Overrated and overpromoted by a few enthusiasts is the completely pretentious and fake note-writer (not even a composer) Sorabji. John Ogdon was lucky enough to have been able to sight read him just once.
Whatever your opinion of the only one of Sorabji's works that Ogdon performed, your assertion doesn't stand up to scrutiny. You are, of course, referring to Opus Clavicembalisticum, a published score of which was given to him around 1956 by Peter Maxwell Davies with the hope that he (Ogdon) would prepare and perform it since, in Davies' estimation, no one else was capable of doing this. At that time, Davies's interest in the piece prompted him to orchestrate its first two movements but sadly he appears not to recall to whom he gave this work and I've never been able to trace its whereabouts. Ogdon gave a private reaading of it in 1959 and always kept a score of it by him in the hope that he would one day record and/or perform it. Before he gave the work its first complete performance in England in 1988 just three months before the composer's death, he had recorded it; that recording was released in 1989, just three months before Ogdon's own death and it is still available today. The suggestion that Ogdon "sight read him just once" is therefore as fatuous as it is unfounded.
There are rather more than just "a few enthusiasts" for Sorabji around these days; there have been more than 35 recordings of his music by various artists as well as hundreds of performances and broadcasts in many countries, much of which have only been made possible by means of the sterling work done by a number of highly gifted and committed editors who continue to produce typeset edition sof the composer's scores. The most recent recording is our around now and is the third CD in Fredrik Ullén's series in which he is recording the complete 100 Transcendental Studies; perhaps you should try this!
...a certain class of "cute" French composers such as Satie and Poulenc...
...Terry Riley's "In C"...an equally horrible parody of note-non-spinning.
...the noisy Phillip Glass and another of his ilk...
...Stravinsky...
...Medtner...a pale, anemic Rachmaninoff imitator...
...John Field's Nocturnes are boring...
...Clementi wrote a few snappy things but is rightly largely forgotten...
...Schumann...
...Chopin...I play at lot of his stuff, but you just run out of interest after a while.
...Shostakovitch on the piano is simply awful...
...Anyone mention Purcell and others of that era?...
...How about practically any opera?...
There's not much left for you to like, is there?! How sad for you! Riley and Glass don't do it for me either, but whilst I admit to the heresy of being able also to live without most of Stravinsky, there are a handful of pieces by him that are utterly indispensible. Medtner never "imitated" anyone, let alone Rakhmaninov, as Rakhmaninov himself would have been the first to agree. Clementi's now quite extensive discography doesn't suggest a "largely forgotten" composer to me. If "you" run out of interest in Chopin after playing his music for a while, that's your problem and not a value judgement of Chopin. Shostakovich's piano writing may not all be either the composer at his best or as important as that of other Russian composers, but he was a considerable pianist himself (who had initially contemplated a career as a pianist until the international success of his first symphony took over), so he knew what he was doing when writing for the piano.
Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Krenek. Random notes I can invent and play at any time.
If Schönberg's D minor quartet or E major chamber symphony comprise "random notes" that anyone can invent and play at will, then Christ was a Muslim.
[Knocks head for not mentioning them before]
Please don't knock your head in case any more spleen falls out (I know that this sounds like a physical impossibility for most of us, but you seem to manage it OK!)...
Best,
Alistair
Topic: the most over played and overrated composer is...