I listen to enough (mostly) guitar-based music that’s passionate, radiant, exciting, nervous, angry, joyful, and powerful all at once that when I reach for classical music, I’m likely going for some sweet spot in between melancholic, gentle, and tragic-a combination that I consider radiant, joyful, and powerful. Me, I generally know what I’m looking for, though there’s no button for The Opposite of Punk Rock. Simply put your finger down and twirl the circle to pick any one of the moods that arise: Passionate (a Schumann sonata for violin and piano) Melancholic (a Schubert string quartet) Radiant (some rousing Paganini for violin and orchestra) Gentle (a Scriabin piano sonata) and onward through Exciting, Nervous, Angry, Happy, Relaxed, Peaceful, Optimistic, Joyful, Powerful, Festive, Sad, and Tragic. Go to “Moods” navigation, and a circle appears on-screen. Too complicated? There’s a button for that, too. If you’re an audiophile who obsesses about sound quality, you can stream (and download) in lossless format.
Save whatever you want to your own playlist, and download anything you want available 24/7. Still at a loss? Use the Discover-button navigation to find featured new releases, look at what’s popular now, or listen to composer essentials, award-winning albums, or scores and scores of brilliantly curated themed playlists (from “Femme Fatales” and learned explorations of, say, the overture or the toccata to “Child Prodigies” and classical music for children) and exclusive performances and recordings. Searches are a breeze-or if you don’t know just what you’re looking for, you can browse by composers, ensembles, soloists, conductors, instruments, genres, and periods. It’s not simply a matter of what they offer (currently over a million tracks, with 20,000 more added each month), but, rather, how they offer it: Idagio’s interface is at once elegant, easy to navigate and understand, and robust in terms of what you can do with it. Idagio, launched in the United States and Canada last fall, is a new streaming service focusing solely on classical recordings-but focusing on doing it right. There’s 15 centuries of mind-blowing music out there waiting for you to discover it, or rediscover it, or obsess on it-and it doesn’t require a lick of expertise on your part.
The upside of all this: It doesn’t have to be this way.
Tidal? Same, plus a virtually useless search function. 10 in C Major” as recorded by the virtually unheard-of Pennrose Orchestra on Classical Piano Lullabies Volume 1? (It’s the pastel-color album with a teddy bear on the cover.)Īs far as Spotify goes: Take much of the above, with a slightly more user-friendly interface. Who knew, really, that a highlight of Beethoven’s oeuvre was “Fur Elise Reimagined” by DJ cMellow & Ludwig van Beethoven? And who could have predicted that the second track listed for Mozart would be his “Piano Sonata No. To compound the insults, have a gander at the “Top Songs” listed under any major composer.