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  On their opening concert of the season on the 16th November, The Isle of Wight Symphony Orchestra will be giving a rare performance of the above work, which dates from 1902 and was often played at Sir Henry Wood's Promenade Concerts early last century. The young soloist will be Tmiothy Ridout, winner of the Lionel Tertis International Competition in 2016. Other works in the concert comprise  Sibelius's Karelia Suite and Wlly Walton's fine First Symphony. Tickets, costing £15, are obtainable via the Orchestra's web site at www.iwso.co.uk. I cannot guarantee that, due to present health problems, I will be there, but I hope to make it. By the way the concert's venue will be The Medina Theatre, Newport Isle of Wight.
     Cheers,
           John.

Hello Gerd,
  In case you didn't get my private replies to you, I can say that I'll get my son to help me with those xml files.  That fine adagio, to me, is like Haydn's Surprise Symphony on steroids!
      Cheers,
            John.

Dear Gerd,
Please forgive my ignorance, but I think I've managed to get all the 4 Sibelius files into compressed XML, but I don't know how to proceed from there. I'd be grateful for a bit of help in locating them and finally posting them please.

Gerd, I've just seen your  post on the 6th symphony which I put into Sibelius software a few years back .  You are certainly welcome to receive the WAV version but, if you can let me have your home address, I'll post you a CD of it. You can contact me by email on   jalbis127@gmail,com
    Personally, I think young Robert Schumann  i , the music critic, who later wrote 4 fine symphonies of his own, was rather over enthusiastic about this work.. I find the opening movement rather monotonous apart from the fugue towards the end. The slow movement is a bit better but I do like the rather spooky mjnor mode scherzo and especially the Rollicikng finale.
       Cheers,
            John.

You are certainly a glutten for punishment Gerd! You appear to take just a few weeks over a task that would take me many months and I'd probably make lots of mistakes on the way.
I notice that, in Lchner's 2nd, 3rd & 4th symphonies the scherzo comes 2nd in the batting order, whereas in Nos 5, 6 & 8 the more usual order of the movements is adhered to. Maybe we might have another thread here on which is the better way of ordering a standard 4 movement symphony.

I've just thought. I wonder if there is anyone in our Forum that has the necessary advanced software and the necessary time who could help Gerd out by undertaking to decipher certain specific movements from these two symphonies. I don't think my poor eyesight would allow me to take on such a task. In the past, it has taken me many months to copy printed works of this size into Noteworthy and Sibelius. However, if such a shared project were to go ahead, I could probably print off A5 miniature scores and produce CDs from MP3 or Wav files to send off to various conductors and recording companies, such as CPO or Naxos, with a view to getting them recorded by live orchestras.
     Cheers,
         John.

Many thanks,Gerd, for letting us hear this splendid Scherzo. Lachner often seems to be at his best in his scherzos.
     Cheers,
         John

   Thank you, gentlemen, for your further replies and offers of help.
      According to Dr Harald Mann, who appears to be an authority on Franz Lachner and his composer siblings, the 2nd Symphony met with thunderous applause at an 1835 performance.
   Sadly, heavy Allied bombing of many German cities during World War II, must have destroyed much printed matter and manuscripts along with everything else. This would possibly account for the difficulty in finding scores and parts of many musical works including these 2 symphonies.
     Cheers,
         John.

Thank you, gentlemen, for your kind replies
Tpalloj in particular. You seem to be even busier than I was in my"prime" around 20 years back. As far as I know, there are no sets of parts available for these symphonies. What you said about Dorico interests me. Am I right in assuming that this is the software created by the whole Sibelius team when they were taken on by that German firm whose name eludes me after their dismissal by the American owner of Sibelius in favour of cheaper labour from eastern Europe? That's why I've never updated my Sibelius beyond version 7. I gather its easier to use than Sibelius which I find much easier than Finale.
  Getting back to those Lachner symphonies. My usual rate of working copying from the printed page is around 1hour per page. That, of course, would add up to about 200 hours for a 200 page symphony.. However, I find the hand written version of the 4th Symphony so difficult to decipher, that the first page took me several hours;so I doubt very much that I could copy out the completescre in what little is left of my lifetime! Hence my plea for help.
     Cheers,
         John

Franz Lachner's 2nd & 4th symphonies are available in manuscript form on the Internet at IMSLP  & at a German web site whose name escapes me*. I have tried downloading and printing off some movements for No 4, but, with my poor eyesight these days, I find them extremely hard to read and have given up attempting to copy them into Sibelius score writing software. Around 20 years ago, when my eyesight was a lot better, I managed to copy the whole of Spohr's 2nd symphony from a manuscript facsimile into Noteworthy software 7, more recently, I copied Lachner's 6th and 3rd symphonies from printed originals into Sbelius(including that huge boob I made on the metronome marking of the slow movement of the latter!). However,now well into my 89th year, I feel I can no longer attempt such a task. Therefore, If any member of this forum who has any of the score writing softwares such as Finale, Sibelius,or Notion or even the much less expensive Noteworthy, which I used for a good number of yeas before I could afford anything more expensive, and if wish to give us some new unheard music from Franz Lachner,could please volunteer to have a go at it? Remember, once you've got your score into any one othese softwares, you can not only hear a rough a ready version of the music but  writing out the individual instrumental parts becomes a doddle. I was able to do that with Noteworthy to get the orchestral parts for my own 2nd symphony for a private performance back in 2002.
Anyone who wishes to take on above challenge will have my full support, as much as
I can give.
      Cheers
           John
*Try Munchener Digitalisierungzentrum or MDZ,
         

I too have been a great admirer of Cherubini's choral sound ever since I obtained a CD of his  celebrated Requiem. From this I can see where Beethoven got his choral style for the 9th Symphony finale, Beethoven also being a great admirer of Cherubini.  The 2 above postings have certainly whetted my appetite for more of his mass settings. Many thanks gentlemen.
        Cheers,
               John

Please does anyone know of the whereabouts of any printed copies of the scores of Lachner's Symphonies numbers 2, 4 or 7? I recently donloaded what appears to be the composer,s manuscript of the first 3 movements of No4, but the writing is so difficult to follow that that, with my poor eyesight, I've decided to give up trying to copy it out.
     Cheers,
           John

Sadly, this seems down to my failing eyesight. I suppose, at 87, I'm lucky to have any eyesight left at all.
      Anyway, I'm glad the matter has been once and for all cleared up.
          Cheers,
              John.

Well, I did reply but, somehow it didn't get through. Maybe I pressed a wrong button. Roughly what I said was that movements 1,2,&.4 were just about the same as my version but that the 3rd movement , although all the notes were the same, appeared to be played about two and a half times as fast as that from my version sticking to the published metronome mark of quaver = 38. I think both versions have their merits, but I still have a sneaking regard for my slower version, as it seems to bring out the occasional timpani solo   
     I trust that this reply will get through.
        Cheers,
            John.

I've ordered the CPO recording from Amazon Alan, so I can expect to receive it early next month. I shall then be able to study it against my score and find out where the cuts have been made.
       Cheers,
            John.