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Godowsky was probably 'somewhat' neglected due to the difficulty of much of his music and the fact that many of them are arrangements (although I'd really consider them compositions). Some of his works are more accessible such as his Corelli arrangements.

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

And while not a "great" composer, Karen Tanaka is under-represented on the forum probably because of the language barrier, and that most of the time her name is written in Japanese.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QijRw4aeNF0

There isn't a lot of it to hear, it basically can all fit onto a single CD (and, BTW, Hyperion is releasing just such a CD this month, played by Garrick Ohlsson).

I think I find most of it more interesting and attractive than you seem to. As far as innovation goes, his sonata was fairly innovative, and there's still nothing else quite like it. It was really a terrible loss to music that he died (at age 35) just as he was starting to really find his voice as a composer.

Speaking of innovation, how important is it in determining the quality of a composer's output? Of course, simply developing an individual style is a kind of innovation in itself. But innovation in the larger sense doesn't seem to me to be a requirement for good music. After all, J. S. Bach was never that much of a ground-breaking innovator.

I said Griffes! His music is pleasant and unique.

I too don't appreciate people judging a composer on how innovative they were. Not that I don't like the modern direction of art music, but I'd love to hear a new piece that is somewhat consonant and using the harmonic language developed over hundreds of years. I don't see the big deal!

I like to play the Fountains of Acqua Paola once in a while, after folks have forgotten the last time I played it.. beautiful late-Romantic piece. I don't buy the line that he was just parroting Debussy.. I hear shades of Liszt's Annees more than anything, but the harmonic language is original.

Nightfall from the same set is also a really neat piece with some cool harmonies. LOVE the changes from 1:15-1:22 here:



I've noticed that more than a few of his works have the Ravel "Le Gibet" thing going on in them with the repeated notes.

Have we ever done a forum about overrated composers?

That would get ugly fast!

I guess it might. I guess I won't instigate that discussion then.

I'm tempted.

Oh well, looks like I already have.

You mean thread?

I think something along those lines was attempted once, and IIRC, it got shot down as being mean-spirited and juvenile pretty quickly.

Yes, I try to get the "thread" and "forum" thing right, but sometimes when it's late I tend to mix them up.

And nobody was supposed to take that suggestion too seriously; I figured it had probably been done before but had to say it anyway.

Scarlatti seems neglected here. Ralph Kirkpatrick says he was the most original keyboard composer of his century.

While I don't agree that he's neglected, I do agree with the statement by Kirkpatrick. He is widely performed, but I still feel he is greatly overshadowed by Bach.

Scarlatti's keyboard music is some of the freshest, most original stuff I've heard from that era. And you get your money's worth with 555 sonatas to choose from!

RVW.

/flee!

That's quite a tame one, compared to who I'm thinking of.

Now that keyboard composers of Scarlatti's era are mentioned - how about Soler?

I'd agree - Soler is neglected here at PW.

And in concert, too, although I once did hear someone (Santiago Rodriguez, IIRC) play that extremely obsessive fandango of Soler's in a recital. Well, it was attributed to Soler, anyway...I understand that attribution is not very certain anymore.

I agree with this about Griffes, especially with regard to his sonata. I find it powerful, painful, poignant, haunting. The only piano music I know that sounds a bit similar in places is Alexander Tcherepnin's first piano sonata, which was completed a year later than the Griffes sonata in 1919. The harmonic language is similar because in these works Griffes mostly uses an 8-note scale while Tcherepnin mostly uses a 9-note scale. Griffes writes using a D minor triad combined with the pentatonic scale on black notes, and Tcherepnin uses three overlapping STS tetrachords. Spelling out both scales from A:

Griff: A, B flat, C sharp, D, E flat, F, F sharp, G sharp, A
Tcher: A, B flat, C, C sharp, D, E, F, F sharp, G sharp, A

So Griffes uses E flat instead of E natural, and does not have a C natural, compared to the Tcherepnin scale. To my ears, the Griffes sounds more dissonant, and also feels more "rhapsodic", with a narrative sweep more important than structure, while the Tcherepnin sounds more constrained and formal.


I agree.

By the way, my vote for the most neglected great piano composer on Pianist Corner, who has already been mentioned in this thread, is Grieg. Perhaps this is due to the emphasis placed here on stretching one's technique, and discovering little-known gems by little-known composers. Grieg might seem too common or obvious or "easy" to some. I think he wrote all kinds of gems that are worth exploring, both on their own merits and also to appreciate how influential they were on other late-romantic composers, which I think is also under-estimated. (For example, just listen to Debussy's early choral work La damoiselle élue. Do you think Debussy might have loved Grieg's piano concerto very much, especially the melody, harmonies and progressions of the second theme to the first movement? I do.)

It's always been interesting to me that Gilels and Richter, neither of whom dabbled much in light-weight music, played hefty chunks of the Lyric Pieces. That's telling, I think.