Unsung music by not exactly unsung composers!

[Pengelli]

My favourite music by VW are 'Five Tudor Portraits',Symphonies
8 & 9 & 'The Poisoned Kiss'. They seem pretty unsung to me?

[Pengelli]

...Performance wise! I find the way certain works by famous composers get all the attention very annoying!

[mbhaub]

Me too! You sit through season after season and you hear Tchaikovsky 4, then 5, then 6 with the first piano concerto and violin concerto thrown in. Then it all repeats. Rarely do Manfred, symphony 3, or the 2nd piano concerto make an appearance. With Prokofieff it's symphonies 1 & 5, 1 & 5, 1 & 5. Maybe some music from Romeo and Juliet, perhaps a violin concerto. Piano concertos 3, then 3, then 3, then 3...and so it goes. I've caught symphonies 3, 6, & 7 one time each in the last 30 years. And don't even mention Vaughan Williams! I remember the 2nd (London) symphony, and the 4th a few years ago. And that's it. Oh, and the overture to The Wasps. Nothing else. Yes, it's bad enough that some composers will never get played, but to keep playing the same old things over and over is just wrong and repulsive. That's why I won't go to concerts featuring symphonies of Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn. Enough already!

[JimL]

I guess you guys live in podunks.  I've heard live performances of the Tchaik S 1 (Winter Dreams) at least twice in my lifetime (once by a community orchestra, once at the Hollywood Bowl).  I've seen his Rococo Variations for cello and orchestra performed twice (I participated as a bass player in the UCLA Symphony the first time).  True, the PC 2 gets short shrift, but that's mainly because the damn thing's so hard to play!  It's one of the biggest knucklebusters in the repertoire, which is probably why so few pianists learn it.  Some years back a young violinist played the Saint-Saens VC 2 with the Santa Monica Symphony.  So there is hope for the more unsung works of the greats as well as the great works of the unsung!  

[TerraEpon]

Makeing your own works lists of various composers, you get to know their works pretty well.

How unsung do you want? Tchaikovsky's Mandred and early symhponies are pretty sung compared to, say, The Snow Maiden or Hamlet, and don't even mention the other bits of incidental music.
Then there's most of the piano music, and so forth. And not even all the orchestral music is known -- hell, I had to buy a fricken LP just to hear the Jurisprudence March and the Overture in C...

And that's just Tchaik, one of the most popular composers in the world.

[Pengelli]

And Dvorak's 'Kate & the Devil',instead of 'Rusalka'. A wonderful
opera. I can't see anything wrong with it!

[Ilja]

There's so much good Tchaikovsky still not available as commercial recordings: the Bohemian Melodies, incidental music to many of the operas (Snegourochka, Dmitri, Vakula, Voyevoda etc. etc.), the early overtures, etc. Even the excellent orchestral suites are only known by a handful of releases.

[Jonathan]

I agree with Ilja - the same is true of Liszt.  Ok, I know all the piano music is now on disc (well, there is another double disc due out in 2011 on which will be more unknown stuff that Leslie Howard has discovered) but there has only been limited interest in the songs, the sacred choral works, the other orchestral works (I mean aside from the Symphonic poems) and the piano duet/4 hand pieces.  As I member of the Liszt society and their CD reviewer, I find this very annoying. 

[TerraEpon]

And Dvorak's 'Kate & the Devil',instead of 'Rusalka'. A wonderful
opera. I can't see anything wrong with it!

I prefer The Jacobin myself. Dvorak too, though, wrote a LOT of great and very little recorded music. Actually both Tchaikovsky and Dvorak are on my 'completionist' list -- I'm actually trying to archive a complete recorded work set for them (and a number of others), which isn't always easy with OOP stuff and of course stuff never even recorded.

I've even been pondering DLing some scores (Tchaik especially has a number) and sequence/notate them just to hear them, since I've been getting back into that sort of thing (in high school I'd spend a LOT of my free time sequencing music, mostly well known stuff borrowed from the VAST collection of the Cincinnati Public Library, as well as Dover scores I bought. I tapered off once Mp3s came around and I got back into other free time wasters though...)

[Peter1953]

Yes Martin, I agree with you. On the other hand, Brahms…

Could something as banal as money be the reason?

Commercial classical music broadcasting companies and many concert halls focus on popular, well-known “hits” for a broad and general public. People like to listen to famous tunes and concert movements, and (have to) hear all the interrupting commercials. People visit concerts with popular classics, because that’s business. In my country (but I’ve seen it in Toronto as well) it’s not seldom that a totally unknown piece of a contemporary composer is programmed before the break (which is in fact a good opportunity for the composer, especially if reviews in newspapers are positive), followed after the break by the concert piece people are coming for: like the Tchaikovsky 4, 5 or 6, but not the 1, 2, 3 or Manfred.

How many people would come to a concert if before the break someone like Hamelin is giving a dazzling performance of Atterberg’s delicious PC, and after the break the orchestra treats the audience to an unforgettable Raff 5? Maybe only Forum members…or am I too pessimistic? 

[TerraEpon]

Could something as banal as money be the reason?

Commercial classical music broadcasting companies and many concert halls focus on popular, well-known “hits” for a broad and general public. People like to listen to famous tunes and concert movements, and (have to) hear all the interrupting commercials.

Well this is quite obvious. Just goto  any of the special compilations offered at Amazon and elsewhere, of the 99 essential <x> masterpieces. Usually they are single tracks. The most recent Vivaldi was 33 concerti. They get mostly praise simply because they are so cheap, no matter the fact the are cherry picked movement (even when the same piece is represented, they aren't together) and not so great recordings.

[Pengelli]

TerraEpon: I love 'The Jacobin'. I find Dvorak's operatic output
very satisfying. Like his choral music, it is always over looked.

[Pengelli]

Oh,and Humperdinck's superior 'Konigskinder',instead of 'Hansel
& Gretel'. A beautiful opera that deserves more performances.

[Ilja]

Commercial classical music broadcasting companies and many concert halls focus on popular, well-known “hits” for a broad and general public. People like to listen to famous tunes and concert movements, and (have to) hear all the interrupting commercials. People visit concerts with popular classics, because that’s business. In my country (but I’ve seen it in Toronto as well) it’s not seldom that a totally unknown piece of a contemporary composer is programmed before the break (which is in fact a good opportunity for the composer, especially if reviews in newspapers are positive), followed after the break by the concert piece people are coming for: like the Tchaikovsky 4, 5 or 6, but not the 1, 2, 3 or Manfred.

Agaiin, I feel I have to emphasise the difference between concert-going audiences and CD- (or download-) buying audiences. The latter are largely collectors and far more adventurous than the former. This is enhanced by the fear on the part of concert programmers that an already dwindling clientele is further scared off by unexpected choices. It's the old story of sixty percent of the custom determining 90 percent of supply.

Sooner or later, however, they'll need to adjust.

[JimL]

Or maybe it's dwindling because of boredom.  That's always been my contention.  Spicing up the proceedings with unexpected choices might add a sense of adventure to the concertgoing crowd, if you sell the idea right.