@spiritofradio @bkeske,
What do you think Brahms would say about, say for instance, Schoenberg? I
sometimes I like to speculate....
I doubt anything positive, but to be expected when he could not foresee the future or understand any rationale to move music in a direction as that. As a visual artist, I would think the same for Renoir commenting on Picasso, if he had the chance and was able. Heck, I doubt Haydn would have expressed any good thoughts about Ravel. But, Brahms and Bruckner were both creating at the same time. And it was not unusual for one composer to criticize another; There are a big egos involved in creating symphonies as both Brahms and Bruckner did, even though Bruckner was always described as a humble creator. That has been happening in the arts for a long time.
It is interesting though, that ‘modern’ conductors such as Szell embraced both. In fact, it somewhat surprises that Szell directly provided such a great platform (The Cleveland Orchestra) for someone like Boulez, as example, and provided him that platform to express and display his beliefs to what ‘classical’ music could include. And at the same time, fully embrace all the great earlier works over the past 200+ years.
