List Of Composers Who Deserve To Be Performed More Often

[Superhorn]

   It's very easy to find excellent recordings of music by these composers, and there are plenty of them
  available.  But you don't have much chance of hearing their works live,unless you attend a concert by Saint Neeme Jarvi, or perhaps a few other conductors such as Leon Botstein and several others.   Several of these composers are known for maybe one or two works, but you very rarely hear other works by them
which are very much deserving of live performance.

Hugo Alfven . Malcolm Arnold..  Franz Berwald. Arnold Bax . Haveergal Brian . Arthur Bliss. Walter Braunfels.
Kurt Atterberg.
Ernest Bloch . Ferruccio Busoni . George Whitefield Chadwick. Ernest Chausson.Emmanuel Chabrier. John Foulds.

Carlos Chavez. John Alden Carpenter.Alfredo Casella  Paul Dukas. Ernst von Dohnanyi. Frederick Delius.

Gheorghe Enescu. Zdenek Fibich . Alexander Glazunov. Reinhold Gliere. Paul Hindemith. Arthur Honegger.

Karl Amadeus Hartmann. Roberto Gerhard.Muzio Clementi. Luigi Cherubini. Paul Creston.Nicolas Flagello.

Gustav Holst. Vincent D'Indy. Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov.  Ernst Krenek. Erich Wolfgang Korngold.Unno Klami .

Charles Kochlin. Anatoly Liadov. Sergei Liapunov. Bohuslav Martinu. Nikolai Myaskovsky. Rued Langaard.

Nikolai Medtner. Frank Martin . Alberic Magnard. Hans Pfitzner. Albert Roussel. Max Reger.Silvestre Revueltas.

Ottorino Respighi. Wilhem Stenhasmmar. Johan Svendsen. Franz Schmidt. Karol Szymanowski. Adnan Saygun.

Franz Schreker. Louis Spohr.Othmar Schoeck.  Josef Suk. Eduard Tubin. Ernst Toch.  Heitor Villa Lobos.
   
Egon Wellesz.  Carl Maria von Weber. Alexander von Zemlinsky .  Jan Dismas Zelenka.

   Of course others here could come up with other deserving names.  Please do . 

[Superhorn]

   I left Max Bruch out. Sorry.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Felix Draeseke. Cornelis Dopper. Matthijs Vermeulen. Roy Harris. Joseph Marx.

[Ten thumbs]

An excellent list, to which I would add Louise Farrenc but then her Octet was performed not far from here last year and blow me if I wasn't on holiday.
Why do we have to have Rakhmaninov time and time again. When are we going to have a Medtner concerto in concert instead? In my opinion his piano concertos have much more substance.

[ibanezmonster]

Gustav Allan Pettersson
Harry Partch (though I can see why not)

[some guy]

While I think many of the composers named so far are worth performing more live, I'd rather start with the composers who are alive and hence able to enjoy the increased exposure. I love Partch and Gerhard very much and wish there were more performances of their music, live or recorded, but my love doesn't do Partch or Gerhard any good.

How many people have heard any music by Luc Ferrari live? Or Helmut Lachenmann? I think Ferrari is shamefully neglected, especially in the US (perhaps solely in the US ), but Lachenmann is still alive. So let's start there.

Grainne Mulvey
Christine Groult
Simon Steen-Andersen
Horváth Balázs

Of course, that also means moving out of the traditional concert halls and away from the idea that the symphony orchestra is the be all and end all of concert music making, but that's OK by me!

[some guy]

there are whole generations of people out there that have no idea on what has been done.)

Too true.

[Grazioso]

While I think many of the composers named so far are worth performing more live, I'd rather start with the composers who are alive and hence able to enjoy the increased exposure.

I take the point but respectfully disagree. I think the music should trump the composer, and if a piece is from 300 years ago but worth reviving, let's do it. Classical music as a genre, as a musical culture, is built around the premise that excellence never goes out of style, that the old is ever new, that composition is an ongoing artistic dialogue and the newest thing said isn't necessarily more important than an earlier statement.

[starrynight]

True, though it is unfortunate when composers don't get that much recognition in their lifetime.  I guess they are just used to it now though, classical music is a minority thing now.  If you want much fame being a classical music composer isn't really the way to get it.

[some guy]

I would say that a living human trumps everything. I wasn't talking about the relative importance of new music to old but the relative importance of living humans to dead ones.

Plus, the old music we now value was once new--and probably not so unambiguously valuable, either. Any of that old music was successfully squashed when it was new then what price its even surviving for our present delectation?

We don't know if a new piece will be considered valuable or not in a hundred years or two hundred. We can know if it's good now, though. By listening to it intelligently and appreciatively.

Or we could just wait and let it languish in obscurity. If it's good, it will find its way.

(Good luck with that one!!)

[Grazioso]

I would say that a living human trumps everything. I wasn't talking about the relative importance of new music to old but the relative importance of living humans to dead ones.

If we're talking about art qua art, the status of the creator is irrelevant: dead or alive, male or female, rich or poor, all-around nice guy or right bastard. Particularly in a field such as classical music, with its idea of a living heritage that bypasses temporal concerns. I might feel sorry for a skilled composer who languishes in obscurity during his life, but if he got into writing classical music for adulation, money, or big audiences, he chose the wrong field.

We don't know if a new piece will be considered valuable or not in a hundred years or two hundred. We can know if it's good now, though. By listening to it intelligently and appreciatively.

Can we know in its immediate aftermath if a piece is good? There's the school of thought that holds that artistic greatness is in part predicated on relative universality and longevity, or at least that granting such status takes a consensus of long-considered opinion versus a first judgment in the heat of the moment. And do we want to perform every new piece just to be safe, when we already know/feel guys like Bax, Korngold, Pettersson, Hindemith, et al. to be worth more performances?

To the original list, I'd add Novak, Lilburn, Frankel, Borreson, Sinding, Kokonnen... A slew of Classical and Early Romantic composers like Boccherini, Cherubini, Kraus, Rosetti, Vanhall, Dussek, Krommer, Ries, Onslow, Fesca, etc.

[mszczuj]

Joseph Joachim Raff. He is one of most important person in history of symphony. I think he established the main model of neoromantic symphony and symphonies of Bruckner, Mahler, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky were written with understanding of Raff's input in possibiliites of this form.

[karlhenning]

Ottevanger, Henning. (And: still alive, too.)

[DavidW]

Ottevanger, Henning. (And: still alive, too.)

When you say still alive... is that before or after your morning tea?

[Superhorn]

   I forgot to mention Granville Bantock, and I started a thread on his music a while ago in the composer's section.
   Also, Anton Rubinstein. 

[Superhorn]

    The music of Partch is weird and fascinating, but unfortunately,it can only be performed on the
    strange-looking microtonal instruments he invented.  Partch was a reverse snob against western classical
    music, and dismissed it out of hand merely because it confines itself(largely) to 12 pitches.
    You can hear his music on youtube.

[Mirror Image]

And his music generally sucks quite frankly. I think the system that has been in place for centuries is far superior.

You need to quit talking about your favorite composer Stockhausen like that.

[Mirror Image]

Stupid comment on all counts, and ignorant too. I was talking about Partch retard.

I know you were talking about Partch, it was a joke. How old are you again? Have we figured this out yet?

[Brian]

Well, MI, I thought it was a great little retort. 

[Brian]

That's fine, you're still a retard though. Stick to posting on internet forums, it's all you know how to do.

Funny, coming from a guy who doesn't know how to post on internet forums.