Leaderboard

I had the misfortune a few years back to be at the première of a piece called Vita nuova by a Russian whose name was Vladimir Martynov. God, it was risible - and not for the reason you might assume with contemporary music, a wall of dissonance, but the opposite. It sounded literally as if a ten-year-old had written it with banal little tunes, mindless repetition and silly gimmicks of the choir walking in and out. Worse, he'd managed to persuade Mark Padmore and the London Philharmonic to perform and it was obvious they thought about at much of it as I did and completely wasted their talents. Half the audience left at the interval, and I wish I'd done the same. (Mind you, I might quite like to hear a small section again just to marvel at how excruciatingly bad it really was). The FT seems to agree with my assessment: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/304e02fa-ff7d-11dd-b3f8-000077b07658.html#axzz1haRAqeFZ There are lots of pieces I wouldn't care to play or hear: notably the Pachelbel Canon, Boccherini's minuet, the Chariots of Fire theme, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. Most of these are from needless overplaying in wedding quartets for people who think that hearing such trifles as background music for two hours in the year gives them a claim to being 'cultured'.