Peter Varley replies to me:

>>PISTON, THOMSON, MENNIN, DIAMOND, LEES, COWELL, RUGGLES, RIEGGER, FOSS,
>>SESSIONS, BERGSMA, SIEGMEISTER, HERRMANN
>
>but not BARBER.  I'd guess that Barber's music is well-known in the US,
>but Walton's isn't.  It's reversed here in the UK.  Barber's music is all
>worth hearing, and IMO the first symphony is one of the great pieces of
>the century.

No argument.

>>ALWYN, RUBBRA, FINZI, HOLST, BRIDGE, LEIGH, MOERAN, LAMBERT, WARLOCK,
>>STEVENS, ARNOLD, FRANKEL, SEARLE, RAWSTHORNE, MACONCHY, CLARKE, IRELAND,
>>BUSCH, BUSH, REIZENSTEIN
>
>I shouldn't have described Holst as overlooked.  And, while Finzi's Dies
>Natalis can send shivers down the spine, it's a reasonably well-known
>piece.

It and the clarinet concerto are probably Finzi's two best-known works.
But Finzi wrote a lot more, and very little of it is available in the US.

>Finally, if Berwald can be called overlooked, then so can SCHUBERT.  I
>thought, until recently, that I'd heard all of Schubert's major works.  Not
>long ago, I heard for the first time the "Six Grand Military Marches with
>Trios" for piano duet.  Despite the unpromising name, it turns out to be a
>powerful, large-scale work.  I wonder how much more fine music there is
>hiding behind unlikely titles.

A professor of mine once remarked that, ironically, the century where we
get most of the war-horses, the nineteenth, is the one we know the least
about.

Steve Schwartz