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The NPR Classical 50 Critic Ted Libbey and radio host Fred Child recommend 50 recordings any fanatic or first-timer should not be without.
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The NPR Classical 50

50 recordings any fanatic or first-timer should not be without
Stravinsky's Most Raging 'Rite Of Spring'

Russian-born US composer Igor Stravinsky in 1955. AFP/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

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Stravinsky's Most Raging 'Rite Of Spring'

Conductor Valery Gergiev's powerful, nearly maniacal interpretation of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring is a lesson in controlled chaos. He emphasizes the angular savagery in the music, which still has the capacity to shock listeners today.

Ted Libbey & Fred Child Recommend Stravinsky's 'Rite Of Spring'

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Rhapsody In Blue: Gershwin At His Greatest

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Rhapsody In Blue: Gershwin At His Greatest

Leonard Bernstein does full justice to the still racy and spontaneous score of Rhapsody In Blue in this 1959 recording. As both conductor and pianist, he brings a smoky, sultry jazziness to the piece.

Ted Libbey And Fred Child Recommend Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue

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Best Of Broadway: Bernstein's 'West Side Story'

Carol Lawrence (right) sings "I Feel Pretty," along with (left to right) Elizabeth Taylor, Carmen Gutierrez and Marilyn Cooper, in the 1957 original Broadway cast recording of West Side Story. Sony Music Photo Archives/Sony Music Photo Archives hide caption

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Sony Music Photo Archives/Sony Music Photo Archives

Best Of Broadway: Bernstein's 'West Side Story'

The original Broadway cast recording of Bernstein's West Side Story was made only three days after the show opened. More than 50 years later, the performers' fresh vitality still shines through.

One Hand, One Heart

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Bartok's Best 'Concerto For Orchestra'
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Bartok's Best 'Concerto For Orchestra'

After all these years, conductor Fritz Reiner's 1955 recording of Bartok's music remains the best. He understood the poignant, brooding, mysterious and exuberant moods it explores, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra plays as if it has been set on fire.

Ted Libbey And Fred Child Recommend Bartok's Concerto For Orchestra

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Van Cliburn's Classic Tchaikovsky

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Van Cliburn's Classic Tchaikovsky

Hear the lanky Texan's iconic 1958 recording of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1, made on the heels of his historic victory at the very first International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.

Ted Libbey Recommends Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1

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Quiet Anguish In Elgar's Cello Concerto

Cellist Jacqueline Du Pre, recording with Sir John Barbirolli. David Farrell/EMI Classics hide caption

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Quiet Anguish In Elgar's Cello Concerto

The concerto was the English composer's last major work for orchestra, as well as his most confessional. In this recording, cellist Jacqueline Du Pre gives one of her finest performances, exposing both gentleness in the pain and an edge to the tenderness.

Ted Libbey And Lisa Simeone Recommend Music By Elgar

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Liszt: Surmounting The Ultimate Piano Sonata

Liszt: Surmounting The Ultimate Piano Sonata

Franz Liszt's Piano Sonata in B minor demands the utmost from the performer in musical as well as technical terms. It's a piece that in the best performances can spark a powerful emotional experience in the listener.

Piano Sonata in B minor, S. 178 (LW A179)

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Mozart's Forward-Looking 'Magic Flute'

The original poster advertising the premiere of The Magic Flute on Sept. 30, 1791, is on display at the birth home of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Getty Images hide caption

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Mozart's Forward-Looking 'Magic Flute'

Mozart's The Magic Flute, written in the last year of his life, was a forerunner of German Romantic opera. Critic Ted Libbey recommends a specific performance by a fabulous all-star cast.

Die Zauberflote (The Magic Flute), opera, K. 620

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Monteverdi's Pioneering 'Vespers'

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Wikimedia Commons

Monteverdi's Pioneering 'Vespers'

Monteverdi stood on the divide between two great musical periods, the Renaissance and the Baroque. His Vespers illustrates a mastery at blending the new with the old in a way that's coherent, expressive and moving, especially in John Eliot Gardiner's atmospheric recording made in Venice.

Ted Libbey And Fred Child Recommend Monteverdi's Vespers

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Mahler's Apocalyptic Second Symphony

Mahler's Apocalyptic Second Symphony

Mahler's grand-scale "Resurrection" Symphony marked the real beginning of his career as a composer. It's the work with which he answered the metaphysical challenge of Beethoven's Ninth, with a turbulent beginning and a triumphant conclusion.

Ted Libbey And Fred Child Recommend Mahler's Symphony No. 2

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Handel's Miraculous 'Messiah'
Courtesy of VocalEssence

Handel's Miraculous 'Messiah'

Handel's deeply felt musical setting of the life of Christ conveys the emotional tide of its story with almost miraculous insight. In the process, it's acquired a universality that is unique in the history of music.

Ted Libbey And Fred Child Recommend Handel's Messiah

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Steve Reich's 'Maximum' Minimalism
Jeffrey Herman/courtesy of the artist

Steve Reich's 'Maximum' Minimalism

The composer's Music for 18 Musicians was a breakthrough work in the history of minimalism and a watershed moment in Reich's career. Its lush textures and expansion of a static harmonic situation make for a dynamic work, bringing elements of "maximalism" to minimalism.

Ted Libbey And Lisa Simeone Recommend Reich's Music for 18 Musicians

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Beethoven's Carefully Choreographed Violence

Portrait of German composer Ludwig van Beethoven by German painter Joseph Karl Stieler, circa 1820. Kean Collection/Getty Images hide caption

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Beethoven's Carefully Choreographed Violence

Beethoven pushed the piano as far as the instrument could go — it was his instrument. Pianist Emil Gilels gives intense, powerful performances of three of the master's greatest sonatas.

Ted Libbey And Fred Child Recommend Beethoven's Piano Sonatas

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John Dowland's Art Of Melancholy

John Dowland's Art Of Melancholy

Dowland was an important and beloved composer at a time when there was no dichotomy between popular and classical music. He was, in effect, an Elizabethan-era pop musician. The dark, wistful mood that pervades Dowland's lute music was, in its day, a sign of maturity and intelligence.

Ted Libbey And Fred Child Recommend Dowland's Lute Songs

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Schubert's Desolate 'Winter Journey'
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Schubert's Desolate 'Winter Journey'

The song cycle Winterreise stands among the masterpieces in the art of song. Schubert conjures up harmonic twists and melodic turns, conveying emotions with remarkable simplicity and force.

Ted Libbey And Lisa Simeone Recommend Schubert's Winterreise

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Dvorak's Symphony For A 'New World'

The Brooklyn Bridge in 1884. Dvorak would arrive in New York only six years later to head the National Conservatory of Music. Hulton Archive/Getty Images hide caption

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Dvorak's Symphony For A 'New World'

The Bohemian composer claimed that "everyone who has a nose must smell America" in his Symphony No. 9. But rather than serve as a musical postcard from abroad, Dvorak's Symphony From the New World ultimately serves as more of a fond look back toward home.

Ted Libbey And Fred Child Recommend Dvorak's Symphony No. 9

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Bach's Best 'Brandenburg' Concertos
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Bach's Best 'Brandenburg' Concertos

Subtle and brilliant at the same time, J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concertos are a microcosm of Baroque music. They contain an astonishingly vast sample of that era's emotional universe.

Ted Libbey And Fred Child Recommend Bach's Brandenburg Concertos

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Berlioz's Unbridled 'Symphonie Fantastique'
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Berlioz's Unbridled 'Symphonie Fantastique'

It may have been written in 1830, but Berlioz's groundbreaking music provides the soundtrack to some wild nights — complete with dancing, drugs, an execution and a rowdy party of witches. The symphony's unusual effects and instruments tell the story of a wild-eyed musician in love.

Ted Libbey And Fred Child Recommend Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique

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Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphonic 'Coup'
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Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphonic 'Coup'

Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 works brilliantly as pure music and achieves a "victorious" closer that ends with the triumph of evil over good. Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic made their historic recording of Symphony No. 5 exactly 50 years ago Tuesday in Boston's Symphony Hall.

Ted Libbey And Fred Child Recommend Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5

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