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Thank you. I'm currently listening to Geoffrey Tozer's recording on youtube and am impressed. Rachmaninov himself might not have disowned it, Dies Irae and all!

Although I don't rate the quartets very highly they do show flashes of invention and romanticism; the flute sonata seems to me like a retrograde step and I can't help wondering if it's a rehashed student piece (sorry Ros!). There were several other minor British composers who seemed reluctant to move on from Mozart, even into the 1880's.

Applause for the performers but IMHO even at his best Macfarren was no Mendelssohn, or Bennett. Frankly this sounds to me as if the romantic age had never happened (maybe it hadn't..?)

Hi Mike, that's good to hear - I'll be on your web site directly.
Billy Reed would certainly have been Percy's contemporary at the RAM but I didn't know they played in the same string quartet and would be interested to know your source. In 1894 at the age of 16 Percy played second violin in a group led by Hans Wessely. In about 1896 Tertis seems to have replaced him on violin and in 1898 Tertis's name occurs again playing viola in Percy's own quartet with cellist Herbert Withers.

As everyone surely knows (maybe temporarily forgets), the "chorale-like" melody is of course Haydn's Emperor Hymn "Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser"

Another fine effort Albrecht, many thanks. The parts look very good to play from; I was only temporarily confused by the fact that your IMSLP link leads to the D minor quintet...

Hi Mike. Of course I warmly echo all the above and appreciate having had the chance to sit in on one of the sessions and meet the musicians. Our first thread on Percy was in 2011 and it's fantastic that he's finally starting to receive his due.

I certainly prefer your version although you might consider slowing the trio section by 10-15%. Mr Elgammal sums up my feelings pretty well when he writes "one of the music experts on the team said that the A.I. reminded him of an eager music student who practices every day, learns, and becomes better and better". Some passages make quite convincing pastiche but others are completely mundane in a way that Beethoven would never have sanctioned for publication or performance.

Sorry Alan, you got in before my revision!

Judging from the identical timings of Gerd's two clips it seems that by the time I heard it the tempo had already been reduced. Of 6 recordings of the string quartet version that can be heard on IMSLP the three fastest are more or less exactly at the revised tempo of 84 dotted crotchets per minute. The string orchestra recording on youtube is around 90 which I think is easily doable and wouldn't cause any problems for wind players familiar, for example, with the finale of the Italian symphony which usually goes at around 100. Take it away, maestro!

I'm on Gerd's side. What I hear is at the same tempo as the Midsummer Night's Dream scherzo is usually taken, with very similar woodwind figuration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUm41WqTix8
In fact it sounds like a crib of the latter...

It's a shame Igor's career was so far overshadowed by his father's. I went looking for a representative performance on youtube and found this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcvSYf3tj0Q
Unquestionably great playing, but the audio and video are so far out of synch (and the recording so good) that I started to wonder, and by the end it's clear that the film is overdubbed! By whom..?

The Smetana orchestration is new on me and most enjoyable - thanks for that!  But Hurwitz's lengthy diatribes bore me. I could go on at considerable length about why I don't like such-and-such but in a way it's disrespectful to those who think differently. Unlikely I know, but it risks persuading them they're "wrong" and spoiling their enjoyment.

But it's OK to orchestrate chamber music? When you think about it, piano reductions of symphonies are even sillier.

Frankly in places the string quartet looks a bit, well, eccentric. In the first movement the first violin has a lot of octave double-stops to play, far more than I've encountered in any other quartet and liable to sound horribly out of tune, in my hands at least. The scherzo in 27/16 time is surely unique! The three upper instruments are expected to play groups of 8 spiccato semiquavers in one bow, all together, which would be quite a feat if any quartet could manage it. One to avoid I think...