Unpopular opinions
As the title says, what are your unpopular opinions about classical music, more specifically strings?Mine is I don't think the Ysaye sonatas are that good...
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Even if I could play the Ysaye sonatas I don't think I would find beauty in them (maybe not even "music"). But that's just me! I admire anyone who can play them (in tune).
I generally don't like the string quartet as an ensemble and feel it is lacking something. (I do love piano quartets and all types of quintets and sextets.)
"Knowing composer's intentions" or heeding stylistic traditions "because this is how it was originally played" is ridiculous, boring and kills creativity. The sheet music is enough: whatever the interpretation is, it just has to be convincing.
Ysaye I've only heard once and was massively underwhelmed.
Beethoven's music can be bitty.
The only opera CDs I ever buy are highlights. I have no Wagner - is that because he is all highlights or all lowlights?
I don't like the Romantics. I switch off after Mozart or Beethoven and switch on again with Debussy. And I haven't got the patience to listen to all those bloody Biedermeier Lieder.
And clearly my opinion of Suzuki is unpopular, lol!
Czardas is overrated.
The Four Seasons is played far too much on a British Radio station...
Also, I generally hate playing music written by pianists. All these 5 note runs. I only have 4 fingers, which means I'll have to make string crossings.
To me the first movement feels overly dramatic and pretentious - it serves very well as background music for some horror movie (something that is lacking of other popular concertos).
I love a lot of Beethoven, but could cut about 50% of his output, and I could cut about 75% of Shostakovitch.
I can't stand almost all of Heifetz's and Argerich's interpretations.
Lark Ascending always seems to be the post popular piece on the classic FM hall of fame.
Uh, pretty sure that's not an unpopular opinion. Except maybe among pianists.
All the best concertos were written by pianists. Symphonies too.
I think that counts as an unpopular opinion. It includes (if counting composers who made a living on the organ, fortepiano, or other piano predecessors) Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Ravel, Schumann, Franck, Faure, and Mendelssohn.
His music is pretty, but empty: icing sugar with the price-tag of caviar.
For a challenge, I would rather tackle Bartok's quartets, or the Brahms concerto.
1.) I will definitely be playing it horribly, missing notes, and not in tune if I tried to emulate the faster tempo of the more accomplished violinists than myself.
2.) I just prefer it slower (not too slow, just right that I don't mess up), and just enjoy the music.
I once played in an orchestra with a very fine young conductor who was a professional horn player and pianist. Needless to say, the brass and woodwind were kept on their toes and couldn't get away with anything but their best when he was in charge. He wasn't a string player, so there was a potential problem when handling the string sections. He dealt with this by spending every rehearsal break in discussing the strings and their problems with the CM. Later on, he took violin lessons from the CM, getting Grade 3 well within his first year. Doing this was a dramatic help to his orchestral conducting; he was now talking to the string sections at their level.
Aiden, I enjoy Bartok in general, just not his viola concerto which is weird as a viola player haha
I also would like to hear more works composed by string players, pieces that were composed on stringed instruments. I feel that the violinist/composer was somewhat marginalized in the 20th century. I listened to the Schoenberg concerto again recently and it sounds like something that must have been a piano concerto at some point in its genesis. Did Heifetz say it was unplayable?
Many of these composers were accomplished (or at least woke) violinists and understand the nature of the instrument.
I was actually specifically thinking of Bizet, who if I have a choice, I avoid.
You are talking about the chance of you ever being able to play the entire concerto? ;-)
Tchaikovsky concerto.
I'm not enthusiastic about Bruch either (1 or 2)
Almost anything written by Les Six - the words 'trivial' and 'banal' come to mind. There are exceptions but I can't recollect them just now.
I'm not wild about much of the virtuoso repertoire (inc Paganini and Sarasate) but I can accept it for what it is and enjoy it occasionally.
Much of Brahms, especially symphony no 3 and the second piano concerto - though I love the string sextets and the second symphony.
Several products of the most arid part of the 20th century - particularly the emanations of Darmstadt, IRCAM and their disciples.
Fortunately there's still plenty left to enjoy.
Opera is extremely boring.
Rachmaninoff should be considered among the five best composers of all time.
http://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/arts/music/23composers.html
I found it educational to consider his perspective and some favorite composers of mine that did not make his list.
The 81 years I have spent as an amateur musician playing alone and in ensembles of various sizes (71 years) music that I have loved (and not) have led me to expand my acceptance of what I hear and play (but not Ravel's Bolero).
Because I have a son who started writing "music" and songs in his early teens and still does it now (more than 40 years later) and a grandson who has made it a major part of his life I KNOW that those who write the music are doing it because it expresses something inside them that they are trying to communicate to the outside of them. So too, I reason, must have been the case for all known composers (except perhaps for those notes put on paper for pedagogical or experimental purposes). I think there is much to be gained bu trying to discern what that was/is.
Monteverdi, Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Verdi, Wagner, Brahms, Puccini, Debussy, Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Bartok.
No room for Ravel, Janacek, Mahler, Bruckner, Dvorak, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Strauss, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, but a place on the high table for Schoenberg and Puccini (!) who I'm sure would have had a great deal to talk to one another other about.
I hope we can all agree that it's fine to make lists of your greatest and worst, just as long as you don't believe you're RIGHT.
We can judge the technical difficulty of a piece, the number of voices it has, the kind of harmonies it employs (and their complexity...), but music, as a form of art, is still subjective, and a piece that doesn’t ‘click’ my taste or sensitivity can bring other people to tears.
So that’s why I think I am not necessarily right on my lists... but I’m convinced everyone else is wrong! ;-)
And what are very much minority views.
Some years ago, I was in an orchestra that contrinuted largely to the BBC's "Homeward Bound" programme - short pieces designed to be listened to in the commute.
Some of them were by forgotten composers who proved WHY they were forgotten. Some others were unknown pieces by great composers, proving that they could have off days like the rest of us.
Others were gems, so it certainly wasn't all dross.
Let's just say very varied.
At least we didn't hang around on them - we'd do around 10 pieces in a rehearse / record session of three hours.
In a thread titled Unpopular Opinions?
No opera!!! Blechhh!!
Now Tommasini did solicit input as I recall in creating his list.
But if I were to troll as some others seem to be doing: I love baroque with a LOT of vibrato playing way up on the strings. I LOVE extremely romantic era extremely virtuosic cadenzas for thing like Mozart concertos or even earlier. I understand but think HIP sucks big time.
I just don't like the ones by Wagner himself.
Hansel and Gretel!
At one point, because I wanted to get a good idea of what orchestras were actually playing, I combined five years' worth of the annual League of American Orchestras repertoire report in a single spreadsheet, running from 2008-09 through 2012-13. (Each year's report contains the entire season's programming from a sampling of professional and high-level amateur orchestras in the US and Canada.) From there, I extracted a list of every piece that had 10 listed performances over 5 years (which based on the sample size roughly translates to 50 performances per year in the US and Canada).
Exactly four pieces that I would call violin showpieces have 10 or more listed performances in that five-year period: Ravel's Tzigane (17), Saint-Saens's Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso (16), Sarasate's Zigeunerweisen (13), and Sarasate's Carmen Fantasy (12). As compared to 25 violin concertos, not including double concertos.
Tzigane was the 18th most performed piece for violin and orchestra, behind the following: Brahms (63), Tchaikovsky (53), Mendelssohn (47), Beethoven (44), Sibelius (41), Bruch No. 1 (40), Barber (37), Vivaldi "Winter" (36), Mozart No. 5 (31), Vivaldi "Autumn" (29), Vivaldi "Spring" (28), Vivaldi "Summer" (27), Prokofiev No. 2 (25), Mozart No. 3 (19), Shostakovich No. 1 (19), Bruch Scottish Fantasy (19), and Korngold (18).
The Brahms Double Concerto, the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola, and the Beethoven Triple Concerto, each including a violin soloist, also had more performances than Tzigane.
I suspect the problem with showpieces in general is that it is really hard to fit them into a program with a top-tier soloist, unless the soloist is playing the showpiece along with a relatively short concerto. (The same is true of Baroque concertos. The only reason the four Vivaldi concertos got on the list is that 25 of the performances of each of them were in fact performances of the entire Four Seasons in a single concert.)
Regarding opera, I'm generally not enthusiastic about the genre - with one exception: the Gilbert and Sullivan light operettas ("Mikado", "Gondoliers" etc), nearly all of which I've played in as cellist in semi-pro runs extending over several years. So I enjoyed seeing them for free (and getting paid for it) from my excellent vantage point in the pit. The unfortunate 2nd violins and violas, on the other hand, had their backs to the stage at all times :(
I've played in half a dozen amateur ones as an oboist, and yes, they are fun, and I look forward to playing violin in some, but I don't much feel the need to watch one.
I don't even get the point of Berlioz, Wagner, Mahler, and most romantic opera. I like Strauss's Don Juan, and maybe a few other things, but most of his music just sounds self-important. I went to "Ein Heldenleben" a few years ago, and it was torture. I don't know how unpopular all those opinions are, but I got 'em for days.
If I recall correctly, I was familiar the Barber concerto and Dvorak Romance before I had listened to the Brahms, Beethoven, or Mendelssohn. I wonder if there was a revival of interest in Barber's music - at least in the United States - in part due to the Adagio's inclusion in the movie "Platoon".
I like Gilbert and Sullivan too. Any video recommendations?
The baroque tradition of improvising and embellishment provides so much freedom to the music and more violinists should experiment with that in later era works.
Mozart's first violin concerto is underrated.
Beethoven's cello parts are garbage.
I can't stand the oboe.
The Dvorak concerto had 12 listed performances in those 5 years, making it a top-30 piece for violin and orchestra in US/Canada. The Dvorak Romance had just 5 listed performances.
I had actually never heard the Romance before I looked it up on YouTube tonight; it doesn't even sound vaguely familiar to me. I'm pretty sure I hadn't even heard of it, apart from maybe noticing that it existed when compiling the spreadsheet. For that matter, the first time I heard the Dvorak concerto was in 2016, when I was in the orchestra playing it. Until I saw it on the concert program, I wasn't even aware Dvorak had written a violin concerto even though I'd been a string player for 17 years and a regular classical radio listener for more than 20 years by that time.
For completeness, other than the above-mentioned concertos and the Dvorak, the other violin concertos with 10 or more listed performances were: Berg (14), Paganini No. 1 (13), Stravinsky (13), Mozart No. 4 (12), Glazunov (11), Ades "Concentric Paths" (10), Khachaturian (10), and Saint-Saens No. 3 (10).
Other pieces featuring at least one violin soloist with 10 or more listed performances: Brahms Double Concerto (24), Mozart Sinfonia Concertante (22), Beethoven Triple Concerto (19), Bach Double Concerto (12), and Bernstein Serenade (12).
Also, they haven't published a report since 2013, or at least it's not available on the website.
I remember my daughter coming home from Kindergarten one day and telling us over dinner how her class had been discussing that day what "opinions" are and how one should be careful with them. Fascinating, but her teacher basically nailed it.
First a confession: I am Swiss and we don't like the Germans very much. And Mutter is about as German (Germanic? Teutonic?) as they come. I just don't like her personality as it appears in interviews and writings. She comes across as pretentious and arrogant. If you don't believe me read her introduction to her recording of the Beethoven sonatas.
I heard her live only once. She was 11 years old at the time and played among other things a Beethoven sonata and Paganini caprice 24 (flawlessly). The whole performance was technically on the level of an excellent adult player and musically the work of a child.
Now to music:
I'll give an example: There is a recording of Beethoven's string trio op. 3* with Mutter playing the violin (I forget the other two). The second theme in the first movement of that piece is a marvel: the melody rises by a tenth in two measures, then takes a second start a fourth below the initial start and soars to even a second higher than before. It is a breathtaking moment in a piece that so far has had no real melody. But Mutter on that recording plays it as coldly as if it were from a Kreutzer study.
There is also her tendency to try too hard to be original--when she turns the middle movement of op. 30/3 into an adagio for example and pretends to find hitherto unknown depths in the music--when Beethoven titled it "tempo di minuetto ma molto moderato e grazioso", to my knowledge the most elaborate tempo marking in Beethoven's chamber music. The whole sonata is by far the wittiest of the set (most famously the unexpected--or shocking--a flat Major entry in the last movement) and the middle movement fits right in when the players begin to stutter once in a while.
Mutter is certainly a fabulous violinist, but--in my opinion--not such a great musician.
* If you don't know this trio I recommend you take the first chance you get to play it. It is well worth it.
I was listening to a performance of Mendelssohn that came on the radio late at night a few months ago, and I was lamenting that I couldn't find any contemporary players that played it tenderly and sensitively, as I heard James Ehnes live last summer give it a performance that I found lacking in any kind of nuance and I guess meant to thrill with its speed or something, and I was really amazed at what I was hearing on the radio with it's gorgeous sound, it's sensitive and beautiful phrasing, and just a sense of real tenderness and lyricism, and it was Anne Sophie Mutter.
I don't know if that was the same as this, but I'll just leave this here, as this performance really speaks to me as well (But in the end, I'm not trying to convince you, Albrecht):
Oh, and I guess you can add "James Ehnes - sterile player", to my list of unpopular opinions. But, but, but, maybe we're living in a world that needs as many sterile players as possible.
I don't find HH's playing cold at all. I find it tasteful and appropriate to the musical task at hand. She gets this "cold" reputation solely by appearing stiff and wooden on stage. Heifetz was cold on stage and aristocratic in his personality, but you can't argue he wasn't a soulful, romantic violin player.
But thanks for the trio recommendation, I'll check it out. My kids play violin and cello and I can manage some things on the piano. Hopefully Beethoven Op. 3 is not too much harder than Haydn. :)
As to HH: I find her solo Bach very boring indeed. But in Mozart sonatas I find her very convincing, more so than just bout anybody else. The first thing I heard from her was her recording of the Shostakovich concerto. I liked it--until I heard the recording with the old master to whom it was dedicated. That set the record straight.
When Alexander Markov plays Paganini's 24 caprices, they become music. In fact, they were my main introduction to the violin, and I must have listened to them all a hundred times over in the 9th grade.
Nobody else plays them like that. A lot of very prominent violinists' renditions of the caprices make me cringe, actually.
I have some of my own conservative tendencies, which I'm pretty comfortable with, mainly because I find most contemporary classical music to be pretty whack. I think other genres are more in-tune with the times.
30 years ago I did some art at night school and the teacher used to whistle Philip Glass. Only an asshole does that, surely?
I think I agree with everything you've said except the slight against shoulder-rest-less-ness.
I wonder how many centuries it will take before humanity can finally lay this conflict over violin *accesories*... to rest!
on 4 strings. I begrudgingly accept electric violins as an unfortunate necessity, but hate
a processed, unnatural sound. I personally find looping and all of that voodoo nauseating.
I hate Paganini: just senseless feats of execution.
Listeing to Brahms is like drinking mud.
JS Bach has his moments, but can be stodgy. Give me Telemann or CPE Bach instead.
I note the anti-Vaughan Williams sentiment. He was a bit of a split personality: one the one hand theres the almost schmaltzy Lark Ascending and Fantasia on Greensleeves, but on the other hand some wonderfully dark stuff like "Job" and Symphonies 4, 6, 8 and 9.
I trash-talk classical music and the whole industry around it, and the only objection I see is to a comment I threw in by the way about shoulder rests. I could probably formulate an unpopular opinion from that, but will stop and leave it as funny. Thanks!
I think Fauré is a greater composer than Debussy, and I think he even captures Maeterlinck's symbolism better than Debussy does.
But I would agree I think. Not a fan of Debussy
But here's an unpopular opinion. Judging from a 2001 BBC documentary I watched tonight Stockhausen seems to have been an articulate, intelligent and unassuming guy. Yes, there was something a bit..? unusual about him, ranging from complete control-freakery in his electronic pieces to total chaotic abandonment in e.g. the Helicopter Quartet which should be in every self-respecting string quartet's repertoire. No, actually I don't believe that.
Here's a curiosity for you - Faure was working on a violin concerto around the time of his first violin sonata, which he scrapped, and then reused themes for the string quartet, which was his very last opus. Judging by this, I'd say he made the right choice:
Have people been sneaking in amendments to their previous posts?
And The Lark Ascending!
I think Fauré was trying to find his feet harmonically at that time - He doesn't even use his patent cadence (Supertonic major to Mediant major. I remember tuning into a somewhat Wagnerian opera on the radio sung in French - I was at a loss to identify the composer until I heard one of the motifs ending in that cadence, then I knew the opera just had to be Pénélope. Some of the words then confirmed it), which he introduced after composing that incredibly beautiful Cantique de Jean Racine.
And Steve, if you agree to call me a person, the answer is yes.
Another opinion of mine that may be unpopular: I prefer Bruckner to Mahler (though, unlike a cousin of the latter's, I don't dislike it).
My right-hand finger nails have long lost their classical guitarist length, now being the same length as those of the left hand. Not so good perhaps for playing classical guitar but would be ideal for the gut-strung lute if I ever return to that instrument (watch out Dowland, if I do!).
In the rare orchestral whole movement in pizzicato I have been known to hold the violin a la guitar for convenience. No-one has raised objections.
And as for left-hand pizz, it can sometimes be useful, when playable, if a composer does something silly like putting a lone pizzicato in the middle of a fast bowed section.
Somehow, there are just certain composers I can't stand even though I love other composers whose work is in many ways similar.
Nothing like Mahler's 6th symphony for orchestra, with chorus of epileptic tenors, an anvil, one of those rubber clown horns, ukelele, throwing a bunch of dishes down the stairs, a baby laughing and the resultant thumping into the podium from the conductor being scratched behind the ears.
See, it's evocative, nay, redolent, of the time that Mahler rode the chipmunk ride at the carnival at 11:37pm on May 5th, 1873, and he could hear the screams from the tilt-a-whirl blending with the squeezebox music down below. His symphonies truly are the WHOLE world. A regular tunesmith, him (although I actually have enjoyed stuff of his other than his symphonies, like the "Songs of Children Being Shot Out of Cannons").
Well, I once serenaded him with the first six bars to the words, "Liverpool are a load of rubbish, rubbish".
Now, THAT may be an unpopular opinion with SOME!
I walked in on evening TV one night, with cricket on, and thought I must have misjudged it. But no, it was just a compression of the days highlights.
And test matches go for Dayys.
It’s quite good on the radio as background, as the commentators fill the hours between something happening, with sometimes hilarious reminiscences of hi-jinks in Indian hotels etc., on past tours. Seagulls always get a mention too.
Bruch 1 is bland and uninspired (especially in comparison to his other two, which is an opinion shared by the composer himself). Wieniawski and Paganini both realized that their works had no musical substance whatsoever, so they tried making them as difficult as possible in order to impress the wider world. Mozart is extraordinarily predictable to my ear (even if it's some obscure kochel that isn't played ever, I guarantee that I could guess how the piece goes after a single phrase) and is considered the absolute zenith of music by the community for some reason. Mendelssohn, even if its opening WASN'T so often butchered by students, still sounds unbalanced and awkward throughout the entire work.
I've never found satisfaction in playing anything from this era, in comparison to my specialization - new music. I began tackling the Berio Sequenza last semester as a side project to my other repertoire and I've never had more fun digging into a piece.
Here's the really unpopular one: I would rather sit through the Ysaye sonatas over the Bach sonatas. I don't really get the hate for the Ysaye sonatas on this board, they seem to be widely regarded as technical repertoire for music students and they are so very rarely performed.
It's like the time I went to Frank Music in NYC when I was a student and asked for the part and score to Schoenberg Concerto. Mr. Frank was a one man business and knew virtually everything about all printed music.
He said as he handed me the music, "You know, it's easier to buy this music than to play it."
Are you sure he didn't mean "easier to buy this than to listen to it"?
Schoenberg is a notoriously difficult modern concerto.
A pet hate hate of mine: opera singers: horrid screaming high notes, an a vibrato which destroys the music. Only half the cast sing remotely in tune.
But many have a vibrato at least a whole tone either side of the note,
and if there was no accompaniment we wouldn't guess what the note was.
Many are simply out of tune as well.
And I'm referring to prestigious broadcast productions!
Why is it that we violinists are told never to vibrate above the note, while singers apparently are exempt from this rule? Yes, I know about making oneself heard over the orchestra - but IMHO the cure is worse than the disease.
Ravel didn’t write Tzigane as a joke. He was inspired to write the piece after listening to Jelly d’Aranyi improvise one evening. After writing the piece he dedicated it to her and she performed it almost immediately. He had thought his piece was so fiendishly difficult that it would test her virtuosity, but when she rose to the challenge without a struggle, he remarked, “If I’d known she would play it so easily, I would have tried to make it more difficult!”
Supposedly Iso Briselli, the violinist for whom it was commissioned, complained to Barber upon receiving the first two movements that they were not virtuosic enough and did not show off his technical prowess. According to the story, Barber responded by writing the fiendishly difficult moto perpetuo third movement, which Briselli found unplayable. In danger of losing his commission money, Barber found another violinist, a student at the Curtis Institute of Music, to learn the third movement on short notice and prove that it was playable, upon which the sponsor agreed to pay Barber the full commission fee and Briselli forfeited the right to premiere the piece.
Good story, but very little of it is actually true.
For me Spohr, Viotti, Paganini, Vieuxtemps, Wieniawski, Ernst, Ysaye, et. al. are all worthy of being studied and performed. Now that's a "controversial" statement, and pretty unpopular everywhere.
I think liking the Bruch Gm is the minority view in our era. It is really good, however.
There was a comment above which was perhaps a joke-the Mendelssohn may be popular (and it is truly an extraordinary work), but how is the Paganini 5 in any way or shape or form "popular"? I bet most violinists do not know it exists.
In any case, the Mendelssohn is timeless, "perfect", and despite its status in the curriculum, not as often played in public as the Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Sibelius, etc.
I used to be much more of a contrarian as a younger player, but nowadays I have learned why the great works should be deemed as such. However, I am all for widening one's repertoire and musical horizons, believing "the classics" as defined by "experts" are not enough music to enrich my own lifetime.
I often opt to listen to Bach's cello suites played on viola instead.
There. I said it. Bring it on.
That leads me to my own unpopular opinion: I don't generally care for cadenzas. One notable exception is that I really like Joshua Bell's cadenza in the first movement of Mozart 3. If I am listening to a YouTube and the violinist starts into the Franko or Flesch cadenza, however, I'm more inclined to fast-forward to the second movement. At least that was written by Mozart.
It is as broad a generalization as those who place all the old composer-violinists output in the trash bin, because they are not as "musically important" as Bach, Beethoven, or Brahms. In my sick world, I do not have to choose either or, but rather am able to enjoy the Chaconne along the other "musically vacuous" works that many generally like to dislike. In short, I have no need to prove I am a serious musician by rejecting everything else that did not make the "musical cut" of an imagined, "learned" classical elite. There is a place for musical depth, lightness, sorrow, and joy.
My view is unpopular everywhere as aformentioned, and I do not mind if it is rejected. Having explored many works of those "bad" composers, I have learned to appreciate their output. Many of them really knew how to sing with their violins, and despite most of them being treated with certain musical disdain by many modern listeners, they often wanted to make beautiful and inspired works, more than just showing off their skills. It is also quite fine to dislike this repertoire, especially if you know what they are about-many if not *most* pros see not much value in these "trite" works, as you put it.
One does not need to play the violin to appreciate its repertoire-my comment was more intended for those who are very arrogant and overly opinionated, but do not even know what they hate well-they just know the composers are "not important", so they can all be safely thrown in the same garbage bag without hearing/playing a single note. There are a few curious listeners that do like the overall violin-composer repertoire even if they may have never held a violin themselves.
(Hating cadenzas is fine, though I feel they are part of Mozart's-and other composers'-original intentions, and thus part of the work. Too many Frankos played, perhaps. Joachim and Kreisler are also used a lot in the popular workhorses. But I like them. Still, the modern recording artist in the last few decades is seemingly starting to compose and play in public with their own cadenzas.)
Feel free to like what you like, and think the way you do.
When Ysaye was new to me, I also did not appreciate the Sonatas well (not saying you need "to grow"-you may never come to love them). I do not think it's "easy listening" for many-indeed, some other difficult works may be "easier on the ears". I think that was just his intention and style.
Whereas I like almost all Wieniawski, and a fair amount of Ysaye and Paganini (although I find them more uneven).
I understand your point. Fortunately, I do not know anyone like that.
Am I impressed? Not really. Mostly it seems to be virtuosity masquerading as music. Having said that, track 6 is nice.
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