IN BLACK AND WHITE

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Clavier I-Temred

Some years ago, I was dining with a distinguished music critic, a man whose writing and opinions have graced numerous journals and newspapers. We were talking about the pianists and composers we liked and disliked. Admittedly, we had taken drink, but were still conversing coherently and lucidly – well before we started mumbling. We had more or less agreed on our favourite pianists and those held to occupy the lower tiers in the pantheon. We agreed that we could both live the rest of our lives without hearing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons again. Or the Blue Danube (except in the Schulz-Evler transcription). And possibly Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto. en my friend raised the stakes. ‘You know what?’ he said. ‘I would not mind in the slightest if I never heard another note of Beethoven.’ I stirred uneasily. ‘I’d be sorry not to hear the G major Piano Concerto again.’ ‘OK,’ my friend conceded. ‘I’ll give you that. And maybe the Appassionata.’ I was reminded of this conversation recently when talking to an elderly friend from New Zealand, a passionate and discerning pianophile. ‘I know you’ll think I’m a complete Philistine, but I have never got on with Schubert’s piano sonatas. I just don’t get them. And as for Richter and his interminable tempos in the G major and the great B-at – sorry I can’t take it.’

It’s dicult owning up to a dislike of a major composer, one who is generally loved and revered. Mozart and Chopin, for example. On BBC Radio 3 a few weeks ago, young Jess Gillam (saxophonist and radio presenter) was talking to her guest, South African cellist Abel

Do you dare to admit disliking composers whose music is universally revered? Charivari considers the pros and cons of the Western musical canon

Selaocoe: ‘I have to admit, until recently, I wasn’t the world’s biggest Mozart fan.’ Result? Sharp intake of breath and incredulous laugh from the cellist, this listener and probably most of her audience.

Wagner is dierent: a Marmite composer with an ugly personality and a virulently antisemitic wife. Brahms is another: ecstasy and profundity for many; stodgy, laboriously Teutonic for others (including Tchaikovsky: ‘What a giftless bastard!’ he wrote in his diary in 1886). Other major composers are routinely dismissed by a certain kind of music lover without fear of opprobrium: for instance, Liszt, Saint-Saëns, Mendelssohn, Puccini. ‘Britten to Shostakovich: I think [Puccini’s] operas are dreadful. Shostakovich to Britten: No, Ben, you’re wrong. He wrote marvellous operas. It’s the music that’s dreadful’ (quoted by the Earl of Harewood in his autobiography).

Just when I was concluding these thoughts, along comes the latest issue of the BBC Music Magazine. eir inspired idea was to ask 174 living composers whom they considered to be the greatest composers of all time, ordered 1 to 5. You think some of the views expressed above are stupid? Just wait till you read the BBC poll results. Of course, these listings are designed to be controversial, get a debate going and, ahem, sell more copies of the magazine. But I really wonder if this particular one has any merit whatsoever.

While, like me, you will not have heard of most of the composers asked to name their Top Five Greatest, some of their choices reveal just how removed they are from the world of the average classical music lover. Having totted up all the votes, this list of the 50 Greatest Composers rates Rachmaninov a lowly 50, Robert Schumann an also-ran at 49, while Pierre Boulez is in the top 50 at 48. e list continues on its bizarre course with Stephen Sondheim (43), Lutosławski (30) and Ligeti (6).

Here are some of the nominations for Greatest Ever (and remember, those questioned had the options of Bach, Beethoven et al had they so desired): Morton Feldman, Pérotin,

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Kate Bush [sic], Mouse on Mars [electronic duo], Björk [2 votes], Julian Eastman (no, I hadn’t either), Mikolai Stroiuski (ditto), Peter Sculthorpe and Chevalier de St George. Nominations also included Kaija Saariaho, Gesualdo, Cage, Knussen, Reich and Varèse. Well, you might say, everyone is entitled to their opinion. Really? When all of the above were at the expense of the following composers, all of whom were excluded from the Top 50: Palestrina, Handel, Mendelssohn, Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Saint-Saëns, Liszt, Paganini, Berlioz, Smetana, Dvoˇrák, Grieg, Bruckner and Johann Strauss II.

e top four of the BBC poll? Mozart (4), Beethoven (3), Stravinsky (2) and, at number one, Johann Sebastian Bach. An uncontroversial winner? Not entirely. I know several people for whom ‘e Great Bach’ is not JS but another Bach who did not receive a single vote from any of the BBC’s contemporary composers: CPE, a far more adventurous and innovative composer, they say, than his father. IP

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