Steven Schwartz wrote:

>Ray Stamford asks:
>
>>I am writing this having just listened to the 5th Symphony (RPO - Handley)
>>and can't make up my mind about this dramatic, almost sub-Mahlerian 'film'
>>music which would have done something along the lines of 'War and Peace'
>>or 'Ivan the Terrible' proud.  It's either brilliant or IMHO, as a lot of
>>music in this genre, a bit of a curate's egg.
>
>What's a curate's egg?  A curiosity?

The curate was a house guest whose egg, the hostess realized, had not been
fresh, and may indeed have been rotten.  Totally embarrassed, the hostess
apologized that the egg had not been fresh, and the curate, to put her at
her ease assured her that 'parts of it were excellent'.  I gather, that
the music Ray Stamford was describing, while tainted by tediousness, also
contained parts that were excellent, something that seems more feasible in
a musical work of discrete parts than of an egg!

Walter Meyer