Top Ten 20th-c. Vn Ctos

[kyjo]

It is a superb work! He's described his own style as 'hard romanticism'.

Great to hear! I wasn't sure if Rochberg himself described his style as such; thanks for clarifying.

[jlaurson]

Great to hear! I wasn't sure if Rochberg himself described his style as such; thanks for clarifying.

It's perfectly possible that he'd been described thus by others first... or simply liked the term.

Here's Rochberg in an interview in "Surprised by Beauty" (Robert R. Reilly) of which a second, expanded edition will be forthcoming next year:

....The First World War was the destruction of idealism, the destruction even of nostalgia, or of the ability to live a nostalgic inner life—always longing for that which cannot be. After the Second World War was the emergence of hard Romanticism, which I realize now is what I was practicing and still do. 'Hard' because you know that the ideal is no longer possible.

[Brahmsian]

Is it just me, or has anyone not mentioned Korngold's Violin Concerto?

[Karl Henning]

It's not just you . . . and that is another Concerto I've been meaning to listen to.

The Rochberg is a temptation, too; when our Dana rocked the Henning Viola Sonata (derided in some musically terrified quarters as the world's worst viola sonata) the other piece on the program was the Rochberg Sonata, which is an excellent piece.

[amw]

Rochberg's later output is pretty uneven—I'm not always convinced by the appropriation of past styles to convey certain emotional states and find his arguments that it's impossible to compose in an authentically personal tonal idiom after WWII rather silly considering that plenty of composers did so anyway, though I do think he made the right decision in abandoning serialism, apart from the 2nd symphony everything I've heard from that period of his was rather dull. But the Violin Concerto is definitely one of the high points. (Symphonies 4 & 5 also look interesting though I've never heard either of them.)

I'm not sure we can make a single "top 10" for the 20th century. We sort of have to make several top 10s:

The "standard repertoire" -

Elgar
Sibelius
Korngold
Barber
Berg
Prokofiev #1
Prokofiev #2
Shostakovich #1
Regional variations: Britten and Walton in the UK, Glass and Adams in the US, Myaskovsky and Khachaturian in Russia, etc

The "influence on later musicians/tastemakers" list -

Berg
Schoenberg? (Its star seems to be on the rise lately)
Stravinsky
Bartók #2
Prokofiev #1
Szymanowski #1 or 2 (probably #1)
Berio Corale
Ligeti (perhaps the most influential on recent v.c.s, compare Chin, Adès, etc)
Adams
Pärt Tabula Rasa (that's a violin concerto right? I've never heard it)

My favourites -

Prokofiev #2
Bartók #2
Dutilleux
Feldman Violin and Orchestra
Ligeti
Stravinsky (as played by Mullova or choreographed by Balanchine, anyway)
Barber
The rest of 'em in some order or another

I've not heard Gerhard or Ginastera and I really should considering how much I like their music.