All-time favorite introduction/beginning to any piece of music?

The title says it all.  My fav:

(Beethoven Symphony No. 3 - 1st movement)

Well, of course Le Sacre du Printemps, but here are a couple of faves a little more off the beaten path: Janáček's Sinfonietta, and the finale to David Diamond's 4th Symphony.

@AngelCityOutlaw Your video doesn't seem to work and there's no option to watch it on YT instead ... ???

@Tom Statler I can't believe I've found someone who likes the beginning to Janacek's Sinfonietta!  No offense, but it's the most annoying piece I've ever heard from a famous and now dead composer.  I just can't stand it's insistent repetition!  LoL  But I guess - to each his own.

Probably this opening fugue

On 9/14/2022 at 11:51 PM, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

@Tom Statler I can't believe I've found someone who likes the beginning to Janacek's Sinfonietta!  No offense, but it's the most annoying piece I've ever heard from a famous and now dead composer.  I just can't stand it's insistent repetition!  LoL  But I guess - to each his own.

 

No worries, Peter. There are any number of works by famous composers that other people can't get enough of that leave me cold. Like, most Mozart, for example. What I love about Janacek is the way he was able to find a totally original - and instantly identifiable - way to speak through the orchestra. He doesn't do development in the Classical sense; he repeats little blocks of melody in different harmonic and textural settings, and it's the evolution of those settings that is the development. As others have said, it shouldn't work, and yet it does. IMO you can't listen to the 3rd movement of the Sinfonietta and not feel like you've been somewhere!

the statement of the theme in Bach's e minor fugue, book II. 

He is not my favorite composer but I love the opening to Mahler's Symphony #5.