Sunday, January 18, 2009

Resolved Question: Favorite piece of classical music that you never hear performed?

Anything from Western art music. There's just so much music out there that plenty of wonderful pieces of music commonly get overlooked by orchestras and radio stations. What are you're favorite under-appreciated works? As for me, I can't help but fall into my early college days studying classical saxophone. I'm a big fan of Russel Peck's The Upward Stream, as well as his sax quartet piece Drastic Measures. Ibert's Concertina da Camera comes to mind as well. For more traditional fare, I'd love to hear some of Barber's songs on the radio occasionally. He wrote some wonderful vocal music. The same goes for Mahler's songs. And while I'm on Mahler, I always seem to notice much more performances of his symphonies 1, 2, 5, and 8, but I wish that I would hear more of 9. Although 2 is probably my favorite, I'm a huge fan of 9, and I hardly ever hear it. I would also love to be able to hear an orchestra perform John Adams' Century Rolls piano concerto. It's such a unique sound for a piano concerto, but I have never heard it played, outside of my ipod. How about you guys? I totally used the word "you're" instead of "your". I hate it when I have bad internet grammar... Thank you all for the answers. You guys always put any of my picks to shame! And del.icious.manager...wow what a list. Of course, I guess that's your job, so it makes sense. Doc Watson, great call on the Pearl Fishers Duet. That has to be one of the more beautiful melodies ever written, and it's also short and sweet. There's no reason for that piece not to get more play on the radio. In addition to what I mentioned yesterday, Shostakovitch also came to mind. I'd really like to hear more of his string quartets get air time.

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