# Compendium of Challenging & Rewarding Listening



## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Let's initiate a new phase of challenging listening this season on Talk Classical! We're grateful for our members who might consider posting a segment of music they find more challenging and rewarding recently! This can be interpreted how you like: segments need not necessarily be obscure, they can be classic like Beethoven, or even non-classical. They can be any music of any background, as long as you've found it slightly challenging and rewarding, we'd love to hear what you have to post today, and you can post something each day.

All entries will also earn some points on our Compendium of Challenging & Rewarding Listening. That means you will contribute! If you enjoy others' contributions, points will be added to theirs as well. Give a thumbs up to any posts you have enjoyed.

Each post should be a 1 to 30 minute-or-so segment, to allow for other samples to be heard. Perfect examples are:

"Movement 3 and 4" of _x_ work
Just "Movement 3" of _x_ work
"This whole 25 minute piece, or part of album"
"The middle 30 minutes" of _x_ movement or act
Just specify where the 1-30 minutes begin with the album name or a video link.

Also! if you ever want to grow this compendium, feel free to post the same entry again. No limits to favoritism in art, every post or repost renders it 3 points, and every "like" it receives renders another point, to where point-counting ends after a week, and you can repost again. Our hope is that this thread throughout its life cycle provokes deep, moving, and interesting listening together with our participants, and expands our journey in classical and overall music appreciation, and most of all, thanks to you for making this possible, whatever your tastes in music are! We welcome you, and happy listening!


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## Prodromides (Mar 18, 2012)

I commence ceremonies by throwing a book at you: *Le livre des Katuns*.

This 28-minute opus was recorded during 1977 in a Radio France studio, but did not surface onto vinyl record until 1981 via the _Le Chant du Monde_ label. The rewarding aspect of this piece is that, purportedly, Polish film director Andrzej Wajda was so impressed by *Le livre des Katuns* that its composer Jean Prodromidès received a commission to provide music for Wajda's *Danton* which the director filmed in 1982.










The challenging aspect, though, is that the musical vocabulary for this orchestral/choral work with soloists is atypical of most listeners' experiences except for those few whose regular diet consists of Scelsi, Ligeti, Varèse, etc.






[FYI: "Salome" & "Parcours" are on side 2 of the LP and not part of the YouTube video]


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Howard Skempton’s Humming Song. No development, just the challenge of experiencing each sound not as part of a structure, but for what it is in itself. There’s lots of music like this, and when I saw this thread I initially thought of Stockhausen’s Naturlich Dauern, which I think is similar. But the astonishing thing is that Skempton was exploring this type of music 40 years before Stockhausen!


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Cherubini: String Quartet No. 1
_Britten Quartet_


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## RobertJTh (Sep 19, 2021)

I'm nominating both Reger concertos, the one for violin and orchestra in A major, op.101 and the piano concerto in F minor, op. 114.

Written during Reger's most intense experimental years, they offer a big challenge to both performers and listeners. When was the last time you heard these works in concert? The name Reger alone guarantees empty venues, and the average soloist avoids these works like the plague.

What is it that makes these two concertos, masterpieces of invention as they may be, so unpopular?
First of all, they're long. The violin concerto is the longest in the regular repertoire, beating even Elgar's. And the piano concerto, while being more concise still runs for a respectable 3 quarters of an hour.

Then there's the "Reger problem". His melodies don't have much staying power, they go "one ear in, one ear out". That's enough for some people to completely dismiss most of his works, causing clueless idiots like Hurwitz to call the piano concerto "the worst ever."
Fact is, it's not that Reger couldn't write beautiful melodies (he could if he wanted), he just wasn't interested in using melodic power as the corner stone of his compositions. In his works, counterpoint, harmony structural and textural integrity are much more important. And even then, anyone who listens to the slow movements of both concertos and is completely unaffected by the melodies must be tone deaf.

But the main reason why these concertos get neglected so much isn't the lack of melodic invention - it's their tremendous harmonic complexity and density. Reger at this time in his life (1907-1910) was a true modernist, in the vein of Schoenberg (who admired him greatly), and while he never abandoned traditional tonality completely like Schoenberg did at this exact same time, he came dangerously close. There are spots in the violin concerto where a tonal center seems completely absent, where every chord presents a chromatic progression into another key. This incredibly concentrated art of chromatic modulation seems to be too much for many ears. There's just too much going on harmonically at any given time, causing the music giving an overloaded impression. "Chromatic sludge" it has been called. And it doesn't help that Reger's orchestration, while solid, isn't that colorful. Curiously enough, he used a relatively small, Beethovenian orchestra (4 horns but no trombones!) for both concertos, while the expansive music seems to warrant a "bigger", romantic orchestration.

Still there's so much to enjoy in these works, there's tremendous beauty to be discovered, but it requires concentrated and repeated listening. In my experience it's best to let the music "wash over" you the first time around, take in a general impression of the music, how it's structured (the forms are much more clear than the harmonies!) and what are the main "building blocks" of the composition. Then you can use that knowledge to your advantage in further listening sessions.

The violin concerto (with orchestral score):






The piano concerto (also with orchestral score):


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## Monsalvat (11 mo ago)

I love Reger's violin concerto especially!

I'll nominate the first movement of Bartók's fourth string quartet (1928): 




I think most people here will be familiar with the Bartók quartets but if anyone isn't, they are worth hearing. They were the gateway to modernism for me; they were able to capture my attention in a way that the Second Viennese School couldn't immediately do. This movement displays a quite interesting motivic and contrapuntal development but in a harsh, stringent vocabulary. By measure 11, we are already being hit with a stretto in inversion:









While it is what I would call a modernist work, it is distinct from the Second Viennese School in temperament and temperature. It isn't pretending to be a detached, impassive spectator of the early twentieth century; it is right there in the fray. This is violently expressive, volatile, and often very stringent. And yet something about it is alluring.

Further listening: the rest of this quartet and the Fifth Quartet. Both have a symmetrical five-movement structure. Then the Sixth Quartet, with each movement sharing a "Mesto" (sad) introduction that ends up consuming the whole of the last movement, and a march and burletta that epitomize grotesquerie. I mean just look at this (from the beginning of the Burletta):










For another take on modernist chamber music, I would suggest Paul Hindemith's Fifth string quartet.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

I'll offer the ten minute work by Krzysztof Penderecki titled "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima", a work from 1960 which is deservedly not obscure, as are many other 1960s era "classical" works.

Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima

The piece remains obviously challenging to the ears. But philosophically it proves quite rewarding. The composer's inventions of scoring and instrumental usage proclaim that new horrors demand new artistic means of expression. I'm not sure Mozart's art, fine as it is for the classical symphony, string quartet, concerto and opera, is adequate to express a horror such as nuclear war. Like Picasso's _Guernica_ it speaks volumes in its sheer assault on the sensibilities. If this music is still ugly to you after 60 decades, then Penderecki has succeeded in his task. And _that's_ the beauty of this work of art.


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