Deryk Barker provides some sources:
>"He was always the musician of conscience, he had too much
>conscience,as a fact - which accoutns for his many tedious
>stretches of 'joiner' confidently put forward as development
>passages."
>Neville Cardus
>
>"Benjamin Britten claims that he plays through 'the whole of
>Brahms' at intervals to see whther Brahms is reallly as bad
>as he thought and ends by discovering that he is actually
>much worse."
>Colin Wilson (does anyone know if the Britten quote is
>actually genuine?)
Liszt said something like "B. is a great composer, but he's lacking
Schumann's spontaneity."
As I said before, I don't think B:s musical material is so well suited for
the development he subjects it to. He's lacking Beethoven's dramatical
impact. And sometimes I just find his musical material boring (middle
sections of 2nd and 3rd movements of the Double concerto).
Mikael
[log in to unmask]