Can the piece proper begin already?

So I was driving a few days ago and I had the Symphony Hall on Sirius on, and they were playing this piece by a composer I’ve never heard of. They spoke of the composer’s pedigree and the composer in question had studied with some of the greats, held prestigious teaching positions and won prestigious awards, yet seems to have been essentially forgotten after their death.

So I am curious. Anyway, the piece starts and it sounds very intriguing. Kind of dark, brooding, atmospheric kind of intro, exquisitely orchestrated to the extent one can tell from hearing a recording on a car stereo. “That’s promising” I thought. Perhaps a forgotten great at the beginning of the revival. Great intro, can’t wait for the piece proper to begin.

The piece still playing, we’re still in the intro. Another minute of the intro, then another one. Huh? At this point I start realizing that the piece proper will never start. The brooding atmospheric intro is all there is. Great orchestration, tons of evidence of skill, just no… no music? I can’t say that—after all there are all those highly cultured sounds with evidence of a great deal of skill and thought put into it. But the overall impression is sort of like, say, you’re coming to a fancy restaurant, and it’s a really nice one, and they bring you a bread basket and some mineral water, and the bread has been just baked and it’s fantastic, so you have some of that and you think how great the main course and the dessert are going to be, but at some point you realize that this bread is all you’re going to get.

Continuing the analogy, there are kinds of what passes for music these days that I would compare with an all-marshmallows-you-can-eat buffet and there’s a kind of music that I’d compare with a restaurant serving meals made exclusively from parts of animals and plants that are not really edible, so I guess I’ll take a place that will serve you a great bread basket over those any time.