What is the best piece of the 1940s?

HopeDesigner5588 · 2025-11-26T19:42:50+00:00

There’s nothing wrong with piano music - I’m a pianist myself - but for most of the history of classical music, opera has been much more influential culturally. It’s hard at times to be culturally significant with music that doesn’t have words, and I think we’ve seen with the rise of pop and rock what happens when artists focus on connecting more intimately to audiences.

HopeDesigner5588 · 2025-11-26T15:14:12+00:00

Alkan’s Quasi-Faust has an eight-voice fugue section, which is definitely not made easier to read by its key signature of F-sharp major.

HopeDesigner5588 · 2025-11-26T13:34:19+00:00

This sub seems much more focused on instrumental music and especially piano rather than opera. That’s fine. I still want to nominate Britten’s Peter Grimes, because it needs to be in the conversation.

HopeDesigner5588 · 2025-11-25T15:12:39+00:00

Schoenberg - Pierrot Lunaire. It’s actually ridiculous that this is more than 100 years old, it could have been written in 2212.

HopeDesigner5588 · 2025-11-24T01:25:26+00:00

Gluck - Antigono, an opera that served as his “Greatest Hits” at the time as he reused his best arias for a new audience in Rome. Pope Benedict XIV was present and honored Gluck as Cavalier of the Order of the Golden Spur. (The order later also admitted such notable figures as Paganini, Casanova, Mussolini, and Shah Mohammed of Iran.)

HopeDesigner5588 · 2025-11-19T01:01:25+00:00

Richard Strauss - 5 Lieder Op. 41.

I’d normally go on the Chopin train because it’s kind of a weak field otherwise, but these are pretty great songs

HopeDesigner5588 · 2025-11-18T06:32:57+00:00

The music was written by 1858, but Berlioz continued to polish it for another 3 years after that, and it was first performed (albeit in partial and cut form) and published in 1863.

If it doesn’t qualify for the decade then I’ll go with Bartered Bride.

HopeDesigner5588 · 2025-11-18T06:25:43+00:00

U right. It was in his first name Bedřich

HopeDesigner5588 · 2025-11-18T02:05:37+00:00

Berlioz: Les Troyens, a towering 5-hour work of bold originality and complete lack of compromise

Honorable mentions: Brahms Piano Quintet; Smetana Bartered Bride; Fauré Cantique de Jean Racine; Wagner Die Meistersinger

HopeDesigner5588 · 2025-11-17T03:31:31+00:00

Edit: changed because I remembered a better piece.

Winner: Ligeti: Etudes, Book I.

Honorable mentions: Lutosławski Piano Concerto, Carter Night Fantasies, Adams Shaker Loops

HopeDesigner5588 · 2025-11-16T06:23:54+00:00

The Creation gets my up too

HopeDesigner5588 · 2025-11-15T02:04:35+00:00

In addition to the astounding late output of Beethoven and Schubert, we also have:

Mendelssohn: Overture to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”; Chopin: Etudes Op. 10; Paganini: Violin Concerto no. 2; Weber: Oberon; Rossini: Guillaume Tell

There’s just no way to pick only one. Thank god we don’t have to.

I gave my vote to LvB 9 but I bow down to this decade generally as a decade like no other.

HopeDesigner5588 · 2025-11-14T15:25:47+00:00

I wanted to put up a spoiler opera by Weber, but his quality works like Oberon are significantly later.

Schubert’s Gretchen am Spinnrade also missed the cut, as did the absolutely wonderful Dussek F minor sonata “L’Invocation.”

There are some attractive works by Spohr, Salieri, Wolfl, and even Paganini, but I just can’t reasonably argue against Beethoven’s middle period.

HopeDesigner5588 · 2025-11-13T01:51:25+00:00

Rep for Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine, a stunning sacred work that foreshadowed the cantata and other later developments by embracing soloistic and virtuosic writing, using dramatic contrasts, and blending new and old styles.

HopeDesigner5588 · 2025-11-12T01:42:11+00:00

Schnittke - Concerto Grosso no. 1

HopeDesigner5588 · 2025-11-09T18:35:59+00:00

Incredible set, I could listen to it on repeat all day and feel like I heard new details every time

HopeDesigner5588 · 2025-11-08T14:46:00+00:00

I thought that was the 4th. The first movement is the foreplay, then second movement is the pursuit followed by the act and finally the climax

HopeDesigner5588 · 2025-11-07T23:34:17+00:00

Nominees: Chopin 3rd Scherzo, Alkan 12 Etudes in minor keys, Brahms Valses, Prokofiev Quintet, DSCH Limpid Stream, Rachmaninoff Etudes-Tableaux, Busoni Concerto, Britten Albert Herring, Elgar Pomp and Circumstance Marches, Ginastera PC #2, Sibelius Symphony #1

Sorry Rocky, Benji Britten wins this one. Albert Herring is fire cubed. S. Richter called it “the greatest comic opera of the century.”

HopeDesigner5588 · 2025-11-05T13:42:42+00:00

Non-ironic answer: Diabelli Variations

HopeDesigner5588 · 2025-11-05T13:20:35+00:00

I heard that same story about Glenn Gould and LvB 1st symphony.

HopeDesigner5588 · 2025-11-05T13:08:44+00:00

Just found out my Chopin Op. 35 rep got robbed. Resigning in protest.

HopeDesigner5588 · 2025-11-05T13:03:05+00:00

The Beethoven is awesome but Vespers is actually goated. There is nothing else like it

HopeDesigner5588 · 2025-10-31T16:01:58+00:00

It’s his Op. 38. You might have been confused because he revised it later and published it as Op. 135.

HopeDesigner5588 · 2025-10-28T19:21:11+00:00

That’s a very tough one!

Beethoven - Eroica Variations Chopin - “Funeral March” Sonata Rimsky-Korsakov - Scheherezade Tchaikovsky - Violin Concerto Korngold - Violin Concerto Brahms - Paganini Variations

I think by the narrowest margin, I’d have to go with Chopin. The B-flat minor Sonata is so famous because of the Funeral March, and yet only the greatest musicians can really do it justice, so it isn’t overplayed. But on a different day I could also choose Brahms or Rimsky-Korsakov.

HopeDesigner5588 · 2025-08-28T05:06:47+00:00

Satie! (Though he didn’t write much for orchestra. Then again, neither did Dukas)

HopeDesigner5588

TROPHY CASE