As for "The awful bombast" by Liszt I can only think that you've never heard "Orpheus" "Benediction de dieu dans la Solitude" "Feux Follets" or, indeed, a hundred other pieces including the famous Consolations and Liebestraume or that your understanding of bombast differs radically from mine !
I should like to commend David Barker's latest article as it has a special significance for me.
I am a great fan of Dudley Moore's parody of Peter Pears, as of course Pears is a direct forerunner of the ghastly Bostridge/Padmore/Tear school of English/British tenor singing - and to me he got both the constricted voice and the precious mannerisms absolutely spot-on.
As an ignorant 18-year-old, I attended my very first concert in Oxford just a few weeks after arriving there as an undergraduate in 1973: there was a concert just down the road from my college in the University Church of St Mary the Virgin. All I knew was that it featured a celebrated English tenor in music by Britten.
I could not believe my ears when he opened his mouth and began wailing. Thus began my lifelong antipathy to both that vocal style and the music itself, which was "Les illuminations". I am well aware for some both are touchstones of excellence but can only shake my head and refer you to similar tastes and aversions which have recently been discussed on this forum, such as Mikeh's - what is to me inexplicable - loathing of Bruckner or the delight some take in what I hear as the awful bombast written by Liszt.
As we never tire of intoning here at MWI: "we are a broad church."
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