Nostalgia department: in 1963, my Mother & Step-Father took me to the Dayton (Ohio) Philharmonic Orchestra (on a school night!), my first experience with live classical music. I distinctly remember the part where the musicians “tuned up” their instruments, thinking that was part of the work which was subsequently performed: Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring). It was to be my introduction to “classical” music and it was memorable. Of course, I knew nothing of its history, that it was a riot causing sensation when it premiered (as a ballet) 50 years before in Paris, that it was to become one of the most monumental and influential musical works of the 20th Century, I just thought all classical music must be AWESOME! Two takes on the work:
Leonard Bernstein & the New York Philharmonic Orchestra (probably from the 1960s), a treat to watch Bernstein conduct:
And, interestingly, Stravinsky wrote a version for piano (2 performers, 4 hands, 1 piano) which was published about a year before the Orchestral/Ballet version (one can only imagine what it was like to hear Stravinsky and Claude Debussy performing it to an unsuspecting audience in 1912). Here is a stunning performance by Dutch Brothers Lucas & Arthur Jussen:
Dennis Hopper called 