Something for everyone! Thank you, Ian - I shall take the recommendations to heart (whilst trying to decode what my suggestions betray about me... ).

I don't think I ever did have a problem with Brahms, actually - though I'm almost tempted to invent one just because I'm curious to see which pieces Ian would come up with as my personal Brahms recommendations!

Over the years I've 'learned to love' a lot of things that I didn't much like initially. Recently that's more often than not for professional reasons (when I have to write about something), and since I've mainly switched from writing reviews to CD liner notes, it's more appropriate to be positive than negative. But that makes it sound superficial, when in fact part of the reason I switched to writing 'in support of' rather than 'against' the music is that I tended to find things grew on me the more closely I studied them.

But somewhere buried deep in my composer-pleasing heart is still a steely pulse of immanent critique, and writing about music in positive terms may mean I've lost faith in the point of expressing critical feelings rather than that they've actually gone away. 'Learning to love' becomes 'teaching yourself to look on the bright side' (or, to stick with the love metaphor, 'learning to overlook someone's faults'), which raises an interesting possibility no one's yet mentioned: that learning to love is a regression rather than an advance, and that maybe your initial negative reaction was closer to what the music deserved?

Let's see about your Brahms canon. I would reckon the Second Symphony might be your favourite of the four; other works I would imagine would include the Haydn Variations, maybe the second piano quartet, the E-flat Clarinet Sonata, the Handel Variations, the Rhapsodies and the Klavierstücke Op. 118, possibly the Requiem, difficult to say with the songs, perhaps much of the a cappella choral music? Also the first Violin Sonata in G, very much so, less so the third?

But this might be completely and utterly wrong.....

This is an interesting insight into the feelings of the musical professional: for those like me who do not compose, perform, teach or write about music professionally, no such responsibility exists.  But in understanding and developing our knowledge of music, we amateurs often rely on the professionals to exercise that responsibility.  Is there a real issue here?

Maybe sometimes (and I've been down that route myself on occasions), but I think more often it's a positive thing (especially once professional obligations are dispensed with) - an indication that the work has a resilience that can bear, and reward, repeated listenings. Isn't that pleasure, which you have had to work at to uncover, somehow more satisfying than an immediate impact?

I think there may be a difference, as tinners suggests, between the music professional (and, ahem, in particular, composers' views of other composers) and your average 'music-lover'. As one of the latter I tend to approach any piece, and any composer, and any genre for that matter, with the attitude "Well, there's bound to be something interesting in this. Let's try and find out what it is."  

But I think it's perfectly possible to combine that attitude with being discriminating and making judgements about pieces (if not perhaps to the extent of Member Grew's Seven-fold Path To Juissance). And there is a difference between admiring and loving a piece, and (um, cough, as elsewhere) the latter doesn't always line up as a neat subset of the former.

[Goodness, those italicised "there must be something"s in this and the previous post were near enough simultaneous, so perhaps there isn't that much of a difference between professionals and amateurs after all in that respect.]

What about Nielsen ? Amongst the composed music I shall probably never "learn to love", the works of Nielsen are amongst the most problematic. Almost to the level of "why does one note follow another" ?

Er. . .  dunno actually.

Oh, that's it ! Nielsen is a free improvisation group ?