A Music Meme! A Music Meme!

Over on Trudy's blog http://philippaalan.blogspot.com, she posted a meme that is irresistible for me: Your top ten musical rushes, those pieces of music that make you want to crank it whenever you hear them. Although I haven't been tagged, my brain immediately exploded with ideas. Genre mixing is encouraged, but that's a problem for me, since nearly all my "rushes" are classical. Oh well.

1. Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto, especially that glorious final movement.
1. (Yes, there are two #1s.) Bach's Violin Partita, of which there must be dozens, but I've only ever heard this one introduced in this way. It was discovered wrapped around a piece of butter in a dairy in St. Petersburg. The criminal waste of this man's music after his death is enough to make my blood boil.
2. The Hallelujah Chorus, from Handel's Messiah. Isn't that on everyone's list?!
3. Vivaldi's The Four Seasons: Winter. Final movement. Muted passion in every note.
4. Ralph Vaughan Williams' Five Variants on Dives and Lazarus.
5. George Butterworth's music. Virtually anything by Butterworth, since his musical career was cut so tragically short by WWI -- there just isn't that much of it.
6. Zigeunerweisen (Gypsy Airs) by Pablo de Sarasate. There's a relatively new recording out by violinist Gil Shaham that just smokes.
7. Romanian Rhapsody #1 by Georges Enescu. There is also a Romanian Rhapsody #2 with some nifty airs in it, but it sounds as if he cut it short before he could complete it. But in the first one, you can practically see the Turks coming over the hill, straight into an ambush by Romanian peasants. Of course the peasants won! ;-)
8. The Greek version of Lord, save Thy people and bless Thine inheritance. Sung in Greek Tone 1, it really sounds like a fight song.
9. And my #1 fight song: The Russian version of the Paschal Hymn, Christ is risen from the dead. Talk about spitting in the devil's eye!

No #10 -- I had two #1's, remember?