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No need to feel guilty. That's the whole point of this forum! As I've said repeatedly, I have my own 'left-field' views on the status of various composers and I no longer feel guilty in expressing them.

Thanks for that summary. Very interesting.

Written in 1882-83 and revised in 1887 and 1895, this is an absolutely splendid symphony. The premiere was conducted by Stanford in Cambridge in 1883 and then, after its first and substantial revision, the work was conducted by the great Hans Richter in London in 1887.

The work marks a major advance over Parry's 1st Symphony in its confidence of expression and its bold writing for the brass, the horns in particular, which come over vividly in Bamert's recording on Chandos. The accompanying booklet notes the foreshadowing of works such as Elgar's In the South and Strauss' Don Juan in the opening movement. It is interesting how Parry seems to be synthesizing an essentially Brahmsian/Dvorakian idiom with hints of Wagner - and anticipating the 'nobilmente' passages of Elgar.

Overall, this is a sadly neglected symphony - surely one which would go down a storm at the Proms.

Update: CD now announced at jpc:
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/detail/-/art/hans-huber-klavierquintette-nr-1-2/hnum/11165045

A really toothsome offering:
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/forgotten-sounds/hnum/11825219 (try tracks 2-4)

But only (so far) as a download. There's no mention of it yet at jpc - in any form.

It's to do with timbre and tuning, I find. As I said, my loss.

I mean this particular recording - which I found on CD at Amazon/France (because it doesn't appear to be available in physical form in the UK). And I meant what I said: this is one of the most lusciously played and recorded releases of chamber music I have ever heard. It was actually a March release in France.

I must admit I've tried Bottesini's music for double bass and found it unlistenable. My loss, no doubt.

...hard to find here on CD, but available as a download, this is one of the most luscious recordings of chamber music I have ever heard:
https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/9599108--chausson-lekeu

Try it if you don't know the music!

By the way, for those curious to know, Samson plays for just over three hours - longer than The Flying Dutchman, but shorter than Lohengrin; about the same length as The Sicilian Vespers. In other words, it's a 'big listen'.

It has been a privilege to receive my copy of this landmark recording and a pleasure writing about it this afternoon. The weather outside may be dreary, but I have a wide smile on my face!

So: the 'Swiss Lohengrin' is here! And a most welcome arrival on the operatic scene it is too. Samson was completed in 1857, some seven years after Wagner's Lohengrin (1850); other important operas written in roughly the same period include those of Verdi's early maturity (Rigoletto, Il Trovatore and La Traviata) and his grand opera The Sicilian Vespers (1855), Meyerbeer's Le Prophète (1849), Schumann's Genoveva (1850) and Berlioz's Les Troyens (1856-8); Gounod's Faust (1859) lay two years in the future. Raff's opera, however, was never staged in the composer's lifetime.
   How, then, does Samson stack up? In a word: excellently. It's simply amazing that music of such quality should have remained unperformed and unrecorded for so long. In common with Wagner's operas up to this point, Samson would surely have seemed very modern: although it has some of the trappings of Grand Opera, it sacrifices mere crowd-pleasing to the dictates of music drama just as seriously conceived as Lohengrin. This is no Meyerbeerian spectacle; neither, however, is it a mere imitation of Wagner, although Raff does employ musical motifs - such as, for example, Samson's triumphant fanfare. In terms of structure, Raff is actually more consistent than Wagner in creating a continuous musical narrative. A CD of highlights might be tricky to devise!
   As in so much of his compositional oeuvre Raff is the consummate synthesizer of musical opposites – in this case, Grand Opera and Wagnerian music drama. The result is something typically Raff, albeit in a synthesis he was soon to abandon altogether.
   The performance does this fine work proud. Philippe Bach conducts the Bern Symphony Orchestra with a sure sense of the need in Raff for taut rhythms and clarity of expression. The cast is good, although not of the very highest class, I think. The best singing comes from the powerful, gleaming soprano of Olena Tokar as Delilah and the firm bass-baritone of Christian Immler as the High Priest. As Samson, Magnus Vigilius is better in lyrical passages than in the strenuous sections where his tenor is sometimes sorely taxed, but he certainly doesn't let the side down. The best of him is probably to be heard in his ardent singing in Act 2 scene 2. The chorus give an excellent account of themselves (and they have a lot to do!)
   I don't imagine that this release will ever have a commercial competitor. It is the reference recording that Samson so urgently needed – and deserved.

Prosit Raff! Prosit Schweizer Fonogramm!

Hurwitz has just posted a video in which he says that the new set was 'sabotaged' by the orchestra and engineers - and I think he may be right. I was certainly unimpressed by the sound but couldn't put my finger on what was wrong. Anyway, at this stage I'd advise caution about purchase and point anyone interested in the music to the excellent three CDs conducted by Lintu on Ondine.
Link to Hurwitz's video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuVoU6OBuuY&list=PLAjIX596BriEwSbnDlmBIpVglgIp9Pf5i

...forthcoming from Lawo Classics:
https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/9626689--christian-sinding-violin-sonatas-nos-1-3

Gorgeous - and right up my street!