"Inessential" Classics

[aeolium]

As a potential alternative to "Essential Classics" I would like MBers to suggest the names of composers, from any century including this one, whose music is rarely broadcast or even performed and whose music they would like to hear broadcast - perhaps in the new successor programme to "Essential Classics". I am not especially concerned with the reasons for the infrequency of previous broadcast, or with views that composer X is more deserving than composer Y, but just with the composers that people would particularly like to hear (and as an optional extra any comments on their music).

I will start the ball rolling by suggesting three names from the last century: Graham Whettam, mentioned on another thread and one of whose quartets interested me when I heard it some years ago; Berthold Goldschmidt, whose music enjoyed a brief revival in the 1980s and early 1990s but has not been heard much since; and Bernard van Dieren, for the sole reason that smittims on the previous boards used to go on about his Chinese Symphony (and I have not heard a note of his music).

[antongould]

Roy Harris IMHO a fine composer who hadn't, SC reports, featured on R3 for over a year until last week when his Symphony 3 was played by Mr. Cowan. Also Galina Ustvolskaya - I have her Piano concerto and Symphony No.1 which I love.
I think I may have spelt Harris and Cowan correctly!

[salymap]

Like Graham Whettam, I think Herbert Murrill worked for the BBC [as Head of Music in his case]years ago but his works are never heard now. He wrote two very attractive cello concertos and much more. I'd also like to hear of some of the composers of my youth like Geoffrey Bush, Alan Bush, Gordon Jacob and John Ireland.

[Richard Tarleton]

aeolium, Flotow's Marta has come up on this and the old board from time to time as an unfairly neglected opera. Flotow a one-hit wonder (cf Mascagni, Leoncavallo, Catalani, Cilea) but Marta is hardly ever played.

[Suffolkcoastal]

I'll back Anton up with Roy Harris of course, and my other choices would be Eduard Tubin and David Diamond, As reserves: Walter Piston, Vagn Holmboe. Herman Koppel, Kalliwoda and Atterberg. I think I'd better stop there before I write an essay!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Leopold Spinner is a composer I know only through seeing a couple of his scores some years ago, and excerpts from other works in essays. He's not available on youTube, and I'd really like to actually hear the Music.
Milton Babbitt hasn't had many broadcasts in the past forty years (and if David Bedford is worthy of a pre-Hear - and I think he does - then Babbitt surely deserves an entire Hear & Now!)
John Dunstable gets shamefully few broadcasts for someone of his importance: and the composers featured in the Eton Choirbook and the Old Hall Manuscripts are cultural treasures we should be celebrating in the same breath as we do Chaucer or Turner.
Ronald Stevenson, Alistair Hinton ...

... and, of course, ...

[Ferretfancy]

Suffolkcoastal

Tubin, Diamond , Holmboe and other worthies are all in my reserve collection. as I nurse a hope that one day I might find them interesting. I'm sorry, but I bought quite a few CDs by these composers when their music began to appear on disc, and I'm sure that it was a worthwhile enterprise at the time, but they are not for me. I've kept some Piston on the shelf because I like the two violin concertos when I hear them, but even so they simply don't stay in the memory.

It's the lack of the individual fingerprints that you can find in other composers that defeats my interest. If for instance I listen to late Stravinsky, even after the Webern influence,it's still his voice that I hear. No doubt there are under appreciated composers, but more often than not the neglect is understandable.

[Serial_Apologist]

Suffolkcoastal

Tubin, Diamond , Holmboe and other worthies are all in my reserve collection. as I nurse a hope that one day I might find them interesting. I'm sorry, but I bought quite a few CDs by these composers when their music began to appear on disc, and I'm sure that it was a worthwhile enterprise at the time, but they are not for me. I've kept some Piston on the shelf because I like the two violin concertos when I hear them, but even so they simply don't stay in the memory.

It's the lack of the individual fingerprints that you can find in other composers that defeats my interest. If for instance I listen to late Stravinsky, even after the Webern influence,it's still his voice that I hear. No doubt there are under appreciated composers, but more often than not the neglect is understandable.

Have to say, I completely agree. From a few weeks ago, William Schuman fell into a forthright-but-bland category of US composers for me, too... Peter Mennin, Norman Dello Joio - to my ears they all compose(d) the kind of "efficient" music one would expect from composers composing in the light of the mainstream middle path of European modern classical music in the 1940s and '50s, when much more interesting things were happening Stateside at the time in the wake of John Cage, and most especially in jazz. I would though exclude Sessions and Carter from this generalisation.

[MrGongGong]

Trevor Wishart : a national treasure and huge influence on a whole generation and largely ignored by the BBC

[Chris Newman]

The music of Sir Michael Tippett has sadly largely disappeared. The same thing happened with Sibelius and Vaughan Williams after they died. The Midsummer Marriage and King Priam are due for revival at one of the major British opera houses. Come on, Glyndebourne, buck up. Some of the middle late period is challenging to newcomers but much of the early and late stuff is as listenable as that of Ben Britten. The challenge of works like The Vision of St Augustine, King Priam and The Mask of Time is worth the hard climb, though I doubt if even the most staunch fans will really accept The Ice Break and New Year. That leaves a massive amount of superb music.

[Bax-of-Delights]

Up until yesterday I would have put Nicholas Maw firmly in the camp of unplayed worthies - and I still do. Sunday afternoon's Maw festival was a revelation and one wonders just why he has been ignored for so long.

[french frank]

One of the first LPs I bought was of harpsichord(?) music by Orlando Gibbons; on the other side, the works of Giles Farnaby. Knowing little, I thought of them both as masters of early keyboard music.

Farnaby has appeared a couple of times (once and repeated) on TTN in an arrangement for brass ensemble by Elgar Howarth; and on an early Early Music Show where he was featured in 2006.

Of whom, Grove: "... he was an instinctive composer with original ideas and sufficient conviction to put them across effectively. His music is correspondingly vital and telling; at its best it has a spontaneity and charm few of his contemporaries can rival." (Just what I thought )

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Farnaby "... was an instinctive composer with original ideas and sufficient conviction to put them across effectively. His music is correspondingly vital and telling; at its best it has a spontaneity and charm few of his contemporaries can rival." (Just what I thought )

[subcontrabass]

Can I suggest Antonin Reicha: 24 Wind Quintets. He invented this combination of instruments, which is all too rarely heard.

[Belgrove]

Robert Simpson. Eleven symphonies and fifteen string quartets for starters. There was an excellent Composer of the Week some while ago which took the form of a civilised and educational conversation between Donald Macleod and Stephen Johnson, but not much since.