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Which composers do you find yourself bored by?

les24preludes said:
As in "It's a good thing I don't like cabbage, because if I did I'd be eating it all the time, and I can't stand the stuff...."?
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Not quite, it`s a favourite phase of a former colleague of Mrs BM - normally uttered through gritted teeth when someone had said something particularly stupid.*

*Which doesn`t apply to any of the opinions on this thread.
 
I quite enjoy Schoenberg, Webern and Berg, although maybe not the way it was intended. I'm prone laugh out loud with "difficult" music.

It's much the same for me with, say, Trout Mask Replica. But at least with Beefheart I know much of the humor was intentional.

At a performance of George Crumb's "Makrokosmos III", David Burge told the audience it was okay if we laughed.
 
Bob McC said:
Chopin
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yep, me too. I can totally hear why Chopin was a genius, that his music is technically superb...... but most of it is hideously self-pitying "oh look at poor me, I'm so sensitive!" very effete and cloying..... if I had been around in an 1840s Parisian salon and he was playing I'd feel compelled to march up to him at the piano, grab him by the shoulders and shake him roughly, shouting "for goodness sake man, pull yourself together!" Which might have been totally acceptable in 1840s Paris, but I probably would not be invited back. And then I wouldn't have to listen to any more Chopin.
 
alanbeeb said:
yep, me too. I can totally hear why Chopin was a genius, that his music is technically superb...... but most of it is hideously self-pitying "oh look at poor me, I'm so sensitive!" very effete and cloying..... if I had been around in an 1840s Parisian salon and he was playing I'd feel compelled to march up to him at the piano, grab him by the shoulders and shake him roughly, shouting "for goodness sake man, pull yourself together!" Which might have been totally acceptable in 1840s Paris, but I probably would not be invited back. And then I wouldn't have to listen to any more Chopin.
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Really?

 
alanbeeb said:
yep, me too. I can totally hear why Chopin was a genius, that his music is technically superb...... but most of it is hideously self-pitying "oh look at poor me, I'm so sensitive!" very effete and cloying..... if I had been around in an 1840s Parisian salon and he was playing I'd feel compelled to march up to him at the piano, grab him by the shoulders and shake him roughly, shouting "for goodness sake man, pull yourself together!" Which might have been totally acceptable in 1840s Paris, but I probably would not be invited back. And then I wouldn't have to listen to any more Chopin.
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That’s how I saw, or should I say heard Chopin. Lucy on channel 4 changed that for me; the cloying, ‘oh look at poor me” just disappeared and we were left with the wonderful music. Performers sometimes have a lot to answer for! Can anyone recommend a pianist who plays Chopin without too much sentiment or cloying romance?

Isn’t that the wonderful thing about music? One forms an opinion of a composer over many years and then along comes someone who, by taking a different approach, blows one’s bias out of the window.
 
Mozart, Brahms almost entirely. Beethoven can be a bit guilty of musical tennis, but has his moments. Straus waltzes are mainly tedious.
 
alanbeeb said:
..... if I had been around in an 1840s Parisian salon and he was playing I'd feel compelled to march up to him at the piano, grab him by the shoulders and shake him roughly, shouting "for goodness sake man, pull yourself together!"
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Interesting. I really enjoy Chopin but it has to be a great pianist and I have to be in the mood.
But I can sympathise with the reaction: I tried to read 'The Sorrows of Young Werther' years ago and gave up after a few pages, thinking ' He just needs a good slap!'
 
davidjt said:
Interesting. I really enjoy Chopin but it has to be a great pianist and I have to be in the mood.
But I can sympathise with the reaction: I tried to read 'The Sorrows of Young Werther' years ago and gave up after a few pages, thinking ' He just needs a good slap!'
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That is exactly the reaction of Mrs BM to the Massenet opera of Werther - a pity as I like it a lot.
 
alanbeeb said:
yep, me too. I can totally hear why Chopin was a genius, that his music is technically superb...... but most of it is hideously self-pitying "oh look at poor me, I'm so sensitive!" very effete and cloying..... if I had been around in an 1840s Parisian salon and he was playing I'd feel compelled to march up to him at the piano, grab him by the shoulders and shake him roughly, shouting "for goodness sake man, pull yourself together!"
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You do realise that Chopin was actually very sick? Charles Hallé visited Chopin in 1844 and found him "hardly able to move, bent like a half-opened penknife and evidently in great pain". It's not clear whether it was tuberculosis or something else, but he was in constant pain and prone to fits of coughing, which is why he rarely played in public. He took laudanum constantly and had to increase the dose as he became habituated to it. He couldn't sleep and went for midnight walks. Altogether a pretty short and painful life. Fortunately he left a lot of music behind. If you want the "heroic" Chopin try the Polonaises and the Scherzos.

 
Predictably with a thread like this, a massive range of opinions.
Me ? I can listen happily to pretty much anything from Machaut to Boulez but I draw the line at Bax....))
 
pianoman said:
Predictably with a thread like this, a massive range of opinions.
Me ? I can listen happily to pretty much anything from Machaut to Boulez but I draw the line at Bax....))
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Bax, ah, great stuff. I love several of his symphonies.
It took a few decades to get into them, though!
 
I've occasionally wondered how our taste is formed. Nature over nurture? Whether you expect to work at it, or wait for it to grab you?

What if I'd gone to Uni and discovered Soft Machine rather than Russ Conway???

I only know Bax's piano sonatas - they seem like a gentle intro.
 
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