What are you listening to?

[jaybee]

There seem to have been a surprisingly large number of recordings of Onslow

I surely can't be the only one thinking

nope....

[Ciaran]

There seem to have been a surprisingly large number of recordings of Onslow

I surely can't be the only one thinking

nope....

Footnotes please!

[Ciaran]

Thanks Pepe, I thought you were perhaps the most likely to answer! There seem to have been a surprisingly large number of recordings of Onslow, and I'm quite tempted to try him. I'm not expecting an undiscovered Beethoven, but the second-rate composers have their own charms, as you are well aware!

Of course. And sometimes it´s even more healthy to hear a little Onslow or Franchomme than to buy yet another Trout Quintet (especially when you already have 17). And when I say second rate by no means I mean a "bad" composer, it´s just to put him in perspective with the handful of undisputed masters.

It's interesting isn't it? When you compare with painting, we're prepared to go around a gallery and look at all the pictures, including those by artists we've never heard of and just enjoy them for what they are, literature similarly, but with music we tend only to want to listen to the 100% AAA guaranteed masters, with the result that the list of familiar composers is far shorter than that of authors or painters.

[Diapason]

Onslow was the name of a character in Keeping Up Appearances, a classically naff British sitcom. That's him in the photo, as you've probably guessed.

Totally agreed about enjoying so-called second-rate composers. There are plenty of them who deserve to be better-known.

[fergus]

I have long enjoyed Kempe's Brahms. It is not too heavy texturally, yet has power and is very lyrical.

[jaybee]

[jaybee]

It's interesting isn't it? When you compare with painting, we're prepared to go around a gallery and look at all the pictures, including those by artists we've never heard of and just enjoy them for what they are, literature similarly, but with music we tend only to want to listen to the 100% AAA guaranteed masters, with the result that the list of familiar composers is far shorter than that of authors or painters.

Has there been a revival of certain composers? in the context of painting, many of the 100% AAA rated masters have only been rated as such since the mid-late 19th century with the onset of the art historian in the vein of Ruskin, whose pronouncement on who was a master or otherwise was Si authoritatively made that it has been forgotten that before such declaration they were just one more in a canon of largely unheard of painters. Thus the taste of a handful of cranky Victorian englishmen has dominated the landscape of historical painting...

Has a similar thing happened with music...?? has JSB always been considered top notch since he started composing, or was he resurrected?

[fergus]

I have a number of the CDs in that series and I have always enjoyed them. I think that the Sacred Music of Vivaldi is still underrated.

[fergus]

Has a similar thing happened with music...?? has JSB always been considered top notch since he started composing, or was he resurrected?

Absolutely not. JSB was completely forgotten and totally ignored until his music was publicly resurrected by Mendelssohn in 1829 when he conducted The St. Matthew Passion.

[fergus]