#39 Buy 5 new albums of classical music

My tendency is to find an artist I like and stick with them until I'm in a foot-deep rut.

In my teens I found Vivaldi, Beethoven, Grieg and one or two other songs by Smetana. Then I didn't really listen to much outside of that.

I wanted to expand my view of classical composers and music a little more.All Angels
Though not strictly classical composers, the girl vocal quartet cover mostly classical pieces on this album, including Hosana, Ave Verum Corpus, Agnus Dei, Salve Regina, Barcarolle and, my favourite, The Flower Duet.

Their voices are angelic, as hinted at by their group's name. I enjoyed the album enough that I bought a copy for my Mum and Sister for their respective birthdays last year.


Ultimate Chopin
The next album I bought via itunes was The Ultimate Chopin. With five CDs of works by Chopin, who wrote predominately for piano, I was pretty sure I would like this buy. And I was correct! With Piano Concertos, Preludes, Nocturnes, Impromptus and Waltzes I had enough music to keep me happy for hours at work.

Chopin became a sanity pin at work - a bad day meant the headphones went on my head and Chopin went on my ipod.


Listening through the Nocturnes, I discovered that one song was a piece I had played during my last year of piano lessons as a teen. I loved it then and listening to a recording of it played expertly made me fall in love with it again.

The piece, Nocturne No. 2 in E flat Op.92, was played as the processional piece at my wedding recently this year.

Breakfast with Bach, Afternoon tea with Tchaikovski, 100 top romantic songs - 5 CDS)