Come learn about the demented world of Georgian composer Heraclius Djabadary, a talent so minor that it can only be measured using homeopathic principles.
By the way, in addition to enjoying, and benefiting from, your rapidly growing collection of videos, I'm impressed by the scope of your shirt collection.
You're a little hard on this guy. He's fabulous. The Sun, Moon and Stars bow down before this guy. I'm getting this recording! (I may be a trifle hyperbolic. But so are you)
Funny because we know the progressions and rhthms are wrong but just think if we knew what Lutoslawsky , MissyMazzoli,Jennifer HigdonLuois Karchin or CarlVine or WillBolcolm or Messiaen then maybe we'd understand why the experts who choose to pivot them also know why they are so above the others . They are YOU MASTERS Maaaah DEARRIIIEEEEE.
I listened to Djabadary's concerto on youtube and it sounds like music you skate to at a roller rink...or for introducing a vaudeville act. It does not disappoint!
I notice that on Amazon, one "reviewer" calls this piece a "neglected masterpiece." Maybe in a perverse way, it is, something akin to a movie that's so bad (maybe an Ed Wood masterpiece), it achieves a special place in peoples' minds--or even empty minds.
It's very bad. But at least this was always very obscure. Some of the most popular salon music for piano of the 1800s, like 'A Maiden's Prayer' and 'The Dying Poet' is much worse in my opinion. It's as bad as it gets. It's for music what Thomas Kinkade is for painting. When the music industry took stock in the early 1900s, 'A Maiden's Prayer' was acknowlegded as the best selling piano piece of all time.
I listened to this recording this evening. Thankfully some kind (?) Soul uploaded it to RUclips. It appears all copies of the CD are sold out. Actually last week I saw 1 copy available, but that has since sold, presumably due to the power of this channel. At any rate,the work is a pile. What I am wondering is, can a person force him/herself to like something if one listens to it enough times? I do now have that exotic theme from the 1st movement stuck in my head. What the hell??
As a result of my watching this video, RUclips is now recommending to me... the Djabadary piano concerto. Thanks a lot! (In all seriousness, though, this is more than made up for by all the great music you've introduced me to over the last few years. So actually, thanks a real lot! :) )
Greetings from Spain! I arrived by chance to your RUclips channel attracted by the title of this video... and I cannot get the disgraceful tune from this piano concerto out of my head! You have nevertheless won yourself a loyal follower.
It's on RUclips, and some people seem to love it. If it were a movie score, I'd laugh uncontrollably. The camel procession sort of sounds like an Italian "swords and sandles" movie.
Don't mess with De Greef - his piano concertos are three delicious little gems. But have to agree on Djabadary, although his nomination for worst piano concerto faces stiff competition from Lorenzo Perosi's (also) A minor concerto (1916).
I've just listened to the concerto. The first movement is wonderfully bad in ways far too hilarious to express - certainly the most goofy and bizarrely (boringly?) structured and orchestrated piece I've ever heard. I've never laughed out loud at music before. It's certainly a keeper (in particular as a 'party piece', as you suggest)!
Can someone explain to me why it's so bad? I listened to half of it and I didn't really notice anything egregious-- it just sounded like a normal piano concerto to me. Am I missing something?
It depends on what you listen for, and what your expectatoins are. Also, much depends on that elusiive qualiity "taste." If you don't understand, don't worry about it. Either you will eventually, or you won't.
As one who always says that truly bad music only really came into being immediately after World War II, when musical fashion became more a shibboleth than art or entertainment.
The first movement, sans piano, would be credible material for an exotic tone-poem. After that it is ludicrous. Some material is simply ill-suited to some forms. Chopin knew enough to not make symphonies out of his piano works. Mahler knew enough to not write concertante works.
The snippet of the first movement you played didn't sound that bad to me; it's sort of like what Albert W. Ketelbey would have come up with if he'd tried to write a piano concerto.
I have a friend who despises the Grieg concerto so much he refuses to own a copy. I've always thought that was just absurd. But then again, he's never heard anything like this before...I wonder what he might say.
In some ways, the pianism is more laughable than the composition, which comes off as a harmless piece of orientalism. The piano parts were probably intended to add to that midnight-at-the-oasis flavor, but he plays them as if he were Jonathan Edwards pounding out Mozart.
Djabadary's may work as banal film music for whatever, but as a piano concerto it may indeed be among the worst, or THE worst. Ferde Grofe's is also right there somewhere in the top five worst. I'm trying to think whether Gian-Carlo Menotti's might also occupy one of these dubiously illustrious positions. Also, although I adore the music of Heitor Villalobos, his five piano concertos seem to have "a whole lotta nothin' going on" and they are as dull as dishwater. I have the Decca 2-CD set of Christina Ortiz playing them and to this day (20 years later) I cannot ascertain why I bought the set in the first place.
I also hope to geta taste for Villalobos . And since they're all free on youtube listened to each with the beginnings of each couldn't a twosecond bit to make me want to hear them. HOw could have written as many as 5 and not thought of using a melody like his Bachiana Brasilera.
@@MrInterestingthings Also, how could such a lush, opulent piece as "The Forest of the Amazon" (in its complete incarnation) not be standard repertoire by now?
David, I am told that some of the writing of Bach's last child, P.D.Q Bach is particularly execrable ... personally it is so bad I find it hilarious. I believe it is sometimes played on US campuses, and receives huge amusement.
Listening to this review at 4 AM (damned cats woke me up), and I nearly burst a blood vein trying to avoid laughing out loud when you compared desiring to own this atrocity to rock music fans collecting the Shaggs....brilliant!
Hilarious; but, of course, just like 'worst' films, the criteria is always a personal one. Some appalling films are watchable for their badness and unintentional humor/pretentiousness. Some are simply, like this concerto, too boring or incompetent to last through. Thanks for the heads-up; think I'll pass after your few excerpts! I have to admit, for me, the 'Yellow River Concerto' would be a close second. Just recently found your channel, and it's a delight. I remember reading you in far off High Fidelity days, and tho' I am not always in agreement (say in the anointing of Szell in many pieces) you are always thoughtful and clear, with delicious humor! I know you are not much on English critics, but it seems to me you are verbally in a line to the literary great Ernest Newman, some of whose essays and critiques are still trenchant and humorous to this day. Likewise, I hope your books compare in the style and scholarship to his marvelous 'Wagner as Man and Artist', I am going now to seek them out. All the best...
Interesting that you use the term "serious music". Here in Hungary that term is widely used in pair with "light music". But when I once said this to one of my English teacher, he laughed and said that it is not used in English speaking countries. Use "classical music" instead - he said. And now Mr. Hurwitz use "serious music" too. :-)
They are interchangeable informally, but "classical" is preferred as being more specific and because it implies no disrespect to other styles of music that are not classical.
This composer is so no-name that one can barely find anything about him on the internet besides this CD. The full piece is available on RUclips by the way. After rummaging through the majority of the 1st movement: yes, it's pretty bad, but there is a certain pitiable honesty about it, like when he fumbles through passages hoping to conjure up some ideas along the way... The same could not be said for those composers who sell the same nothing-music as if it was the best thing in the world. Ultimately, it sounds like what some amateur MuseScore composers would do.
As much as I agree with you and your humorous presentation of poor Djabadaba I guess there is still a "more worse" piano concerto which I just uploaded. In case you are bold enough for an unsuspected encounter please search for "Linda Babits Western Star" and your ears will hopefully enjoy it!!!! Regards, RP
Hearing it for the first time now. I kind of like it in that it is a nice mishmash of ideas and sounds. Some nice energetic piano playing. Second rate orchestra for sure, but even in classical times that was common practice. The oriental style I do like and reminds me of Alan Hovhaness. So, a 2 out of 5 at best. But one has to admire the effort.
I heard Dmitri Bortniansky's Concerto di Cembalo a few months ago for the first time and was struck by how bad it was, or perhaps how pointless it was. It surprised me because I like a lot of Bortniansky's work. It has been my top contender for the worst Piano Concerto ever written. I will have to listen to this Djabadary work to compare. Fortunately the Bortniansky work took up less than 9 minutes of my life.
The weird thing from what you just played is the composer does seem to know how to orchestrate - basic orchestration and fundamentals. But he has no taste at all or sense of organization. The guy really has no taste no imagination. I have written poor music but at least I find some salvageable ideas buried in it. This really doesn't have any.
I dunno. The first movement is... not good. The rest is, I suppose, passable to my layman's ear. Is this any worse than something by, for example, Richard Nanes?
It's an "interesting" work but I don't think it is the WORST work ever written. I guess it is a matter of listening depth and experience and, taste, of which, we all know that some of us have and many of us do not! ;>)
Perhaps another contender for worst piano concertos (my opinion of course) would be the The Yellow River Piano Concerto (1969) by Yin Chengzong and other committee members (Chu Wanghua, Liu Zhuang, Sheng Lihong, Shi Shucheng, and Xu Feixing). Since more than one person was responsible for the creation of this travesty, it becomes tricky to know who just who to point a finger at.
It is always nice to find someone else who has listened to Ketèlbey. I tried to create a few, but they immediately dismissed his work as "pure torture," but then I was playing one of the pieces with no words.
Ah ah ah! Great Fun David! :D Oh no don't worry...this georgian composer is symply trivial and banal but not so atrocious...in music history there are some pieces that are simply more atrocious, also by well-known composers and perhaps partially over rated...of course this georgian composer is not a Kancheli or a Khachaturian...is surprising to me that Maestro de Froment could record this piano concerto. He did a lot of recordings for Vox, especially of french music (Saint-Saëns, Debussy, Satie) and he did a good job indeed. One exception is Saint Saëns 3rd Symphony: the organ in the Luxemburg Concert hall was really awful. I've never heard an Organ Symphony with an organ so weak...literally dead!
Perhaps what adds insult to injury would be a piece of music that is pretty awful yet classical radio listeners loved it every time we played it. After some soul-searching in the spirit of the benefit of the doubt, due to listener requests, I concluded: it's still awful. That would be the Concertino In A Minor Op.72 for guitar and orchestra by Salvador Bacarisse. One of the few pieces I've heard that has melodies which move from the tonic of the key to the tonic of the key and just sit there, and in the last movement, move awkwardly up and down, cadencing statically on the tonic in mid-melody. (P.S. I still forgive Bacarisse however because I have written concertos, for horn, bassoon, viola and soprano saxophone and no doubt the God's would punish me with an unforeseen mediocrity of my own, but at least it can't be said, "if you're so critical, why don't you write a three movement concerto.")
The trouble with designating anything as "the worst ever" is that you thereby give it a sort of publicity it doesn't deserve and keep it in the public eye. It's why the appalling poems of William McGonagall are still in print and why people listen to recordings of Florence Foster Jenkins. And of course it's why I (in common with, I suspect, a lot of your listeners) immediately tracked down a copy of Djabadary's piano concerto on watching your critique of it. Yes, it's pretty bad- boring, poundingly repetitive with no melodies worth listening to- but at least it managed to find someone to record it. There must be a lot of concertos out there that are so unplayable or of so little merit that they have never had a performance.
Wow... I went into this review thinking, "Nothing could be as bad as the "Yellow River Concerto", but I have to admit you're right. (Check out the new recording by Yuja Wang of the Abrams Concerto, if you want to hear another howler.)
Try Sorabji. He has an astonishing following though. Mostly among those who think that technical difficulty or length are all it takes to justify performing something.
Hallo deares Listeners, I am a professionell Musician living and working Europe..I can only say the music so hidious that it is extremely entertaining...amazingly disjointed ..Fish or fowl....the dear Gentleman meant well but unfortunately this composition was not a musical triumph...OUCH...
OK it's awful. But what's the point of attacking an unknown dead person who wrote something hardly anyone has ever heard. What's a bigger waste of time, his concerto or your calling our attention to it now?
@@DavesClassicalGuide I disagree, for example his 'Variations sur un chant hongrois' was quite enjoyable. In any case, there is too little by this composer that I can listen to online to make any judgements about him..
I don't like this concerto, but calling some ones attempt at integrating and synthesizing the traditional music of their homeland (Georgia in this case) an "oriental camel procession" is honestly an awful thing to say. There are no camels in Georgia, but there are musical traditions influenced by Persian, Turkish, and Armenian music. If you're only able to picture camels, perhaps you need to dig a little deeper into traditional music from that part of the world. The way you're mocking a composer who tried to integrate non-western musical influences from his home country into his music leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Get over yourself. That fact that his music sounds like a camel procession just confirms what a lousy composer he was. And when was the last time you were in Georgia to verify the lack of camels?
My suggestions for three really bad pieces of music: Symphony 1997 by Tan Dun (one cliche after another, truly horrible), Imagined Oceans by Karl Jenkins (think of the Swingle Singers doing variations on 'Shave and a haircut'), and Allan Petterson's 7th Symphony. Strange because each of these composers was/is capable of much better.
Well... if I looked for a music performance of a different type of quality, I always end up at the video called 'Polish Brass' (the title is probably random) by user @filiper (unfortunately, one cannot give links in the comment, not even to another youtube video...)
i,m just come to see your video...excellent....!..i'am very to late in viewing of the series of excellent videos.....one thing i want ask to you ....a musical critic of montréal ( claude gingras) writing about the piano concerto no 1 of villa-lobos ( he have a recording of this work with ansermet)..he said this concerto is a concerto of ''filling'' ( remplissage)....he tell about other work of villa lobos the same thing.....and he tell the same thnig about.....darius milhaud ....because he tell ....''generaly a composer who receive order and mutch money for a work ( concerto ,symphonie) generaly he d,ont make the best of imself.....what is your point on that.....?
I think you need to look at each case individually, and that's all you can say about it. I don't think either Villa-Lobos or Milhaud, just because they were prolific, were careless or lazy or indifferent.
The worst piece of all time? That title goes to a number called "The Dream of Gerontius" by Delius. Followed closely by the Piano Concerto no. 1 by Rod McKuen, who is better known as a poet.
@@DavesClassicalGuide My luck is such that, on a whim, I put down good money and bought Ivo Pogorelich playing the Tchaikovsky 1st Piano concerto on DG without hearing in first. With Pogorelich playing it, the Tchaikovsky sounds like the worst concerto ever written.
Cage was a brilliant composer when he wanted to be (think: Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano), but he was more important as a thinker and musical gadfly. There's room for that too.
@HillDueceua Nonsense. Cage's early works, in particular, reveal a powerful creative imagination. Music history is full of "you won't amount to anything" claims against major figures, usually made by people who never amounted to anything. And "balls," or courage have nothing to do with it. It all comes down to a question of taste, plain and simple. I'm not sure which "party" insists that Cage stands beyond criticism. I simply believe in recognizing his achievement for what it is, whether I happen to like it or not. For me, he was one of the few modern composers with a sense of humor, which I value very highly.
From the little that you played there was clearly some sad rummaging attributable to Rimsky's orientalism. Yeah this is sad stuff but there has been other equally bad stuff let loose into the world. Just keep listening, you'll find out.
My mother told me to never speak ill of the dead ! Some of the individual notes Djabadary chose were excellent and also chosen by great composers
Lol! Nice one!
My camel loved it.
By the way, in addition to enjoying, and benefiting from, your rapidly growing collection of videos, I'm impressed by the scope of your shirt collection.
So I've heard.
Yes, but have you seen Dave's cat yet? She sauntered by in one of the videos - Sibelius 2, I think.
Don’t like wearing table cloth, I must say
That sounded like a faux Mozart piano concerto mixed with discarded music from Lawrence of Arabia. Lol
You're a little hard on this guy. He's fabulous. The Sun, Moon and Stars bow down before this guy. I'm getting this recording! (I may be a trifle hyperbolic. But so are you)
I think this piece is better than many "avant-garde" pieces. At least it is entertaining...
Funny because we know the progressions and rhthms are wrong but just think if we knew what Lutoslawsky , MissyMazzoli,Jennifer HigdonLuois Karchin or CarlVine or WillBolcolm or Messiaen then maybe we'd understand why the experts who choose to pivot them also know why they are so above the others . They are YOU MASTERS Maaaah DEARRIIIEEEEE.
I listened to Djabadary's concerto on youtube and it sounds like music you skate to at a roller rink...or for introducing a vaudeville act. It does not disappoint!
I notice that on Amazon, one "reviewer" calls this piece a "neglected masterpiece." Maybe in a perverse way, it is, something akin to a movie that's so bad (maybe an Ed Wood masterpiece), it achieves a special place in peoples' minds--or even empty minds.
It's very bad. But at least this was always very obscure. Some of the most popular salon music for piano of the 1800s, like 'A Maiden's Prayer' and 'The Dying Poet' is much worse in my opinion. It's as bad as it gets. It's for music what Thomas Kinkade is for painting. When the music industry took stock in the early 1900s, 'A Maiden's Prayer' was acknowlegded as the best selling piano piece of all time.
A Maiden's Prayer is ugly to the point of being actually creepy.
I listened to this recording this evening. Thankfully some kind (?) Soul uploaded it to RUclips. It appears all copies of the CD are sold out. Actually last week I saw 1 copy available, but that has since sold, presumably due to the power of this channel. At any rate,the work is a pile. What I am wondering is, can a person force him/herself to like something if one listens to it enough times? I do now have that exotic theme from the 1st movement stuck in my head. What the hell??
So true, I just listened to the first movement and it's stuck in my head 😂
@@morganmartinez8420 I purchased a copy of the cd a few weeks back!
It's yours forever. 😁
As a result of my watching this video, RUclips is now recommending to me... the Djabadary piano concerto. Thanks a lot!
(In all seriousness, though, this is more than made up for by all the great music you've introduced me to over the last few years. So actually, thanks a real lot! :) )
Greetings from Spain! I arrived by chance to your RUclips channel attracted by the title of this video... and I cannot get the disgraceful tune from this piano concerto out of my head! You have nevertheless won yourself a loyal follower.
Thank you, and my apologies!
Wow - it's so awful it accidentally reverses into a kind of greatness.
It's on RUclips, and some people seem to love it. If it were a movie score, I'd laugh uncontrollably. The camel procession sort of sounds like an Italian "swords and sandles" movie.
Yes, I posted the link. Have fun!
If I didn't know about this piece, I would have gone for Britten's piano concerto.
I agree that it's not Britten's greatest work, unlike his Violin Concerto, which is a masterpiece.
"You know De Grief, right? He wrote, well....stuff...." I worship your channel Dave, thanks so much, always
Don't mess with De Greef - his piano concertos are three delicious little gems. But have to agree on Djabadary, although his nomination for worst piano concerto faces stiff competition from Lorenzo Perosi's (also) A minor concerto (1916).
...and Ferde Grofe.
@@DavesClassicalGuide I didn't know that one yet. Now I do. Honestly can't say my life has gotten much better in the last half hour.
@@bomcabedal LOL
My party record is any symphony by Richard Nanes.
I've just listened to the concerto. The first movement is wonderfully bad in ways far too hilarious to express - certainly the most goofy and bizarrely (boringly?) structured and orchestrated piece I've ever heard. I've never laughed out loud at music before. It's certainly a keeper (in particular as a 'party piece', as you suggest)!
Can someone explain to me why it's so bad? I listened to half of it and I didn't really notice anything egregious-- it just sounded like a normal piano concerto to me. Am I missing something?
It depends on what you listen for, and what your expectatoins are. Also, much depends on that elusiive qualiity "taste." If you don't understand, don't worry about it. Either you will eventually, or you won't.
As one who always says that truly bad music only really came into being immediately after World War II, when musical fashion became more a shibboleth than art or entertainment.
I found this video after searching for the Schönberg concerto, I was confused but decided to watch anyways. A brilliant video, thank you mister David!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Same here! For a second I was afraid he was talking about the Schoenberg lol.
The first movement, sans piano, would be credible material for an exotic tone-poem. After that it is ludicrous.
Some material is simply ill-suited to some forms. Chopin knew enough to not make symphonies out of his piano works. Mahler knew enough to not write concertante works.
The snippet of the first movement you played didn't sound that bad to me; it's sort of like what Albert W. Ketelbey would have come up with if he'd tried to write a piano concerto.
I imagine that Ketèlby would have done it rather better because Ketèlby knew what he was good at writing, and he kept it light.
I have a friend who despises the Grieg concerto so much he refuses to own a copy. I've always thought that was just absurd. But then again, he's never heard anything like this before...I wonder what he might say.
Given his taste appears to be so poor, he'd probably like it.
Grieg’s concerto is trash, sorry
In some ways, the pianism is more laughable than the composition, which comes off as a harmless piece of orientalism. The piano parts were probably intended to add to that midnight-at-the-oasis flavor, but he plays them as if he were Jonathan Edwards pounding out Mozart.
Djabadary's may work as banal film music for whatever, but as a piano concerto it may indeed be among the worst, or THE worst. Ferde Grofe's is also right there somewhere in the top five worst. I'm trying to think whether Gian-Carlo Menotti's might also occupy one of these dubiously illustrious positions. Also, although I adore the music of Heitor Villalobos, his five piano concertos seem to have "a whole lotta nothin' going on" and they are as dull as dishwater. I have the Decca 2-CD set of Christina Ortiz playing them and to this day (20 years later) I cannot ascertain why I bought the set in the first place.
I also hope to geta taste for Villalobos . And since they're all free on youtube listened to each with the beginnings of each couldn't a twosecond bit to make me want to hear them. HOw could have written as many as 5 and not thought of using a melody like his Bachiana Brasilera.
@@MrInterestingthings Also, how could such a lush, opulent piece as "The Forest of the Amazon" (in its complete incarnation) not be standard repertoire by now?
David, I am told that some of the writing of Bach's last child, P.D.Q Bach is particularly execrable ... personally it is so bad I find it hilarious. I believe it is sometimes played on US campuses, and receives huge amusement.
That must be the Concerto for Piano Versus Orchestra, Schickele no. 88.
Listening to this review at 4 AM (damned cats woke me up), and I nearly burst a blood vein trying to avoid laughing out loud when you compared desiring to own this atrocity to rock music fans collecting the Shaggs....brilliant!
The cats wake me up at the same time...
@@DavesClassicalGuide (sighs, like Zero Mostel in Waiting for Godot)
Hilarious; but, of course, just like 'worst' films, the criteria is always a personal one. Some appalling films are watchable for their badness and unintentional humor/pretentiousness. Some are simply, like this concerto, too boring or incompetent to last through. Thanks for the heads-up; think I'll pass after your few excerpts! I have to admit, for me, the 'Yellow River Concerto' would be a close second.
Just recently found your channel, and it's a delight. I remember reading you in far off High Fidelity days, and tho' I am not always in agreement (say in the anointing of Szell in many pieces) you are always thoughtful and clear, with delicious humor! I know you are not much on English critics, but it seems to me you are verbally in a line to the literary great Ernest Newman, some of whose essays and critiques are still trenchant and humorous to this day. Likewise, I hope your books compare in the style and scholarship to his marvelous 'Wagner as Man and Artist', I am going now to seek them out. All the best...
Thank you! It's great to hear from someone about the "good old days!"
Djabadary would have been good at composing circus music.
Isn't that what he did?
Can’t be worse than Richard Nikon’s piano concerto.
Interesting that you use the term "serious music". Here in Hungary that term is widely used in pair with "light music". But when I once said this to one of my English teacher, he laughed and said that it is not used in English speaking countries. Use "classical music" instead - he said. And now Mr. Hurwitz use "serious music" too. :-)
They are interchangeable informally, but "classical" is preferred as being more specific and because it implies no disrespect to other styles of music that are not classical.
Now I'm thinking of Abbott And Costello meet The Mummy.
Morecambe and Wise for me. “I’ve written all the right notes…not necessarily in the right order”
This is even more of a kitsch abberation than the "March of the Siamese Children" from "The King and I".
This composer is so no-name that one can barely find anything about him on the internet besides this CD. The full piece is available on RUclips by the way. After rummaging through the majority of the 1st movement: yes, it's pretty bad, but there is a certain pitiable honesty about it, like when he fumbles through passages hoping to conjure up some ideas along the way... The same could not be said for those composers who sell the same nothing-music as if it was the best thing in the world. Ultimately, it sounds like what some amateur MuseScore composers would do.
Thanks, that's good to know. Here's a link: ruclips.net/video/XBIe7stRUyU/видео.html. Go forth and listen people!
If I am understanding you correctly, this is bad, but at least he's actually trying.
As much as I agree with you and your humorous presentation of poor Djabadaba I guess there is still a "more worse" piano concerto which I just uploaded. In case you are bold enough for an unsuspected encounter please search for "Linda Babits Western Star" and your ears will hopefully enjoy it!!!! Regards, RP
Thanks for the tip!
Great stuff as always. One thing, could you up the volume of your videos, I can hardly hear you on earphones when my wife is watching the telly.
I will try.
Hearing it for the first time now. I kind of like it in that it is a nice mishmash of ideas and sounds. Some nice energetic piano playing. Second rate orchestra for sure, but even in classical times that was common practice. The oriental style I do like and reminds me of Alan Hovhaness. So, a 2 out of 5 at best. But one has to admire the effort.
Oh my! You may like it, but the piano playing is every bit as bad as the orchestra.
Thank you! I know another VERY BAD ( orchestral ) piece: Prelude to The Eumenides bij William Wallace.
The composer reminds me of Gene Wilder...
I heard Dmitri Bortniansky's Concerto di Cembalo a few months ago for the first time and was struck by how bad it was, or perhaps how pointless it was. It surprised me because I like a lot of Bortniansky's work. It has been my top contender for the worst Piano Concerto ever written. I will have to listen to this Djabadary work to compare. Fortunately the Bortniansky work took up less than 9 minutes of my life.
The weird thing from what you just played is the composer does seem to know how to orchestrate - basic orchestration and fundamentals. But he has no taste at all or sense of organization. The guy really has no taste no imagination. I have written poor music but at least I find some salvageable ideas buried in it. This really doesn't have any.
I dunno. The first movement is... not good. The rest is, I suppose, passable to my layman's ear. Is this any worse than something by, for example, Richard Nanes?
I kind of enjoyed the snippet you played. It’s distinctive and catchy. 😂
It's an "interesting" work but I don't think it is the WORST work ever written. I guess it is a matter of listening depth and experience and, taste, of which, we all know that some of us have and many of us do not! ;>)
And some of us sorely lack a sense of humor and appreciation of a little good-natured hyperbole.
of which your reply surely proves.@@DavesClassicalGuide
"atrocious in ways I can't even describe" - love it!
If he was productive and able to work fast, he should have composed for the Silver Screen. His addiction to cliche would have been no disadvantage.
It sounds fun, so bad it's good
In my view, so far, it is Judith Weir's Piano Concerto from 1997. It is fairly tedious and does almost nothing of any substance.
Perhaps another contender for worst piano concertos (my opinion of course) would be the The Yellow River Piano Concerto (1969) by Yin Chengzong and other committee members (Chu Wanghua, Liu Zhuang, Sheng Lihong, Shi Shucheng, and Xu Feixing). Since more than one person was responsible for the creation of this travesty, it becomes tricky to know who just who to point a finger at.
Writing a piece of music by committee sounds like an absolute recipe for success.
It's a really good piece though?
@@Spo-Dee-O-Deeyeah no idk what they mean it's just fine
The Yellow River piano concerto by I. P. Freely?
I rather like March Of The Camels. Fantasia 3.0 Why not?
The 'camel music' reminds me of Ketèlbey's In a Persian Market
It is always nice to find someone else who has listened to Ketèlbey. I tried to create a few, but they immediately dismissed his work as "pure torture," but then I was playing one of the pieces with no words.
Ah ah ah! Great Fun David! :D Oh no don't worry...this georgian composer is symply trivial and banal but not so atrocious...in music history there are some pieces that are simply more atrocious, also by well-known composers and perhaps partially over rated...of course this georgian composer is not a Kancheli or a Khachaturian...is surprising to me that Maestro de Froment could record this piano concerto. He did a lot of recordings for Vox, especially of french music (Saint-Saëns, Debussy, Satie) and he did a good job indeed. One exception is Saint Saëns 3rd Symphony: the organ in the Luxemburg Concert hall was really awful. I've never heard an Organ Symphony with an organ so weak...literally dead!
that recording was bad lol
Though, his variations on a hungarian chant are wonderful
Perhaps what adds insult to injury would be a piece of music that is pretty awful yet classical radio listeners loved it every time we played it. After some soul-searching in the spirit of the benefit of the doubt, due to listener requests, I concluded: it's still awful. That would be the Concertino In A Minor Op.72 for guitar and orchestra by Salvador Bacarisse. One of the few pieces I've heard that has melodies which move from the tonic of the key to the tonic of the key and just sit there, and in the last movement, move awkwardly up and down, cadencing statically on the tonic in mid-melody. (P.S. I still forgive Bacarisse however because I have written concertos, for horn, bassoon, viola and soprano saxophone and no doubt the God's would punish me with an unforeseen mediocrity of my own, but at least it can't be said, "if you're so critical, why don't you write a three movement concerto.")
Brilliant review.
I want this CD, LOL
The trouble with designating anything as "the worst ever" is that you thereby give it a sort of publicity it doesn't deserve and keep it in the public eye. It's why the appalling poems of William McGonagall are still in print and why people listen to recordings of Florence Foster Jenkins. And of course it's why I (in common with, I suspect, a lot of your listeners) immediately tracked down a copy of Djabadary's piano concerto on watching your critique of it. Yes, it's pretty bad- boring, poundingly repetitive with no melodies worth listening to- but at least it managed to find someone to record it. There must be a lot of concertos out there that are so unplayable or of so little merit that they have never had a performance.
Wow... I went into this review thinking, "Nothing could be as bad as the "Yellow River Concerto", but I have to admit you're right. (Check out the new recording by Yuja Wang of the Abrams Concerto, if you want to hear another howler.)
How is that even a bad concerto
Your comments really brighten up my day...LOL....
Try Sorabji. He has an astonishing following though. Mostly among those who think that technical difficulty or length are all it takes to justify performing something.
Hallo deares Listeners, I am a professionell Musician living and working Europe..I can only say the music so hidious that it is extremely entertaining...amazingly disjointed ..Fish or fowl....the dear Gentleman meant well but unfortunately this composition was not a musical triumph...OUCH...
Fellow looks rather like Gene Wilder in "Young Frankenstein", not necessarily a recommendation.
OK it's awful. But what's the point of attacking an unknown dead person who wrote something hardly anyone has ever heard. What's a bigger waste of time, his concerto or your calling our attention to it now?
Um, because it's fun?
@@DavesClassicalGuide I apologize. Please proceed. Amuse yourself all you want.
@@dorfmanjones Thank you. I shall.
Way to spoil an obscure composer nobody has heard of by one piece...although I do enjoy your sense of humor, especially in the description
Don't worry. His other stuff is just as bad.
@@DavesClassicalGuide I disagree, for example his 'Variations sur un chant hongrois' was quite enjoyable. In any case, there is too little by this composer that I can listen to online to make any judgements about him..
@@adigozelov-enjoyer I didn't say he wasn't enjoyable--just bad.
@@DavesClassicalGuide I see!
@@DavesClassicalGuide Do you enjoy any of his bad music?
I don't like this concerto, but calling some ones attempt at integrating and synthesizing the traditional music of their homeland (Georgia in this case) an "oriental camel procession" is honestly an awful thing to say. There are no camels in Georgia, but there are musical traditions influenced by Persian, Turkish, and Armenian music. If you're only able to picture camels, perhaps you need to dig a little deeper into traditional music from that part of the world. The way you're mocking a composer who tried to integrate non-western musical influences from his home country into his music leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Get over yourself. That fact that his music sounds like a camel procession just confirms what a lousy composer he was. And when was the last time you were in Georgia to verify the lack of camels?
Nah I think I would easily outdo it
assurdo...un musicista completamente dimenticato viene riesumato per essere sbeffeggiato...a che pro? sadismo completamente gratuito
My suggestions for three really bad pieces of music: Symphony 1997 by Tan Dun (one cliche after another, truly horrible), Imagined Oceans by Karl Jenkins (think of the Swingle Singers doing variations on 'Shave and a haircut'), and Allan Petterson's 7th Symphony. Strange because each of these composers was/is capable of much better.
Andrew Lloyd Webber's piss-poor attempt at a "Requiem Mass" deserves to be here too
@@mogmason6920 Yeah the one with the wrong Pie Jesu. Ugh
Symphony 1997 and Pettersson 7 are both good
Dave. You need to turn up the volume on your videos. Thanx.
The oldest ones were low volume, and I'm stuck with it, unfortunately. Then I figured out how to do it.
@@DavesClassicalGuide you're doing a wonderful service for the world!
Well... if I looked for a music performance of a different type of quality, I always end up at the video called 'Polish Brass' (the title is probably random) by user @filiper (unfortunately, one cannot give links in the comment, not even to another youtube video...)
I found a recording on RUclips. It's as bad (in a funny way) as you say.
i,m just come to see your video...excellent....!..i'am very to late in viewing of the series of excellent videos.....one thing i want ask to you ....a musical critic of montréal ( claude gingras) writing about the piano concerto no 1 of villa-lobos ( he have a recording of this work with ansermet)..he said this concerto is a concerto of ''filling'' ( remplissage)....he tell about other work of villa lobos the same thing.....and he tell the same thnig about.....darius milhaud ....because he tell ....''generaly a composer who receive order and mutch money for a work ( concerto ,symphonie) generaly he d,ont make the best of imself.....what is your point on that.....?
I think you need to look at each case individually, and that's all you can say about it. I don't think either Villa-Lobos or Milhaud, just because they were prolific, were careless or lazy or indifferent.
The worst piece of all time? That title goes to a number called "The Dream of Gerontius" by Delius. Followed closely by the Piano Concerto no. 1 by Rod McKuen, who is better known as a poet.
It's bad, but I have heard worse piano concertos.
Lucky you!
@@DavesClassicalGuide My luck is such that, on a whim, I put down good money and bought Ivo Pogorelich playing the Tchaikovsky 1st Piano concerto on DG without hearing in first. With Pogorelich playing it, the Tchaikovsky sounds like the worst concerto ever written.
So funny...
This is bad, but for me the worst "composer" ever is John Cage. Yuck.
Cage was a brilliant composer when he wanted to be (think: Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano), but he was more important as a thinker and musical gadfly. There's room for that too.
@HillDueceua Nonsense. Cage's early works, in particular, reveal a powerful creative imagination. Music history is full of "you won't amount to anything" claims against major figures, usually made by people who never amounted to anything. And "balls," or courage have nothing to do with it. It all comes down to a question of taste, plain and simple. I'm not sure which "party" insists that Cage stands beyond criticism. I simply believe in recognizing his achievement for what it is, whether I happen to like it or not. For me, he was one of the few modern composers with a sense of humor, which I value very highly.
@@DavesClassicalGuide Also (IMHO) a brilliant writer.
From the little that you played there was clearly some sad rummaging attributable to Rimsky's orientalism. Yeah this is sad stuff but there has been other equally bad stuff let loose into the world. Just keep listening, you'll find out.
Not my cup of tea, but not horrible. Sort of like Ravel. Plenty of really butt awful soundtrack music around that’s far worse than this guy.
Sorry, but...the Reger is worse.