We at IntoClassical have been listening to — and obsessing over — classical music for over 30 years. But this love didn’t start with digging deep into Mahler symphony cycles, reading endless numbers of composer biographies, and collecting untold quantities of CDs. It started much earlier and on much simpler terms.
It all began with a cassette. (Remember those?) A tape of the Jean-François Paillard Chamber Orchestra playing Pachelbel’s Canon in D. Oh, we all roll our eyes at the Canon now that we’ve heard it at a hundred weddings, but at the impressionable age of seven or eight, it was unbelievably beautiful music.
Paillard’s especially slow and sentimental performance of the Canon seemed perfect. It still has that magic, to be completely honest. And it was the gateway to eventually learning the violin, joining a school orchestra, encountering the great composers, and building the love (and obsession) we have today, note by note, one piece at a time.
What about you? What was it that got you started in classical music?
