Top Ten Classical Pieces

1. Tchaikovsky - Piano Concerto No.1 in B flat
(1st live music concert I ever went to - Sheldonian Theatre Oxford as a schoolboy,
I went out and bought it on 10” classical album with my pocket money)
2. Rossini - William Tell Overture (my dad would conduct imaginary orchestras and listen to his

favourites - this was one and quickly became one of mine
3. Gavin Bryars - Sinking Of The Titanic
4. Charles Ives - The Unanswered Question/ Central Park In The Dark
5. Catalani/ Illica - La Wally (by Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez)
6. Ravel - Bolero (check 2014 Promenade concerts BBC) I loved this one too from a child and

teenager
7. Pachelbel - Canon in D major
8. Mahler - symphony no 9 in D minor

9. 'Pokarekare Ana'

- This love song arose in Northland New Zealand at the start of World War One where it was modified into an action song telling of Paraire Tomoana's 1912 courtship of Kuini Raerena. I learned this at Primary school and knew all the words throughout my childhood much to my parents bemusement and the melody has stayed with me. I had a New Zealander teacher who taught us aspects of Maori culture, instruments and a number of songs. It is now known and sung world-wide.

10.Mussorgsky- Pictures at An Exhibition (piano) not the Rossini orchestrated version,

discovered on my own I heard this original piano piece on my own listening to my first

transistor radio in my bedroom under the covers

Bubbling under: I saw A Clockwork Orange when it came out and was blown away by Walter (now Wendy) Carlos' soundtrack . . . . . . . . . my dad was horrified when I bought the album!

Thomas Tallis - Spem In Alium religious music is not for me and the simplicity of hymns I do not trust unlike my dad who loved them. The meditative quality of Tallis though is not lost on me

Possibly a juvenile and unsophisticated mixed bag of where music started for me and with some additions largely from my art college tutor Gavin Bryars' influence (Sinking . . , Ives etc)

Gioacchino Rossini: William Tell Overture (1829) London Philharmonic, Alfred Scholz