Randomramblings

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I've been listening to classical music since I was about ten or eleven years old. At least that's when I figured out I don't really like what my school mates were listening to. Those where the days of the boy bands like Backstreet Boys, N'Sync and Caught in the Act. As you might imagine my friends spent one thousand (and more) hours obsessing about the best-looking singer and how in a few years' time they will marry and have children with this gorgeous sweetheart. I tend to praise myself that I was above such nonsense and sometimes I think that had I spent more time listening to them discussing tactics to get noticed by the singers on their next concert, I would have (unwillingly of course!) been assimilated.

Luckily, I didn't like the music much. Although they were catchy tunes and all I never seemed to get into the habit of listening to them every day. (Which I imagine took to become an obsessed fan.) What I did listen to every day was Tchaikovsky. I heard his Piano concerto Nr. 1 in a film and instantly feel in love with the Russian. I borrowed the CD from a friend and listened to the beginning of it so many times that the CD might as well have become damaged beyond repair. Those were the times when I found the Russian composers to be absolutely superior to anybody else - when Mozart was dull and Beethoven annoying. Also I had the patience to listen only the crescendo and very loud parts of the concerts. When - for example in the Tchaikovsky's Piano Concert the piano had a solo part, I would just rewind to a more "interesting" section.

Years later I went to my first concert and enjoyed the experience enormously. By that time I had begun to amass patience to listen to the "duller" parts of the concerts and actually begun to enjoy them. A year later I took a concert subscription with the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra. Then I slowly realized that there were other composers besides the Russians. That there actually were other superb composers besides the Russians.

I discovered Chopin last year and immediately liked him. Listening to his piano pieces seems like talking to a close friend, to someone who knows me and someone who is at the same time just like me. This year I took to listening to Mozart a great deal. His piano concertos are just so uplifting! And speaking of piano concertos I could not overlook Beethoven's - I've got a recording of Dubravka Tomsic Srebotnjak performing his 1st concert and it's just so perfect... I think my eyes have actually begun to water just by the reminiscences of this piece.

(I seem to prefer piano pieces to others, don't I?)

Anyway, I was listening to Mozart's Requiem yesterday and begun thinking that whereas the majority of people would only listen (and like) the Dies Irae (track Nr. 3), I would listen to the entire composition and love it. I think (and this cannot go without praising myself a little) that being able to see so much beauty in the world is a gift, after all. (And lots of learned patience - to give the composer the chance to show his best.)

Having written the above I realize that not having taken a concert subscription in two years is a minor sin. Must definitely be nicer in that respect next year. And if my intuition's got it right this is a first New Years' resolution. (A little early, but better than never!)