Top 10 compositions you have radically changed your opinion about

[Jaakko Keskinen]

Simply put, 10 most important cases of compositions of which your opinion has completely changed, for better or for worse. You may have hugely enjoyed some work and later have come to abhor it. Or the other way around. Anything which fits the title. Oh, and it would be enlightening if you would specify the way you used to feel about it and how you feel about it now.

[Jaakko Keskinen]

Oh, and if you can't come up with 10, it doesn't have to be that many. 

[arpeggio]

I can come up with composers that I changed my mind about.  I did not get Carter and Schoenberg until I was in my fifties.

[Jo498]

Tchaikovsky's last 3 symphonies. The 5th and 6th were among the first handful or two of large scale classical pieces I encountered as a teenager and I loved them. A few years later when Beethoven and Brahms were my favorites, I began to dislike most of Tchaikovsky. Another 10 or more years later I have reached an intermediate position: I listen to them once in a while and there are great passages or even whole movements but others are simply worn out for me (finales of 4 and 5 mainly).
(I also loved the 1812 Ouverture, Marche slave, Capriccio italien. But I very rarely want to listen to them now, actually never)

Bach's piano music: I found most of it boring even after almost 10 years of listening to classical music and thought one had to play those pieces to enjoy them. Now it is probably the part of Bach's oeuvre I listen to most.

[North Star]

Bach's piano music: I found most of it boring even after almost 10 years of listening to classical music and thought one had to play those pieces to enjoy them. Now it is probably the part of Bach's oeuvre I listen to most.

That's weird - I didn't know he wrote any piano music. 

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Vaughan Williams: Symphony no. 7. I used to think it rather twee, but now I tend to actually like it

Elgar: Cello Concerto. I think I was turned off from listening to this after hearing du Pre's recording with Barbirolli, only to discover that I actually love it after hearing the recordings made my Queyras and Weilerstein. I guess it was just the interpretation I first heard which left me cold!

Sibelius: Symphony no. 2. Thought this was the musical equivalent of yawning, even when I heard it live to see if it would change my mind. It wasn't until 2013 that all of a sudden I loved it without knowing why.

Stravinsky: Violin concerto. When I first heard it aged 10 I didn't understand why anyone would compose such a weird sounding work. Most of the 'neoclassical' works I didn't particularly like until much later by working backwards from his very late works which I have always adored.

Copland: Appalachian Spring. I never thought it was particularly interesting compared to his other ballet scores until I heard a school performance of it this year which knocked my socks off. I saw it a few years ago performed by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and thought it meh at the time. Perhaps it was just a dud performance.

I can't think of any music which I have changed to a negative or neutral opinion...........

[San Antone]

All the Mahler symphonies and Lohengrin, Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal by Wagner (still can't tolerate the Ring).  I used to not listen to them, at all, didn't like them, and sometimes even argued against the entire Romantic period's tendency to produce big, bombastic orchestral works which I considered all examples of TMI. 

I have come to learn the error of my ways.

[Dancing Divertimentian]

That's weird - I didn't know he wrote any piano music. 

Bach obviously had radar.

[Mirror Image]

I'm not sure if I can give ten examples off the top of my head but here are a few...

Berg's Violin Concerto - This work was my gateway into the Second Viennese School. Of course, I had already heard the late-Romantic works of Schoenberg, but I consider this VC from Berg a huge turning point for me into understanding not just Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg, but atonal music in general. I was quite enchanted with this Berg concerto and I listened to it eleven times in a row before deciding that it might be a good idea to listen to something else for awhile.

Wagner's The Ring - I'm not sure when I decided that it might be a good idea to listen to any of Wagner's operas, but I decided to buy Karajan's Ring cycle and devote part of a summer to go through these operas. An experience I still remember and also helped change my perception of Wagner as a composer of pure self-indulgence and thunderous orchestral/vocal onslaughts into a composer I've come to greatly admire for his forward-looking harmonies and just the general atmosphere his music evokes.

Shostakovich's Violin Concerto No. 1 - I've never had any real problems with Shostakovich's music other than I thought he could have used a nap or two as he was quite cranky! Anyway, when I finally sat down and really listened to his Violin Concerto No. 1, a light suddenly went off in my mind and I felt it's as if he handed me the keys right into his own emotional world. The work just felt so autobiographical and allowed me to understand his music from a better emotional/intellectual standpoint. By the time the Passacaglia movement ended, I was in tears. Shedding tears doesn't happen to me too often, but I felt a real special connection with this music and I still do. This was my turning point with Shostakovich.

Bruckner's Symphony No. 8 - Up until fairly recently I haven't listened to Bruckner's music much and not because I don't enjoy it, but, because I felt that I didn't really have any reason to until I bought the older issue of Karajan's cycle. The symphony that absolutely floored me this time, but one that I had remained quite indifferent to was his Symphony No. 8. A whole new world opened up for me with Karajan's interpretation. Suddenly, it's as if this music has been locked inside my heart and mind for the past seven years only to finally be set free. Now whenever I want to hear some Bruckner, I always reach for Karajan's performance of the 8th with the Berliners. Of course, I love many of his other symphonies, but the 8th has become something quite special for me.

Strauss' Four Last Songs - There's been a good bit of talk about this work lately and I still find it to be one of my main pathways into finally accepting Strauss as the great composer I believe he is. I used to view his music as superficial and lacking an emotional core, but I soon realized that it was my own perception of the composer that was hindering me and that deep down I actually did like his music a lot. Four Last Songs helped cement this fact for me rather quickly.

That's all for right now. I might add onto this later as it's really late here and I'm tired.

[vandermolen]

There are some works I loved but then didn't have much time for through over-exposure:

Vaughan Williams: The Lark Ascending
Elgar: Cello Concerto
Elgar: Introduction and Allegro
Copland: Appalachian Spring

I rate them all as great music but hardly listen to them any more.

[The new erato]

But you haven't changed your opinion, just your listening? I could say the same about most romantic orchestral music.

[Jo498]

That's weird - I didn't know he wrote any piano music. 

As a lot of the manualiter keyboard music is underspecified with respect to the instrument I took that liberty...
But harpsichord would not have helped I am afraid and it took me another 10+ years to get somewhat into his organ music. But interestingly, those first encounters with the solo keyboard music were all on piano and usually with Gould. For biographical reasons as he friend who introduced me to the stuff was a pianist himself and liked Gould.

"Radically changed" is probably a little strong in the Bach case but it fits roughly my stance with respect to the Tchaikovsky pieces mentioned above.

[vandermolen]

But you haven't changed your opinion, just your listening? I could say the same about most romantic orchestral music.

Yes, I guess that's true.
PS although their are works like Holst's 'The Planets' which I have probably heard more frequently but never have got bored with.

[Androcles]

Richard Strauss. When I first got into classical music I loved the tone poems. Now they seem overblown somehow just lacking in any sort of real content. Metamorphosen is a different matter though.

Alfred Schnittke went in the opposite direction. It seemed to me for quite a long time like crash bang wallop horror music with no subtlety or beauty. Strangely enough, it was washing 'The Glass Harmonica' cartoon that changed my mind.

[Brian]

As a teenager and GMG neophyte I loved the music of Ferde Grofé and defied Cato's objections by shamelessly enjoying such camp as the "Mississippi Suite". Nowadays I don't enjoy his music in the slightest.

More generally, "obscure" music used to thrill me as a late teen and college student - "have you heard Kalinnikov/Ries/Englund? So mind-blowing!" - but age and wisdom are teaching me that many of the Big Name Composers are bigger names for very good reasons. My listening has become more focused.

Oh. The day Philip Seymour Hoffman died, one listen to Lenny cured my 6-year-old dislike of Mahler's Second Symphony.

[Karl Henning]

As a teenager and GMG neophyte I loved the music of Ferde Grofé and defied Cato's objections by shamelessly enjoying such camp as the "Mississippi Suite". Nowadays I don't enjoy his music in the slightest.

More generally, "obscure" music used to thrill me as a late teen and college student - "have you heard Kalinnikov/Ries/Englund? So mind-blowing!" - but age and wisdom are teaching me that many of the Big Name Composers are bigger names for very good reasons. My listening has become more focused.

Oh. The day Philip Seymour Hoffman died, one listen to Lenny cured my 6-year-old dislike of Mahler's Second Symphony.

Most interesting, in all parts.

[Cato]

As a teenager and GMG neophyte I loved the music of Ferde Grofé and defied Cato's objections by shamelessly enjoying such camp as the "Mississippi Suite". Nowadays I don't enjoy his music in the slightest.

Go and sin no more!  0:)  To be clear, "camp" can be fun...just not the way Grofe' does it! 

Concerning a work conducted by Herbert von Karajan and having my mind opened by the result (see Mirror Image above about the Bruckner Eighth Symphony)...

When I was listening my way into Schoenberg's works, Pelleas und Melisande was a stumbling block!  The Five Pieces for Orchestra were no problem  , but Pelleas just eluded me.  I kept trying different recordings, and whether it was in fact von Karajan's conducting or just the number of repetitions I had experienced, or both, his recording brought everything together.