Music you didn't "get" until you heard a specific performance, but now love?

[Tyson]

What pieces of music have you listened to and thought "meh" initially, only to hear a later performance that "opened your ears" and allowed you to like/love the piece?

For me, it was Elgar's violin concerto.  All the performances I'd heard were too reticent, too much striving for beauty and restraint.  Then I heard Hilary Hahn's recording and thought - "finally a performance with some steel in it's spine!"  Ever since then it's become one of my favorite pieces.

Same with Shostakovich's string quartets - I had the Eder and Fitzwilliam quartets and it wasn't till I heard the 2nd Borodin cycle that I really got what they were about.   I love them to death now, too.

How about you?

[Brahmsian]

Same with Shostakovich's string quartets - I had the Eder and Fitzwilliam quartets and it wasn't till I heard the 2nd Borodin cycle that I really got what they were about.   I love them to death now, too.

How about you?

Almost a complete reversal for me Tyson.  I first heard the Emerson SQ and Borodin for Shostakovich Quartets, and didn't really dig them.

Until I heard Fitzwilliam, and now Eder Qt, I love them!

[drogulus]

      Elgar's Dream of Gerontius. I heard the Naxos version and it was a snooze. Then I heard the Barbirolli/Hallé recording with Baker and Lewis and now I count it as one of my favorite Elgar works.

[Bulldog]

It was Bach's organ works.  For many years I just wasn't able to enjoy them.  Then, I found a set performed by Lionel Rogg on Harmonia Mundi, and it all opened up for me.  It's possible that I hit the right point in time, and any set would have done the trick.  However, I'm going with Rogg. 

[Elgarian]

Beethoven's fifth symphony. For years I'd have paid money to avoid listening to it, but then a few months ago I heard Jos Van Immerseel and his band play it, and WHAM! Now it's in my top ten super duper 'I love this music' list.

Viviana Sofronitzki is currently in the process of achieving an even bigger turnaround for Mozart's piano concertos.

[mahler10th]

Schoenberg - Transfigured Night.   I'd heard it before, but cut off Schoenberg and his 12 tone antics from my collection...but I heard this on radio one day (in the last 6 months I think, I did post about it elsewhere) and wondered what the beautiful music was and who was responsible for it.  I was horrified to discover it was Schoenberg, and made me think again about his output.

[Scarpia]

Based on today's experience, I may have to say Beethoven's 4th.  Listened to the Barenboim Staatskapelle Berlin recording and it is finally coming into focus.  Not my favorite Beethoven, by a long shot, but I am starting to get it.

[eyeresist]

Sibelius Symphony no. 5 - conducted by Ole Schmidt (w/ RPO).

It's a terrible cliche to say the music is "in his blood" due to nationality, but the fact is I hadn't heard a version of this music which worked, until Schmidt, who made it rhetorically convincing as a whole.

[Bunny]

Ancient Voices of Children by George Crumb

It wasn't any specific performance so much as a set of circumstances that happened.

This was the hardest piece of music to listen to when I first heard it.  For months I would put it on and within 5 minutes I would just shake my head and take it out of the player.  Then one night all of the sounds -- the amplified piano, the temple bells, prayer beads, weirdly vocalized sounds suddenly seem to leap into the air -- floating and moving as if they had become fireflies dancing.  Now it's my go-to piece when life happens while I'm making plans.

[DavidW]

Yea .. it took time for me to get into Bach, it wasn't until I was in my 30s ...

It took time for me as well, but I haven't really embraced the organ works yet.  I'm warming up to it, it's simply the instrument itself.

[greg]

The finale of the Mahler 6th was something that I had been listening to every now and then for a few years, but didn't get it at all until I heard Tennstedt (and I bet that was less than a year ago). Up until then, I was mainly familiar with Karajan's recording.
(also, a similar experience with the last movement of the 3rd when I heard Tennstedt, although on a smaller scale...)

[Xenophanes]

What pieces of music have you listened to and thought "meh" initially, only to hear a later performance that "opened your ears" and allowed you to like/love the piece?

For me, it was Elgar's violin concerto.  All the performances I'd heard were too reticent, too much striving for beauty and restraint.  Then I heard Hilary Hahn's recording and thought - "finally a performance with some steel in it's spine!"  Ever since then it's become one of my favorite pieces.

Same with Shostakovich's string quartets - I had the Eder and Fitzwilliam quartets and it wasn't till I heard the 2nd Borodin cycle that I really got what they were about.   I love them to death now, too.

How about you?

Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherezade.  I had Haitink, Kondrashin, and a couple I thought were better, Stokowski and Beecham, but last year I picked up Ansermet's recording and I really liked it.

I never much liked Beethoven's 5th Symphony until some decades ago I found an old recording by Artur Rodzinski on LP--not great sound but I liked the performance.  It still isn't my favorite Beethoven symphony, but it's tolerable with Leibowitz and Ansermet. I still think the ending is bombastic.

I really couldn't stand Beethoven's 9th symphony until I found Suitner on Denon, which I think is very well recorded. I also listen to Leibowitz. 

[hornteacher]

Beethoven's fifth symphony. For years I'd have paid money to avoid listening to it, but then a few months ago I heard Jos Van Immerseel and his band play it, and WHAM! Now it's in my top ten super duper 'I love this music' list.

AGREE TOTALLY.  I loved the 5th before but this performance really brought something different to the table.

[Opus106]

It's possible that I hit the right point in time, and any set would have done the trick.

I'm interested to know if that is also the case with the  others who have replied to the initial query: How long was it between your first listen that didn't click and the one that eventually did? I always consider myself to be listening at the "right point in time" when a piece of music "clicks," but then I'm someone who rarely goes for multiple interpretations.

[Elgarian]

I'm interested to know if that is also the case with the  others who have replied to the initial query: How long was it between your first listen that didn't click and the one that eventually did?

44 years. (Seriously)

[imperfection]

Beethoven's PC#4. Barenboim/Staatskapelle Berlin.

[Sergeant Rock]

The most significant piece of music I didn't get at first was the greatest symphony ever composed, Beethoven's Eroica. I understood its historical significance, understood that I should like it, but it really bored me. Finally hearing Lenny and the New York Phil's Columbia (Sony) recording did the trick. That was about five years after I'd first heard the symphony.

Sarge

[Moldyoldie]

Great topic!

There's a very specific personal instance apropos to this thread; allow me to just paste what I wrote on Amazon:

What must have been a purchase based on a glowing review of this recording [of Sibelius' Symphony No. 5 - Esa-Pekka Salonen/Philharmonia/CBS] from the late '80s turned into an unfortunate lasting eschewal of the popular Sibelius 5th by this then-novice listener. A musically savvy online acquaintance recently wrote: "I find that recording very interesting, surprisingly (for Salonen) expansive and brooding, very melancholic and expressive, but I am also impressed by the finely chiseled textures in the first movement." Yeah, brooding and melancholic -- that about sums up my feelings on Salonen's Sibelius 5th. As to its "expressive" qualities, it elicits nothing in me but abject depression. This was my first exposure to the 5th. "Gawd," I said. "What a Gloomy Gus!"

It was a few years later that I picked up Malcolm Sargent's recording of the 5th with the BBC Symphony (Sir Malcolm Sargent conducts Sibelius Symphonies 1 & 5 (EMI)) from a record store cut-out bin -- what a difference! The tempos were upbeat and invigorating; the winds and horns called forth an awakening instead of a mourning; the playing was taut and lively and the recording was intimate with only a hint of unobtrusive late-'50s tape hiss. Here are the timings:

Salonen I. 14:00 II. 10:03 III. 9:27
Sargent I. 12:20 II. 8:34 III. 8:27

Perhaps to a non-musician and a then-Sibelian novice such as myself, these tempos made a world of difference. All I know is that I'd never recommend the Salonen to anyone not already intimately familiar with the 5th. I won't even pretend to argue its "Sibelian merits", if any. To the extent that this turned me off to immediately and seriously exploring further into the Sibelian symphonic canon, I must deem this to be a "Sibelian disaster".

It's interesting that I recently came across the following snippet in an article from the January, 1999 edition of Finnish Music Quarterly:

Salonen recorded Sibelius' Fifth Symphony while still a young conductor. The recording is peculiar, to put it mildly. The maestro has himself admitted that he was able to strip the symphony of the usual mannerisms in the recording studio, but didn't quite have the time to develop an interpretation of his own to fill the void.

"In those days, CBS was pressuring me to record the whole cycle of Sibelius symphonies. I resisted because it felt too obvious. I was totally against doing it then," says Salonen of his situation in the mid 1980's.

Around that time, Salonen made the comment that his relationship with Sibelius was like 'a Bedouin's relationship with sand.' "I intentionally meant the allegory to be equivocal," laughs Salonen.

I can listen to this Salonen Sibelius 5th recording today with a more experienced ear and find some arcane merit, but it certainly doesn't come easy! Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic on DG (Leonard Bernstein Conducts Sibelius (Collectors Edition)) take a similar ultra-expansive approach with the 5th, but at least Lenny knew when to hit the gas and reach for the heights; plus the DG recording is up close and personal, not distant and removed, albeit with a few strident moments during fortissimos. The more recent Segerstam/Helsinki Philharmonic recording on Ondine (Sibelius: Symphonies Nos. 3 & 5) is also similarly expansive, but it's also vividly recorded and certainly not "brooding and melancholic"!

I'll also add that it wasn't till I lived over twenty years in Northern Michigan that I warmed up to the music of Sibelius, then its appeal became obvious -- go figure.

The most significant piece of music I didn't get at first was the greatest symphony ever composed, Beethoven's Eroica. I understood its historical significance, understood that I should like it, but it really bored me. Finally hearing Lenny and the New York Phil's Columbia (Sony) recording did the trick. That was about five years after I'd first heard the symphony.

Yep, it wasn't till hearing Lenny's recording of Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique that I could make hide nor hair of what's supposedly a concert hall and recording warhorse.  I still don't feel any "love", but at least now I "get it".   I think it must've been Lenny's over-the-top psychedeli-sensational approach.

[Opus106]

44 years. (Seriously)

Ah, yes. By becoming a HIPpie after all these years.

[O Delvig]

Beethoven's fifth symphony. For years I'd have paid money to avoid listening to it, but then a few months ago I heard Jos Van Immerseel and his band play it, and WHAM! Now it's in my top ten super duper 'I love this music' list.

Viviana Sofronitzki is currently in the process of achieving an even bigger turnaround for Mozart's piano concertos.

yup, same for me with the fifth. Have you heard Immerseel's Mozart? He made me appreciate the PC's.

Also on my list would have to be Telemann, who I never liked until I heard Musica Antiqua Koln, I love everything I've heard from that group!!