I just don't like the noise it makes.... (those 'blind spot' pieces)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

So many - too many: Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra, and most performances of the New World Symphony most immediately obvious to me.

But works in the past that I've regarded with a similar sinking heart have become essential since - and I include the Bruckner #8 and Schubert #9 (both of which "clicked" when I reached my thirties.)

[eighthobstruction]

(both of which "clicked" when I reached my thirties.)

....all that spitting into the wind finding a locus....

[Nick Armstrong]

The Tallis Lamentations.

That's a very good point! I'm a Tallis nut.... apart from the Lamentations...

[Nick Armstrong]

the 'Unfinished'... stands beautifully complete as a two-movement work

... but (as the man said) I just don't like the sound it makes!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

....all that spitting into the wind finding a locus....

Sorry ... can't read this ... something in my eye ...

[teamsaint]

Sorry ... can't read this ... something in my eye ...

touch typing then?

[cloughie]

I was going to say 4'33" but I've not heard it yet!

[Nick Armstrong]

I was going to say 4'33" but I've not heard it yet!

You should try playing it! You may find it's a piece that matches your talent!

[Serial_Apologist]

I was going to say 4'33" but I've not heard it yet!

It's always on if you listen.

[Nick Armstrong]

It's always on if you listen.

[Serial_Apologist]

[cloughie]

You should try playing it! You may find it's a piece that matches your talent!

Nah - I'd probably do it too slow and then it'd be Brubeck!

[Serial_Apologist]

Home Bru

[Pabmusic]

As I said in an earlier post, I tend to think in pieces rather than composers. But there are some composers I just can't get along with sometimes. Bruckner (nice ideas, but they grate after the first 92 repetitions), some Mahler (2, 3, 6 especially), some Brahms (Symph.1 especially), Tchaikovsky 3 and the piano concetos (all of them), Dvorak 2 and all the tone poems (try as I might), almost all Liszt, some R. Strauss (Don Quixote drags - I feel), and I haven't even started on later 20th-Century composers (Britten has several 'blind spots' for me, and he was a fairly gentle composer).

At the last, though, it's not an intellectual choice (well, not usually): I either enjoy, or don't enjoy, individual works, whatever their origins.

[Nick Armstrong]

I would have to say that there's still a 'blind spot piece' for me from 2 of my favourite composers, Ravel and Shostakovich:

DSCH's Fourth still totally eludes me despite regularish attempts and many passionate advocates here (I have to admit I've still never heard his 2nd & 3rd all the way through ... but I think No 4 is in rather a different category...)

And I just can't get any pleasure out of Ravel's "L'Heure Espagnole" though its 'doubles partner' "L'Enfant et les Sortilèges" always brings me to my knees.