Schoenberg's opera (technically a monodrama because there is only a single actress onstage) is pretty much the outer edge of my comfort zone with atonal/expressionistic music. It is a weird story (it would have to be) about a woman looking for her lover (spoiler alert) and then finding she killed him. For me, the music requires not just active listening but concentration for about half an hour because it is very atmospheric but really only makes sense on a moment by moment basis.



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The Sinopoli/Staatskapelle box of Second Viennese School "classics" is pretty excellent, for what it is.

My other favorite expressionistic opera: Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle. This is a little less weird, and more tonal than Schoenberg, but it is still out there.



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I'm surprised by how many recordings there are of this piece, but two of the first are still the best. YMMV. This one by Kertez on London and Dorati on Mercury. Both have great playing, great singing and great sound.

I was always told a piano is a percussion instrument because a hammer hits the strings but a harpsichord is a string instrument because the strings are plucked. Certainly the categorization of these instruments is both arbitrary and academic, but it does explain a lot about how they sound. Esp. the lautenwerck or lute-harpsichord which uses gut strings and sure sounds like some kind of guitar or lute to me.



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Listening to the Well Tempered Clavier on das lautenwerck is interesting, but not something I do very often.