Gould was a contrarian. He played slow pieces fast, fast pieces slow. He mocked revered composers and exalted unknown ones. He demanded perfection in the recording process, but did so while singing along on his old squeaky chair.
In other words, a pain in the ass.
How on earth is Bela Bartok not mentioned in this thread? My favorite type of classical music is chamber music, where he excelled, but it’s not like he didn’t write anything else.
For me - I don’t enjoy Baroque, so I leave them all off:
Tier 1: Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart
Tier 1.5 (I know he’s tier 1, but not my cup of tea): Bach
Tier 2: Dvorak, Schubert, Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, Bartok, Stravinsky
Tier 3: Faure, Debussy, Ravel, Bruckner, Schoenberg (yeah, I know), Shostakovitch, Haydn, Schumann, Vaughan-Williams, Messiaen, Verdi, Gershwin, Smetana, Mendelssohn, Rachmaninoff
Somebody early on mentioned how people forget Faure - Firefox suggested corrections for a few of the names I typed incorrectly at first try, but it doesn’t recognize Faure.
Wagner and Chopin are two that I can recognize as brilliant but don’t really appeal to me.
Some decades ago, NYC’s WQXR radio audience was polled as to their favorite composers. Bartok came in dead last.
@Wilson I guess we need some examples of great works by Bartok. I am not familiar with his sturff that’s for sure.
So a quick intro to Bartok:
As I mentioned, chamber music is my particular favorite subset of classical, and his six string quartets are all parts of the standard string quartet repertoire. The fourth is probably his best known, but being later it’s more modern and shows some influences from serialists but isn’t quite into Schoenberg/Berg territory. The first and second are more approachable.
Folk music - particularly Hungarian, Czech and Slovak - influences a lot of his work, particularly the earlier works. Many of his solo piano pieces show that influence - the Hungarian Folk Tunes and Hungarian Peasant Songs for example. His Allegro barbaro may be his best known solo piano work.
He didn’t write a ton for orchestra - no symphonies in the traditional sense. I think his two best known works are the Concerto for Orchestra and Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta, both of which I think are good starting points for getting in to Bartok before jumping in to lesser known works like his one opera Bluebeard’s Castle or his symphonic poem Kossuth.
Hope that helps, for the curious.
I hears ya. Wolfie composed some utterly sublime passages (many in opera) but Haydn beats the crap out of him in masses, string quartets, and symphonies! (And Dvorak wasn’t a wannabe Brahms, as the general opinion seemed to be a half century ago; his oeuvre is far more enjoyable.)
Absolute Geniuses: Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms, Debussy, Prokofiev
Great Composers: Mozart, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Fauré, Scriabin, Ligeti
Well Worth a Listen : Dowland, Purcell, Vivaldi, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Dutilleux