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I'm loving that Saint-Saens is getting some love from this thread. I don't know a lot of the names being dropped here but I had noticed in general life that his doesn't get dropped quite as often as I think it should. He's wonderful really.

Underrated: 1. Kalevi Aho. Probably the finest Finnish symphonic composer ever. Yet his 16 symphonies are not widely known. Of course not all of them are first-class, but numbers 1, 5, 7, 9, 10 and 15 are truly awesome. 2. Camille Saint Saens: he is much better composer than he is usually given credit for. His piano concertos and symphonies are outstanding. His clarinet sonata is such a beauty! He is not just a composer of Animal Carnival, Dance Macabre and Samson and Dallila. 3. Gustav Holst: He is known only for Planets but he has composed lots of exciting music, especially vocal. And his music from opera The perfect fool is intriguing. 4. Levi Maadetoja: his symphonies can easily match the quality of Sibelius, especially no. 2. 5. Lucijan Marija Skerjanc: I purposedly mention this Slovene composer since he is much underrated even in my country. But his symphonies no. 4 and 5 plus some other compositions (string quartets no 3, 4 and 5) should be world-known. Overrated: 1. Anton Bruckner: I give him credit for symphony no. 4, otherwise a boring, boring composer. Sorry. 2. John Cage: he had some intriguing ideas but he was never supposed to become a guru of modern music since he never really showed serious artistic tendencies. 3. Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini: while they are excellent opera composers they are overdosed. 4. Gustav Mahler: funny, just as Bruckner, he was also the luckiest with his fourth symphony. The no. 1 is also ok, but he has made other symphonies way way too long. A smell of self-exhibitionism is too obvious. 5. Frederic Chopin: I am beginning to avoid concerts where is music is present. I am surprised the pianists are still so attached to him. Why not trying something else?

BTW, I somehow forgot to list Camille Saint-Saens as grossly underrated. He was not only another child prodigy capable of matching both Mozart and Mendelssohn, but also wrote some wonderful music, possibly as colorful as Tchaikovsky's and as thoughtful as Brahms. Yet he isn't even considered a major composer by himself. Which leads me to think that, generally speaking, French and Russian composers tend to go underrated (think Berlioz, Saint-Säens, Faure, Scriabin, Kalinnikov) whilst Austro-German composers tend to go overrated (think Wagner, R. Strauss, Mahler, Bruckner, Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms). Perhaps Wagner did too much of a good job convincing everyone that German-speaking composers, provided that they weren't Jews, wrote works of more intellectual and philosophical depth (???) whilst non-Germans (including German-speaking Jews) wrote nothing but banality... Also of note: overrated doesn't necessarily mean bad. Just sayin' ...