Topics

I enjoyed these notes and remembrances of pianist Michael Ponti, an early champion of unsung composers (and still alive, I believe). I thought you might enjoy them, too, and my friend gave his okay to share them.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Ponti was, along with Earl Wild and others, a hero of my youth.
And he always will be one of my personal heroes.

In the 70s and early 80s I went to any concert by him I could.
In one concert he played the whole "Hammerklavier" as an encore......Totally insane........

He had T-shirts to sell, on which you could read
"Ponti- Power" or "Ponti-Fex"...........

He is a somehow tragical person, who never had the chance to be [considered] one of the greatest -- though for me and others, he actually is.
I remember a 1978 WDR interview with him, and I also remember my conversation with him in 1996 after he played a concert with us.
Afterwards we drank a lot. He was very sad about the way his career had gone. As in the WDR interview, he said that he had no chance [had not had the right opportunities].

Vox told him: "We want the complete Rachmaninov solo piano works."
And he said "ok."

Vox told him then: "Next we want the complete Scriabin."
At this moment - he told me - he became nervous.
But he said "ok."

And then Vox said to him: "The first recording we want to do is the Henselt concerto."
Then he knew it would be a very tough time for him.

And he was willing to play any gig you could imagine. Take a summer holiday in Sylt, for example, 30 years ago.
The local Kurorchester wanted to play Brahms Piano concerto No.1.
Ponti appeared and played it on a little piano, a "Stutzflügel."

He had memorized over 50 concertos. In 1996 he played the Liszt 2nd Concerto with us.
During rehearsal he had only a small "Taschenpartitur", a very old one, his own.
But he did not need it. He knew all the markings and numbers by heart.

Kudos.
He was a 150% old school professional.
Even in rehearsal he made no mistakes.
He sat at the piano, making no unnecessary motions, and just played.
That demeanor is, of course, rather unlike some of our stars nowadays.

And he played beautifully and -- of course -- powerfully.
What a sound.
Ponti-Power!

He was often recorded unfaithfully, with bad Instruments and under bad circumstances.
He did his job all the time.

That said, I have a Rachmaninov and Prokofiev 3rd Concerto from the 90s that seems produced very well and that sounds very good.
It is played with great character, intensity and verve on a very good Steinway.
And the recording is state of the art.
This is Ponti at his best.
Sadly this CD is out of print.

Rach 3 with Ponti I have dreamed about for decades.
But it exists!

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Some of these anecdotes seem to suggest that Ponti wanted more opportunities to be heard in standard repertoire. (Which of course doesn't mean that he stinted on his preparations for Henselt et alia.)

Eric's concert thread is getting a bit sidetracked, so it seemed not inappropriate to fork a Boellmann question here.  There's a 2015 recording on the Blue Griffin label, "Trouvailles!" that includes Boellmann's work together with cello sonatas of Dohnanyi and Bridge, the whole played by Hannah Holman and Rene Lecuona. I've recently been impressed by some other young chamber players, such as the Avalon Ensemble, so I could imagine this being satisfying. Has anyone heard it? The Hyperion recording Alan recommends goes for around 30 pounds and up in the US.

From Bradley Stockwell on the Furtwängler FB page: In 1927 Furtwängler wrote about wanting to conduct the Draeseke Third Symphony:

"For three years I have considered adding the Tragica of Draeseke; This year I - reluctantly - put it aside again, at the last moment, because other "newer" works (i.e.. those which tend, unlike the Draeseke, to only have a one-day existence!) got in the way." (,,Seit drei Jahren habe ich die Absicht, die Tragica von Draeseke aufzuführen; ich mußte sie dieses Jahr – ungern – im letzten Moment wieder beiseite legen, weil andere ,,aktuellere" Werke (d. h. solche, die im Gegensatz zu Draeseke nur ein Eintagsdasein führen!) dazwischen kamen.")

Nothing against John Adams or Philip Glass ... but: sound familiar?

Can anyone think of another specific instance where a major conductor (not just a Toscanini but, say, a Sir Mark Elder) wanted to conduct an unsung work appropriate to this forum but didn't get the opportunity?

Rather than digress within the thread on the Järvi interpretation of Raff's Lenore symphony, I thought it better to offer my somewhat abstracted response in a separate thread.

Alan has mentioned that there is something about Järvi's performance that works, even if one is initially uncomfortable with his tempos. And john_christopher has documented the disparity between Raff's own metronome markings and those used in other recent recordings. We all know that nothing could be more Kapellmeisterisch than a dance-band approach to tempo, of course, yet I often find myself, in contrast to Alan, comparing performance tempos as if slow or fast in and of itself were a significant metric -- this despite the fact that Busoni's Sketch of a New Aesthetic in Music is one of the texts about music I value most.

Mahler had a lot to say about tempo, and I think it worth considering one of his remarks (from 1898), which supports the view that Järvi's fast tempo need not do violence to the music so long as it is embedded in a coherent overall presentation of the music. Mahler's point of view, which treats music as a form of human rather than mechanical expression, seems quite close to Busoni's, not to mention Furtwangler's:

All the most important things -- the tempo, the total conception and structuring of a work -- are almost impossible to pin down.  For here we are concerned with something living and flowing that can never be the same even twice in succession. That is why metronome markings are inadequate and almost worthless; for unless the work is vulgarly ground out in barrel-organ style, the tempo will already have changed by the end of the second bar. Therefore, the right inter-relationships of all the sections of the piece are much more important than the initial tempo.  Whether the overall tempo is a degree faster or slower often depends on the mood of the conductor; it may well vary slightly without detriment to the work. What matters is that the whole should be alive,  and, within the bounds of this freedom, be built up with irrevocable inevitability.

Piano trios were a mainstay of 19th-century chamber music. Members have accordingly discussed trios by numerous unsung composers, including:
Bache, Berens, Fesca, Franck (Eduard), Gernsheim, Goldenweiser, Hägg, Höller, Jacobsson, Klauwell,
Labor, Laurischkus, Lux, Merikanto, Mikorey, Neumann-Cordua, Reber, Reingle (Caroline), Rimsky-Korsakov, Sellergren, Spohr. de la Tombelle, Walthew, Weigl, and Zelenski among many many others.

I would add to this list the Piano Trio, opus 5, by Max Bruch. There is nothing tentative about this early work, first performed publicly in 1857. Had Schumann heard it, one imagines he would have praised Bruch nearly as highly as he praised Brahms in 1853.

In another thread a certain interest was expressed in a 19th-century survey of symphonies I have started to explore. Rather than take that thread off topic I have started a new one, inspired by George P. Upton's "The Standard Symphonies: A Handbook," dedicated to Theodore Thomas and (c)1888 A. C. McClurg and Company, Chicago.

The volume immediately resolves any ambiguity attaching to its titular adjective: "The programmes of the concert-stage, running through a series of years, are sufficient to indicate what may be considered standard." The author admits to allowing one non-standard work into his canon: Beethoven's Choral Fantasie, opus 80. The following list of post-Beethoven symphonies, then, may be considered as ones that were not unsung in 1888 Chicago. At time of publication quite a few of the composers below were still alive. An asterisk below indicates that the composer was deceased.

*Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique and Harold in Italy
Brahms, Symphonies 1-4
Cowen, Symphony 3 (Scandinavian)
Dvorak, Symphony 3 [=6] in D
Gade, Symphonies 1 and 4
*Goetz, Symphony 1 in F
Goldmark, "Rustic Wedding"
Hofmann, Symphony (Frithjof)
*Liszt, Faust and Dante symphonies
*Mendelssohn, Symphonies 3, 4, 5
Paine, Symphony 2 (Spring)
*Raff, Symphonies 3, 5, 8
Rheinberger, Symphony 1 (Wallenstein)
Rubinstein, Symphonies 2 and 5
Saint-Saëns, Symphonies 3 [=2, a minor] and 5 [=3, c minor]
*Schubert, Symphonies 8 and 9
*Schumann, Symphonies 1-4
*Spohr, Symphony 4 (Consecration of Sound)
Stanford, Symphony 3 (Irish)
Sullivan, Symphony 1, e minor
*Volkmann, Symphony 1, d minor
*Wagner, Symphony, C major

The author appends discussion of "Symphonic Poems" by six composers:
Mendelssohn, "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
Liszt, "Les Préludes," "Tasso," "Festklänge," "Mazeppa," "Hunnenschlacht," "Todtentanz" [!]
Paine, "The Tempest"
Reinecke, "Hakon Jarl"
Moskowski, "Joan of Arc"
Saint-Saëns, "Rouet d'omphale," "Phaeton," "Danse macabre"

Particularly noteworthy, I think, is the inclusion of the Saint-Saëns c-minor symphony, premiered only two years before publication of this volume in Chicago. The boonies were not all that far off the beaten track, it seems. More important, perhaps, is the fact that the author had no doubts that this new work and also Brahms's newish symphony 4 were instant "standards."

Worthy of mention, also, are some of the composers missing from this list -- Tchaikovsky, for one. He was already well established on America's northeast coast, but apparently not in the heartland.

Not the composer but the pithy essayist, late in life.

The art of music has, for a long time now, suffered from an overdependence on consecrated names. When music lovers speak of composers, they are generally referring, in the whole history of music, to half a hundred famous names of whom perhaps half a dozen belong to our era. This does serious injustice to many valuable composing talents, both of the past and of the present.

-- notes to Phoenix PHCD 106

I'd enjoy hearing what are the most impressive post-Baroque opus 1s for other forum members? (I'm avoiding the plural, opera, on purpose.) For me, the first names that come to mind are Beethoven, Draeseke, Brahms, Stenhammar, and Dohnányi. To make the game harder, let's restrict ourselves to composers, preferably unsung, who actually used opus numbers. Had Sibelius designated his breakthrough work, the first A-minor string quartet, as opus 1, I would also have included it in the list. But he didn't. So I have to cheat and talk about it anyway.

I'm hoping we can compile a list of really really good opus 1s (or numerical near misses) from the romantic period and not just a laundry list of opus 1s.

Those who have been planning a visit to YouTube to sample recordings of classical music, sung or unsung, should probably not wait too long.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/21/technology/google-ordered-to-stop-copyright-violations-on-youtube.html

Ivory ticklers in this group may be interested in the score of William Bendix's piano sonata, recently uploaded to IMSLP. A recording by Peter Seivewright on Rondo Grammofon has been available for some time.

Facilities for scanning were primitive, and the scan quality is mediocre. Still, the notes are all there. The specimen scanned previously belonged to the musicologist William Newman, whose three volumes on the sonata principle from the 1970s make good reading today.

Written around 1896, Bendix's sonata stands up handsomely, I think, when compared to fellow Dane Carl Nielsen's piano works of the same period. I encourage pianists to have a go at this splendid sonata.

No one would call MacDowell the equal of the once-unsung Schubert, but quite a bit of MacDowell's best music, like Schubert's, is haunted by preternatural intimations of mortality. While Schubert spent his last creative months sharing some of his ripest musical thoughts, MacDowell, as syphilitic senility approached, focused on revising (substantially) his first major work, the piano suite in E dedicated to Raff's widow. Perhaps lack of confidence had something to do with MacDowell's reluctance to leap. The composer's cultural environment surely was another factor.

The novelist Upton Sinclair's "American Outpost: A Book of Reminiscences" is difficult to find, so I hope the forum will forgive me if I quote a passage from it in which Sinclair reflects on MacDowell and his environment as he knew them as a college student.

"Since we are dealing with the phenomena of genius, I will tell about the one authentic man of genius I met at Columbia. Edward MacDowell was the head of the department of music, struggling valiantly to create a vital music center in America, against heavy odds of philistinism, embodied in the banker trustees of the great university. MacDowell gave two courses in general musical culture, and these I took in successive years, and they were not among the courses I dropped. The composer was a man of wide culture, and full of a salty humor, a delightful teacher. There were less than a dozen students taking the course -- such was the amount of interest in genius at Columbia.

"Early in the course I noted that MacDowell suffered in his efforts to say in words something which could only be said in music, and I suggested to him that instead of trying to describe musical ideas, he should play them for us. This suggestion he at once accepted, and thereafter the course consisted in a piano rendition of the great music of  the world, with incidental running comments.  . . .

"Since I was going in for the genius business myself, I was interested in every smallest detail of this great man's behavior and appearance. Here was one who shared my secret of ecstasy; and this set him apart from all the other teachers, the dull plodding ones who dealt with bones and dust of inspirations. . ."

Late last night while driving home from work, a local FM station broadcast music that intrigued more and more as it unfolded (at length). Rather than listening single-mindedly, I found myself trying to guess who could have written such a piece with this, that, and the other thing in it. More importantly, many of the thises, thats, and the others were pretty darned impressive, if not quite goosebumpworthy, music.

It turned out to be a late ballet by Villa Lobos based on Eugene O'Neill's one-acter "The Emperor Jones."

I'm sure we've all had similar experiences. So my question is:

What would be a memorable unsung piece that you encountered in some such way?

After the end of patronage, many well-known composers penned works that have either been labeled 'tragic' (rightly or wrongly) or that may fairly be described as tragic, even if, as in the case of Tchaikovsky 6, they've been labeled a bit differently.

Among my own questions is whether a work need END tragically to be considered tragic so long as sufficient catharsis has been exacted along the way.

My main question, however, is: What unsung composers have contributed significantly to the subset of symphonies that are tragic? A sub-questions might be: Does writing a tragic symphony tend to make a composer less unsung?

I'd love to read thoughts and opinions from other forum members. Hopefully without us dwelling too much on the minutae of labels per se,

http://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,516.msg6299.html#msg6299">Martin Eastick and perhaps others have mentioned Arthur Hinton previously in this forum.  Sibley has recently uploaded some of his piano works to IMSLP. They strike me as well made and -- for the pianists in this group -- fun to play.

A piano concerto by Hinton is reviewed by none other than Lewis Foreman http://www.musicweb-international.com/SandH/2002/Apr02/Hinton.htm It was in Clifford Curzon's repertory, but it appears he had little luck in finding a band to play it with.

Much more could be (and I hope will be) said about Hinton (and his wife), but for starters I would like to second Martin Eastick's view that Arthur Hinton deserves a 21st-century hearing.

(Sorry for the HTML. I don't understand how the hyperlink button works.)

I've hyperlinked them! Alan Howe

Recently a music lover uploaded to IMSLP the three (published) piano sonatas by Robert Fuchs. I've played the first and am moved to praise it.

Born the year before Wagner manned the Dresden barricades, Fuchs wrote his first (published) piano sonata around the time of the Ring's premiere (sonata pub. by Kistner ca. 1876). I imagine the Hanslicks of the day saw the sonata as authentically Brahmsian. In truth it sounds more like a paean to Schubert. Though it does not rise quite to the heights or plumb quite the depths of Schubert's last six sonatas, its kindred heart clearly moves in the same currents. Fuchs ignores not only Wagner but Schumann and Mendelssohn as well. Some voicings might remind one of Brahms, but alternatively they might recall Bergmüller, Hiller or Heller if one knows those composers.

For the pianists especially among forum members, I recommend this work.

Perhaps it's been mentioned here before and i missed it, but...

Haenssler Classics just released (on 15 January) a recording of the Volkmann Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in a minor, op. 33 (coupled with the Schumann) performed by Peter Bruns with the Leipzig Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra under Juergen Bruns. I haven't had a chance to hear this yet, but Bruns has an exceptionally broad repertoire, and his sympathy with concerted works by composers as disparate as Elgar, Pfitzner, Delius, Lalo, C.P.E. Bach, and Haydn (not to mention Brahms, Dvorak, Bruch, etc) bodes well for this recording.

The fillers include more Volkmann, some of it previously unrecorded.

Robert Volkmann:
Concerto for Cello and Orchester op. 33 in a minor
Andante mit Variationen (1836) for 3 Cellos
Drei Stücke für Violoncello und Klavier
Chant du Troubadour op. 10
Capriccio op. 74
Romanze op. 7

Robert Schumann:
Concerto for Cello and Orchester op. 129 in a minor
Abendlied op. 85, Nr. 12 (arr. for Cello and strings by P. Bruns)
Abendlied op. 85, Nr. 12 (arr. for Cello and Piano by Pablo Casals)

Catalog ID: 098.594

Among novelists, there's the well-known phenomenon of "sophomore slump." I'm not sure if this happens with composers. Most second symphonies (in order of composition) seem to me to be as good as their creator's first symphonies. Is Brahms's second a lesser work than his first? Or are symphonies with life-affirming first movements less great than those that feature struggle and conflict? (What would Aristotle say?)

Here's my personal short list of best second symphonies (in order of composition), based on my (limited) listening history. I'm sharing this in hopes that some of you with much broader knowledge will share some of your own favorite second symphonies that I can get to know.

Best second symphony ever: Mahler
Short list of other favorite second symphonies:
Bax
Brahms
Draeseke
d'Indy
Mendelssohn ("No 5")
Rachmaninov
Schumann ("No. 4")
Sibelius
Stenhammar
Vaughan Williams

Bruckner's second (Symphony "0") sounds to me like a warm-up. If you count his F-minor as first and make "No. 1" his second, then that would go on my short list.
Does anyone have an opinion about Tubin's second (which I have yet to hear)?