Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Did you like classical music before you started playing

I played piano for about a year before I discovered classical music.

I watched a video of Berezovsky playing Liszt's Mazeppa, and a few months later, I listened to nothing but classical, and the bit of popular music that's musically intereting.

I started when I was 5, so I don't really remember before that, but as far as I can remember I always was in love with classical music.
Since little, listening not only piano pieces, but symphonies and ballets!

Honestly, I prefer pop, ballads, romantic and sad songs. I'm only beginning my music journey and only yesterday decided on a teacher (my first lesson is tomorrow).

As I was growing up (as a young boy), my dad listened to nothing but classical. I never developed an interest in it. In my later teen years, like most young people, I gravitated toward what I heard on the radio and what everbody else was listening to. Back then, I can't say I can ever recall a young person listening to classical on the radio - at least in my circle of friends.

I just found it very curious why most piano players (at least at this forum) gravitate toward classical and was wondering if most 'grew' into it because of how they were trained on the piano, or if they just liked it for other reasons.

Honestly, I love anything played on the piano and in my later adult life finally opened my mind to all different types of music, I heard some very beautiful classical pieces played on the piano. I can certainly understand the comment about the previous poster who said that the way it is written is more complex and has greater depth that its other musical genre counterparts.

I guess we all like what we like.

My late start was due only to the fact that I LOVED classical music. It sounds cliche, but I heard moonlight once on the radio and asked my mother for a piano. With my grandmothers will money, I got a piano to feed my classical addiction. So yes, I loved Beethoven, Bach, and Chopin (All Id heard) before I touched a piano or studied music. It wasn't my 'favorite' though. I never drew a definite line between classical music and all other kinds of music anyways.

My mom started teaching me how to sing as soon as I could pronouce the simplest words befor I was 1...so I already loved music from that point.

I only like classical and church music.

It came to me with maturity - and I still do not like everything in classical, probably never will.
But as far as I remember, the Pinkfloyd "Money" is the first piece I have listened and listened and listened again and again ....
It did not affect my ability to be moved and deeply touched by Chopin's Ballades, valses and preludes as well as so many others.
In the mean time, AC/DC is great!

I've always loved classical, from as far back as I can remember. My mother was (is) also a lover of classical music so I grew up listening to it, long before I started studying piano.

Although I also love other kinds of music, my record & CD collection has consistently had a ratio of about 80% classical to 20% everything else. For the last 3-4 years my listening has been almost exclusively classical. There's such a wealth of classical music that there are a number of directions that can be pursued i.e., you can explore one composer/instrument/artist/era in depth or choose from a wide range of each.

I've been listening to classical music for almost 50 years and feel I've only scratched the surface.

I took lessons from age 6 to 16 in classical music, but really didn't care nor had any appreciation for it.

Now 30 years later, I started to play again just last month. In the interim, I wasn't a classical music listener, although I have always liked Chopin. I tend to like Broadway tunes, Carpenters, John Denver. Now that I am playing again, I find that I enjoy playing classical because of the complexities and intricacies of the composition. Strangely, I don't tend to play the things I like listening to (Broadway, Carpenters, etc) because the piano arrangements for those pieces are just too plain.

Ah yes. I didn't like classical music much, not even the sound of the piano or violon.
I began playing classical guitar about 5 years ago then went and bought a violon that I played for about 6 months then I went and bought a Clavinova about 3 yrs ago. During all that time I learnt mostly classical pieces. This process of playing different instruments and looking up the forums opened the door to so much beautiful music from so many composers. I remember awhile back when I couldn't stand listening to Chopin etc...But now I think I listen to the music in a different way since I've played some of the instruments. When I think now how mush I enjoy listening to the Scriabin Preludes ! That would not have been easy listening awhile back
I really enjoy listening to chamber music now. The sound of a piano, violon and cello is so powerful and beautiful.

Peter

Before I started the piano at 8 the first piece of classical music that excited me was Peer Gynt by Grieg. The teacher would play the disc and us kids were encouraged to express our response through movement as it were. I remember that Morning and The Hall of the Mountain King principally interested me. The other bits on the program were not so appealing but I really loved the excitement of the narrative of Peer Gynt even if I didn't fully understand it.

Later I joined the school choir and discovered Handel and Haydn. When I started the piano I was curious to pick out the notes of Haydn and really enjoyed it. So I suppose, yes I liked "classical" music before I started playing. I know it's formally simple classical music but it just grabbed my imagination and took me with it.

When I was in Kindergarden, we had taken a field trip to see a performance of beethoven's 9th. I can't quite remember if anything else was performed, especially keeping our attention spans into consideration, but since that day I have always liked classical music. I didn't start listening to it on a regular basis until I had taken up piano.

It was liszt that led me to explore many pianist and composers. it was sitting in Civics and Economics that I had the piano song from the cartoons "Rhapsody Rabbit" and "The Cat Concerto" stuck in my head, and it wouldn't go away. I google searched looney toons piano song and there it was. Hungarian Rhapsody #2 written by franz liszt on a web site dedicated to popular classical pieces and the venues they appeared in. I went out and bought Hung. Rhap. vol 1 #s 1-9 and i thought they were pretty cool. I didn't love them yet, (now i think they're all amazing). I proceeded to read an online biography on Franz Liszt and was blown away by the accounts of this man as a pianist. I then kept on reading about other pianist after finishing this one, (chopin, schubert, alkan, etc.) Since then, i've never looked back.