Scheherazade is lovely
Peer gynt too
The planets is nice
The soundtracks to Disney’s fantasia and fantasia 2000 are really well recorded and a good selection. From easy stuff to stravinsky. And of course the films are great too
IMO, as a classical fan it’s nigh on impossible to just get 3 recs and go from there.
I’ve got about 1000 classical albums on CD/Vinyl and streaming. It’s a huge vast musical landscape and you will miss out loads of great music, it really is an amazing world when you get in to it.
As for recs, I find that nigh on impossible, I love the music of people like Arnold, Glass, Adams, Vasks, Part, Kancheli, Mahler, Beethoven, Bruckner, Shostakovich, Bantock, Stravinsky, but even I can get in to stuff like Brahms which I’ve never bothered with before, but you hear one amazing recording of a piece and you end up going through 20 versions of the same piece.
It’s so reliant on giving the piece a few listens as well, as with any music the best stuff are the ones that get you going back to get in to them - Wagner, Schoenberg, Messiaen.
Start with a piece, like Beethoven’s 3rd symphony, or something like Strauss Waltzes and then see where the streaming service takes you next.
You’re going need 75 odd minutes to sit and listen to a Mahler or Bruckner symphony so don’t expect to give them one listen and be whistling the tune the next day, they can take many listens before you even begin to enjoy the rewards. That’s part of the enjoyment of listening to classical music.
Knowing next to nothing about the genre Simon, I have to start somewhere and the folk here haven’t let me down when I’ve asked similar with other genres.
I’m happy to invest some time and see where the rabbit hole takes me. I sort of suspect that I will end up in some seldom charted Classical backwater, as that is what has happened previously.
But I have to take the first step, hence the ask. I’m really looking forward to the journey.
I have 24 classical you can have - some Digitally remastered. I haven’t a clue where I got most of the from but as you can imagine they all look unused.