Chopin

Ivan Hewett, an exceptionally fine music critic for The Daily Telegraph, says he had a deep aversion to Chopin's music when he was a young man: "those melting runs and arabesques made me feel physically sick.... Chopin wasn't serious, certainly not compared to the tough modern music I favoured.... If pressed to say why I disliked it so much, I imagine I would have said it was too girlie." He goes on to say how his view changed over time but I think I know how he felt then though I have a liking of Chopin that is the opposite of aversion: I love it all.
How I came to like Chopin was I think the result of seeing the film "A Song to Remember" with Cornell Wilde playing the part of the composer and Merle Oberon as George Sand. It wasn't that I found the film particularly good - indeed, young as I was then, I think I saw through the artifice and sentimentality - no, it was because the music in it was so beautiful. Now it is regarded as one of the worst of Hollywood's biopics. Someone in Time Out magazine wrote: "Hilariously inept even by Hollywood biopic standards.... Amazingly stilted kitsch, packed with unspeakable dialogue." And in Mountain Xpress (whatever that is) someone wrote: "Indefensible as either art or history... it is the absolute definition of kitsch... it's all utterly preposterous but not without its campy charms."
Neither mentions the piano music in it played brilliantly by Jose Iturbi and that was the feature of it that made it such a wonderful experience for me.
I went to Youtube and typed in "A song to remember" and got a couple of scenes from the film. Yes, it is pretty awful stuff but you can close your eyes and listen to Iturbi's superb playing.
I think Jose Iturbi, who appeared as himself in a couple of movies ("Anchors Aweigh" for one) was the second worst actor in Hollywood. The worst? That great tenor, a favourite on Housewives Choice, singing an aria from The Mastersingers: Lauritz Melchior. Both were standing lumps of wood on screen but Iturbi was ash to Melchior's teak.