@Angela, surely the fact of being of Jewish origin weighed, but also a certain useless and gratuitous criticism towards him, accused of being substantially a conservative, an author little innovative or even superficial in comparison with his other contemporaries of age romantic.
In reality he has had so many merits, including
being the most important rediscoverer of Bach and reconciling the baroque / classical musical forms with the new romantic language.
You can enjoy a refinement and delicacy in his compositions - real bijoux - which is difficult to find in other authors. Thus he himself declared:
"People often complain that music is too ambiguous, that what they should think when they hear it is so unclear, whereas everyone understands words. With me, it is exactly the opposite, and not only with regard to an entire speech but also with individual words. These, too, seem to me so ambiguous, so vague, so easily misunderstood in comparison to genuine music, which fills the soul with a thousand things better than words. The thoughts which are expressed to me by music that I love are not too indefinite to be put into words, but on the contrary, too definite."
I can only agree