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Both of Franck's recorded symphones are hugely enjoyable works; what they also share is a certain, almost muscular, confidence. 

Chronologically, the A major and Bb major symphonies are Franck's Symphonies No. 4 and 5. There seem to be various dates floating around, from the late 1850s (IMSLP) to 1882/1883 (German Wikipedia), and it is not entirely clear which one was written first. For me, the A major feels the more "senior" of the two, but of course that doesn't mean much. 

There are three earlier symphonies in A minor, G minor and B major written in the 1840s and 1850s but they are listed as "verschollen" (lost). Does anyone know more about them and how "lost" they are exactly? 

Amazon.de/.nl/.fr/.es however, are not. Personally, I'd wait until JPC gets it.

Oops! I see that Amazon.de does list the CD.

It should be added that Glazunov's status in Russian concert halls is much more solid, but those performances aren't listed on Bachtrack for ... obvious reasons. I'd say his best-known works west of Kaliningrad are probably the ballet Raymonda (which has seen a surprising number of performances of late) and the Alto Saxophone Concerto (also because of the scarcity of concert repertoire for that instrument).

Years ago, I was fortunate enough to witness an absolutely scorching performance of the Glaz 5 by the Netherlands Radio SO under Alexander Lazarev, and the audience's reaction was as euphoric as the one mentioned by Martin. That experience renewed my faith in people's ability to listen past the iron repertory, and it also showed that these are not risky pieces to program.

FWIW I think there's only so much further you can take the Berlioz-Liszt-Mahler conception of the symphony. There's probably a lot more life left in something rather more modest, but just as effective. I know which I favour...

That is why I think the efforts of composers such as Woyrsch, Larsson, Gram and others to get out of the corner Mahler c.s. painted themselves into by moving to smaller forms are so fascinating. The post-Mahlerian popularity of forms like the Sinfonia Brevis and Kammersinfonie might express the same desire.

All good points. I was mostly considering Mahler's influence on his direct contemporaries, to be honest; a few decades later it was obviously greater. 

Not sure about Sibelius, either. His introduction into the Germanic performance canon is a fairly recent one, if memory serves – his music was certainly more popular in the UK for a long time.

In a different thread, Maury and I were discussing Mahler's contemporary influence, which he rated higher than I did. After some further digging I think I was in the wrong in at least one aspect: the symphony for solo voice (usually soprano) and orchestra - i.e., a symphony with an orchestral song inserted for just one voice in the finale. I know of no examples before Mahler's Fourth in G major (1901), but have counted no fewer than five in the years afterwards: by Hans Huber (4th, "Heroische" in C minor, 1902), Mathilde Kralik von Meyerswalden ("Hymnische" in F minor, 1904*), Jan van Gilse (3rd, "Erhebung" in D major, 1903) and Rued Langgaard (2nd, "Vaarbrud" in A minor, 1914). That can't be a coincidence. Peter Gram's 2nd symphony of 1927 could also be mentioned, but it's quite a bit later, and the song is used in the penultimate movement, not the finale.

Interestingly, of these really only Van Gilse's sounds somewhat Mahler-esque at some points, and it is also the only one to share a major key. The rest appear to have used the form (orchestral song by soprano as movement or part of movement(s)) but not so much its musical content. I am not entirely certain what that means for my hypothesis about Mahler's rather limited influence, but I am reminded of a possible parallel in popular music: David Bowie. A hugely successful artist, but arguably more influential in issues of form and presentation than in the music itself.

All this to lead up to my question: can you think of other examples of this setup, possible even ones predating Mahler? I have been looking, but came up short. There are several for voice and chorus

*From Kralik's great-grandson I understood that the symphony's fourth movement was probably not completed before 1943, but it was conceived as containing an orchestral song from the beginning in 1904).

Other people in the Dresden music scene of the 1920s and 1930s were certainly guilty of the former...

But seriously, I think this may be a case of unconscious appropriation, where after humming a tune for a while you start thinking you created it yourself - quite a well-documented psychological phenomenon. Also, it's just that single melodic line, the rest of the movement sounds nothing like Busoni.

Edit: I just checked, and Busoni's concerto was performed in Dresden in July of 1909; so it's quite possible that Büttner picked up the melody then and there.

I really enjoyed this concerto albeit in a superficial sort of way. The middle movement is perhaps the most exceptional (in a good or bad way, depending on your perspective) as it mostly feels like a string of piano miniatures with occasional accompaniment. The finale feels quite Von Sauer-ish, relatively light-footed compared to the opening movement. 

One thing: the coda to the first movement sounds very familiar; probably inspired (for want of a better word) by something I should've recognized immediately, but I didn't. Anyone?

A bit of a footnote, but it appears that Lange studied with Kiel and Rudorff in Berlin together with Fritz Kauffmann, of Franke fame. Kauffmann was a few years older but first trained as a pharmacist.

I don't want this to escalate into another pointless discussion of economics, but it's good to realize that in commercial terms, classical music is minute at around one percent share of the music market. Of that, the independents are again only a small part.

One element to keep in mind also (and which I forgot in my earlier post), and which might explain Amazon's policy of pushing downloads over physical product is that the margin on downloads is generally higher. Not only because of inventory, but also because the costs of creating physical product are, by and large, higher than the price difference between CDs and downloads.

To be honest, I'm not sure that Mahler would count as a "leading composer" in the Austro-German realm at the time, though. Strauss, definitely, but Mahler?

I wouldn't say that Zemlinsky and Strauss "never bothered much with symphonic writing" after their student days. There's Zemlinsky's Lyrische Symphonie (1924) and "symphony-ish" Die Seejungfrau (1903), Strauss' Sinfonia Domestica (1903) and Eine Alpensinfonie (1915), and quite a few by others in the Austro-German realm, such as Schmidt, Hausegger, Graener and Marx. Of course, the concept of "symphonic writing", or what could be called a symphony at all had become more fluid by this time, but if anything, Mahler further expanded that definition. Meanwhile, adherents of more traditional symphony-writing pushed away from Mahler rather than towards him; the increasingly modest (in terms of length and forces involved) symphonies of Felix Woyrsch are a good illustration.

Not all that odd from a retailer's perspective. Keeping inventory is expensive, so the more customers you can serve with the digital product, the less physical items you need to stock. Of course, one box of Raff CDs won't make a huge difference but across their entire catalogue...

Eric, thanks for the sorting correction. I had used the Fesca entry as a template since he shared quite a few categories with Kauffmann and thought I'd removed all the residue, but apparently not.