Da Ziff blue danube is more playable than you might expect.
I’d say Brahms has one of the highest quality outputs of all composers. I can’t think of anything he published that isn’t at least good. I even enjoy Rinaldo, somewhat.
Brahms was very critical of his work and destroyed anything that displeased him.
ahahaha on de otha hand
except da PAG VARz, derez not a zingle BRA zheeyat datz truly wikid 
Haha This is actually a sign of ego.
Surely the things he destroyed were worth listening to. Maybe not true greatness, but something worth hearing nonetheless.
I like the music of a lot of Brahms contemporaries who followed his ‘school’. Like Raff etc.
If his sub-standard works were ‘Raff level’ then I’d say they would be well worth hearing.
This for Eg. I’ve listened to this a lot and enjoyed it, I’d imagine it’s of the level of some of the stuff Brahms scrapped.
Tru, I would say definitely second category as a lot is still not mainstream. (Particularly the songs).
Dukas was also severely self critical but what survives is high quality. Again, only 1 piece I regular rep though.
Ravel could fall into both. Mostly high quality output and in general rep.
Why ego though?
Well ego in terms of having pride over the elite standard of his work.
I don’t actually see Brahms as an egotistical man, more a man perhaps burdened by the pressures of his own talent and potential.
When he was young he was hailed as ‘the next Beethoven’ by Schumann etc.
His first Symphony in particular was a burden to him, he did feel the weight of pressure to produce something magnificent.
He did, but I’d love to hear what else he would have written with less burden, less pressure.
As this topic title states, the average ‘quality’ of his works - if he published all these discarded drafts of pieces - would be lower, but in my view we would be richer for having them.
Take for example Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu. Not saying it’s the best thing he wrote, but it’s a beautiful piece. Chopin didn’t want it published, and that would have been an act of pride that deprived the world of a perfectly fine piece.
Luckily those around him after his death unearthed it and promoted it, against his wishes.
I’m certainly of the ‘more the merrier’ school of thought when it comes to this, but I can understand why some like the image of a pristine oeuvre formed by the culling of less than stellar creative output.
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I hear you. Randomly regarding pianists, we are lucky enough to hear some awful perfs from da bezt evah. Haha I bet they wouldn’t be too happy with dat eithah
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Tru -
But tiz hilarious when you listen to sub-prime HO live recs, studio outtakes & rejects and they outshine the best takes of most pianists 
Even HO in JAP is more appealing to listen to than most competition winners these days 
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Diz iz tru…and why we pozzibly mizzed out on zum profound genzui drom a mofo such as brahmz
We do have some original Brahms in the form of the bmaj trio. Good thing he revised it.
Actually he left the original trio in existence as opposed to asking it to be erased.
Yes the revised is superior, but I’m glad the original exists as it’s well worth listening to, a fascinating alternative imo.
alzo tiz cool we actually hav da brahms voice
The voice tis debatable, but the playing is his, tru.
wait iz da Edison sheeyat a fake newz?
I read zumwhere that the talking may not be his, but can’t find it now.
What I didn’t know was he recorded another Strauss sheeyat
I’m more sad Clara shitcanned schumanns latest works : (
It’s anyone’s guess - the cylinders were usually announced by Wangemann, but eyewitness reports (if penned down decades later) have it that Brahms had a finger in the announcement too, and I think this is indeed the case. I have the afternoon like so →
Wangemann’s travels are interesting incidentally - he went to Boston earlier that year with the specific intent to record a Bülow recital. A whole Bülow recital! And he did indeed do it too, but the cylinders vanished virtually the same evening. Edison usually bought interesting things up, and I know his recs haven’t been fully inventoried yet.
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