Rejected, then Embraced! And Vice-Versa!

[karlhenning]

Karl, I would add 2 and 3 to that list. Until I heard the Jansons set, I really coudn't bring myself to listen to these.

Steve? You there, Steve? :-)

Not strictly on topic, since I hadn't heard them before;  but I have enjoyed initial listens to the Maksim Dmitriyevich accounts of the Second & Third.

[Joe Barron]

Oh, the prime example for me is Mahler. When I was a teenager, I found his music longwided, boring and unmelodic. (Though I think I might have come in the wrong door. A friend of ine played the second for me before I heard the first. Big mistake.) I had to force myself to listen, but I came around eventually. Now Mahler is perennially in my top 10.

I can't think of any classical music I have turned against after liking it. Pop music is another matter completely.  I don't want to hear the Police ever, ever again.

[karlhenning]

Well, and it isn't every day you meet someone who has both Mahler and Carter in his top ten.

Unless one meets Joe every day, of course

[bwv 1080]

For me, Mahler was more or less instant wheras Carter was an acquired taste, although I never outright rejected him.   The first Carter work I heard was Changes on the old David Starobin disc and oddly enough I found the Babbitt piece on the same disc much more comprehensible.

[Joe Barron]

For me, Mahler was more or less instant wheras Carter was an acquired taste, although I never outright rejected him. 

Carter too was an acquired taste, as was Ives, but I never thought I would never get to like them, which was the case with Mahler, and is still the case with Shostakovich. 

There were pieces by Ives and Carter I liked immediately, others I was glad to work on, because I thought there ws something there I should be getting. I had tpo force myself to listen to Mahler, which I did because people whose opinions I respected swore by him. Turns out they were right.

[Cato]

Having discovered Bruckner I eventually of course wandered toward Mahler: I came across the Mahler 9th Symphony in the early 1960's through an Everest recording (they were not the peak of recording perfection) with Leopold Ludwig conducting.  

Mahler led me to Schoenberg, whose early works were no problem, but the post-String Quartet #2 works remained a problem: rejected, until one day I decided to give Erwartung a spin on the old player.  The rejection phase was over, and now things like Erwartung, Jakobsleiter, the Piano and Violin Concertos, etc. are all-around faves!

Busoni is a case of embrace and reject simultaneously.  Doctor Faustus I embraced immediately, and still believe it his masterpiece.  But almost everything else for orchestra I still find lacking, with the stellar exception of the Piano Concerto.

[bwv 1080]

I used to like Boulez alot less than I do now.  Thought the works were too long for the material employed (I still think Ritual suffers from this)

[Greta]

I had to force myself to listen to Mahler, which I did because people whose opinions I respected swore by him. Turns out they were right.

Me too! I just wrote him off as too lengthy and difficult for far too long. But I heard snippets over the years on the radio, and thought, my there's a lot of great things going on there if I could ever make a concentrated effort. And boy, is it rewarding me a hundred times over. He was so incredibly clever. I love finding the links between his works. Like I was just listening to M2 today and noticed the sly looking forward of the Scherzo to the macabre scordatura violin solo of the M4 1st mvmt!

I am excited like a kid in a candy store about Mahler. In fact, I have a confession to make, I'm afraid Mahler is danger of knocking Wagner off his place for most of my conscious life as my #1 composer!  Me, a self-professed Wagnerite! 

While I went to a divine all-Wagner concert last week and my soul still thrilled hearing the familiar strains of the Tannhauser Overture and the gaiety that is Die Meistersinger, it's so familiar to me, like a comfortable old shoe, and Mahler is like um, a a shiny red pair of stilettos! They look so pretty....you hate to take them off.... and Mahler just seems to have taken up residence in my computer room CD player.

And my other CD player is filled with an endless succession these days of contemporary/modern composers I wouldn't have dreamed I could handle back in the Wagner/Verdi/Tchaikovsky days. I will confess to being a bit closed minded to after say, 1940. Past 1980 I was fine with. Well I'm slowly working my inwards and finding some real goldmines. Hindemith chamber music, Ligeti (almost anything of his it seems), Finnish composers! Lutoslawski!

But it's time for me to give the toughest a chance, Webern, Berio, Boulez, Carter, later Schoenberg...I'm doing well with early Schoenberg so far, and am finding a surprise connection with Messiaen. 

So I can imagine in 10 more years, my tastes will be completely different yet again!

[Cato]

Greta: your last line is always the goal!  Musico-spiritual development!   0:)

If you follow Mahler long enough, thou shalt accept his disciple Schoenberg even in his later mainfestations!   

I can recommend a book about the lines connecting Bruckner through Mahler to Schoenberg  called, oddly,
Bruckner, Mahler, Schoenberg by Dika Newlin.  (She was one of the latter's students.)  In her late 50's and 60's she became an orange-haired punk-rocker, and even appeared in a punk-horror movie of no renown, the whole adventure no doubt the result of arteriosclerosis.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/28/arts/music/28newlin.html?ex=1311739200&en=dfc5964624279a4d&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

[Dancing Divertimentian]

Webern

If you only knew the rewards that await you...

[Dancing Divertimentian]

For me one of the greatest resources for turning me on to 'rejected' composers has been my car radio.

It's that "cloak of mystery" that does it: dialing in to an unknown work smack dab in the middle without a hint of who the composer is.

So without preconceptions it's just me and the piece until the DJ chimes in at the end and announces the name of the piece. And if I've stuck it out that far (given time) I'm sure to want a recording of whatever piece it is.

That's what happened with two composers who up 'till my chance car radio encounter had been booted off my radar with contempt: Berlioz and Britten.

Now, thanks to the trusty car radio that's all changed!

[karlhenning]

If you follow Mahler long enough, thou shalt accept his disciple Schoenberg even in his later mainfestations!   

And, in harmony with the topic . . . Schoenberg himself started out with a low opinion of Mahler, and then Saw Light  0:) 

[Scriptavolant]

Rejected and then Embraced: I would say Frederick Delius, I judged him sugarcoated, then learned to appreciate his elegant sweetness and naturalistic skills, mainly thru "In a summer garden", even if I still consider his orchestral works as divertissment and little more.

[Mark]

Berg's Violin Concerto. I hated it on first hearing. It epitomised everything (I thought) I hated about atonality. I actually threw the CD in the trash, and forgot about it.

Then, less than three years later, I heard it again ... and it made perfect sense to me. I don't remember if it was the work which unlocked the door that had barred me from understanding/enjoying atonal music, but it stands out in my memory as being a significant watershed.

[greg]

And, in harmony with the topic . . . Schoenberg himself started out with a low opinion of Mahler, and then Saw Light  0:) 

(wondering if Karl will ever follow in Schoenberg's footsteps)

[Kullervo]

For me one of the greatest resources for turning me on to 'rejected' composers has been my car radio.

It's that "cloak of mystery" that does it: dialing in to an unknown work smack dab in the middle without a hint of who the composer is.

So without preconceptions it's just me and the piece until the DJ chimes in at the end and announces the name of the piece. And if I've stuck it out that far (given time) I'm sure to want a recording of whatever piece it is.

That's what happened with two composers who up 'till my chance car radio encounter had been booted off my radar with contempt: Berlioz and Britten.

Now, thanks to the trusty car radio that's all changed!

I second that. NPR was *instrumental* (ha-ha) in building my interest in Classical-era composers, especially Haydn.