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Messages - saxtromba

#46
Composers & Music / Unsung Key Signatures
Thursday 31 March 2011, 20:05
Certain key signatures aren't very common, especially ones with lots of sharps or flats, and doubly especially the enharmonic key signatures (a-flat minor for g-sharp minor, and so on).  I'm wondering how many pieces (or at least movements) people can think of which use, as the foundational key signature, the four seven-accidental key signatures (a-flat minor, C-sharp Major, a-flat minor, and C-flat Major).

So far as I can tell, a-flat minor is the most common.  The slow movement of Beethoven's Op. 26 piano sonata is so signifies, as are several pieces by Janacek, Dmitri Cuclin's 13th symphony, and so on.  C-sharp Major was actually more common during the Baroque period than D-Flat Major, with the most famous example being the third Prelude and Fugue in The Well-Tempered Clavier; in modern times, D-Flat Major takes over, as in Prokofiev's seventh symphony, where the last movement should be in C-Sharp Major yet is notated in D-Flat.  But C-Flat Major and a-sharp minor?  Can anybody here think of such pieces?  (remember, I'm asking about whole movements or entire pieces, not sections within movements).
#47
Composers & Music / Re: Stjepan Sulek
Thursday 17 February 2011, 21:37
I don't know Sulek's 7th symphony, but the 6th, once available on a Yugoton LP (which I have treasured for years), is really a wild piece, kind of an ultra-decadent salute to glories past (in a way, it's modelled on Chopin's second sonata, with three lengthy movements followed by a swiftly whirling conclusion, save that in Sulek the last movement is in fact the long-delayed coda to the first.  The second movement scherzo is really weird in a wonderful way, with a prominent bass clarinet part and (in what passes for the trio, save that it's the end of the movement) lots of eerie fluttertongued flutes and clicking percussion.  Wonderful!

Your comment about the 7th symphony doesn't say whether you know it from a live performance or a recording.  The only currently available recordings I know are of his 'Vox Gabrieli' trombone sonata (which is a lovely piece indeed) and a guitar piece.  I'd love to discover other recordings.  Can you suggest any?
#48
Composers & Music / Re: Unsung Lieder: Rubinstein
Thursday 17 February 2011, 21:26
Quote from: TerraEpon on Tuesday 15 February 2011, 20:58
I have the Dux disc with the duets, all 12 are on it.
You're absolutely right; I had crossed it with the RealSound release featuring Johanna Rutishauser and Ela Berger, which also happens to be the disk with the complete Op. 57 solo songs.  So there are two and 11/12ths complete versions of the Op. 48 duets, and only one complete set of solo songs-- and that one is out of print.... :(
#49
Composers & Music / Re: Requiems
Tuesday 15 February 2011, 17:15
I apologize if somebody else already mentioned this and I missed it, but I didn't see the Requiem of Abbe Georg Joseph Vogler, Beethoven's contemporary, listed.  This has been released on both the Arte Nova and Oehms labels.  Another, quite charming (!), Requiem, unfortunately no longer available, was that of Mateusz Zwierzchowski, which was once available through the Music Heritage Society, so used copies might still be floating around.  Zwierzchowski comes across as a gentle soul in the music, much more interested in resurrection and forgiveness than fear and punishment. 
#50
Composers & Music / Unsung Lieder: Rubinstein
Tuesday 15 February 2011, 17:05
Although there is still a great deal of Rubinstein's music yet to be recorded, his solo piano sets are fairly well represented in the catalogs (I know of complete recordings of Opp. 3, 10, 14, 21, 22, 23, 26, 30, 37, 69, 71, 75, 81, 109, 114, and 118).  Not so the songs, even though he wrote nearly as many as he wrote piano pieces.  The duets of Op. 48 have been recorded (all 12 by Dorte and Heidrun Blase on the Thorofon label, 11 of the 12 by Jadwiga RappĂ© and Urszula Kryger on the Dux label, as well as various selections in various collections), and the Blase sisters also recorded the Op. 67 duets.  But that's it as far as complete sets go.  There was a recording of the Op. 57 songs, and I remember seeing the Persian Songs, Op. 34, listed (in a cassette recording, which gives you some idea of how long ago that was!), though I was never able to find them.  The Northern Flowers volume 1 of Rubinstein songs offers five of the ten Serbian Songs, Op. 105, but there doesn't seem to be a follow-up disk coming any time soon.

So the only option is collections which happen to feature a few Rubinstein songs.  Rubinstein wrote songs to German and Russian lyrics, as well as a few to French, Italian, and even English words (three that I know of; these have been recorded in German versions, but never in the original).  There being many lieder collections out there, I'm wondering whether anyone has suggestions for ones which, a) have a fair number of Rubinstein songs on them; and, b) are well-performed.
#51
Composers & Music / Re: Humor in Romantic style music
Tuesday 15 February 2011, 16:44
Anton Rubinstein had quite a sense of musical humor.  His 'Variations on Yankee Doodle' manages to be both an excellent set of variations and to poke fun at the tune as well.  Even funnier is the set of variations on a Russian folk tune, or folk-style tune, in his Op. 75.  It's almost a literal rendering of Schoenberg's later comment that all you can do with a folk tune is play it louder.  Listen to the way the music runs down just before being dismissed with some brisk chords.  More subtle, but still fun, is the spoof of Chopin (Sonata #2 scherzo) in the scherzo of his fourth sonata; the way he flips aside the forceful sections with a spiky dissonance then segues into the waltz is quite amusing.
#52
Composers & Music / Re: Unsung String Quintets
Thursday 03 February 2011, 16:42
Another quintet I'm surprised no one has mentioned yet is Ethel Smyth's Op. 1, a Brahmsian five movement work with some very beautiful sections. It was recorded on CPO a while back, along with her much lengthier string quartet.
#53
Composers & Music / Unsung String Quintets
Tuesday 01 February 2011, 15:52
There are gazillions of well known string quartets, but not so many well known string quintets (Schubert, Bruckner, Brahms, a few others).  I can certainly think of ones which should be better known (Rubinstein, e.g.), but I'll bet there are others I've never even heard of.

Recommendations?  I'm looking for the combination of either 2 violins, viola, and two violoncellos, or 2 violins, 2 violas, and violoncello, not the string quartet plus double bass versions (e.g. Hummel) or piano quintets.

Thanks.
#54
It's really unfortunate that the very recent release of Anton Rubinstein's piano trios by the Edlian Trio comes as a two-disk set rather than two separate disks; in the latter case, it would be possible to recommend, albeit with reservations, the second disk and recommend ignoring the first.  As it is, though, Rubinstein completists such as myself will want the whole thing, but others may want to hold off due to the high price of the set.

There's good news and bad news, musically speaking.  The fifth trio is indeed complete, filling one of the many large holes in the Rubinstein discography.  The fourth trio is cut, but not massively; movement one is complete, movement two omits the repeat but is otherwise complete, movement three is missing 18 measures just before the end, and movement four is missing 36 measures, and has a noticeably bad edit just before four missing measures at the return of the main theme.  I suspect the whole thing was recorded (minus repeats; the Edlian Trio takes only one of these in the entire set), and then cut down to fit the CD.

The major cuts come in the earlier trios.  The third trio, first movement, is missing 12 measures; as every other recording of this trio, so far as I know, is complete, this alone would remove the Edlian version from serious consideration.  The second movement is complete, while the third lacks the repeat in the middle section (the repeat in the main section is observed), and the fourth is missing 82 measures. 

Much more damage is done to the first and second trios.  The first lacks the exposition repeat in the first movement (ten pages worth of music), as well as that in the third movement.  More seriously, all of the repeats in the slow middle movement are omitted (94 measures worth), along with an additional 38 measures in the opening and closing sections.  But these omitted repeats are not simply the same music heard twice; Rubinstein starts each variation with one statement, explicitly calling for the repeat to add new material, thus creating a sort of expanding dialogue ( as well as allowing for sections in which the two strings are heard without the piano).  All of this is missing (to be fair, the same omission occurs in the only other recording of this trio known to me, that by the Romantic Trio on Russian Disc some years back; this trio still very much needs a truly complete recording)

Weirdest of all is the fate of the second trio.  The first movement lacks the exposition repeat and twelve measures at the conclusion.  The second movement has six (yes, just six) measures excised.  The fourth movement lacks the repeat and a few other measures.  The third movement is utterly mangles; the entire opening section is missing (135 measures), and there are other cuts as well.  What makes this particularly odd is that a couple of years ago the Edlians released the same recording (so far as I can hear), presumably as part of the fund-raising toward this release, and all of the movements were complete (except, of course, for the missing repeats). 

As to the performances and recordings themselves, the energy level is usually high; in fact, some of the tempos seem a bit rushed (the middle movement of Trio #1 especially).  The violin sound is rather thin, and balance between the instruments not always good (the violoncello simply disappears on more than one occasion).  It's good to have five and most of four (the latter is, I'm inclined to think, Rubinstein's best trio, though not by a wide margin); better versions of the other three exist (If you can find the old Melodiya recording of Trio #3, with Eleanora Teplukhina, Marat Bisengaliev, and Yuri Semenov, grab it; it's a superb recording and performance).  This would have been a better release had it been on three disks, with the Piano Quartet filling out the third, leaving room for truly complete versions.