Music Chat: Classical Music's Ten Dirtiest Secrets 

Nobody cares about Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique's first 3 movements? Man, I listen to that piece just for the Waltz!!

I am fearless. I love Bach cantatas. All of them. I crave for the other 100 missing. I'm going to Oklahoma as soon as I can.

I'm a big fan and don't miss a video of David Hurwitz, but I must admit they all sound the same

"Schoenberg was a difficult, truculent kind of guy who wrote difficult, truculent music" . Ha - this is great !

I actually do love to hear the complete Symphonie Fantastique. I love "un bal" for exemple and don't mind to have to wait for the grand finale.

The Große Fuge is dissonant. It's not ugly.

You made me smile,you made me laugh.Youre such a tonic Mr Hurwitz.

Agree with a lot, but like others not about Liszt. There isn't a composer alive today who could write something like the Faust Symphony, Les Preludes, or the first piano concerto, not to mention a lot of the piano music. Great, underrated and misunderstood.

Your parting message is why I love your channel. Thank you!

Great recommendation regarding the missing Bach cantatas! LOL! Bach’s Calov Bible was actually discovered in a farmer’s attic in the US and can be viewed at a Lutheran Seminary in St Louis, MO.

Magnificent! „Use your own judgement“ reminds me of Immanuel Kant: „Habe Mut, dich deines eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen“ (Have the courage to use your own mind). We love your humor David! Kind regards from Berlin, Germany

Even as a Mozart fanboy I have to agree. Good luck staying awake if you decide to listen through his early symphonies.

RE: LVB Grosse Fugue: Just because something is ugly doesn't mean it can't be beautiful.

But Liszt invented the symphonic poems, we might not have all those (admittedly better) ones of Strauss, Sibelius had some good ones, of course Respighi... Would these even be stand alone things without Liszt? I love that form, give Liszt credit for that.

Thank God for David Hurwitz! Finally someone to keep me company while I listen to and collect recordings. I love most of your recommendations and this particular talk was entertaining and interesting at the same time. I am a retired musician / computer programmer living in a remote costal town in the west. I need this kind of stimulation! No one I know is even remotely interested in the music I love.

Most amusing, esp. your comments on Bruckner, Schoenberg and Bach...)...please, more editions of dirty secrets!

I'm dying laughing. Number 8 was hysterical. But I can just picture one of those TV shows where they follow people driving around the country, looking for hidden treasure in people's barns and such. Well, you can guess the rest . . . coming upon more Bach cantatas in a disheveled, cluttered barn in Oklahoma, along with neon coca-cola signs and thin tires mounted on spoke wheels, etc. - along with a million copies of "Mechanic's Life" magazine or something. There, among all that stuff, is a fully scored Bach cantata! Awesome. In regards to Schoenberg, my two favorite 'ugly' works of his are "Jakobsleiter" (Jacob's Ladder) and his gorgeous "Serenade". I like to play them, just to remember how ugly serious music can truly sound. Great stuff.

I have, indeed, listened to all 200 Bach Cantatas -- WHILE doing so, a lady from down the hall walked into my office, grabbed the door and SLAMMED IT SHUT as she walked out. I recall that Schoenberg's Piano Concerto was the FIRST WORK that I ever listened to, over and over and OVER and over and over, expecting it to eventually "catch on..." I finally gave up. It was REFRESHING to hear YOU explain that my experience was accurate. I came to the same conclusion. RECENTLY... as more and more incredible pianists have recorded the work, I revisited it. It still doesn't work. Thank you so much for letting me off the hook.

That was absolutely ruthless -- I loved it!

Absolutely cannot agree with the Mozart assessment. Yes there are similarities from one work to another from time to time but that holds true for all composers. As an fyi Stravinsky said Vivaldi penned the same concerto 100 times (that's the way he heard it). There are some truths to these points but only as a very general point of view from the casual listener.

I loved this! It put a huge smile on my face - good advice too. Thank you!

Love it! Thank you David, and greetings from The Netherlands!

In principle I agree, though I dearly love Schoenberg's Verklaerte Nacht "Transfigured Night" (both the sextet and orchestral versions).

3:30 Best moment of classical music commentary :D

Love it! I only dissent on Wagner. Everything else is spot on! (Especially Bach cantatas!)

Thank you so much for freeing me from Beethoven's Grosse Fuge. I have tried to years to make some peace with the work, to now avail. I tried the original, I tried and orchestrated version, I tried a four-hand piano version (which was admittedly the best), all to no avail. As a listener, I always assume there's just something in the music I'm not getting. Maybe, as you point out, there's nothing there WORTH getting. Thank you!

Delightful! Forgive me but I love- no adore Beethoven's "Grosse Fuge". I listen, follow the score, and my brain lights up. As for Schoenberg, he never gives his neurosis a rest. His demands to the author, Thomas Mann re "Dr Faustus" reveal the ugly compulsions which found themselves in his 12 tone row. Thank you Mr Hurwitz. You enrich my life.

I did hear a string quartet of high school musicians who turned the Grosse Fuge into thrilling music on the "From the Top" show, and made it sound easy. Also, I have noticed that Schoenberg comes off better in concert than on recording. And the complete Bach Cantatas were the first pieces that I collected. I love them all.

Number 11: Mahler 7 is the 'Cinderella' of the symphonies, the 'most forward-looking' of Mahler symphonies. The last movement 'has a poor structure', 'is 'the most demented C major you'll ever hear', the second Nachtmusik is 'the death of society'. All complete nonsense. The Seventh is instantly compelling, orchestrally ravishing and unceasingly inventive. It's a delight from start to finish. Conductors love it, orchestras love it, audiences love it. Stop overloading the work with stupid associations. Enjoy it for what it is!

Totally agree with you on #1, Mozart does all sound the same! Not much so on your #8, I love Liszt's B minor sonata...all in all, like what you stated, listen fearlessly and draw our own conclusions.

Wonderful! Agree with everything apart from the comment on Liszt: he was truly a genius (even though he wrote the Dante sonata).

The Grosse Fuge is at the very top of my Least Liked Pieces in Classical Music. Thank you for the validation. Now about that Bach....I *have* heard all the known Bach Cantatas (Rilling box) and would happily go through them again.

I agree with most of your thoughts, but the Berlioz symphony is amazing all the way through. Ever since I saw and heard Bernstein speak about it in the 1960's it has been one of my favorites. To add a couple, I have never understood Mahler nor Bruckner. I have tried and tried to listen to their symphonies, and find them disjointed to the point of confusion...pretty sounds spliced together without any cohesion.

Great stuff! I agree with most of your observations, although I'm not willing to dismiss everything Liszt wrote as junk. Yes, a lot of it is glitzy cocktail-piano pyrotechnics (even when not written for the piano), but I find some really affecting and beautiful moments in some of his quieter works, such as several in his "Years of Pilgrimage" collection. And I have listened to all 200 Bach Cantata (mostly from the Edition Bachakademie set over the long process of their gradual release), but there are maybe a dozen at most that I return to regularly. Cheers!

I'd love to see a remade version of this video that goes more into depth into every "secret", 5 minutes was way too little time for you David.

Beethoven';s Grosse Fugue is the English Bulldog of chamber music -- so ugly it's beautiful. Absolutely love it.

Brutally honest & quite funny! Keep provoking! :)

One of the most delightful videos to warch! Couldn't agree more on all 10 points!! Especially mozart, berlioz and Bruckner!! :) 😁

Although I thoroughly love Gurrelieder, I have difficulty listening to most of the rest of Schoenberg's oeuvre. I have never stop trying, however. Ugh, life is too short! Thank you for admitting out loud what every one else has been quietly thinking! Your "You Tube" videos are very entertaining and they help me appreciate music at a deeper level. While watching one of your videos, my wife asked who you were. I said that you were a critic and you offered excellent guidance on curating musical recordings. Noting the depth and breath of my recent acquisitions since following your lectures, my wife laughed and (in humor) quipped that you were not a critic, but one heck of a good CD salesman. I think you can be both, lol! Thanks for sharing your knowledge and opinions!

I disapprove of about 5 of the points, but approve of all of them stylistically! Great work.

Here's an open secret of my own experience. Except for a passing nod via two of his lesser pieces in the centenary year of his birth, the BBC Proms pursues a policy of exclusion of the music of the late British composer George Lloyd (see your review of his 5th Symphony). For nearly thirty years - before and since the composer's passing - I've written a series of letters to the controllers of that event and its music management about including Lloyd's music, not least his Symphonic Mass ("Gramophone" magazine described its importance in 20th century English choral music). I've received a range of "fobbing off" responses and "we'll see what we can do" promises that never materialise. Meanwhile, the Proms readily promotes the "usual suspects" of favoured composers and the reliable old warhorses of classical music, plus the modern PC acceptable range of names,fads and fashions. Lloyd was noted for his stoicism. It was a quality sorely needed, both by him and his admirers.

I read that Brahms referred to Bruckner's symphonies as "symphonic boa constrictors."

Provocative and entertaining as always, BUT, I love Schoenberg's Moses und Aron. Call me crazy.

I love Mozart and what he did was generally so good I don't mind some of it sounds like some more of it. I love Wagner and don't care that you can enter a performance during daytime and come out at night. I love all five movements of the "Symphonie Fantastique" even though it's not my favorite work by Berlioz (the "Romeo and Juliet" symphony is). And I love every bloated minute of Schönberg's "Gurrelieder." But I enjoyed your talk; you have the knack of telling me things I didn't know even if I disagree with you. And you're absolutely right about Bruckner and about the Shostakovich Fifth, which he inscribed as "A Soviet Artist's Response to Just Criticism" - i.e., "The Symphony I Wrote to Keep Myself Out of the Gulag."

Straight talk. I enjoyed that. Not least your point about Shostakovich´s 5., I found that one particularly refreshing. And symphony Fantastique and Wagner too. Grosse fuge though, hmm, that´s actually my cup of tea. So there we are. Anyhow, your videos are very much appreciated. Thanks a lot from Copenhagen.

Great stuff. Please do 10 more. Even if I find Michael Tilson Thomas' take on Shostakovich 5 to be completely convincing. For those in need of more Bach cantatas, try those of Bach's only forgotten son, P.D.Q.

The nice thing about classical music 'dying' (Norman Lebrecht has been announcing its death for decades now), is that we can now pull the rug out from under 'sacred cows' and enjoy ourselves poking fun at things a bit, all in good fun.

So the Years of Pilgrimage is trash????

I agree that we need to use our own ears and not rely for our listening choices on the ears of Haggin, Kolodin, David Hall, Harold C. Schonberg, Alex Ross or even you ; thanks and have a great weekend, Sir !

You are very refreshing and may I be so bold as to say a truth teller. VERY Rare in this business! Cheers, to a new year!

#2 feels like a case of the emperor's new clothes. So glad someone finally said it. Maybe there are wonderful ideas buried somewhere and maybe it's the rhythmic expression but I feel like I'm being slapped over the head while being asked to listen to great music. Maybe I'll try again because it's so peculiar but it can feel like a prank at least on the first listen.

Liszt: Sonata in B minor and Faust Symphony....junk!? I don’t think so. Ahem........

That was just great! 👏😀🎵

My wallet nearly took your enthused recommendation for the Leslie Howard Liszt box set very seriously and literally... :)

I think the key take away is: don't worry if you agree with Dave or not - judge for yourself. At the same time, accept that informed judgment is likely to be worth listening to - which is why Dave's views are worth considering . In the end, though, it's your ears and no one else's you need to attend to - infallibility doesn't come with this territory. And sometimes hearing something you don't agree with is a good thing!

If I had to choose between living without Mozart or living without Schoenberg, I'd live without Mozart (but there are some compositions of his that I love). Many years ago, while my wife was breastfeeding our first daughter, I had Verklarte Nacht playing. The tension was such that my wife got nervous and so did my daughter. Obviously, Verklarte Nacht is not suitable for breastfeeding, but it's still wonderful.

If you are feeling a bit mentally deranged Beethoven's Grosse Fuge makes sense of it all.

Regarding the Bach cantatas, I don't share your view. I listened to all of them, I love around 80% and I listened again to a lot cantatas many times. For me, they are a bliss. But as you said, everyone has their own view! By the way, I really like your channel and always enjoy your critics. Thank you, Mr. Hurwitz.

Thanks for speaking the truth! Although, like the previous person, I do like Schoenberg's Verklaerte Nacht "Transfigured Night".

Very amusing and iconoclastic. Furtively agree about Wagner, but would never admit it publicly. Re Mozart, I've erected the stake, spread the kindling and wood all round, and I'm coming for you!

Lol, fun video! Classical hot takes! True on most Schoenberg, but Abbado conducting "A Survivor from Warsaw" was really good.

I totally agree with your Mozart assessment. I'm also of the school that Vivaldi basically wrote the same concerto hundreds of times. I also echo your sentiments about Symphonie Fantastique. But maybe that's because I'm a trombone player who has to sit out the first three movements, then come in relatively cold in the 4th. It's fun to play once one gets the chance to actually play.

Disagree with most of your points but couldn’t agree more with your central one. Use judgement! Not every piece is wonderful not every performance is wonderful and it’s fine to not like some things and have preferences for others. Your honest taste is why I subscribed to you! You actually review recordings rather than re-hash press releases. BTW, your Handel Dixit Dominus recording recommendation... where has that been all my life? Glorious! Thank you!

Hey Dave, I am one person who really would love to listen to more Bach cantatas, the lost ones! I don't know even one single bad piece by this composer.

Thank you, I prefer the Rachmaninoff Symphony #2 and the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with the cuts. The film composer Leonard Rosenman studied with Schoenberg and it definitely shows in his orchestrations. Watch the movie "Pork Chop Hill" or the TV show "Combat". So I'll give him credit for that. His music for "Fantastic Voyage" with Raquel Welch is supposed to use 12-tone compositional techniques.

Thank you for #5! I got into an argument with my graduate music history professor about Schoenberg, and he promptly gave me a C in the class (while all the average students got As and the worse student got a B). As for Mozart and Bach, I'm ok with Mozart sounding like himself in all his work, and Bach's most boring cantata sounds better than the vast majority of music on this planet.

I had great fun with this!

This video was so much fun. 1. Mozart. I was told I would appreciate him more later in life. I am now decidedly later in life. Neither Mozart nor I have changed. 5. Schoenberg. I love his work, but many of the pieces are just too long. It’s ironic: although he chucked 19th century tonality, Schoenberg, unlike the more radical Webern, did not free himself from the idea that to be good one had to be monumental in length. (Segue now to your excellent “timing problem” video …) You say “difficult”, but I think for me that translates to “tiring”, although not necessarily “tiresome”. 6. Schumann: The orchestral works are just plain boring, even when re-orchestrated. I think I may have fallen asleep while performing some of them. Or maybe just during rehearsals. 7. Bruckner: mostly unlistenable, poor man. But at least it seems some people love him. 8. Liszt is trash. Oh thank God someone had the courage to say it. He’s like a caricature of everything that people who think they should love classical music but know nothing about it think that classical music sounds like. It’s like Bugs Bunny impersonating Stokowski in tails. The music speaks absurd hero-worship (Liszt was, after all, one of the first musical superstars), artificial outdated excitement, a Napoleonic aesthetic only a soi-disant emperor or a starry-eyed imbecile could love (sorry, that is how I feel). I have never heard anything by him that didn’t leave me feeling I had utterly wasted some precious time interval of my remaining and sadly finite life. But fortunately I never feel that way about these fabulous reviews, Dave. Your ever devoted fan.

I agree 100% about Mozart. If you know 4 chord changes (and that's being generous) you could shoot out a bunch of 18th century music by just following the rules. Although I love Mozart's operas, everything else sounds the same to me. Thank you for saying what needed to be said.

Bravo!

The only one I really strongly disagree with is "Liszt is trash". The B minor sonata is one of the greatest works ever written for the solo piano. It alone puts Liszt on at least the same tier as Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Bruckner, etc.

Can you eleborate on your distaste for Listz?

Wagner operas on DVD are the only way I could take them. I can watch an hour or two and turn it off and watch more another day.

I don't particularly like Liszt's symphonic poems, but I do respect they were a new genre created by Liszt. But how can you possibly dislike Liszt's piano music? Especially the Annees de pelerinage, Harmonies poetiques et religieuses, the piano sonata, the late pieces, the 2 legends, the 2 ballades, the valse-oubliees, the 2 polonaises, the 2 concertos, etc.? The chamber versions of his late pieces are also amazing. Not to mention the lieder.

To be fair, all composers repeat themselves, just that the 18th century and before did it more.

I hate that Oscar Hammerstein II deleted his lyric "Oklahoma! Where the Bach is moldering in the barn" from the Broadway show.

Most people are not aware that there are FAR more people being trained to perform classical music at a high level than there are audiences willing to buy tickets. It is a TERRIBLE job. You can graduate from Juilliard with honors and win international competitions and still be unable to make a decent living as a classical musician. The only way to make it becomes teaching the next generation and creating even more well-trained musicians who will never be able to make a living. If your child is spending 4 hours each day playing the same Chopin Scherzo then you are doing great damage to that child. Sell the piano and let them go play outside. The whole thing is a dead end for 95% of those who dedicate decades of soul-killing effort to it.

Hmmm. Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony #1, especially in its full orchestra arrangement (op. 9b) got better and better with repeated listening as and is now one of my absolute favorite works. There’s an exquisite struggle-of modernism pulsing its way through romanticism and winning the day. Modernism wins but it still sounds quite accessible and triumphant to these ears.

So, that's why you concentrate on covering the Haydn Symphonies rather than Schlepp through the Bach Cantatas... 😂

Schoenberg's Gurrelieder is one of the most beautiful classical pieces I have ever heard and does not sound difficult to me...

I love this.

Liszt is beyond awesomeness, what are you talking about?

Appreciate your own judgment, surely this motto can help some people hesitating to take the plunge in classical music. You’re free to make your own choices, yeah! Consider listening to Liszt. He composed very intense and avant garde in his later years. Try his Via Crucis in the version for piano by Reinbert de Leeuw (issued 2012). I also regard the Dante symphony an interesting and unique work.

How is there "contrapuntal mastery" if it sounds bad? It's not integral serialism.

So right about Schoenberg. His tonal music is decent, but if people are really honest, they would rather hear an orchestrated version of "Happy Birthday To You" than his later works. Mozart sounds the same? Yes, I agree. I find the Haydn Symphonies to be far more enjoyable and inventive. Bruckner allegros? Right again. I once heard a commentator say that Bruckner wrote the same symphony, but did it 9 times. I have warmed up to Bruckner over the years, but still get that feeling of sameness from time to time.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Loved this!

I'm sorry. I felt like this when I was 16!

I all but worship at the altar of the Grosse Fuge. I love the violence of the first fugue, the slow movement, the aborted victory dance, the next round of violence which exhausts itself, and the final resolution. And yet it is sometimes ugly for a purpose (darkness to light/strife to peace), not ugly for the sake of being ugly like the music of Boulez or Stockhausen!

I really do agree with everything you say about Schönberg, and I'm a big fan of Webern and Berg so it's not about dodecaphonic music in general, it's just Schönberg. Wait, I actually agree with pretty much anything you say here!

Great stuff! You spoke out, what I think for long a time. Even the point about Wagner (whom I like) is right. Cut down "Tristan" to 2.45 hours, and you get a fine opera. In the "Flying Dutchman" , Wagner knew what he did. Afterwards he became a megalomaniac and wrote too much slow tempi. I just disagree just with your point about Schönberg - well, not totally, but a liitle bit. There aren't many works one can listen with joy (Schönberg detests joy, I would say) and, yes, even the "Transfigured Night" is weak, after all it's much too long for it's substance. But I have an affection for "Pelleas", although I know that the motivic material is far weaker than in works by Zemlinsky or Schreker. Also his transcriptions of Monn and Händel are great, in my opinion (and I like what you tell about them in your video).Moreover, I think that "Erwartung" is a good piece and one can listen to without difficulties, and the "Gurrelieder" are a wonderful piece, too, with exception perhaps of the final chorus. Mahler and Delius did such things better, I guess. But I'm no missionary. Besides: You're right with Mozart. But isn't this the case with all prolific composers? Think on Milhaud or Maxwell Davies. -

Thanks for the afternoon chuckle! Anyone who believes that "In matters of taste, there can be no disputes" should try debating the proposition "Salieri wasn't THAT much worse than Mozart" with someone who's listened to and studied both. But I do have to quibble -- very slightly -- with your take on Schoenberg. I enjoy the Gurrelieder. His first chamber symphony has its moments. Everything else? -- fugetaboutit.

Love this! I have to admit I like some of the works of Liszt! Taking your comment about Bruckner further - I dislike (hate?) his music profusely! The longest I could ever try to listen to any of his symphonies was less than 5 minutes. Maybe there is something wrong with me ...

My personal #11: Ravel's Bolero is uninteresting trash

Mozart's last three symphonies were written simultaneously in a matter of weeks, and they're completely unlike one another in mood and instrumentation. (If Toscanini thought all Mozart sounded the same, that only reveals another dirty secret: The maestro was a rigid, uncomprehending, joyless conductor who didn't so much interpret music as put it in a vise.) Beethoven's Great Fugue certainly isn't "pretty," but for me it's one of music's most thrilling experiences - and if you don't hear beauty in the Meno mosso section, God help you. For me, Schoenberg absolutely has gotten better with repeated listening. Not everyone has to like it, but to portray one's dislike as some sort of brave, iconoclastic stance is bull. Most people disliked Schoenberg when he was alive, and most people dislike it now. It would be braver and more iconoclastic to suggest that music can be both challenging and moving.

#11 Brahm's piano concerti are OVER after the slow movements. He couldn't write finales.

Your right about Mozart and Berlioz

Guess I shouldn't wait for a "Best Liszt Piano Sonata" video.

I don't dislike Liszt as much as you do. I only think 85% of it is trash. (Unfortuntately, that proportion holds within many of his better pieces.) I think Liszt's probblem also is that his music ends itself to trashy performances more readily than others. Mayhbe that proves your point. Agree with you about Schoenberg. One of my darkest evenings was a performance of Moses und Aron in Holland. "Wo ist Moses? Wo ist der Musik?" Joyful Shostakovich 5th? Hmmm --- love all those jolly minor sixths in the final pages. I just re-heard Andre Previn's Sh5th, with the final pages outdoing even Bernstein's oroginal recordidng in gallopping to the final cadence, and thought it sounded so wrong.

I love this. He's an opinionated sumbitch and I don't agree with all of it but I agree with enough of it. And it's always fun hearing someone say it!