Pet hates

We are always so positive here, talking about the things we like best. I thought it might be fun to be negative and talk about what we hate in classical music (not just piano music, because there is more that that). It is my philosophy that for each thing you truly love, there must be some other thing you truly hate. Yin and Yang, so to speak It's just not possible IMO to love/like all music, and I question the musical taste of anybody who says they do.

So I've listed my top ten of pet hates in no particular order.

• Virtuoso violin music a la Paganini and Sarasate, with lots of sixths, octave doublings, and sul ponticello passages
  Transcriptions for strange combinations of instruments, like recorder or saxophone quartet
  Schubert works for male choir
  Orchestrations of piano pieces (Ravel in particular)
  Flute and harp music
  Baroque opera
  Mendelssohn string quartets
  Fortepiano and other instruments that fill the gap between harpsichord and piano
  Vivaldi (most of it)
  Operetta (most of it)

 

That it's played on a flute

It doesn't have to be 10. Your list counts for at least 100.

 

Much Baroque vocal music
Listening to opera on the radio
Aleatoric Music
Negative or Abrogated Compostions (for lack of just the right word) e.g.: Cage's 4'33"
Sort of combos of the above two: Stockhausen's Klavierstück XI, and T. Riley's In C
John Cages' multi-radio composition Imaginary Landscapes no.4 (1951) for 12 radios, 24 performers and a conductor
Gebrauchsmusik (Music for use) style of Hindemith
Wilhelm Kempff playing Chopin (sorry to my German friends)




Edit: Removed Rap, and Screaming Head-Banging Rock

 

I know you felt like you had to list 10. But hey, this is a classical music forum
Don't get me started on rap, the absolute cesspit of music.

And I intended classical music genres, not individual pieces. Or I would have listed Fur Elise :lol:

 

It's fun to see some of my favourite things appearing on these lists (no, I won't embarrass myself or anyone else by saying which items) ;-)

 

You mean embarrass us.

 

Let me take a little dig here, so do not think I am either serious or miffed!

Recorders... Well, there was a time when there were really recorder ensembles, but I agree: Mozart played by for recorders...

Talking of Mozart, he was not partial to the flute either!

All right, Ravel orchestrated by Kostellanetz (is that spelled right?) is one thing, but Musorgsky orchestrated by Ravel?

Operetta… but do you know Giuditta?

To the peril of my life I will make my list and it starts, as you might have guessed, with

1. Liszt (Consolations and Liebestraume excepted)
2. Chopin solo piano music (but have you ever heard his songs, his piano trio, his Krakowiak rondo?)
3. The Art of the Fugue, a good part of the Well-Tempered and most of the Musical Offering (trio-sonata excepted)
4. Italian opera, Verdi first (the Harold Robbins of opera)
5. Italian tenors a la Pavarotti (even if they are not always Italian. You know what I mean)
6. Virtuoso music that sounds like virtuoso music (Oh, ah… He can play the violin with his teeth!)
7. Mozart Symphonies (except the 4 last ones)
8. Most of Schoenberg (tonal, atonal and 12-tone: it is all the same to me) and his acolytes (the Gurrelieder are saved)
9. Ee-aw music
10. Tchaikovsky's concerti, tone poems and late symphonies (numbered and not)

 

Blimey :shock:
I think we'll have to expel you from the forum.....
Not liking Chopin and the WTC is a dangerous game here :lol:

I (mostly) agree with your other items though.

 

I said I was taking my life into my hands! I live dangerously!

but I DO like Chopin's songs (I have recently purchased a copy of them, complete), as well as his variations on La ci darem la mano, the Krakowiak (very well orchestrated, by the way), his piano trio, the sonata for 'cello and piano and the introduction and Polonaise Brillante for 'cello and piano.

And I DO like Tchaikovsky's early symphonies a lot.

What gets me about the Well-Tempered is when you get those recitals, "John Doe will be playing the complete set in the course of 2 concerts over the weekend." Also I tend to prefer them on the harpsichord. I like the Toccatas. Do you know them?

 

Richard, I didn't want to be the first to express incredulity at your inclusion of Liszt and Chopin (solo piano music: that's about 98% of his output!). That's sort of like being an aviator and saying you don't care for the Supermarine Spitfire or Northamerican P-51 Mustang. It just ain't so! But everyone has their tastes and that's what makes the world go round. :wink:

 

I am just not normal, the lonely outsider who ends up commiting an enormity, that is all. But let us be positive: it lets me free to listen ton and to play loads of other pieces and I leave those composers to others.

The funny thing is that my onetime teacher had the same likes concerning Liszt and Chopin (this I learnt afterwards, of course) and I was acquainted with a pianist who shunned Liszt and could bear to listen to Chopin, but not to play him.

 

And I do like the odd prelude and fugue. I can even play some of them all by myself!

 

I couldn't agree more. I've decided that four years is a good time frame for playing the entire WTC. No need to build Rome in two days ;-)

 

Quite right you are and I wish you all the best for your recital! I am one who likes varied programmes and by varied I do not mean eccletic. I mean, for example, Bach-Haydn-Beethoven-Schubert-Shostakovich.

I would say what happens is that for one reason or another (pieces too short to be published separately, pieces that centre around one subject - like teaching - or simply posthumous collections that owe nothing to the composer) a whole collection is is gathered together, like the Inventions, the Sinfonias, the Well-Tempered Klavier or, for that matter, Chopin's Preludes (and by the way I DO like two or three of them ) or Songs and for some reason these works that were published together are suddenly expected to be played and listened to together, as if they suddenly had become one work. The Well-Tempered Klavier is not one single work (or two, because there are two volumes), but a collection of Preludes and Fugues. Any one of those pairs is a work of its own and has even been given its own BWV number. While I would not dream to play one of the preludes without its corresponding fugue, I would avoid at all costs playing two (or three or four...) pairs in any fixed order.

One frown upon people who listen only to the Clair de Lune or to the middle movement of Mozart's Piano concerto No 21, yet we accept people who, in the course of two evenings, play the whole Well-Tempered Klavier or Beethoven's 6 quartets op 18.

It brings to mind my father's comment, many years ago, when he saw such a programme (Chopin's complete Etudes it was). "Imagine losing count after the sixth Etude!")

 

I believe the term is Genre Recitalist. The last of my piano professors was himself a genre recitalist. He would often perform full sets of the Chopin Etudes, Ballades, Scherzos, Debussy Preludes, etc. I have to admit that it was too much of a good thing. OK I like steak (or insert any other food you like) but I don't want 3-5 courses of it. I much prefer the eclectic programs that Richard gave an example of. Right now I'm working on a program with (not necessarily in this order): Rameau, Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy, Rachmaninoff, Ginastera, and Scriabin and Liebich for encores. A smorgasboard if you please.