blue moon wrote:
Luckyman and andygunn, I know what you mean but I think for many people the problem may be knowing which CD to put in the machine. If you are not familiar with classical music, how on earth do you know where to start, with several centuries of music to choose from? It took me a long time to discover the things I liked, even though I had the advantage of working in record shops for most of the '80s.
...which is how I know, despite having not seen Platoon, that you're probably thinking of Barber's Adagio for Strings, Sharky.
I used to use my local record library , taking out a few albums a week - I slowly manged to tune my tastes to certain composers .Also I used to listen to BBC Radio 3 quite a lot (Classical FM tends to play only segments of popular pieces - better to hear the whole thing ) before it dumbned-down .I went to a lot of classical concerts and became familiar with a lot of stuff, sometimes taking a gamble and going to something I had not heard before(Kurtag etc) .A few years ago the Edinburgh Festival were doing Wagner's Ring Cycle in yearly installments - got my tickets (cheaper than going to football), went along and was blown away by it all.Take a gamble bluemoon and try these avenues , there will be something out there just waiting for you to explore and enjoy .