Klaus Döring's Classical Music/Klaus Döring's Klassische Musik

Walking down the aisle, signing the register, the first dance – let Classic FM London help you plan the classical music for every stage of your wedding or civil ceremony with our handy step by step guide. 1. The night before: relax You've spent months planning, so take a little time to yourself and relax before the big day. How about Bach's sublime 'Air' from his Orchestral Suite No.3 in D major? Or, for something a little more romantic, try the smooth Chanson 'In Love' by Rudolf Friml. 2. Getting ready before the wedding ceremony The big day's finally arrived, and the first movement of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 is sure to ward off any pre-wedding nerves. If that doesn't work, the excitable mood of Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez will definitely set the tone. 3. Arriving at the wedding venue What better music ...

...from Beethoven for West Side Story? Beethoven - 5th Piano Concerto 'Emperor' (Zimerman, Bernstein, Wiener Philharmoniker) 41:25 By Maddy Shaw Roberts Here’s the proof that 'Somewhere', one of the most beautiful tunes in this Bernstein musical was very much inspired by Beethoven… West Side Story  is the 1957 Broadway musical that broke all our hearts – and at least a smattering of our  Leonard Bernstein -shaped tears can be attributed to its poignant ballad, ‘Somewhere (There’s a Place for Us)’. But did you know that its main tune (‘there’s a place for us’) was taken from the second movement ( Adagio un poco moto ) of  Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ Piano Concerto No. 5? That's this bit, in the Beethoven:  In Beethoven’s version, the ‘us’ sinks back down to the F sharp, returning to the note on which the phrase began. But in Bernstein’s composition, the ‘us’ is slightly higher – like this: 'Somewhere' appears in  West Side...

Classical music can vary in length from under a minute to 15 hours (looking at you, Wagner). So why are all pop songs roughly three minutes? By Victoria Longdon It turns out the reason most pop songs have wound up at just over three minutes in length is a) really interesting, and b) reveals some important facts about the history of recorded music. How did this 3 minute length come about? Around the 1920s shellac records replaced the phonograph cylinder as the technology of choice for recorded music. These 10 inch ‘singles’ stored just over three minutes of music. It wasn’t rocket science – exactly how much music they could store depended on how closely you spaced the grooves on the record. Closer together and you could store more music, but too close together and the sound quality would begin to suffer. If you were an artist in the 60s or 70s and you wanted your song played on the radio or a jukebox, that song had to be on a single. It was that simple. If it couldn’t fit, ...

The 14 best pieces EVER written for piano By Classic FM London 0 The piano is such a versatile instrument, that naturally everyone wants to write for it. But today we’re getting down to the exceptional stuff: this is a list of the best pieces ever written for piano (no questions asked). Beethoven – ‘Moonlight’ Sonata The heart-stoppingly beautiful first movement of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata is the most famous from his work, and was described by composer Hector Berlioz as a ‘lamentation’. But it couldn’t be more different from the third movement, an epic technical work-out for the fingers... Debussy – Clair de Lune Curiously, ‘Clair de Lune’ also means ‘Moonlight’ – but there’s a stark contrast between Beethoven’s Romantic classicism and Debussy’s Impressionism. Don’t be fooled by the initial simplicity of ‘Clair de Lune’: it took Debussy 15 years to write the third movement of the  Suite Bergamasque,  and the ...