Aaron Rabushka:

>Any takes for Mahler and Berlioz?
>
>Aaron J. Rabushka, to whom "excessively emotional" is never an insult!

Good man!  Actually, most of Berg fits the bill for me as emotionally
over-the-top. It strikes me as an adolescent rush to climax, one after
another.  Berlioz always comes across to me - no matter how wild the
ideas - as a bit detached.  The Requiem "Dies irae" sequence, for example,
particularly the "Lacrymosa" - I can picture Berlioz writing this grande
guignole stuff and saying to himself, "*That'll* get 'em!" I'm a huge fan
of Berlioz and don't really understand why more people don't take to pieces
other than the Symphonie fantastique.  Mahler is emotional, but all the
emotion seems earned, as it does in most Tchaikovsky.

Steve Schwartz, just finished listening to "Les Troyens"