Rachmaninoff?

[Greg Romero <gregory.romero@yale.edu>]

     A Glenn Gould list talking about Rachmaninoff?  I've got to get my
two-cents in worth fast, I guess.
     I can't stand Rachmaninoff and I never could.  IMHO, Rachmaninoff is
a crowd-pleaser who was born about 50 years too late.  His music is overly
long, the melodies (with the rare exception of maybe the 2nd Concerto's
slow movement. I refuse to say the same about the 18th variation, though,
because R himself told us enough about that one.) are rambling, pointless,
and saccharine, and he added nothing to the repertoire but a couple of
salon-music piano w/ orchestra pieces, a bunch of all-technique-no-music
piano solo pieces, and a couple of long, boring symphonies.  He reminds me
of Liszt, who I also can't stand, except that he wasn't a fraction as
daring as Liszt was.  Where Liszt pushed the harmonic idiom ahead twenty
years, Rachmaninoff pulled it back fifty. Look at the work that Scriabin
and Schonberg were doing at the same time as Rachmaninoff for a
comparison.  I think Grove's had the right idea when they told the truth
about Rachmaninoff. Rachmaninoff should have stuck to playing the piano.
     You can get mad at me if you like, but GG said worse stuff about
Mozart, Chopin, and Schumann.