Great composers whom you like a few works of, but who usually bore you.

[mc ukrneal]

Except that the Sibelius edition records every transcription and version known to mankind. And one one of those CDs there are 50 tracks of 'a catalogue of themes'.  Some of them less than 10 seconds long.  I certainly know that Sibelius did write some piano music, but I wouldn't use THAT edition as any kind of measure of what 'music' the man wrote.

I have the complete piano version on Alto and it is 5 discs, so still a reasonable number of works. One of them is a sonata, though he wrote a lot of 5 pieces of the piano, ten pieces for the piano. etc.

[North Star]

Wow, I will have to explore.  I wasn't aware that Sibelius had written so much solo piano music.  Thumbs up! 

See here

Except that the Sibelius edition records every transcription and version known to mankind. And one one of those CDs there are 50 tracks of 'a catalogue of themes'.  Some of them less than 10 seconds long.  I certainly know that Sibelius did write some piano music, but I wouldn't use THAT edition as any kind of measure of what 'music' the man wrote.

Ah okay. But nonetheless, there are some fine pieces in there, even if they're not in the same class as the symphonies or tone poems.

[Madiel]

I have the complete piano version on Alto and it is 5 discs, so still a reasonable number of works. One of them is a sonata, though he wrote a lot of 5 pieces of the piano, ten pieces for the piano. etc.

5 discs worth sounds a lot more plausible, yes.

[mahler10th]

RAFF

A composer whose place and time in music should lead me to an instant love for his music...but it doesn't.  Like Glazunov, he is very good at stirring things up and mixing the ingredients, but the damn cake always gets undercooked.     (Please note, undercooked is a different thing from Underrated  )

[71 dB]

Oh, and I think that Faure would've been the first to admit that for a considerable part of his career, orchestral music was not his strong point.  Just as well, then, that there isn't actually very much of it.

Fauré earned a modest living as an organist and teacher, leaving him little time for composition.

- Wikipedia.

[Madiel]

How do you know what Fauré thought?

By observing that he allowed others to do the orchestrating for him on a number of occasions, and if the recesses of my memory are correct because somewhere in the rather large volume of correspondence he left behind he commented on the issue.

EDIT: And while we're referring to Wikipedia, the article on Faure's Requiem has a note, referenced, saying that Faure wasn't very interested in orchestration. One of the references is Nectoux, I wouldn't be surprised if that's one of the places I picked up this crazy notion from.

SECOND EDIT: Better yet, thanks to Google Book previews, if this link works properly you can go read some relevant pages in Nectoux yourself.  http://books.google.com.au/books?id=YEo5jwtbnC4C&pg=PA255&lpg=PA255&dq=faure+interest+in+orchestration&source=bl&ots=io73vbWY3b&sig=FPyFPqlmsB91Sd41LLxQI0BlUFo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ByVUUompMendigfFwYGgCA&ved=0CFAQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=faure%20interest%20in%20orchestration&f=false

[Parsifal]

How do you know what Fauré thought? And quantity doesn't implicate anything either .. fact is, what he did leave behind for the medium is wonderful.

Exactly.  Although his output of orchestral music is small,  what he produced is exquisite.  As I mentioned above somewhere, the prelude to Penelope is a superb work, second to none.  I wish he had been inspired to have written more for orchestra, although the piano music he left behind establishes him as one of the true masters of 20th century music.

[Madiel]

And just in case the link isn't working for people, I'll just pull out the direct quote attributed to the composer:

"I know myself well enough to have taken note of this failing more than once - a failing of nature, obviously and one that I'm afraid I shall not now have the time to put right!"


So yeah. I love answering rhetorical questions like 'how do you know what the composer thought'. The answer is because I listened to what he said.  We're talking about one of my top 2 or 3 composers here, I'm not going to pull that kind of critical comment up out of thin air.

[Parsifal]

And just in case the link isn't working for people, I'll just pull out the direct quote attributed to the composer:

"I know myself well enough to have taken note of this failing more than once - a failing of nature, obviously and one that I'm afraid I shall not now have the time to put right!"


So yeah. I love answering rhetorical questions like 'how do you know what the composer thought'. The answer is because I listened to what he said.  We're talking about one of my top 2 or 3 composers here, I'm not going to pull that kind of critical comment up out of thin air.

Mostly the article you quoted described Faure as not having much patience for orchestration.  You don't give the exact source of the quote above, but I found it.  You've taken that quote out of context.  Faure was a self depreciating person and made that remark in response to criticism of the orchestration of Penelope made by Koechlin.  That was at the end of Faure's life when he had suffered profound hearing loss, and he may be refering to his inability to further refine the orchestration of music that he could not properly hear.

[Madiel]

You don't give the source of that quote, but I found it.  You've taken that quote out of context.  Faure was a self depreciating person and made that remark in response to criticism of the orchestration of Penelope made by Koechlin.  That was at the end of Faure's life when he had suffered profound hearing loss, and he may be refering to his inability to further refine the orchestration of music that he could not properly hear.

And that is inconsistent with what I originally said, how exactly?

EDIT: And saying 'you don't give the source of that quote' is really odd when I just provided a link in the hope that people could read several pages worth of Nectoux's book for themselves.

[Parsifal]

And that is inconsistent with what I originally said, how exactly?

Looking back, our disagreement is not as large as I originally thought, but I don't agree that Faure lacked the skill to write orchestral music, and I found your quote in which Faure expresses pessisism about his abillity to improve his orchestration misleading because he made that remark after he had essentially gone deaf.  It may reflect his deafness, rather than a lack of faith in his own ability as an orchestrator.

[kyjo]

RAFF

A composer whose place and time in music should lead me to an instant love for his music...but it doesn't.  Like Glazunov, he is very good at stirring things up and mixing the ingredients, but the damn cake always gets undercooked.     (Please note, undercooked is a different thing from Underrated  )

Yeah, I haven't been too terribly impressed with Raff's music either. He's been showered with much praise in many circles, but a lot of his music bores me. I like his Symphony no. 5 Lenore quite a bit, though, with its stirring finale. He also wrote some nice chamber music, in particular his piano trios.

[Rinaldo]

(Please note, undercooked is a different thing from Underrated  )

I sense a 'Top 5 undercooked compositions' thread looming..

[Florestan]

Of the profound pre-20th century French school .. Fauré, Debussy, Ravel

Ravel is pre-20th century? 

[Jo498]

Liszt - but I admit that I could not bring myself to spend a lot of time with e.g. the tone poems and Faust Symphony (although I have probably heard all of them about twice). I like (don't love) the b minor sonata and the dies irae thing, have an on-off-relation with the piano concerto
And I like the Schubert song transcriptions

R. Strauss - again, I have not spent enough time with the operas (but I sat through the whole of Rosenkavalier in the Berlin opera once). I am bored by most of the tone poems (which prevents me from getting to know them better and so on). I love Don Juan, the four last and assorted other songs, like Salome, Till Eulenspiegel, Burleske and the Violin sonata. I should really listen again (and more in depth) to Elektra and maybe also Rosenkavalier

Prokofieff: The 2nd piano concerto is my favorite pc in the 20th century, after Bartok's. I also like the violin sonatas quite a bit.
It would be exaggerating to say I find other music of his I have heard boring, but I am rather indifferent to the other piano and violin concertos, don't really get into the piano sonatas (except maybe #6) and the symphonies (although I have to try the elusive 2 and 3 again, I certainly do not like the 5th symphony in any proportion to its reputation and the 1st is fun but hardly an important piece...). Balletts are too long for me to listen without watching (and I don't care for watching either, being rather indifferent to the art form).

I'll leave it a those three...

[North Star]

Liszt - but I admit that I could not bring myself to spend a lot of time with e.g. the tone poems and Faust Symphony (although I have probably heard all of them about twice). I like (don't love) the b minor sonata and the dies irae thing, have an on-off-relation with the piano concerto
And I like the Schubert song transcriptions

Prokofieff: The 2nd piano concerto is my favorite pc in the 20th century, after Bartok's. I also like the violin sonatas quite a bit.
It would be exaggerating to say I find other music of his I have heard boring, but I am rather indifferent to the other piano and violin concertos, don't really get into the piano sonatas (except maybe #6) and the symphonies (although I have to try the elusive 2 and 3 again, I certainly do not like the 5th symphony in any proportion to its reputation and the 1st is fun but hardly an important piece...). Balletts are too long for me to listen without watching (and I don't care for watching either, being rather indifferent to the art form).

Have you heard Années de pèlerinage from Liszt?
As for Prokofiev - Le pas d'acier or L'enfant prodigue are not that long for ballets, and you don't need to listen to R&J straight through (or try the suites maybe). Cinderella I prefer in the Pletnev piano duo transciption of the suite as recorded by Argerich and him, maybe give that a go.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

With most composers I've listened to, I've only heard a few works (like, I've heard probably less than 10% of Bach's output for example), so I can't tell if the rest of it will bore me or not.......I've listened to all of Varèse and Webern's works I'm pretty sure, and most of Boulez (everything in his complete works box plus a few other pieces not included), so with those composers I know that they never bore me at least.

[Jo498]

I have the Années on disc (Brendel/Kocsis) as well as some excerpts by different pianists but I probably never listened to the whole thing systematically. I also do not dislike some of the Transzendental etudes, e.g. Funerailles and once a year I can have fun with some of the Hungarian Rhapsodies (two or three of the most famous ones were among the first classical piano pieces I liked as a teenager)

as for Prokofieff's Ballett, I somewhat naturally started with Romeo & Juliet and Cinderella, so I have not heard the pieces you mention. Again, I do not dislike them, it's just that I am fairly indifferent to most of it.

[Jay F]

Great composers whom you like a few works of, but who usually bore you:

Brahms - I like his chamber music, but not as much as Schubert's or Beethoven's.

Chopin - I like the obviously melodic piano music, but not much more. I've given away or sold a couple of complete box sets or large-ish segments.

Liszt - I like the Hungarian Rhapsodies. I've tried to like the Sonata in B Minor.

Mendelssohn - I like Midsummer Night's Dream and the name Mendelssohn. In my next life, "Mendelssohn" will be my last name. Or maybe it already was in a past life.

Tchaikovsky - I like the Piano Trio and Symphonies 6 and 5. I like the part of Swan Lake Erica danced to in An Unmarried Woman, but that's about it.

Ravel, Faure, Delibes, Satie - I like the usuals. Don't know much else, in spite of the fact that I have, or have had, some of it.

There are some composers I didn't care for at all, mostly because I found them boring, or what I call "meandering." The English composers head this part of the experience. Also Debussy. He is the King of the Meanderers.

And then there's Wagner.

[Jo498]

What are the "usual pieces" one likes by Ravel, Fauré, Delibes and Satie?

I like the chamber music of Fauré, hardly now the piano music, am not too fond of the Requiem (I do not like "soft" Requiem settings without powerful Last Judgment parts ) and rather indifferent to the orchestral music (there is not a lot, IIRC). I am not sure I have consciously listened to any Delibes. I was bored by all Satie I have heard but I keep two or three discs with piano pieces, maybe for "librarian" reasons.

I like most Ravel, but I love only a few pieces.