest. I'd certainly never use them, despite having suffered from quite debilitating jitters at times.

A huge meaty chunk of Brahms, in a glorious played and rapturously received live performance.