Come learn about the demented world of Georgian composer Heraclius Djabadary, a talent so minor that it can only be measured using homeopathic principles.
By the way, in addition to enjoying, and benefiting from, your rapidly growing collection of videos, I'm impressed by the scope of your shirt collection.
You're a little hard on this guy. He's fabulous. The Sun, Moon and Stars bow down before this guy. I'm getting this recording! (I may be a trifle hyperbolic. But so are you)
I listened to this recording this evening. Thankfully some kind (?) Soul uploaded it to RU-vid. It appears all copies of the CD are sold out. Actually last week I saw 1 copy available, but that has since sold, presumably due to the power of this channel. At any rate,the work is a pile. What I am wondering is, can a person force him/herself to like something if one listens to it enough times? I do now have that exotic theme from the 1st movement stuck in my head. What the hell??
Funny because we know the progressions and rhthms are wrong but just think if we knew what Lutoslawsky , MissyMazzoli,Jennifer HigdonLuois Karchin or CarlVine or WillBolcolm or Messiaen then maybe we'd understand why the experts who choose to pivot them also know why they are so above the others . They are YOU MASTERS Maaaah DEARRIIIEEEEE.
I notice that on Amazon, one "reviewer" calls this piece a "neglected masterpiece." Maybe in a perverse way, it is, something akin to a movie that's so bad (maybe an Ed Wood masterpiece), it achieves a special place in peoples' minds--or even empty minds.
I listened to Djabadary's concerto on youtube and it sounds like music you skate to at a roller rink...or for introducing a vaudeville act. It does not disappoint!
Greetings from Spain! I arrived by chance to your RU-vid channel attracted by the title of this video... and I cannot get the disgraceful tune from this piano concerto out of my head! You have nevertheless won yourself a loyal follower.
As a result of my watching this video, RU-vid is now recommending to me... the Djabadary piano concerto. Thanks a lot! (In all seriousness, though, this is more than made up for by all the great music you've introduced me to over the last few years. So actually, thanks a real lot! :) )
Can someone explain to me why it's so bad? I listened to half of it and I didn't really notice anything egregious-- it just sounded like a normal piano concerto to me. Am I missing something?
It depends on what you listen for, and what your expectatoins are. Also, much depends on that elusiive qualiity "taste." If you don't understand, don't worry about it. Either you will eventually, or you won't.
As one who always says that truly bad music only really came into being immediately after World War II, when musical fashion became more a shibboleth than art or entertainment.
Don't mess with De Greef - his piano concertos are three delicious little gems. But have to agree on Djabadary, although his nomination for worst piano concerto faces stiff competition from Lorenzo Perosi's (also) A minor concerto (1916).
It's very bad. But at least this was always very obscure. Some of the most popular salon music for piano of the 1800s, like 'A Maiden's Prayer' and 'The Dying Poet' is much worse in my opinion. It's as bad as it gets. It's for music what Thomas Kinkade is for painting. When the music industry took stock in the early 1900s, 'A Maiden's Prayer' was acknowlegded as the best selling piano piece of all time.
It's on RU-vid, and some people seem to love it. If it were a movie score, I'd laugh uncontrollably. The camel procession sort of sounds like an Italian "swords and sandles" movie.
I've just listened to the concerto. The first movement is wonderfully bad in ways far too hilarious to express - certainly the most goofy and bizarrely (boringly?) structured and orchestrated piece I've ever heard. I've never laughed out loud at music before. It's certainly a keeper (in particular as a 'party piece', as you suggest)!
The first movement, sans piano, would be credible material for an exotic tone-poem. After that it is ludicrous. Some material is simply ill-suited to some forms. Chopin knew enough to not make symphonies out of his piano works. Mahler knew enough to not write concertante works.
I have a friend who despises the Grieg concerto so much he refuses to own a copy. I've always thought that was just absurd. But then again, he's never heard anything like this before...I wonder what he might say.
Hilarious; but, of course, just like 'worst' films, the criteria is always a personal one. Some appalling films are watchable for their badness and unintentional humor/pretentiousness. Some are simply, like this concerto, too boring or incompetent to last through. Thanks for the heads-up; think I'll pass after your few excerpts! I have to admit, for me, the 'Yellow River Concerto' would be a close second. Just recently found your channel, and it's a delight. I remember reading you in far off High Fidelity days, and tho' I am not always in agreement (say in the anointing of Szell in many pieces) you are always thoughtful and clear, with delicious humor! I know you are not much on English critics, but it seems to me you are verbally in a line to the literary great Ernest Newman, some of whose essays and critiques are still trenchant and humorous to this day. Likewise, I hope your books compare in the style and scholarship to his marvelous 'Wagner as Man and Artist', I am going now to seek them out. All the best...
In some ways, the pianism is more laughable than the composition, which comes off as a harmless piece of orientalism. The piano parts were probably intended to add to that midnight-at-the-oasis flavor, but he plays them as if he were Jonathan Edwards pounding out Mozart.
David, I am told that some of the writing of Bach's last child, P.D.Q Bach is particularly execrable ... personally it is so bad I find it hilarious. I believe it is sometimes played on US campuses, and receives huge amusement.
The snippet of the first movement you played didn't sound that bad to me; it's sort of like what Albert W. Ketelbey would have come up with if he'd tried to write a piano concerto.
Interesting that you use the term "serious music". Here in Hungary that term is widely used in pair with "light music". But when I once said this to one of my English teacher, he laughed and said that it is not used in English speaking countries. Use "classical music" instead - he said. And now Mr. Hurwitz use "serious music" too. :-)
They are interchangeable informally, but "classical" is preferred as being more specific and because it implies no disrespect to other styles of music that are not classical.
I dunno. The first movement is... not good. The rest is, I suppose, passable to my layman's ear. Is this any worse than something by, for example, Richard Nanes?
Djabadary's may work as banal film music for whatever, but as a piano concerto it may indeed be among the worst, or THE worst. Ferde Grofe's is also right there somewhere in the top five worst. I'm trying to think whether Gian-Carlo Menotti's might also occupy one of these dubiously illustrious positions. Also, although I adore the music of Heitor Villalobos, his five piano concertos seem to have "a whole lotta nothin' going on" and they are as dull as dishwater. I have the Decca 2-CD set of Christina Ortiz playing them and to this day (20 years later) I cannot ascertain why I bought the set in the first place.
I also hope to geta taste for Villalobos . And since they're all free on youtube listened to each with the beginnings of each couldn't a twosecond bit to make me want to hear them. HOw could have written as many as 5 and not thought of using a melody like his Bachiana Brasilera.
@@MrInterestingthings Also, how could such a lush, opulent piece as "The Forest of the Amazon" (in its complete incarnation) not be standard repertoire by now?
As much as I agree with you and your humorous presentation of poor Djabadaba I guess there is still a "more worse" piano concerto which I just uploaded. In case you are bold enough for an unsuspected encounter please search for "Linda Babits Western Star" and your ears will hopefully enjoy it!!!! Regards, RP
Ah ah ah! Great Fun David! :D Oh no don't worry...this georgian composer is symply trivial and banal but not so atrocious...in music history there are some pieces that are simply more atrocious, also by well-known composers and perhaps partially over rated...of course this georgian composer is not a Kancheli or a Khachaturian...is surprising to me that Maestro de Froment could record this piano concerto. He did a lot of recordings for Vox, especially of french music (Saint-Saëns, Debussy, Satie) and he did a good job indeed. One exception is Saint Saëns 3rd Symphony: the organ in the Luxemburg Concert hall was really awful. I've never heard an Organ Symphony with an organ so weak...literally dead!
Perhaps another contender for worst piano concertos (my opinion of course) would be the The Yellow River Piano Concerto (1969) by Yin Chengzong and other committee members (Chu Wanghua, Liu Zhuang, Sheng Lihong, Shi Shucheng, and Xu Feixing). Since more than one person was responsible for the creation of this travesty, it becomes tricky to know who just who to point a finger at.
Listening to this review at 4 AM (damned cats woke me up), and I nearly burst a blood vein trying to avoid laughing out loud when you compared desiring to own this atrocity to rock music fans collecting the Shaggs....brilliant!
Well... if I looked for a music performance of a different type of quality, I always end up at the video called 'Polish Brass' (the title is probably random) by user @filiper (unfortunately, one cannot give links in the comment, not even to another youtube video...)
This composer is so no-name that one can barely find anything about him on the internet besides this CD. The full piece is available on RU-vid by the way. After rummaging through the majority of the 1st movement: yes, it's pretty bad, but there is a certain pitiable honesty about it, like when he fumbles through passages hoping to conjure up some ideas along the way... The same could not be said for those composers who sell the same nothing-music as if it was the best thing in the world. Ultimately, it sounds like what some amateur MuseScore composers would do.
The weird thing from what you just played is the composer does seem to know how to orchestrate - basic orchestration and fundamentals. But he has no taste at all or sense of organization. The guy really has no taste no imagination. I have written poor music but at least I find some salvageable ideas buried in it. This really doesn't have any.
The worst piece of all time? That title goes to a number called "The Dream of Gerontius" by Delius. Followed closely by the Piano Concerto no. 1 by Rod McKuen, who is better known as a poet.
It's an "interesting" work but I don't think it is the WORST work ever written. I guess it is a matter of listening depth and experience and, taste, of which, we all know that some of us have and many of us do not! ;>)
I heard Dmitri Bortniansky's Concerto di Cembalo a few months ago for the first time and was struck by how bad it was, or perhaps how pointless it was. It surprised me because I like a lot of Bortniansky's work. It has been my top contender for the worst Piano Concerto ever written. I will have to listen to this Djabadary work to compare. Fortunately the Bortniansky work took up less than 9 minutes of my life.
OK it's awful. But what's the point of attacking an unknown dead person who wrote something hardly anyone has ever heard. What's a bigger waste of time, his concerto or your calling our attention to it now?
i,m just come to see your video...excellent....!..i'am very to late in viewing of the series of excellent videos.....one thing i want ask to you ....a musical critic of montréal ( claude gingras) writing about the piano concerto no 1 of villa-lobos ( he have a recording of this work with ansermet)..he said this concerto is a concerto of ''filling'' ( remplissage)....he tell about other work of villa lobos the same thing.....and he tell the same thnig about.....darius milhaud ....because he tell ....''generaly a composer who receive order and mutch money for a work ( concerto ,symphonie) generaly he d,ont make the best of imself.....what is your point on that.....?
I think you need to look at each case individually, and that's all you can say about it. I don't think either Villa-Lobos or Milhaud, just because they were prolific, were careless or lazy or indifferent.
Perhaps what adds insult to injury would be a piece of music that is pretty awful yet classical radio listeners loved it every time we played it. After some soul-searching in the spirit of the benefit of the doubt, due to listener requests, I concluded: it's still awful. That would be the Concertino In A Minor Op.72 for guitar and orchestra by Salvador Bacarisse. One of the few pieces I've heard that has melodies which move from the tonic of the key to the tonic of the key and just sit there, and in the last movement, move awkwardly up and down, cadencing statically on the tonic in mid-melody. (P.S. I still forgive Bacarisse however because I have written concertos, for horn, bassoon, viola and soprano saxophone and no doubt the God's would punish me with an unforeseen mediocrity of my own, but at least it can't be said, "if you're so critical, why don't you write a three movement concerto.")
It is always nice to find someone else who has listened to Ketèlbey. I tried to create a few, but they immediately dismissed his work as "pure torture," but then I was playing one of the pieces with no words.
Hallo deares Listeners, I am a professionell Musician living and working Europe..I can only say the music so hidious that it is extremely entertaining...amazingly disjointed ..Fish or fowl....the dear Gentleman meant well but unfortunately this composition was not a musical triumph...OUCH...
The trouble with designating anything as "the worst ever" is that you thereby give it a sort of publicity it doesn't deserve and keep it in the public eye. It's why the appalling poems of William McGonagall are still in print and why people listen to recordings of Florence Foster Jenkins. And of course it's why I (in common with, I suspect, a lot of your listeners) immediately tracked down a copy of Djabadary's piano concerto on watching your critique of it. Yes, it's pretty bad- boring, poundingly repetitive with no melodies worth listening to- but at least it managed to find someone to record it. There must be a lot of concertos out there that are so unplayable or of so little merit that they have never had a performance.
Try Sorabji. He has an astonishing following though. Mostly among those who think that technical difficulty or length are all it takes to justify performing something.
My suggestions for three really bad pieces of music: Symphony 1997 by Tan Dun (one cliche after another, truly horrible), Imagined Oceans by Karl Jenkins (think of the Swingle Singers doing variations on 'Shave and a haircut'), and Allan Petterson's 7th Symphony. Strange because each of these composers was/is capable of much better.
Wow... I went into this review thinking, "Nothing could be as bad as the "Yellow River Concerto", but I have to admit you're right. (Check out the new recording by Yuja Wang of the Abrams Concerto, if you want to hear another howler.)
Cage was a brilliant composer when he wanted to be (think: Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano), but he was more important as a thinker and musical gadfly. There's room for that too.
@HillDueceua Nonsense. Cage's early works, in particular, reveal a powerful creative imagination. Music history is full of "you won't amount to anything" claims against major figures, usually made by people who never amounted to anything. And "balls," or courage have nothing to do with it. It all comes down to a question of taste, plain and simple. I'm not sure which "party" insists that Cage stands beyond criticism. I simply believe in recognizing his achievement for what it is, whether I happen to like it or not. For me, he was one of the few modern composers with a sense of humor, which I value very highly.
@@DavesClassicalGuide I disagree, for example his 'Variations sur un chant hongrois' was quite enjoyable. In any case, there is too little by this composer that I can listen to online to make any judgements about him..
@@DavesClassicalGuide My luck is such that, on a whim, I put down good money and bought Ivo Pogorelich playing the Tchaikovsky 1st Piano concerto on DG without hearing in first. With Pogorelich playing it, the Tchaikovsky sounds like the worst concerto ever written.
I don't like this concerto, but calling some ones attempt at integrating and synthesizing the traditional music of their homeland (Georgia in this case) an "oriental camel procession" is honestly an awful thing to say. There are no camels in Georgia, but there are musical traditions influenced by Persian, Turkish, and Armenian music. If you're only able to picture camels, perhaps you need to dig a little deeper into traditional music from that part of the world. The way you're mocking a composer who tried to integrate non-western musical influences from his home country into his music leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Get over yourself. That fact that his music sounds like a camel procession just confirms what a lousy composer he was. And when was the last time you were in Georgia to verify the lack of camels?
From the little that you played there was clearly some sad rummaging attributable to Rimsky's orientalism. Yeah this is sad stuff but there has been other equally bad stuff let loose into the world. Just keep listening, you'll find out.
