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Schoenberg was very anti-Händel / pro-Bach on the same, purely musical grounds that the Nazis were when they adopted Händel as an approved state composer over Bach: simplicity! Some Händel can be great, but almost all of the Bach that I have heard has been infinitely richer than Händel. Just my (and Schoenberg's) two cents.



I enjoyed this, to a point! His idiom feels a bit dated, and that it might not hold up to repeated listenings, but I haven't heard anything quite like it, so it's a very nice a palette cleanser!



Rzweverklpylytcbzewski is a wonderful composer!


Okay, contribution time: Roger Redgate's Eidos. About a minute long, and I feel like it would make a great encore. I just bought the (two page) score for this today on the basis of Nicholas Hodges' powerful and affecting performance:

Rzwvzckqaergliuajreljgfaweiojfiwulajaijfwetpszewsky is pretty under-appreciated, I agree.

I agree, Rzwzezqszzzjjjisjzjfsky's so under-appreciated I never spell his name the same twice.

Percy Grainger!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Grainger

Karol Szymanowski,
I'm little surprised that nobody has mentioned him yet...

Perhaps because he hasn't been entirely neglected here? At least I personally have tried to keep the discussion up about his music in various threads, haha

I haven't followed the entire thread, but it seems some of the russian avant-garde guys aren't mentioned much. Roslavets, Feinberg, Mosolov, people? Some very valuable stuff there, just discovering Roslavets piano sonatas.

Not to mention that you have posted some very fine performances of his work!

For Polish composers who are really neglected here, how about Artur Malawski? His Symphonic Etudes for piano and orchestra should be better known, I think. As should the Toccata and Fugue in the Form of Variations, also for piano and orchestra - I can't even find a recording of this, although there is a rumor that there once was one. I wish somebody would upload it to YouTube, if it exists. Considering how rare it is, I am surprised that once, decades ago, I heard/saw it on a television broadcast, and still can remember how taken I was with it. The Symphonic Etudes are there already...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCGbt0FE3jA

Back to Szymanowski, there's a new recording of the Symphonie Concertante on Chandos with Louis Lortie that's really good.

I think Handel's greatness has nothing to do with his keyboard music which I don't find very great. I think there are good reasons why it's almost never performed with the exception of a handful of works.

I think many of the composers on this thread may fall in the neglected category but hardly in the great category.

Well, I for one am fairly tired of the approach to music history where we have one Genius Composer carrying the torch of Western Classical Music until the next Genius Composer comes along and takes it over. Once you start looking under the surface, there was so much more going on. Early 20th century french music is so much more than just Ravel and Debussy...to give but one example. Also, it's only fair to point out that composers under the Great category often found inspiration from others around them, however less great they might have been. Just to give a example, a highly talented pianist I know, currently a visiting fellow at Harvard where he's been working with Robert Levin, once came across a little-known C minor piece (sonata perhaps, dont remember) by a mostly forgotten viennes classical composer that started with a motif close to identical to Mozart's C minor fantasy. After the closure on the dominant in the 2nd bar, the theme is re-stated one whole-tone down...As far as I remember, it was written in Vienna and pre-dates the Mozart piece by a year or two. Coincidence? Like Stravinsky said about great composers...they don't borrow, they steal.

Szymanowski, Ligeti, Dussek!!!!

Albeniz, De Falla, Granados, Villa Lobos, Ginastera, Lecuona, any other Latin American/Spanish composer

Griffes!

Also, this Stanchinsky work in particular is an underrated gem:

C'mon, don't hold out on us!
Who's the composer?

The ever-celebrated and over-performed...Leopold Kozeluch!!! Actually, saying that the motif is "close to identical" was an exaggeration, now that I looked back at the score. The similarity is still rather striking to my mind. Did Mozart hear this piece before he wrote the fantasy? Check the score for yourself:

Kozeluch sonata

My goodness gracious.

I think Kozeluch was hanging out by Mozart's window, heard it, and wrote this real fast before Mozart could get his out.

Listen the spectacular Finale (from 4:12), however all iss marvellous.
And Blechacz is playing

I would start with the three M's: Mendelssohn, MacDowell, and Medtner. Surprised nobody has mentioned MacDowell yet, as his piano contributions are very accessible and modern-sounding in their simplicity.

Then there are the three H's: Handel, Hummel, and Hindemith.

Finally anybody who's surname begins with Ch. No, I'm not thinking of Chopin. I'm thinking of Cecile Chaminade and Emmanuel Chabrier.

How about the American composer Charles Griffes?

Not that I've heard an awful lot so far but he seems to have been very uneven, and perhaps not very innovative either.

Perhaps, but I don't hear his piano sonata as being particularly inferior to the Barber, if the latter has more opportunities for the virtuoso.

Elliott Carter's early sonata (from 1945) seems to me a better work than either.

What about the 3 I's: Ives, and Ippolitov-Ivanov (counts as 2! if only he'd written more for piano).