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Massenet is much less unsung than used to be the case but his four large scale sacred works are hardly known. I have greatly enjoyed getting to know them lately. "Marie-Magdeleine", "Eve" and "La Vierge" are early works but have many characteristic pages while "La Terre Promise" is much later. It is a more austere work melodically but dramatically effective. Does anyone else know them?

For anyone interested in unsung French music drama....and that's most of it....there's an interesting channel on Youtube containing extracts from operas by Camille Erlanger and others, sometimes in synthesized versions. It's only a small channel so give him some support. So far he only has 5 subscribers!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYzaTqihnBl87x7YnOprNPQ/featured

Mention of Franz Lachner's Harp Concerto reminded me of the one by Anton Edouard Pratté, a composer and harpist who seems never to have been mentioned on this forum. He was born in Bohemia in 1797 and died in Sweden in 1875. There is even a festival and competition devoted to him. It began in 2019 and is held in Norrköping. If you've got 3/4 of an hour to spare, his harp concerto is well worth a listen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIEO7VZMR68&t=2050s

Composers are often at their best in their piano quintets....Schumann, Brahms, Elgar, Dvorak, Franck for example. I see that Humperdinck wrote one and it's available on CPO coupled with more of his chamber music. Does anybody know it?

I see from this month's "Gramophone" ( P. 11) that Supraphon will be recording Novak's fine if early and rather uncharacteristic piano concerto in May for release in the first half of next year. Great news as long as you don't mind acquiring another recording of Schumann's concerto.

Has anyone else been listening to the Naxos disc of C-T's Violin "concerto" (it's actually for violin and piano) No.3, the String trio and the Sonata for Violin and 'Cello? This is all first-rate music....and virtually all of it would easily fall within the remit of this forum. (The finale of the trio may push at the boundaries a little!) The sonata, in particular, is little short of a masterpiece....enormously challenging  for the players but brilliantly worked out and seamlessly (yet not confusingly) constructed. The performances are quite superb as is the recording. Don't miss it. There is so much more to C-T than that guitar concerto!

I've recently been getting to know this opera in the 1955 recording conducted by Oliviero de Fabritiis. It is very well sung and superbly conducted and the recording is perfectly acceptable. The opera itself is really quite compelling. The story is melodramatic as you would expect  but the opera is fast moving and, after a slow start, from Track 4 or so onwards, it  is full of colourful and highly melodic music. The quality is maintained, certainly throughout Acts 2 and 3 and much, if not all, of the final act. Does anyone else know it...or any other recordings of it?

I don't know if Massenet's "Cendrillon" counts as unsung.  Borderline, perhaps!  A DVD of a Freiburg production was issued a few weeks ago on Naxos. Photographs and this trailer suggest an imaginative, if small scale production, but the sound seems poor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEHPMvImLUw

So far, I have not been able to find any reviews. I have resisted the less-than-magical Covent Garden production with Joyce DiDonato.
Any comments?

"L' Ancetre" could well be on its way.

http://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php?topic=6876.0

Perhaps "Fredegonde" may not be recorded as it's a completion of an opera by Guiraud. Extracts from "Dejanire" are available here:

http://www.operapassion.com/cd10214.html

so we are not far from a full house!

A young cast and Petrenko conducting (he's already recorded "Susanna's Secret") make this enticing:

https://www.mdt.co.uk/wolf-ferrari-i-quattro-rusteghi-european-opera-centre-rubicon-2cds.html

Those of us who've got the Siegfried Wagner bug will be interested in a DVD of this opera, one of  the composer's  best, now out on Marco Polo. Here it is at MDT:

https://www.mdt.co.uk/wagner-an-allem-ist-hutchen-lionel-friend-marco-polo-dvd.html

The Marco Polo sound only recordings of other S.W. operas have been distinctly variable but this one must be worth investigating.

Does anyone know this opera? I have always been curious about it.  It dates from 1884 and was was enormously popular in its time. There is a recording available on Capriccio.

It looks as though the MS of Huber's Piano Concerto No 4, said to be in very poor condition, has been restored and the concerto can now be performed. Has anyone else spotted this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VRKScOm31Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NMiiLKPwiE

There's a reference in the new "Gramophone" to a new issue which is on the way in Hyperion's RPC series...music for piano and orchestra (presumably the piano concertos) by Alfred Hill and George Frederick Boyle. Piers Lane is the soloist. The disc will be out next spring. Both concertos can be heard on Youtube in other performances.

If you only know this delectable concerto from the old recording by Mireille Flour, there is a new one on the Klara (Warner) label. It is superbly played and recorded and coupled with Gliere's concerto and Rodrigo's arrangement of the Concierto de Aranjuez.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00NTDSN8Q?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00

Don't miss the first recording of C-T's First Violin Concerto on Naxos (played by Tianwa Yang) , just issued. Sunny and tuneful it's a lovely piece.

Gustave Charpentier's opera "Louise" may not be totally unsung but it is rarely produced and there has not been a new recording for many years.  None of the complete recordings is entirely satisfactory. However, a really splendid DVD of a 2007 Paris production is available. The sound and picture are excellent as this was a television broadcast; it's not just somebody sitting with a camera in the stalls. It's also very well sung and conducted. It's an answer to a prayer!

http://www.operapassion.com/dvd-y36.html

It is well known that, after his death, Raff's reputation plummeted but I was not aware to what extent.  I'm sure I'm not the only one has searched the London Proms archives to see how composers' reputations have ebbed and flowed over the years. In the whole of the Proms' 115 year history there has only ever been one performance of a complete orchestral work by Raff  (the 1st 'Cello concerto in 1903) though the march from the "Lenore" symphony did get an airing in 1895!

Has anyone else made any interesting discoveries? Xavier Leroux's cantata "The Nile", for example, was played 15 times between 1908 and 1926...admittedly in an arrangement by Henry Wood who was always the conductor!

What do these composers have in common?  Sibelius, Rimsky-Korsakov, Liszt, Amy Beach and.....probably (it's not known for certain) Raff. Googling not allowed!

A live recording of d'Albert's opera "Der Golem" is due out from Dabringhaus and Grimm very soon.

http://www.crotchet.co.uk/MDG9371637

In fact, it's already listed on Amazon.de.  If it's anywhere near as good musically as "Die Toten Augen", it should be well worth investigating.