what about Liszt people!

Interesting--I just purchased the Brilliant Classics box set of Liszt's Symphonic Poems...I'm still getting familiar with the material. I've had "Les Preludes" on vinyl for 20 years or so, but haven't listened to it a whole lot. Maybe in a month or two I can tell you a little better what I think. Initial impressions: he's got some great music, but a notch or two less spectacular than my all time favorite composers.

well...his hands were so enormously large that he came up with compositions that most people couldn't play...and he was the first person to set the piano at its side so people could see how he was playing, rather than have his back to the crowd like in the past

Oh yeah, I know about what a phenomenal pianist Liszt was. He was one of the first "musical celebrities" in the modern sense--maybe the very first. He drove the girls wild, according to all I've read about him.

My big thing as a classical music fan is the symphony orchestra, so I'm more interested in Liszt's orchestral compositions than his piano works. By the way, I'm into listening to the symphonic poems a second time now, and they're really growing on me.

as if this wasn't a hard enough question... not only am i totally unqualified, but on top there are so many and diversley talented musicians in the 'classical' genre. why dont we pare this question down to a period, such as romantic or rococo?

Interesting point, camilojoe...almost all of my favorite composers fall in the late-romantic period. But on a general-purpose music forum like this, I would think that a lot of folks probably don't even know the periods, but still enjoy the music.

Highly agreed!

charles ives
frank zappa
stravinsky
edgard varese
bartok
schoenberg
anton webern
chopin


whew!

oh yeah, and charles ives

Fun list! I loved the fact that you included Zappa. And I completely approve of you listing Charles Ives twice...there were at least two of him...maybe several...

Gustav Mahler, Claude Debussy, Edgard Varese, Chopin.