Music

No more Shostakovic for me thanks. His 5th Symphony was probably, for some, the highlight of the concert I went to a few weeks ago but the highlight for me was the Grieg Piano Concerto. I can hear some of my college friends of many years ago saying "O no!" Yes, Grieg. I recall someone in the interval of a concert saying to his partner "Liked the Mozart but hated the Grieg." The Grieg happened to be his Holberg Suite which is a wonderful work, Grieg at his best.
I recall reading something about Walter Legg the great impresario: he had discovered a young pianist, Dinu Lipatti, and wanted the famous and then ageing Arthur Schnabel to hear a record of the young man. "I'll play you the Grieg Piano Concerto," he told Schnabel. "O no, not that, anything but that," said Schnabel. "Just the cadenza then?" Schnabel agreed and was swept away by the man's playing (Lipatti didn't have long to live after that and hurried to record a great deal of piano music before dying). But that was all, he didn't want to hear the rest.
Michael White, writing in The Telegraph, says that music critics like him can't "unquestionly adhore every piece of serious music". Even they have their favourites and composers they positively dislike.
I dislike Shostakovic (apart from his 2nd Piano Concerto), Mahler, Bruckner, Schonberg, Berg and most modern composers. I love Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Brahms (some of it), Stravinski (some), Bach, Haydn - which is enough to go with. O yes, and Grieg.