I would love Martin's wish come true for cpo to record Raff's Welt Ende oratorio and opera König Alfred, although actually his Wagner-inspired music drama Samson would be the opera I'd choose. Neither prospect is very likely I'm afraid and, if they were recorded, with cpo's snail's-pace release schedule the worry would be whether I'd live long enough to see them actually issued! For the last two years they have been promising "next year" for volume II of the Raff string quartets, all eight of which have now been recorded by the Mannheim Quartet.
Still on the Raff front, it looks fairly certain that Neeme Järvi and the Suisse Romande Orchestra will be recording at least Raff's Lenore Symphony for Chandos, which should be a special event, and Sterling should be issuing a CD of his religious choral music, half of the programme being works with orchestra, the other half a capella. We can also expect definitely one, and probably two CDs of his piano works from Tra Nguyen on a major label.
Turning to other composers, I hope that we'll see a second Rufinatscha symphony recording on Chandos from Noseda. More than anything else though, I share everyone else's frustration at cpo's log jam of recordings and hope that we'll see them speed up their schedule so that we have a few Nicodé, Sträßer, Jadassohn etc. CDs to look forward to next year.
