# Your Somewhat Obscure Classical Recommendations



## ka00 (Mar 14, 2019)

I'm curious to hear any piece of orchestral/classical music that really moves you, which wasn’t composed by one of the top 20 most well-known composers of all time.

Basically, what’s a piece of music (or more than one) that you think is great and that most people (who didn’t study music in college) probably don’t know about.

I’ll go first:

“Song of the Soul” by Edmund Rubbra


Thanks


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## Justus (Mar 14, 2019)




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## Vonk (Mar 14, 2019)

Great thread idea.
Frank Martin - a Swiss composer. I have the score for "Petite Symphonie Concertante" and it's been a great study and influence. Interesting orchestration and takes you on a real journey. (I think from melancholy to mania - but that's just me).


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## Akarin (Mar 14, 2019)

Bernard Schulé. Another Swiss composer. He studied with Nadia Boulanger and Paul Dukas a lifetime ago. 



He was my grandfather too.


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## Parsifal666 (Mar 14, 2019)

Penderecki and Lutoslawski with their at times _fascinating_ aleatoric symphonies.

That said, Penderecki is probably one of the top ten or fifteen composers alive today, so perhaps not so niche.


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## BenG (Mar 14, 2019)

Anything Morten Lauridsen...


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## Joe_D (Mar 14, 2019)

Scriabin Piano Concerto in F sharp minor (Op. 20), Movement 2:


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## TGV (Mar 14, 2019)

I'm a great fan of Martin too. A few more:

Franz Berwald, a Swedish composer from the early Romantic period, e.g. his piano concerto in D.

Walter Braunfels, writer of the best opera ever, Die Vögel (bizarrely enough entirely online).

Ernest Chausson, French Late Romantic-ish, e.g. Poème de l'amour et de la mer.

Niels Gade, a Danish Romantic composer

Giullaume Lekeu, a Belgian composer who died much too young: String Quartet in G.

Bohuslav Martinů, born in Bohemia, somewhat modern, not unlike Martin, e.g. his Sinfonietta.

Some obscure Austrian classical composer, a certain Mozart. He wrote e.g. a quite decent Laudate Dominum.

Karol Szymanowski, Polish, modernish, e.g. Stabat Mater.

Michael Torke, student of Philip Glass, I believe, but more interesting: Telephone Book, but later works didn't really impress me that much.

Jan Dismas Zelenka, the Polish Baroque composer that even Bach admired, e.g. this sonata in g ZWV 181, or the Simphonia a 8, or Miserere ZWV 57.

The honor position is reserved for a composer who is perhaps more limited in his expression, and who, like so many other composers, was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time, but who has written some of the most beautiful and heart-wrenching works I've ever heard: Gerald Finzi. Listen to his https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkQbzZgwfl0 (Eclogue for piano and strings) later on the evening when everything is quiet.


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## muk (Mar 14, 2019)

Another Swiss composer, Arthur Honegger:



Pacific 231. A fascinating piece, inspired by an accelerating steam locomotive.


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## nanotk (Mar 14, 2019)

My absolute favorite piece, another version exist also for Violin and Piano.


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## Land of Missing Parts (Mar 14, 2019)

ka00 said:


> “Song of the Soul” by Edmund Rubbra


This has just made my day. Exactly what I needed right now.


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## JohnG (Mar 14, 2019)

Duruflé's Requiem is one of the most sublime pieces ever written. It incorporates Gregorian chant lines but -- it doesn't sound like that. It's just a wonder of conception, sensitivity, and reverence.

Here's one Youtube link:


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## dzilizzi (Mar 14, 2019)

Don't know how obscure this is but Smetina, The Moldau


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## batonruse (Mar 14, 2019)

Sweden 1 - 1 England 
Hugo Alfvén: Elegy from 'King Gustav II Adolf', Op. 49
Gerald Finzi - Romance in E flat major, Op. 11


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## ed buller (Mar 14, 2019)

Check out Papa !



best

e


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## W Ackerman (Mar 14, 2019)




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## patrick76 (Mar 14, 2019)

So many... will limit it to a handful -

*Gorecki Symphony No.3 * 


*Joseph Schwantner ...and the Mountains Rising Nowhere * 


*Daneil Asia Symphony No. 3 * 


*Arvo Part Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten * 


*Steve Reich Music for 18 Musicians *


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## CT (Mar 14, 2019)

JohnG said:


> Duruflé's Requiem is one of the most sublime pieces ever written. It incorporates Gregorian chant lines but -- it doesn't sound like that. It's just a wonder of conception, sensitivity, and reverence.
> 
> Here's one Youtube link:




I was going to mention this one too. It's hard to say what "somewhat obscure" really means!


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## Gaffable (Mar 14, 2019)

The Lamb, composed in 1982 by Sir John Tavener (1944 - 2013). The music is used in the 2013 Italian movie La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty), which is where I discovered it.


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## ka00 (Mar 14, 2019)

BenG said:


> Anything Morten Lauridsen...




Definitely! I especially love his Lux Aeterna:





muk said:


> Another Swiss composer, Arthur Honegger:
> 
> 
> 
> Pacific 231. A fascinating piece, inspired by an accelerating steam locomotive.




I love that piece. Huge fan of Honegger, especially La Danse des Morts and Une Cantate de Noel.


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## Living Fossil (Mar 14, 2019)

Great thread!

I just start with one composition of Franz Liszt:


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## Living Fossil (Mar 14, 2019)

...followed up by the quite forgotten but great composer Theodor Berger:


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## Living Fossil (Mar 14, 2019)

... let's continue with Franz Schreker, once a highly regarded composer. After he was outlawed by the Nazi regime, his music had some kind of a comeback, but still remains quite undervalued.


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## Chris Wagner (Mar 14, 2019)

- Anton Arensky Piano Concerto in F minor (1st & 2nd Mvmt.)

- Sergei Bortkiewicz Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat Major (1st & 2nd Mvmt.)

- Alexander Scriabin Etude No. 12 Op. 8 in D-Sharp minor


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## Ray Cole (May 7, 2021)

Great thread! I'm reviving it to add some favorites not mentioned yet:

Carl Vine - Piano Sonata No. 1 (1990), here played in a PHENOMENAL performance by Michael Kieran Harvey, to whom the piece is dedicated:


The Vine Piano Sonata No. 1 is possibly my favorite piano sonata of all time.

Peter Sculthorpe - Irkanda IV (1961)


There is something haunted and dangerous about this piece as if the violin is stranded in the middle of the vast and hostile Australian outback.

Toru Takemitsu - To the Edge of Dream (1983)


Takemitsu's orchestration on this piece is stunning.

Edgard Varese - Arcana (1925-1927)


Fans of Jerry Goldsmith's score to Planet of the Apes will like this one I think.


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## cygnusdei (May 8, 2021)

This piece did make quite an impression on my fragile little mind. Canadian composer Denis Gougeon:


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## RobbertZH (May 8, 2021)

The symphonic poems (purely instrumental, no vocals) from Paul Ladmirault.
He was a student of Gabriel Faure in the same class as Ravel.

One example of his symphonic poems is "En Foret" (in the forest):


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## RobbertZH (May 8, 2021)

Very cinematic is the symphonic music of Anatoly Liadov
(PS: there are different ways to spell his name).

Baba Yaga has a fantasy theme, but you can very well imagine it under a Starwars movie from John Williams.




Kikamora is rather brooding music:




And no, you do not want to ever meet Baba Yaga or Kikimora


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## RobbertZH (May 8, 2021)

And also cinematic, but with a more pastoral feel, the symphonic music from (the better known composer) Frederick Delius.

Brigg Fair would fit nicely in the animation movie Watership Down (with the rabbits in the english countryside):


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## kgdrum (May 8, 2021)




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## kgdrum (May 8, 2021)




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## nolotrippen (May 8, 2021)

I've just discovered John Foulds. There are four volumes of his orchestral work with the BBC Concert Orchestra. Beautiful stuff. https://www.amazon.com/s?k=John+Foulds&i=popular&ref=nb_sb_noss


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## Terry93D (Jun 1, 2021)

Guillaume Lekeu was a promising young composer mentored by Cesar Franck who contracted typhoid fever and died the day after his twenty-fourth birthday. I claim no great knowledge of him or his works, and in fact the piece I am going to link you is the only one of his that I've heard. It's his Adagio for String Orchestra, a beautiful and melancholic work written after Franck's death, and an excellent demonstration of just what was lost when he died.


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