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Just listening to "Un Sospiro" by Liszt, and was completely caught off guard as tears just welled up in my eyes...Wow, how gorgeous this piece is. It seems to say "Oh, the world is so beautiful and yet so sad, how bittersweet our existence is, and it all has to come to an end..."

Think I hear intimations of what's to come in Debussy...

i thought you were injured or something. But, I completely agree with you. Un Sospiro can be a tear jerker. I also found Gowdosky's transcription of Le Cygne also has the same effect.

There is a small distinguished set of pieces that have literally brought me to tears. 20 years ago, it happened with the adagio from Beethoven's A minor string quartet ("A Convalescent's Holy Song of Thanksgiving to the Divinity"). 15 years ago, again with the last movement of Mahler's 3rd symphony.

I thought my tearful days were behind me until it happened again, a few months ago, the first few times I listened to Strauss's Last Songs.

-Jason

The second movement of Beethoven's 10/3 came along at the right time in my life - some traumatic events occured (amour...bien sur) that came to life in certain gestures in the music.

the only other time i can really remember weeping at music was when i heard andreas scholl singing erbarme dich from the st. matthew passion...others are quite wonderful, yes, but his made me weep.

A lot of classical music affects me emotionally...

My teacher uses a video of herself playing Un Sospiro on her website. Its what sold me on taking lessons from her before we even met. Every now and then I'll be on a long car ride listening closely to something (often Chopin) and just one note or chord will make me lose it. I always shake my head in wonderment at these moments.

Funnily enough Debussy payed hommage to Liszt's Sospiro in his études: pour les arpèges composés. Sospiro thrives a lot on Walhalla's music from der Ring des Nibelungen, it's quite Wagnerian, or is Wagner quite Lisztian...

Many Liszt pieces affect me this way, good, not bad. So many gorgeous tunes.

I am glad I posted this, I now have works to explore that I do not know. Thanks! That's interesting about the Liszt/Wagner connection. Wagner is one composer that I don't know at all, and honestly haven't had the inclination, but now I'll have to explore...

will take some time lol

I remember having tears come to my eyes a few years ago, in a lesson, when my teacher played excerpts from various Chopin Etudes; I think I definitely need the real sound and not a recorded sound to affect me like that though.

Maybe those tears were a result of seeing the difficulty of the etudes up close But yes, they are so beautiful

Something that definitely caused more than a few tears to steal down my cheeks was the first time I heard Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto (Cliburn's recording). I think I was in my early teens. My immediate family wasn't into classical music that much so I'd never heard that beautiful work before. When that thrilling, sensuous opening theme began, I was toast.

I will still occasionally bawl like a baby at live performances. When that happens, my family says they wish the ground would swallow them alive!

I can't say a Liszt work has ever wrung a tear, but the first time ever I heard the "Funeral March" from the "Eroica"...WOW...tears, yes, but emotionally overpowering...flooring even.

I find it interesting how one interpretation you may barely notice, and another brings you to tears. That's exactly what happened to me for Chopin's C Minor Nocturne (Op. 48 No. 1). I heard Rubinstein's and barely registered it, and then I heard Lugansky playing it on youtube and I lost it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjRky-ACSJg

Yes definitely, that's what it was. Incredible to hear! At the time I could only play one of them, arguable two maybe, so to hear parts of so many of them all at once, I was stunned!

I once was at a concert with Emma Matthews and she really had tears flowing down while singing...

children make me cry when they sing. Occasionally I conduct or play for them. I swear, their voices are so beautiful raised in song.

some children also make me cry when they sing, but, obviously, for other reasons, only the ones that contributed to the Mahler 8 Kubelik recording can pass the bill...

Neuhaus reportedly started crying during the last few measures of a performance of the Brahms Intermezzo in B flat minor.