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Topics - matesic

#1
Lots more fascinating stuff on that web site. Most of it seems to be pre-romantic but Strauss's Don Juan played on two pianos is a new experience for me. One slight downside is that many of the CD sleeves are reproduced too small to be easily decipherable. I've bookmarked it here: https://klangraumtirol.musikland-tirol.at/Musikgenies/praesentation.html
Clicking on each CD cover brings up its playable list of tracks. There's tons more if you explore around
#2
Thank you Mark for brightening my mood this morning! Can it possibly be that Richard Strauss heard the piece in his teens and stole the allegro feroce theme for Death and Transfiguration?
#3
Composers & Music / Léon Kreutzer 1817-1868
Tuesday 06 March 2018, 12:19
Another fascinating forgotten figure who I hadn't heard of until yesterday, although he does get an entry in New Grove. Quite a few of his scores are on IMSLP and I hope 4candles and cypressdome won't mind my sharing our conversation:

http://imslp.org/index.php?title=Special:WikiForum&thread=20187

I doubt that anyone here has ever heard a note of his but someone might just have some information?
#4
What a monster! From the orchestral sound I'd say you must be in the right part of the world, but it certainly isn't one of the Taktakishvili concerti posted on youtube. The heroic solo playing could be a clue.

[This refers to this post in the Downloads Board - Mark]
#5
As an offshoot from the thread on Hiller's first quartet, here's a nearly contemporary piece (1837) that strikes me as preferable on most counts. Usual apologies about intonation, finger tangles etc:

http://imslp.org/wiki/String_Quartet_No.2,_Op.16_(Gross,_Johann_Benjamin)#IMSLP421036

I. Starts very Moderato, like the blandest Mozart albeit with a nice mix of phrase-lengths, but he has some surprises in store.
II. The Scherzo goes at a fair lick (I couldn't get close to the specified 100 bars to the minute), distinguished by 3-bar phrases and a furiant-like rhythm
III. Andante affettuoso, a melancholic and surprisingly weighty slow movement
IV. Allegro con Spirito - the most conventional movement, later improved by a strong dash of Mendelssohn's octet

Most of his compositions feature his own instrument, the cello, but here it assumes a conventionally modest role. IMSLP also has String Quartet No.1, Editionsilvertrust No.3, which leaves No.4 (p. Schlesinger 1845) worth tracking down.
#6
Composers & Music / Max Lewandowsky 1874-1906
Friday 10 October 2014, 07:54
Does anyone have any info on this German composer resident in Berlin, not to be confused with the Jewish composer Louis Lewandowski (1821-1894) or the eminent neurologist Max Lewandowsky (1876-1916) who were also Berliners? According to Cobbett he published 2 piano trios (1900 and 1903), a piano quintet (1901), a string sextet (1904) and, posthumously, a violin sonata (1907), a cello sonata (1909) and two string quartets (1910). The sextet is a slightly old-fashioned but well crafted piece that I hope to be uploading a rendition of to imslp in a few days. Worldcat also has 2 pieces for cello and piano and 3 sets of songs, two of them posthumously published. The only other information I can find on him is a concert programme from April 1906 (4 months before his death), described as a "Compositions-Abend von Max Lewandowsky" and featuring the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, or members of.
#7
Composers & Music / Percy Hilder Miles 1878-1922
Sunday 10 August 2014, 08:44
I uploaded 4 more scores ("renditions" included) to imslp, increasing his published tally to 7. Most significant of the new ones, I think, are his 2 settings of WWI poems, In Flanders Fields and England and Flanders,  composed in the first weeks of 1919. At what could well have been their premiere performance a few weeks ago I found them very powerful. The others that I've transcribed from manuscript are his second string quintet (2vlns, vla, vc, db) and clarinet quintet. The best of his chamber work movements (e.g. IV of the string quintet, III of the clarinet quintet, I of the string sextet) seem to share a painfully nostalgic quality that inevitably puts me in mind of Elgar, although Percy's harmonic language is distinctive.

The biggest work to remain unpublished work is his cello concerto which exists only in piano reduction. It was supposed to have been premiered at the 1908 proms, but for some reason the dedicatee, Bertie Withers, played the Dvorak instead and Percy withdrew the dedication. Anyone fancy their hand at orchestration?
#8
Composers & Music / Richard von Perger 1854-1911
Thursday 20 February 2014, 08:13
A bit of a conundrum. After studying composition with Brahms and others he had a multifaceted career in Rotterdam and Vienna but it seems extraordinary that the 7 chamber pieces listed by Cobbett (the only works of Perger's on imslp) were all published between 1886 and 1889. Eric mentions a violin concerto, but what else did he write? The second and third string quartets and the string trio are all fine pieces in a somewhat Brahmsian mould (maybe that's what became of Brahms's 'prentice works..?) that could definitely be ranked alongside Herzogenberg, Gernsheim etc. Writing in Cobbett, Rudolf Felber goes into some detail about the trio and two of the quartets before dismissing Perger for having "no background of strong emotional experience", whatever that means.
#9
Composers & Music / Overview of romantic string quartets
Wednesday 25 September 2013, 08:07
Despite having plenty better to do, I went through my best sources (mainly Cobbett) and listed all the composers I could find with credible dates who published string quartets in the century after Beethoven (1826-1925). Those who I know have recordings of some sort (very occasionally of SQs published after 1925) are on the "sung composers" sheet, the rest of course "unsung". A substantial proportion of pieces on the sung page may not in fact have had recordings. Of course quite a few "unsungs" must truly belong with the "sungs", but it's clear there that out of a total of more than 650 there are plenty yet to be heard!

http://www.mediafire.com/?6tj7zl2qhqdlddd

The dates recorded for each piece are mostly of publication, except where that was definitely more than 5 years after writing, in which case I went for the latter. I'll add some graphs in due course, but the main trend over time is a massive increase starting towards the end of the 19th century and persisting right into the 1920's, a big spike at 1920 I suspect being due to the sudden resumption of publishing activity after WW1. There's also a period during the 1860's when the proportion of "sung" to "unsung" drops particularly low, so that's where I'll be putting my spade looking for undiscovered treasure. Unfortunately my suspicions are that this was a time when conservatism reigned, and there just isn't much that looks interesting.
#10
Composers & Music / Francis J. Morgan
Thursday 12 September 2013, 13:27
Does anyone have any info on this Englishman, b.1866? His published scores, all produced by Curwen/Goodwin and Tabb in the early 1920's and quite widely available in libraries, seem to consist only of 4 violin sonatas (nos 1, 3, 4 and 6; No.3 is the "Sonata Romantica" which I hope locates him within the UC pale!), 2 piano trios (nos 4 and 5) and a suite for solo piano. In Cobbett's chamber music survey Victor Olof writes glowingly of him, also mentioning an unpublished string quartet and 2 "chamber concertos" for solo violin, string quartet and piano. I may be able to post a rendition of the Sonata Romantica before too long.
#11
Composers & Music / A plea for greater discrimination
Thursday 15 August 2013, 20:07
Don't get me wrong (one of my least favourite sayings..), I do sympathise with and share most of the aims of UC, but I also like to stimulate debate. In spite of the fact that the "big" classical music scene is increasingly dominated by high-profile populist performers of over-performed repertoire, in the realm of recorded music it is undoubtedly the case that we have access to a wider range of obscure repertoire than ever before. So maybe not quite so much grumbling about neglected long-dead geniuses who inexplicably have never had money thrown at them for the gratification of a few old codgers with jaded palettes?

I'm just as curious as the next man about the vast amount of music written in the last 400 years that never (or hardly ever) gets publicly aired, but time is precious. There are many days when I relish the prospect of getting acquainted with the OK-to-middling music of another unsung, but it isn't all wonderful stuff and there are plenty more days when I want to refresh and deepen my appreciation of true masterpieces. With too much emphasis on the obscure, isn't there a danger that musical refinement gives way to a kind of gluttony? What I find lacking in this otherwise admirable forum is any marked degree of quality discrimination between composers of widely differing degrees of competence, inspiration and originality. So how about a 10-point scale for each?