Classical Music : Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …

Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …


Alan Bennett was cast away on 28 August 1967. His luxury was an “unending supply of afternoon teas”. He has never returned. “It’s years since I was on Desert Island Discs,” he wrote in his diary in 2010, “but these days I’d find it much easier to choose the eight records I don’t want than those that I do. I don’t ever want to hear again Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, Schubert’s 5th Symphony, Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, Mozart’s 40th Symphony.”


I certainly agree with his 2nd choice. Pretty sick of PaaE too!

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/jan/06/desert-island-discs-75-defining-moments-from-75-years-castaways


You're my wife now.

Re: Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …

The last two choices are obviously dumb. Can't disagree with the first three though.


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Re: Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …

I can't hear the violin solos in Scheherazade without thinking of this: https://t.co/c6SI7aUc7W




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Re: Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …

Heard Scheherazade at a Christmas Eve concert and have been humming it ever since.

I hope Bennett will get over it (and himself, but I doubt it). At one point, eons ago, I decided I hated Handel's Messiah, esp. the Hallelujah Chorus. After years of avoiding it, I went to a Christmas season concert with My Lovely Wife and had a spiritual experience. Now, a live concert every Xmas season (and we went once during Easter) is a family tradition.

You will part me from my Schubert, Beethoven, and Mozart when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.

mf

“I know that, in spite of the poets, youth is not the happiest season"

Re: Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …

There's a difference between disliking pieces because they're overplayed vs. disliking them for being of poor quality.

I try not to think badly something just because it's overplayed, I'm not going to let the fact that a few bars from Beethoven's 5th or 9th have been used to sell everything from laundry detergent to tires interfere with my enjoyment of the music.

In contrast, there are other pieces that are both overplayed and just not very good. Bennett's complaint can't seem to distinguish between the two, since it lumps Mozart's 40th into the same category as Pictures at an Exhibition.

Re: Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …

I'd be ok to never hear any of those again. I can handle the last movement of the RK every few years or so (the Reiner recording of course!).

I've never heard an interesting Schubert symphony & the 5th is indeed excruciatingly dull.

I hate the Pastoral, well most of it.

I've never understood why people like Pictures, piano or orchestral version. I think it's one of those pieces where people forget that the famous openings to some of the movements are about as interesting as those movements get. The final Great Gate outing is perhaps one of the most soporific & seemingly interminable passages of music I can think of.

I think there may a couple of occasions between now & death where Mozart's 40th would be welcome...there's just too much quality in it - despite its hackneyed feel - to ignore as easily as the rest.

I suppose this is the wrong time to add to Mr Bennett's (my uncle was at university with him, don't you know!) list, especially as the list would be so very long, but I'll throw in 'any piece by Dvorak, any opera by Donizetti, Rossini, Bizet, Bellini, Offenbach, Gounod, & Bruch's Scottish Fantasy'... what about you?

Re: Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …

So.... what do you like?

Re: Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …

Anything scored for slide rule and pocket calculator.

stfu about fking avatars already.

Re: Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …

fud-slush likes Wagner. Hey, on that note, fud: is there anything by Wagner, post-Rienzi, that you DON'T like?


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Re: Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …

Absolutely; Tannhauser, Lohengrin, Dutchman...anything pre-Ring. Tannhauser & Lohengrin have a few moments, I suppose, but there's a lot of snooze time. The Ring on are in a completely different league.

Re: Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …

Oh, I didn't realize. But thumbs up to everything from the Ring on?


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Re: Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …

Plenty...you can beat the Germans - Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, Strauss; Austrians - Mozart (in small doses), Mahler; French - Ravel, Debussy; & Russians - Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, Stravinsky - enough for a lifetime, but not just them, obviously. I don't see how music would be missing anything without Dvorak.

Re: Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …


but I'll throw in 'any piece by Dvorak, any opera by Donizetti, Rossini, Bizet, Bellini, Offenbach, Gounod, & Bruch's Scottish Fantasy'...

Even William Tell?

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Re: Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …

...ok, I'll save the overture (a childhood favourite), & those to the Thieving Magpie (purely because it was the first piece I played in an orchestra) & maybe the B of Seville...but only (yet again) if they're the Reiner recordings! Anything that comes after those overtures is crushingly dull...I've no idea how anyone can bear to perform or listen to them without suicidal urges.

Re: Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …


I suppose this is the wrong time to add to Mr Bennett's (my uncle was at university with him, don't you know!) list, especially as the list would be so very long, but I'll throw in 'any piece by Dvorak, any opera by Donizetti, Rossini, Bizet, Bellini, Offenbach, Gounod, & Bruch's Scottish Fantasy'... what about you?


You know that Friedrich Nietzsche's syphilis was already getting the better of his brain when he declared Offenbach "a far greater genius" than Wagner. He thought that Tales of Hoffman a greater work than Tristan und Isolde? Really???

As to the lest of your list, I can do without Dvorak's symphonies but like his cello concerto and some of his sacred choral works. I like Bizet in the same way that I like Glenn Miller band music - not something to be taken too seriously, but fun to listen to. Most of the rest on your list I can take or leave.

Re: Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …

Did he really?! How absurd...he'd have probably ironically thought that the Superman was better than the Batman too. He clearly had no ear for music whatsoever...& why should he have done? Offenbach is so much easier to understand, & hate, if you are musical.

I used to like the Dvorak cello concerto, & like it a lot. It's not a terrible piece by any means, & there is still the odd bar that delivers on an emotional level, but alas there are too many poor, syrupy or plain dull moments too. Not even Rostropovich can make me listen now. The Elgar is worse, but that's for another thread, if at all.

I like the arrangements that the likes of Sarasate or Horowitz did of themes from Carmen, & you're right about its lack of seriousness, but I'd still feel slightly guilty listening to it...guilty of wasting time.

Re: Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …

Nietzsche had some musical training and composed some short pieces for piano. They're nothing spectacular (you can listen to some of them on youtube) but they do show that he should have known enough about music not to say such stupid things, even if they were said out of spite.

Re: Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …

My bad, I shall check them out, thanks...

Re: Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …

But Superman is better than the Batman. He has super powers whereas the Batman has a cool car. Superman doesn't need a car.

Dvorak had a couple of good string quartets, no? Pictures, Scheherazade and Scottish Fantasy are unlistenable.

Re: Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …

Superman is Siegfried, Batman is Hagen, Wonder Woman is Brünnhilde, Wonder Woman wins.


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Re: Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …

...but they all die! Some victory...

Re: Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …

I'm sure, but it was an attempt at a Nietszchean Superman jest more than anything.

I've heard the American quartet - reason enough not to listen to any more. Aw, no I wouldn't agree that Scheherazade is in unlistenable territory - I think it has too much quality for that - but it is rather repetitive, not much is developed & it's all a bit Hollywood.

Re: Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …

"what about you?"

Well Pachelbel's Canon would be No. 1 with a bullet!

Scheherazade in at No. 2.

The Lark Ascending is really starting to get on my tits these days too - it's never off the radio.







You're my wife now.

Re: Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …


Well Pachelbel's Canon would be No. 1 with a bullet!


Re: Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …


I don’t ever want to hear again Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, Schubert’s 5th Symphony, Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, Mozart’s 40th Symphony.”


This seems like a rather strange list. I can certainly do without Pictures at an Exhibition, and can take or leave Scheherezade. I'm surprised to see Mozart's 40th symphony, which is one of his best symphonic works, lumped into the same category.

I suppose that the common characteristic is that Bennett thinks that all of the above are overplayed, but that's not really true of Schubert's 5th symphony (among Schubert's symphonies, only his "unfinished" 8th and 9th are played relatively often - and there's a good reason for that. Most of his earlier symphonies are juvenilia, less than successful imitations of Mozart and Haydn).

Re: Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …

Of Bennett's list, the Rimsky-Korsakov is the only one I'm in full agreement, and partially with sections of Pictures. I love just about everything written by Bach, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Weber, Gluck, Wagner, Verdi, Brahms, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Faure, Bruckner, Mahler, R. Strauss, Stravinsky, Messiaen, and Bartok.

One composer that I have a problem with is Ravel, I really like some of his works but find others quite boring and repetitive. Pavane, very boring; Daphnis e Chloe (suite), good for one listen, then too long and repetitive. I find Bolero less repetitive than the previously mentioned works, despite its deliberate repetitious form. I do like his string quartet, piano concerto, and Le tombeau de Couperin.

Re: Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …

Actually, I take back having Bruckner in my "good" list. I like about half of his symphonies.

Re: Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …


Actually, I take back having Bruckner in my "good" list. I like about half of his symphonies.


I like about half of his symphonies too, but in a different way. Usually, his first movement and adagio are impressive, but then he has a scherzo that sounds like a broken record and a finale that often sounds like an incoherent mess. There are some exceptions, however: the scherzo of the Bruckner 9th is amazing, and the finale of his fifth puts the finale of the Brahms 4th to shame.

Re: Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …

Hmmm, I'll have to try listening to the 5th again. What puts me off some of them is when he gets into a sort of bombastic mode with super loud brass orchestration. I like the more lyrical, introspective parts, like the 7th second movement or the 8th third movement.

Re: Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …


I'll have to try listening to the 5th again. What puts me off some of them is when he gets into a sort of bombastic mode with super loud brass orchestration. I like the more lyrical, introspective parts, like the 7th second movement or the 8th third movement.


That's the other issue I have with most of Bruckner's finales (especially the finales to the 4th and 8th), they contain too much empty noise. You get even more of this with Mahler and Shostakovich, who are also at their best when they aren't trying too hard to sound grandiose.

Re: Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …

I talk sh-t about how I never want to hear another piece by Antonio Formula Vivaldi ever again but then the first movement of Spring comes on the radio and I melt.


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Re: Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …


I never want to hear another piece by Antonio Formula Vivaldi


That's how I feel about GP Telemann, who seems to be the most frequently played Baroque composer on many classical radio stations. Those in charge of the programs must think he's "easier listening" than Bach and most of his other contemporaries, which is true, albeit not in a good way.

Re: Pieces of Classical music Alan Bennett never wants to hear again …

God created Telemann so Handel could steal his tunes and use them better. And yet my generally excellent-taste-having father loves Telemann. I don't get it.


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