The soothing Music
There are so many frustrating things happening around us nowdays and there are times we need to find a comfort zone somewhere, to have a rest, to recuperate and get our strength back. For me, music is one of the best medicines towards that goal.
Back in the days when there no weekend, only Sunday, I remember waking up as a kid with the sound of classical music. That sound brought a reassuring, beautiful feeling about the day laying ahead. Decades later, it still does!
It is certainly not a music for all moments. There are times I want to listen to AC/DC's Thunderstruck, to 'Every tear is a waterfall' performed by 2Cellos, to 'Down to the Waterline' by Dire Straits, to 'Nothing else Matters' by Metallica (and so on).
If you think classical music as an ... alien from another world, consider it as ... a treasure vault. A door must be opened in order to appreciate the richness inside it. For different people there is a different 'key', a different musical composition functioning as a door to that vault. It might be 'The flight of the bumble bee' of Modest Mussorgsky, 'Eine kleine Nachtmusik' by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 'Dance Macabre' by Camille Saint-Saëns, 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice' by Paul Dukas, Folia by Arcangelo Corelli, Air of Johann Sebastian Bach, Adagio in G minor by Tomaso Albinioni, Canon by Johann Pachelbel and so many others! A book, like 'Classical Music for Dummies' (which is quite good actually), may provide more tips than this post.
Allow me to give another perspective. From 1600 (start of Baroque) to 2000 we have four hundred (400) years during which more than twenty seven thousand (27.000) composers wrote music (check the IMSLP — Petrucci Music Library)! The most popular music is still performed by orchestras and ensembles around the world. A music that survived the grind of time is not worth listening to?
One of the most beautiful films about music is "All the mornings of the world (1991)". It speaks, among other things, about the value of music that rises above politics and the brutality of life. The last scene where the student sits outside the humble premises of his teacher, to listen to his music and finally entering the premises, is beyond description.
One must admire the extent of cooperation and coordination that players and their conductor must accomplish in order to deliver a hearing reaching perfection: it is a feast of the human spirit! Consider the different countries, languages, cultures of the musicians in an orchestra having music as universal language!
So, how can you hear good classical music? Live is (as always) the best choice but also expensive. After you find classical pieces you like (through YouTube, Spotify etc.), then you might want to get better listening quality. Tidal is a good option (both audio and some video). Another amazing option is the Digital Concert Hall of the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra, with live performances and a huge archive. During a performance, the camera zooms at the players and their instruments, so one seems the instrument creating the sound currently heard! If you register with an account you get a seven day free trial without using a credit card. They even have some free content.
What was the trigger for this post? Well, two days ago I watched Johannes Brahms's Piano Concerto No 1 as recorded in Herodion, Athens, on 01/05/2004 with conductor Sir Simon Rattle and Daniel Barenboim in the piano. It was a breath taking performance! Then yesterday I watched the same concert by Kiril Pertrenko and Víkingur Ólafsson as recorded in Berlin on 03/10/2026. It was another breath taking performace! You might say: why watch the same thing?? Well, it is not exactly the same. But the differences exceed a textual description :).
