# Favorite obscure works by major non-obscure composers



## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Enter the mysterious world of Rachmaninoff's operas, Wagner's sonatas, and Haydn's pieces for mechanical clock. 

What are your favorite unknown compositions of the well-known composers?


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Richard Strauss Piano Sonata (the adagio played by Gould is special).


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

This one immediately came to mind:

Sibelius - Pelléas et Mélisande


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Not necessarily a favorite but certainly obscure: Beethoven's only music for glass harmonica, in his 1815 incidental music for _Leonore Prohaska_. Can be found on YouTube.


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## Minor Sixthist (Apr 21, 2017)

I can't say it's that obscure since it is the music to a Marlon Brando movie I know was very well-received and gather was popular back in the 50's when it came out, but Bernstein's _On the Waterfront _Suite is somewhat of a hidden gem that is not nearly as abused by the symphony orchestra as _Candide_ and _West Side Story_ have been - _especially _this past 2018, what with all the concerts celebrating LB's centennial.

The suite to _On the Waterfront_ is a piece I find really interesting and definitely set a bit apart from the other LB stuff I mentioned, though it's not as if you couldn't tell it's LB. Really beautiful muted horn solo opens the piece and remains the primary motif. Lots of _tutti_ chaotic moments, notably in the percussion, but contrasted with some really moving slow/soft lines toward the end - I recall in my head the piano taking up the melody (Geez, was it the celeste??) and it was always hard to give attention anywhere else but there. Great piece, I really need to re-listen to remind myself of everything.

I attest as an orchestral musician, especially as one who was in several different ensembles this past year specifically, that there came a time as 2018 was winding down that as much as we may have loved Len - we were about ready to be sick if we saw one more score of _Candide_ sitting on a stand. In my experience it even carried over into this year, though at the very least we played "Profanation" from his first symphony, something most of us hadn't seen much of before.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Stravinsky's early Symphony in E flat, op. 1
Bloch's Symphony in C sharp minor
Bizet's Roma
R. Strauss Aus Italien


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Minor Sixthist said:


> I can't say it's that obscure since it is the music to a Marlon Brando movie I know was very well-received and gather was popular back in the 50's when it came out, but Bernstein's _On the Waterfront _Suite is somewhat of a hidden gem...


That's been a favorite of mine for a long time.


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## Minor Sixthist (Apr 21, 2017)

KenOC said:


> That's been a favorite of mine for a long time.


Do you have any favorite recordings? Want to find a good one and listen to it now.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Minor Sixthist said:


> Do you have any favorite recordings? Want to find a good one and listen to it now.


Bernstein always does a great job with Copland.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Art Rock said:


> This one immediately came to mind:
> 
> Sibelius - Pelléas et Mélisande


...or _The Bard_ or _The Tempest_


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

V.Williams - An Oxford Elegy.
A very moving evocation _and_ narration of selections from Arnold's 'The Scholar Gypsy'. Recorded a few times, but still obscure.


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## CrunchyFr0g (Jun 11, 2019)

Prokofiev's incidental music to Hamlet, and this especially.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

mikeh375 said:


> V.Williams - An Oxford Elegy.


A good piece. But please use the right family name for the composer: Vaughan Williams (first name Ralph).


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)




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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

Art Rock said:


> A good piece. But please use the right family name for the composer: Vaughan Williams (first name Ralph).


Huh? seriously?..a little too pedantic even for me Art Rock (I did know his first name btw)


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

mikeh375 said:


> Huh? seriously?..


Wikipedia is just a click away.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

and....? I don't really need wiki much for my profession.
Whereas you are correct in what you say, most people will call him Vaughn Williams and ignore the Ralph. Is your policing really necessary?


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## Clouds Weep Snowflakes (Feb 24, 2019)

Does Beethoven's Fidelio count? Daniel Barenboim conducts this:


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Policing? Strange term for what was a simple correction.
Necessary? Maybe not, but I also didn't expect it would ruffle your feathers.

I have seen people mistakenly think that the composer's full name is Vaughan (first name) Williams (last name), and posting his name as V. Williams surely suggests this in your case as well. I've made the opposite mistake with Peter Maxwell Davies, where I thought wrongly the family name was Maxwell Davies for decades - until someone pointed it out to me. Like I said, a simple correction, nothing more nothing less.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Antonín Dvořák - Svatební košile


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

Art Rock said:


> Policing? Strange term for what was a simple correction.
> Necessary? Maybe not, but I also didn't expect it would ruffle your feathers.
> 
> I have seen people mistakenly think that the composer's full name is Vaughan (first name) Williams (last name), and posting his name as V. Williams surely suggests this in your case as well. I've made the opposite mistake with Peter Maxwell Davies, where I thought wrongly the family name was Maxwell Davies for decades - until someone pointed it out to me. Like I said, a simple correction, nothing more nothing less.


... seems like we both mis-read each other then. Enough said, the internet's a pain at times right?
Anyhow it's good to know I'm not the only one who likes R.V.Williams' Oxford Elegy. The end "why faintest thou" section floors me every time I hear it, the prose and the music.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Kurt Weill - _Der Jasager_. One of his Brecht collaborations, but the music isn't of the cabaret pit band style with which we usually associate the partnership - it's a bleak re-telling of an old Japanese morality tale and the music complements the story with its chilly neoclassicalism.

Benjamin Britten - _Gemini Variations_ op.79. A clever little work in which a flautist and violin player do double duty as a piano duo.

Paul Hindemith - _Der Dämon_ op.28. Hindemith's first ballet - a work in two scenes for chamber forces in which two sisters are seduced by the 'hero' but with different results. This work came right at the start of Hindemith's amazing burst of creativity in the early 1920s but is all but forgotten now.

Aaron Copland - _Grohg_. An early ballet - a creepy story featuring a necromancer falling victim to the rules of his own game.

Dmitri Shostakovich - _A Foreword to My Complete Works and a Brief Contemplation with Regard to this Foreword_ op.123 for bass and piano. A short narration in which the composer reflects on how much of his work was lambasted or doomed to obscurity during the Stalin era.

_'I scribble on the paper in a spurt, then I hear catcalls, but my ear's not hurt/then I torment the ears of all the world, then have it printed, but forever unrecalled...'_

He then sardonically signs off with some of the official titles heaped upon him during the Khrushchev/Brezhnev years.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Beethoven's Christ on the Mount of Olives has to qualify as obscure. I would bet that many people who love Beethoven don't know it exists.


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## Littlephrase (Nov 28, 2018)

Or how about Beethoven's pieces for the Mandolin?


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

Jean Sibelius: Jedermann (Everyman)
Carl Nielsen: Overture "An Imaginary Journey to the Faroe Islands"
Pyotr Tchaikovsky: opera "The Enchantress"
Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov: opera "Mlada"
Dmitry Shostakovich: Piano Sonata I
Sergei Rachmaninoff: opera "The Miserly Knight" & Cello Sonata
Alexander Glazunov: Symphony no. VI, Piano Sonata I, Theme et Variations for piano, The Forest, The Sea, From the Middle Ages, Triumphal March
Sir Edward Elgar: The Nursery Suite
Sir William Walton: Henry V (complete film score)
Jules Massenet: operas "Herodiade" & "Esclarmonde"
Ludwig van Beethoven: Wellington Victory
Bela Bartok: Symphonic poem "Kossuth"
Zoltan Kodaly: Concerto for Orchestra, Peacock Variations
Leonard Bernstein: Symphony no. II "The Age of Anxiety"
Franz Lehar: operetta "Der Zarewitsch"
Sergei Prokofiev: ballet "Tale of the Stone Flower"


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## Brahmsian Colors (Sep 16, 2016)

Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus and Charterhouse Suite...Two more lovely works from the pen of Ralph Vaughan Williams


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## Brahmsian Colors (Sep 16, 2016)

Not as well known as Vaughan Williams, George Butterworth, another English composer, died at an early age while fighting in World War One. I wouldn't hesitate to call him a musical poet. Try listening to The Banks of Green Willow, Two English Idylls and the orchestral version of A Shropshire Lad.


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## paulbest (Apr 18, 2019)

Kurt Weill
1st sym , gets to me everytime , have like 3 or 4 recordings. 
Some feel the 2nd is his better work. I also like the 2nd, but its passages in the 1st that are ,,,spell binding,,,mesmerizing …
anyone else get the same emotional gripping from the 1st sym,,,or is it , just me?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Art Rock said:


> I have seen people mistakenly think that the composer's full name is Vaughan (first name) Williams (last name), and posting his name as V. Williams surely suggests this in your case as well. *I've made the opposite mistake with Peter Maxwell Davies, where I thought wrongly the family name was Maxwell Davies for decades - until someone pointed it out to me.*


Thanks for sending me to Wiki to look up Peter Maxwell Davies. I've been unsure about his name for a long time, based on sources as confused as I. This problem would be neatly solved if we could all agree to hyphenate double last names, a procedure now common in America.


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## Bluecrab (Jun 24, 2014)

_Divertimento for String Orchestra_ by Bartok. Perhaps it's not truly obscure, but it doesn't seem to draw nearly as much attention as other Bartok works, such as the string quartets and the piano concertos.


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## apricissimus (May 15, 2013)

Shostakovich: The Execution of Stepan Razin, Op. 119

Is this obscure? Someone can tell me whether this is obscure or not.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

^
^

I myself would have to say probably not - it's one of Shostakovich's more appreciated vocal works. Now, had you have chosen the _Two Fables of Krylov_, I would have said definitely so!


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## Heliogabo (Dec 29, 2014)

Beethoven’s Prometheus; great piece shadowed by Beethoven’s masterpieces.


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## Cadenza (Sep 24, 2012)

The Romance in D for Violin by Saint-Saens


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Bach-Vivaldi Concerto for 4 Harpsichords:


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## Littlephrase (Nov 28, 2018)

Speaking of the vocal works of Shostakovich: how about the great Suite on Poems by Michelangelo? Or really any of his songs.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Bluecrab said:


> _Divertimento for String Orchestra_ by Bartok. Perhaps it's not truly obscure, but it doesn't seem to draw nearly as much attention as other Bartok works, such as the string quartets and the piano concertos.


Bartok's early Orchestral Suites #1 and #2, are big, lush, Romantic pieces which I had never heard of till I found a used CD in a pawn shop. Not much like his later music, but enjoyable.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Littlephrase1913 said:


> Speaking of the vocal works of Shostakovich: how about the great Suite on Poems by Michelangelo? Or really any of his songs.


Of the songs/song cycles I'd hazard a guess that _From Jewish Folk Poetry_ op.79 is his most well-known, but usually in its voice/orchestra guise rather than for voice/piano. There are many hidden treasures amongst his songs - the 5-disc series on the Delos label is especially worth investigating. The cycle you mentioned is indeed powerful stuff for the composer to sign off his vocal output with.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Couchie said:


> Bach-Vivaldi Concerto for 4 Harpsichords:


An outstanding work, but arguably not obscure, I think. I first came across it on a Bach 'greatest hits' recording.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Maybe Debussy - _Le martyre de Saint Sebastien_ if that counts, it is one that comes to mind.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

Here's one:

Liszt - Weinen Klagen Sorgen Zagen


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Thanks for sending me to Wiki to look up Peter Maxwell Davies. I've been unsure about his name for a long time, based on sources as confused as I. This problem would be neatly solved if we could all agree to hyphenate double last names, a procedure now common in America.


Well, he was widely and generally known as 'Max', so maybe that's the solution!


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## CrunchyFr0g (Jun 11, 2019)

Poulenc's Sarabande may not be deeply obscure but it's worth putting up because it's lovely.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Nielsen - Springtime in Funen (Fynsk foraar)


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

I rate the following choices as obscure masterpieces and recommend them: 

Bach - Organ Sonatas, BWV 1025-1030;
Couperin - Versets composed by order of the King (from 1703, 1704 and 1705);
Berlioz - Te Deum Op. 22;
Beethoven - Mass in C, Op. 86.


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## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

Beethovens Mandolin piece!!


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## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

And now serious: Beethovens Egmont. And I don't mean only the Overture!


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## geralmar (Feb 15, 2013)

Beethoven, Choral Fantasy. I know it's dismissed as merely the dry run for the final movement of the ninth symphony; but I prefer it for its airy unpretentiousness. (Lots of Beethoven in this thread.)


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer

I do think he was a genius, just based on the Concerti Armonici. For many, many years they were ascribed to Pergolesi, Stravinsky adapted them for his Pulcinella [sic? & am I right?], but good recordings of the works are still _relatively_ hard to find and the performances are few and far between.

My own opinion is that of all the aristocrats who tried their hand at composition, he was the only one for whom greatness might have been in reach. Just listen to the opening of this concerto:






I find it to be among the most beautiful of its age. The best recording of this piece is by St Martin but I've never found a digitized version since tragically giving away my LPs.

*Edit:* Just realized he doesn't meet the OP's request for "non-obscure" composers, but I can't help mentioning him. He's obscure in every sense.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

From Beethoven, his "Eyeglass Duo" for viola and cello ("with two eyeglasses obbligato"). It's said that Beethoven liked to play this with his friend Zmeskall von Domanovecz and that both needed to wear glasses to make out the notes. Very unusual, very nice.


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## Clairvoyance Enough (Jul 25, 2014)

I found this browsing through Mozart's oeuvre over 5 years ago (I'd just watched Amadeus), and that first landler is still stuck in my head. I don't even know what a landler is.






The first and third dances of this are also still stuck in my head, but I primarily remember being pleasantly surprised by the entrance of that bagpipe(?) instrument at 4:25.


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