>Steve Schwartz wrote:
>
>>Peter Goldstein wrote:
>>
>>>... leads me to propose a new thread, if anyone's interested: overrated
>>>works.
>>
>>What does doing such a thread along this subject matter really
>>accomplish?
>
>Hear!  Hear!  I don't really mind such threads, as long as someone says
>something insightful about the works one dislikes,

I personally look at these sorts of threads as saying something insightful
about the people criticising than about the works. I think it gives you a
much better idea about the styles of music they enjoy. This way, you can
more fully evaluate other recommendations for or against a work/composer
by the same person.

As an example, Don Satz has often stated that he dislikes Tchaikovsky
for being too "emotional", but enjoys Bach and Shostakovich (two composers
I have generally found to be very dull).  Since I quite like Tchaikovsky
(especially the Nutcracker as conducted by Kenneth Schemmelhorn (sp?)...
is this available on CD?) I now know that if Don criticises a piece as
being too emotional, that this is not necessarily a bad thing, and can keep
this in mind while reading.

Similarly, anyone reading a list of my likes/dislikes would recognise that
I have no taste in music and my opinions can be completely disregarded:-)
In fact, just to prove this, I'll state now that some of my favourite music
is actually computer game music.  And the reason I got into classical music
was that one of the games gave you a choice of background music, amongst
which were several pieces from Mussorgsky's _Pictures at an Exhibition_.

Anyway, to answer the original question, my favourite composer is currently
Prokofiev, and I have listened to a significant fraction of his works.  My
favourite works by him are

Toccata Op11.
Ten piano pieces Op12. (especially numbers 7 and 10)
Piano Sonata 2 Op14.
Violin Concerto 1 Op19.
Visions Fugitives Op22.
Classical Symphony Op25.
Piano Concerto 3 Op26.
Lieutenant Kije Suite Op60.
Symphony 7 Op131.

Most of these are works from early in his career, and possess more of
the quirkiness that I enjoy than his later works do.  I find that as his
career progressed his work became more mainstream (although there are some
exceptions, like many moments in Symphony 2 (although this didn't work
well for me as a whole), Symphony 3 (3rd movement), Piano Concerto 5 (3rd
movement), Symphony 5 (2nd movement) and the final movement of the 7th
piano sonata).  Even amongst the more conventional work, there is a lot
of good lyrical material (such as in his ballets Romeo and Juliet and
Cinderella), but he also composed an increasing amount of material which
had no interest to me at all.

Of Prokofiev's works I have heard, my least favourite is a set of piano
pieces called _Pensees_ which is an extremely introspective (for me,
this word is synonymous with boring) work.  But since this is relatively
unknown, I wouldn't really call it over-rated.  A better candidate for this
might be his 5th symphony, which apart from the brilliant second movement
is slow, and excruciatingly boring.  Most works I don't care for don't
particularly bother me, and I can even use them as background music.  For
some reason, I find this piece is actively boring rather than passively
boring and I have to turn it off even when I'm not really listening to it.
This puzzles me, since it contains some nice although not great tunes.
Does anybody else have a piece of music that objectively they ought to like
but don't, or am I just crazy? (or both?)

Tristrom Cooke
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