Neglected But Not Forgotten
Joshua Kosman at the San Fransisco Chronicle has an piece on ten works that have been, in his opinion, unduly neglected/underperformed/ignored.
Kosman writes, “The canon of classical music is a hard club to break into. The membership rolls were printed up long ago, and the very predictability of contemporary concert life can be a self-fulfilling prophecy - if a piece is never performed, goes this line of thinking, there’s probably a good reason. But it isn’t so. Music history is littered with worthy, beautiful, ingenious or simply charming pieces that have never received their full due.”
Miss Mussel is in two minds about this. On the one hand, as a horn player, she is familiar with a great many really lovely pieces that are not in the general canon, particularly chamber music. On the other hand, she once went to a recital of all Salieri given by Cecilia Bartoli. It was brilliant until she chose to sang Gluck for the encore. Within the first two bars, it was obvious that Gluck was a far better composer and Miss Mussel immediately wished Bartoli had not spent the last hour on B grade, when A-grade was available.
Back to the first hand, here are some of Miss Mussel’s picks:
1. Heinrich Biber (1644-1704)–Mystery Sonatas. Biber was a violin virtuoso and first-rate composer of instruments and choral works in Salzburg. The Mystery Sonatas are fifteen short reflections on the fifteen mysteries of the life of Christ. Traditionally grouped in three groups of five (Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious) the sonatas are most famous for their imaginative use of scordatura and remarkably adventurous harmonies.
2. Franz Strauss–Notturno for Horn and Piano Father of the much more famous Richard, Franz was generally regarded as the best horn player of his day. His adulation of Mozart, Beethoven and Mendelssohn was as all-encompassing as his hatred of Wagner. In one of music history’s most delicious ironies, he was principal horn in many of Wagner’s opera premieres. The Notturno is a short piece of no consequence other than it’s a hopelessly Romantic way to spend 10 or so minutes.
3. Clara Wieck Schumann — Concerto for Piano in A minor Miss Mussel heard this on the radio in summer 2001 while cleaning hotel room toilets in Niagara Falls. Well, she may have been making the bed at the exact moment the piece came on, but that’s neither here nor there, really. She’s not heard the piece since but it has stayed in her mind all this time as a work of real imagination.
What’s on your list?
