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