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I just found out yesterday that Heritage Records have, in the past few years, been reissuing Unicorn-Kanchana CDs, including several Bernard Herrmann titles.  As noted in a thread from a few years back, all copies of the 1990 CD reissue of Herrmann's 1970 recording of Raff's 5th Symphony evidently suffer from "bronzing," aka "CD rot."  I've emailed Heritage encouraging them to consider reissuing the Raff.

My eternal gratitude will go out to any of you who would do the same.  I'd also note that there are a number of other currently unavailable titles in the Unicorn catalog that might be of interest to readers here, so it can't hurt to let them know there's interest in their efforts.  I'll paste the link to their website below:

https://www.heritage-records.com

Listed on Presto as download only, but I imagine the CD will be listed soon.  The filler is the 9-minute "Sinfonia Festiva."

BIS has a forthcoming SACD of Helvi Leiviska's orchestral music coming soon.  It is "volume 1," so I guess at least one more is planned after this one.

I saw it listed on the HMV Japan website, and not being able to read Japanese, I can't tell what the pieces included are, but their Opus numbers are. 11, 27 and 30.

As Beethoven's 250th birthday is coming up in 2020, lots of boxed sets are appearing in the listings of forthcoming releases.  I'm pretty sure I have all the Beethoven I'll ever need, but this got me to thinking.  2022 will see Raff's 200th birthday.

Any time I am in contact with record labels about anything else, I always try to slip in a good word for Raff's 5th, hoping to stir a little interest.  Now, I actually have an excuse.  Going forward, I'll be asking, "by the way, are you planning any new releases for the upcoming Raff Bicentennial?"   

Luckily, Cesar Franck seems to be the only other composer born that year likely to be competing for attention.

Raff's 5th Symphony is my very favorite symphony, so I collect every recording issued on CD.  (We're up to 7.)  Bernard Herrmann's on Unicorn Kanchana is proving to be a bit of a problem.  I've acquired at least half a dozen copies over the years, and they all have bronzing, sometimes called CD rot.  In the past, when I've ordered a used or out-of-print CD on labels like ASV and gotten a bronzed disc, I've noted the copyright date on the inlay card and then searched for another copy with a different date.  If I find one with a later date, I order it, and I get one that isn't bronzed.

My question is, then, whether anyone can confirm that there was or was not a repressing before Unicorn went under.  Used copies, that aren't scratched all to heck, are getting pretty pricey, and I don't want to keep wasting money on bronzed copies.  Every copy I have ever seen is dated 1990, so if anyone has a clean copy with a later date, I would know to continue searching.  I suppose it is also possible that they reissued it without changing the date.  I've read that Unicorn went under sometime in the 1990s, so it is possible that they closed up shop before PDO started repressing the bronzed titles.

...and, yes, I've copied the best one onto a CDR, but it just isn't the same thing when collecting them is a hobby.  I've been hoping for years that Brilliant or Alto would reissue it.

If you are considering buying the recent BIS SACD of Stenhammar's 2nd Symphony by Christian Lindberg & The Antwerp SO, you might want to hold off a month.  Coming in October, there will be a competing version by Herbert Blomstedt & The Gothenburg Symphony.  For filler, the Antwerp disc has eleven and a half minutes of music written for a Strindberg play, while the Gothenberg disc gives you the Serenade, which usually runs around 36 minutes or so.  The somewhat odd thing here is that the Blomstedt SACD is also on BIS.  Anyway, it is listed on the HMV Japan site with a release date of October 20.