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Despite repeated listens I've jut failed to engage with this work. It certainly sounds appealing but there's an emptiness to it, as if it was a student exercise written out of duty rather than out of compulsion to create. So, as Alan writes, some of the elements are there: promising material, inventive and colourful orchestration but the drive to create something memorable is somehow lacking. 

I didn't bother with catalogues. Living only about an hour from central London in the early 70s, it was very easy to make the trip on a Saturday to a couple of stores in the Soho area which specialised in obscure LP labels and even more obscure music: IIRC one was called Harold Stave, long gone now of course.  Oh, the thrill of finding an LP of music by an unknown (to me) composer with the "right dates" (1800-1920 or so) or, even better, a new recording of music by someone who I'd already discovered and loved - Raff was the first such, but other early favourites were Glazunov (almost exclusively on those thick and heavy Melodiya discs) Rubinstein and Goetz. The Genesis, Louisville and Turnabout racks in particular were the first to be scoured for new releases. There was also a rather shifty Melodiya dealer who worked out of an unheated upstairs room opposite Foyles book shop on Charing Cross Road. Going to see him was always a rather grubby experience, but the joy of finding he had a previously unheard Glazunov symphony in stock made it worth while. Sometimes a major label would turn up trumps - Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge's thrilling Esclarmonde and Les Huguenots sets were my first exposure to opera (and remain favourites even now).

But nostalgia isn't what it used to be. It's easy to forget that many of those performances were cut, were of poor technical quality (Melodiya) or featured orchestras in particular which had clearly been selected for their cost rather than their quality (all those Turnabout recordings). Compared to many offerings now, the pickings then weren't only slim in number but also in quality. We have truly been living in a golden age for recordings of the unsung and, as Ilja points out, the digital age - with so many recordings both commercial and off-air freely available to listen to on YouTube - makes things almost too easy.

Fantastic, Martin. Thanks, as ever. The openings of Rheinthaler's Symphony and Kauffmann's Concerto are really promising....

Thanks, Tuomas.

...but the coupling and the prospect of Wee as soloist are beguiling. My fingers are crossed.

I imagine Alan is referencing Tchaikovsky's presumably unconscious (but remarkably direct) copying of a theme from the slow movement of Raff's 10th Symphony in that of his own 5th Symphony a few years later.

Thanks so much for this, Martin.

The CD has the same discrepancies between the printed track times in the booklet and the actual ones, which are the same as the downloads. You're missing no music.

I'm away from home now, without access to either recording, but from memory my impression was that the Leipzig performance has a tad more drive and immediacy. Of course, that may be down to the different acoustic and balance of performers.

The recording and performance deliver a pretty impressive punch, conductor Gregor Meyer emphasising the dramatic vigour of the work. The baritone Andreas Wolf has a powerful and dynamic presence and soprano Marie Henriette Reinhold, with a much smaller part, is also excellent. Both are recorded a little forward of the choir but not excessively so and the chorus itself sings with gusto and finesse as the music demands. The purely orchestral passages come over very well, the fierier ones genuinely exciting, and the pace of the piece is absolutely spot on - Meyer doesn't hang around and that's what's almost always needed with Raff. I suppose I'm so familiar with the work from the old LP recording, a noble but flawed effort, and this is such a (literally) dramatic improvement, that at present I'm rather bowled over by it. In this performance it really does come over as the master work Raff hoped it would prove to be. 

Yes, I'd say so, but I've always quite liked that idiom.

A new CD featuring the estimable Oliver Triendl playing Rudolf Moser's Piano Concerto, coupled with various of Moser's orchestral works, is imminent from Hänssler - details and audio samples her. Moser is a new name to me but his idiom, although clearly 20th century, seems to be within UC's area of interest.

Oh, well done, Colin!

I tried to download it when this was first posted but, despite having a MediaFire account, I couldn't.

That's setting the bar a bit low, though, Alan.