So What One (maybe one) Composer Influenced You The Most?

[Steve Moshier]

Describe the composer and a work/performance that 'blew you away'.

[Steve Moshier]

TAKE A STAND!

[Steve Moshier]

Beethoven.

[Steve Moshier]

Simon Jeffes (Penguin Cafe Quartet): obscure by Island Records

[Mary Jane Leach]

Monteverdi

[Dennis Bathory-Kitsz]

Cagesualdoltrainskyzappartchiveros.

Composers influenced me "the most" at different times in my life. Barring that answer, then here's the one composer who influenced me at the formative age of 13: Stravinsky, because of the Rite of Spring, in an unheralded 1960 performance on Reader's Digest LPs by Rene Leibowitz and the London Festival Orchestra.

Dennis

[Dennis Bathory-Kitsz]

danstearns said:

like most people i'd guess, i've had lots. but one day wayback when....Ives, the Finale of the 4th,i was stunned for days .

Oh, yes. This was three years after I first heard the Stravinsky Rite. My parents were visiting relatives in Connecticut, and I was determined not to miss the radio broadcast of the premiere. It might have been live or on tape -- I don't really know -- but it had been announced and I was curled up in the corner with a little radio, listening to it through the static coming out of the speaker on one side and the laughs and hoots of relatives trading stories on the other.

Dennis

[Steve Layton]

Well, for me there's been a lot of major shapers but Stravinsky started it all, so forget the rest and props where they're due.

[Alphonse Izzo]

I'd have to say Stravinsky as well. The piece that did it for me was "Symphonies Of Wind Instruments". It irritated the hell out of me even though I kept returning to it until one day I had the eureka moment.

[Dave Seidel]

Not to be a maverick or anything, but Stravinsky for me too, the Grierson/Thomas recording of Rite of Spring for two pianos.

The other one was Ives, The Unanswered Question (don't remember which recording, but it doesn't matter).

[David Beardsley]

I don't have just one.




.

[Steve Moshier]

The 2nd movement of the Op. 111 piano sonata (especially the Gary Graffman/Columbia recording = sublime)

Steve Moshier said:

Beethoven.

[John Koch-Northrup]

If I'm sticking with composers in the generally classical sense - Claude Debussy. My mom's favorite song was Claire de Lune - which meant that my older sister and I both learned it on piano so she could hear us play it. I have a soft spot for that piece - as well as several others from Debussy mainly due to my mom.

My sister had me record a version of it for her wedding around 1990 (you'd think I'd remember the year!) which I spent the night in the music store I worked at recording the whole thing and all the various parts. ...cough - a little laughable now, but hey - it was fun.