Ups and downs in the repertoire

[Ilja]

Dear all,


I've asked this question a few years ago, and I thought it might be interesting to discuss it again. What composers do you think are emerging and disappearing from concert halls? In other words: is the "Iron Repertoire" really that "iron"? To be frank, I haven't done systematic research into this, but browsing through all the season schedules from the countries within my travel reach (NL, B, D, DK, SE, F, P, ES, IT) I got the impression that particularly composers from the second quarter of the 20th century were less prominent than they once were: Bartók, Stravinsky, Ravel – and certainly that the diversity of their works being played had diminished.


On the other hand, I also have the feeling that we see a small resurgence of national composers that were once firmly in the unsung camp: Stenhammar in Sweden for instance, or Braga Santos in Portugal.


What is your experience? Have you noticed shifts and if so, where?

[Double-A]

It would not surprise me if composers from the Stravinsky generation disappeared from the repertoire.  They were never popular with the majority of concertgoers and were programmed primarily out of a sense of obligation to program contemporary music (or almost contemporary anyway).  That this obligation fades as time goes by while the popularity of the music is still in the basement would explain the phenomenon.  Hindemith has disappeared from the repertoire two decades earlier already.  And the part of Schoenberg that survives is the part that fits our remit.

[Alan Howe]

Stravinsky certainly hasn't disappeared from concerts over here in the UK. Nor should he - he was a great composer.

[MartinH]

I've been looking over the programming of US orchestras for the 2018/19 season and can't really see any trends. Not that I did tallys or a statistical study - but nothing really stand out. Mahler doesn't seem to be as prominent as a few years ago, but all the majors are doing at least one symphony. No Franck d minor in sight. How that lovely old chestnut has vanished is a mystery. Needless to say there's no Bax, Raff, Rubinstein, Balakirev or even Schmidt! On the bright side (at least for me) I will finally get to hear the Elgar 2nd live, with James Judd and the Tucson Symphony. For many of you that probably provokes a yawn - but over here the only Elgar we get are endless repetitions of Enigma, the Cello Concerto, and that's about it.

Even more depressing are the summer festivals which have nothing to look forward to. Same stuff as the regular season. Same tired, over-played, too familiar music. I know that when I hear Beethoven 5th for the 100th time it might be the first for someone else. Have the BBC Proms been announced yet? Maybe there's something on it worth coming back to London.

[eschiss1]

A movement from Raff 10 was performed by the Mill Valley Philharmonic in California last November though (and a group played the Sinfonietta around that time I think.)

[Santo Neuenwelt]

Here at Edition Silvertrust, we track chamber music concerts. And I can tell you that as far as American performing ensembles go, virtually no works by forgotten or unknown composers, unless they are alive and have commissioned a work, are programmed. American ensembles are the least adventurous of all. We do not even get to hear chamber music live by Foote, Chadwick, Cadman Beach, Huss, etc, etc. Fear of the box office rules...., understandable of course.

If it were not for CDs, we would hear nothing but Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Dvorak, Bartok. and Shostakovich. Once again, American groups are the least adventurous. How many times is too many times to record the Beethoven string quartets? Ask the Emerson, they seem to think there is no limit...

With regard to CDs, the Germans lead the way and not only with their own national composers. Hats off to them. The British are not far behind. The rest such as the Dutch (with the exception of the Utrecht), the French, the Scans and the Russians tend to stick to their own national compatriot composers which is still okay since they often record lesser known composers.

I do not think Bartok will disappear from the chamber music repertoire. Personally, I hope Schoenberg does. Interesting as it might be on paper, and I and my friends have waded through his quartets on a few evenings, I do not want to hear what he has to say after 1905 more than once. Did not music come from singing?. Was it not at first meant to be sung? Is that not why most 20th century classical music is dead and pop music rules? Who can sing to Schoenberg's atonal melodies? Who wants to sit down on their sofa and listen to it? Schoenberg was wrong, not everything that could be said by traditional melody was said said by 1910.

Give me the UC composers...As for the 20th century, there are men like Arkady Filippenko (1912-1983) whose music would be appreciated and very successful in the concert hall.

[eschiss1]

"who can sing Schoenberg's..."
me!!!!!

[eschiss1]

and of course exception needs always to be made not just for individual concerts but whole groups like the Jupiter, who just played the Martucci quintet yesterday, are playing Glière's 3rd sextet and Eduard Franck's 3rd string quartet soon... (edit: and Balakirev's early(?) octet Op.3, in a concert in April.)

[eschiss1]

Double-A - do you also live in the US? What gets played here is not a good indicator of what gets performed, period. Orchestras and ensembles, especially lately, are notably unadventurous, and not just with 20th-century music. (And if Hindemith has disappeared, you'd have trouble telling it from Bachtrack, which shows quite a few Hindemith performances just in what's left of the current season.)

[eschiss1]

"And the part of Schoenberg that survives is the part that fits our remit."

Somehow I think Pierrot Lunaire will survive too, and even Moses und Aron. (Both Pierrot and the violin concerto are being performed - _in the US_ - before this season is out. And A Survivor from Warsaw, together with Miecz. Weinberg's last finished symphony, make for 2/3rds of an interesting concert in Warsaw in late April, too...)

[sdtom]

It would not surprise me if composers from the Stravinsky generation disappeared from the repertoire.  They were never popular with the majority of concertgoers and were programmed primarily out of a sense of obligation to program contemporary music (or almost contemporary anyway).  That this obligation fades as time goes by while the popularity of the music is still in the basement would explain the phenomenon.  Hindemith has disappeared from the repertoire two decades earlier already.  And the part of Schoenberg that survives is the part that fits our remit.

I hardly think so.

[Alan Howe]

Could you elaborate, please, Tom?

[Double-A]

Maybe I should add a thing or two:  If the Stravinsky generation is losing ground as time goes on this is probably in part natural and right:  They are now historical repertoire.  When we were young they were (almost) contemporary. 

I did not want to say anything about the merit of these composers.  I think they deserve respect and admiration.  And they--or some of them--will doubtless survive though in a diminished role.  What I find more worrisome is actually the lack of successors:  In the post Stravinsky generation there are no giants left.  One remembers names like Henze, Stockhausen, Boulez, Cage, but nobody was remotely as dominant as Stravinsky or Bartok.  This seems to happen the first time since at least Beethoven.  And of the present generation I know hardly more names than the composer who wrote a commissioned piece for a local amateur orchestra...

FYI I live in the US now but grew up in Zürich, came over here about in the middle of my life.

[Alan Howe]

I'll reserve judgment on Henze, but as for Stockhausen, Boulez and Cage: why should we regard them as 'giants' anyway? Nobody really wants to listen to them. The true giants have been obscured by the modernist movers and shakers who banned George Lloyd and countless others (I'll pin my colours to the mast and declare GL's 4th Symphony a 20th-century masterpiece). I could go on, but I was listening to Nimrod Borenstein's VC on Chandos earlier and my faith in the continuance of good music has been miraculously restored!

[eschiss1]

... actually, I could do without what most of what I know of by Stockhausen, Boulez (well, ok, Boulez is fascinating- I could keep a lot of Boulez - "nobody"), Cage _and_ Lloyd.

(Glad to hear) Messiaen, though!... what orchestration, what harmonies, what sounds!... and a lot of Reich and Feldman...