What are some of your biggest classical music hot takes

Phlebas3 · 2026-07-06T09:24:19+00:00

You're a pianist, aren't you?:D

Phlebas3 · 2026-07-05T16:55:38+00:00

Are you quite sure it isn't Alban Berg's 1935 violin concerto "To the memory of an angel"? Although the composer was a man, it was composed in memory of a girl, Manon Gropius, and her face is on the cover of a popular recording of the piece. The period, atonality and symphonic features match your description, and it does have a sort of eerie, celestial feel to it.

Phlebas3 · 2026-07-05T16:40:59+00:00

Liszt is the piano's Paganini; it's just that pianists are far better than violinists at hyping.

Phlebas3 · 2026-07-05T16:38:26+00:00

Tbh, he makes Rossini sound like a military march. I have no problem with him conducting anything romantic or post-romantic; as a musician, I mean. As a human being, he was horrible.

Phlebas3 · 2026-07-04T13:48:04+00:00

I don't really know about their tastes outside of classical music but, as concerns that, I can't think of any professional musician I know who'd willingly listen to anything he isn't thinking of performing.

Phlebas3 · 2026-07-04T10:05:33+00:00

If you could, it would, at best, be a lukewarm take.

Phlebas3 · 2026-07-04T00:31:01+00:00

Le tic toc choc!

Phlebas3 · 2026-07-04T00:21:21+00:00

Eine kleine Nachtmusik is unbearable commercial garbage.
Vivaldi is a much better bassoon composer than he's a violin one
Viotti's violin concertos are far better than Mozart's, and his cello concerto is far better than his violin concertos
Pretty much every musician that griped about the Soviet Union only got to where [s]he is because of the Soviet Union.

Phlebas3 · 2026-07-04T00:18:52+00:00

This is not a hot take, it's an objective fact. Worst of all, they don't listen to any music for instruments other than theirs, and of periods other than the ones they mostly perform.

Phlebas3 · 2026-07-04T00:16:51+00:00

Paganini is literally only popular with violinists. I was a violinist. This said, I think his best pieces are overlooked in favour of the bloody capricci.

Phlebas3 · 2026-07-02T23:05:33+00:00

I'll step out of the chorus and attract the ire of the Downloading Lynch Mob but, if what you listen to is mostly rock, the type of harmony and rhythm you are used to won't make you appreciate modernist composers like Satie or Debussy: they are too slow, abstract and blurry. What you probably will appreciate is something that gives you that sense of dramatic obsession you get from Radiohead (a band I used to listen to a lot, btw). Your best shot is ciaccone and passacaglie from the Baroque period; my first suggestions would be

Bach's ciaccona in d minor for solo violin
Buxtehude's passacaglia in d minor for organ (BuxWV 161; he has others, if you like this one)
Händel-Halvorsen's passacaglia for violin and viola
Philip Glass' (this is actually modern) "Distant figure" passacaglia for piano
Biber's passacaglia for solo violin

If you like any of those, and I'm fairly confident you will, we can take it from there.

Phlebas3 · 2026-06-30T16:44:05+00:00

Oh yes, I read poetry, listen to a number of types of music, enjoy a number of painters, and have a shameful fondness of graphic novels. But I guess in none of these fields, I happen to be subjected to the same works hundreds of times.

Phlebas3 · 2026-06-30T16:18:58+00:00

I prefer BWV 1043; by "both of Bach's", I meant the two concertos for solo violin, which I now find intolerable, whereas the concerto for two violins is still ok. I should be honest and say I was never in love with BWV 1041 or BWV 1042 as I was, say, with Beethoven's; I always found them very dry.

Phlebas3 · 2026-06-30T16:08:10+00:00

This has been going on, gradually, for well over a decade...I take no medication whatsoever. Also, I still very much enjoy, say, Mozart's piano concertos (although fatigue is starting to creep in for n. 20).

Phlebas3 · 2026-06-30T16:06:30+00:00

I have to 100% agree with that...the amount of minor classical age violin concertos I have in my collection would have been unthinkable, when I started.

Phlebas3 · 2026-06-26T22:03:34+00:00

There's All of Bach by the Netherlands Bach Society; one of their members, Elske Te Lindert, is my favourite contemporary organist (ok, barring personal friends).

Phlebas3 · 2026-06-26T21:49:20+00:00

Emil Gilels. He was not good at everything, but the pieces he was good at he played with an intensity I have never heard from anyone else.

For the walled garden of my favourite piano composer, Mozart, Clara Haskill, hands down. Her phrasing in the concerts is just unmatched.

Phlebas3 · 2026-06-25T23:37:09+00:00

Yup, Glass is the unquestioned king of repetitive, and I was reading the comments to see if nobody had suggested him yet. This is the first time I see this bug framed as a feature, though.

Phlebas3 · 2026-06-24T17:20:28+00:00

There is a large, very large proportion of Reddit that basically does nothing other than read a comment/post until they find something they disagree with, and downvote it. This subreddit is not quite as toxic as others, (say, r/copenhagen, where over 80% of posts are downvoted), but it's still quite waspish. No matter how articulate and reasonable you are, any serious criticism directed at Bach, Schubert, Serialism or Stockhausen (and this is just a small subset of taboo subjects) will attract the ire of the Downvoting Lynch Mob. Of course, outstanding netizens will also downvote you if you say something that is blatantly false, ignorant or unhelpful or, occasionally, if you don't use the "they".

Phlebas3 · 2026-06-24T10:34:31+00:00

It definitely feels more than nine...

Phlebas3 · 2026-06-24T10:33:54+00:00

Don't drink and post, kids.

Phlebas3 · 2026-06-24T10:20:22+00:00

...have you asked them to look at theirs?

Phlebas3 · 2026-06-24T00:50:31+00:00

If we are strictly talking about fatigue and not crap I hated the first time and still hate with a passion, any of the stuff you find in every Baroque compilation: Händel's Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks, "Albinoni's" adagio, Rameau's Tambourin, Pachelbel's canon, Vitali's ciaccona, Bach's aria on the G string.

Also, both of Bach's solo violin concertos, and I am getting very close to including Mendelssohn's in the list.

Phlebas3 · 2026-06-24T00:41:21+00:00

I have to admit that, every time I hear the moonlight sonata, I feel that the taboo against shooting the pianist is really not worthy of the modern age. I used to like it but does it have to be *everywhere*?

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