Pieces you really couldn't care less about

[thorn]

Because if you can't beat this little infestation, you should probably join it. And apathy hasn't been mentioned yet.

I'm going to start with anything written by Mendelssohn I've ever heard in my entire life.

[megadodd]

Listen to his piano trio in D minor! opus 49 i think. It's a good one!

[animae]

Anything past 1750 is garbage (in my opinion).

Baroque music has such purity and its transcendental nature appeals to me more than any other music.

[49410enrique]

bobby schumann's music, i have tried to enjoy it, boresville....

with the exception some of his very late works (where the limits of tonality are really tested) i  tend to not get very excited about liszt's music. cool sometimes but i don't go out of my way to listen or learn any of it.

[costicina]

bobby schumann's music, i have tried to enjoy it, boresville....

with the exception some of his very late works (where the limits of tonality are really tested) i  tend to not get very excited about liszt's music. cool sometimes but i don't go out of my way to listen or learn any of it.

Nooo, please, please!!!!  .... (but I confess that I can't help laughing: only you could call him 'Bobby'  ...)

[thalbergmad]

Anything past 1750 is garbage (in my opinion).

Hey, I make the daft comments in this place pal.

Thal

[thalbergmad]

I couldn't really care less about nearly all of the Snorabji I have heard.

I only listen to it when I am in need of a good sleep. It is a cure for insomnia.

Thal

[stoudemirestat]

Anything past 1750 is garbage (in my opinion).

Baroque music has such purity and its transcendental nature appeals to me more than any other music.

That purity and transcendental nature you describe is instead flat out boring to me for the most part. I love how tastes differ

[williampiano]

Lately I've been trying to enjoy Alkan's music, but I haven't been overly impressed.

[ajspiano]

anything by kesha.

Anything past 1750 is garbage (in my opinion).

Not that there are many 16yr olds that listen exclusively to music of that era, or have opinions on music that arent defined purely by the radio and their peers.. but I think this may change as you get older and live more..

bach just doesn't express heartbreak/loss the same way chopin does..

[werq34ac]

I feel like Bobby's music is an acquired. It's not exactly divinely beautiful, but his music is very intimate. Schumann has a sort of element of speaking that might seem a bit boring, but one MUST listen to Schumann's "words" before they dismiss his music as garbage.

I'm not big on Mendelssohn, though I do like some string quartets and the piano trios.

As for the person who dismissed 250 years of music as garbage, sure Baroque music is nice, but really in the end, that's all it is: nice. I mean I like Baroque music, but I have yet to hear a Baroque piece that has absolutely blown me away.

As for Liszt, Liszt has the element of "showing off" that some people don't like, but hey, it earned him many lady fans. And as we know about those who criticize have lots of lady fans, they're just jealous =P. Just kidding. Well, I suppose if you really have something against show-offs, then that's your own problem.

[stoudemirestat]

As for Liszt, Liszt has the element of "showing off" that some people don't like, but hey, it earned him many lady fans. And as we know about those who criticize have lots of lady fans, they're just jealous =P. Just kidding. Well, I suppose if you really have something against show-offs, then that's your own problem.

I agree. I hate that viewpoint of Liszt. Yes, he was perhaps the greatest virtuoso ever and basically a rockstar in his day. And he wrote lots of works to promote that unsurpassed digital ability rather than for musical purposes. He was popular with the ladies, obviously...But why do people judge him for that? It's rather snobbish, for me. He was also an infinitely generous and remarkable man, who was also a great, revolutionary compositional genius past the rockstar life. 

[thorn]

I listened to the Mendelssohn Trio... nothing, sorry!

animae: the difference between 1750 music and todays music is akin to the difference between 1750 itself and today. the nature of the world is to progress and develop and move forward- if people were still writing today what people in the 1700s were writing, it would be incredibly stagnant. music is part of life, it has grown with culture, society, technology, you name it. To dismiss post 1750 music is to dismiss progression, to dismiss the present and the future!

Schumann: I am not indifferent to him, I actually can't bear to listen to a lot of his piano works for long periods of time.

Sorabji wrote some gorgeous stuff!

I feel towards Alkan what people have described feeling towards Liszt. I believe he was said to have better technique than Liszt? In any case, he definitely wrote works to promote "digital ability" over musical purposes, in my opinion.

Liszt was always about the music, I think. If he cared about showing off unrivalled technique, why would he have simplified the Grandes Etudes for fear they wouldn't be played after his death? I just think he was a very orchestral thinker and had the gift of translating that to the piano. I am not too fond of his orchestral works though- I feel any orchestral talent he had went into his piano works if that makes any sense to anyone?

[j_menz]

Anything past 1750 is garbage (in my opinion).

Music died with JS Bach?   Fairly limiting, but hey, you're still young. I love Bach as much as anyone, but things did happen after him that are very worthwhile.

Why don't you try some of the Busoni or Liszt transcriptions of Bach for starters, or some late Beethoven, Busoni's Fantasia Contrapuntistica, the Shostakovich 24 Preludes and Fugues or (waits for the wrath of some) Michael Nyman.

Hey, if you're really brave, try Opus Clavcembalisticum by Sorabji.

[thorn]

animae- also, if you think anything past 1750 is garbage, why did you post a thread about learning the Rachmaninoff Third Concerto? it was written 150-60 years too late!

[stoudemirestat]

Liszt was always about the music, I think. If he cared about showing off unrivalled technique, why would he have simplified the Grandes Etudes for fear they wouldn't be played after his death? I just think he was a very orchestral thinker and had the gift of translating that to the piano. I am not too fond of his orchestral works though- I feel any orchestral talent he had went into his piano works if that makes any sense to anyone?

I do think that Liszt, for the most part, was about the music. However I think that (I could be wrong) in many of his early opera fantasies there are passages that he wrote to show off his technique. Even he admitted his opera fantasies are worthless trash (which I disagree with, some of them are absolutely masterful). I think the etudes are a bad example. The worse opera fantasies would be where to look.

But I do agree about him being a very orchestral thinker and had the gift of translating that to the piano, as good as anyone in the 19th century.

It was your opinion but I love his orchestral works. I think his ideas were very good, his orchestration rather inconsistent. But the Faust Symphony is a masterpiece. The Dante Symphony is remarkable too, if not flawed. The tone poems, as Alan Walker said..."Their historical importance is undeniable; both Sibelius and Richard Strauss were influenced by them, and adapted and developed the genre in their own way. For all their faults, these pieces offer many examples of the pioneering spirit for which Liszt is celebrated." They are very inconsistent, but some of them, given a good performance, are terrific (although maybe not to everyones taste). Works like Les préludes, Tasso, Lamento e Trionfo, Mazeppa, Orpheus, Hunnenschlacht, Hamlet, Héroïde funèbre, Von der Wiege bis zum Grabe - are great. As Liszt aged his orchestration got better. In his later choral works his orchestration is pretty much flawless and very effective. He was an inconsistent, but revolutionary orchestral composer who wrote terrific works in the genre.

[redbaron]

Alkan is chronically boring, Schumann leaves me completely unaffected bar about two pieces and I think the vast majority of Mozart's piano output is dull, twinkly, hugely overrated shite.

[werq34ac]

Alkan is chronically boring, Schumann leaves me completely unaffected bar about two pieces and I think the vast majority of Mozart's piano output is dull, twinkly, hugely overrated shite.

Mozart I understand why people don't like him. "Too happy" as some say. Personally however, Mozart is the perfect composer even if that perfection makes him a bit boring at times. Not exactly emotionally heavy stuff (apart from stuff like the requiem and the a minor sonata) so it's not as "moving" as say Chopin or Rachmaninoff, but the beauty of Mozart is of it's perfection.