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Mark, from the post above in this thread, you uploaded this. Is it still available? Can you tell me where?

For some reason, I have nothing by this composer. I've looked in the old archive in both the Swiss and German collections and I've done a UC site search, and I find nothing other than this thread. Is the symphony still available somewhere?

Yes, "unsungitude" is a term I plan to adopt, like a pet mouse I can let scurry out in unsuspecting moments to dazzle my friends and befuddle my ... uh ... unfriends.

"recorded" is a rather time-limited (in both directions, considering pre-1880s-ish and post-some time in the future?), contingent way of capturing something that could probably be better phrased, though I don't know how offhand... still... hrm.

Eric, this is one of your most creative sentences ever. 

I can think of things that would enhance the live concert experience. I do agree that the tuning on stage should be limited to full orchestra just before playing. And I agree with the author that a lot of the concert halls (and auditoria) in which I've sat were uncomfortable and acoustic abominations. Listening to a live concert should not be a test of endurance.

I really hate e-books. I have a Kindle and read a little in it, but for serious reading (esp. non-fiction) I really detest e-books. Add to that the tediousness of dissertations. Grrrr ....

However, this topic interests me, so I'm curious enough that I'll try to dig into it. Thanks for the link!

I too prefer Sennheiser cans. Mine are 490 Pro. I use them for listening to downloaded music. Since the audio quality of mp3 is usually pretty poor, and recordings of live performances can be variable, I find the headphones offer a pretty decent solution. (I still prefer my traditional stereo rig for playback of LPs, CDs and SACDs.)

As for live performance, so much depends on the acoustics of the venue. I've recently attended two concerts, and will attend another this week, in a hall that has very dead sound. I've attended programs in just about every imaginable setting, including outdoors. The old adjuration that recorded music is a poor substitute for live performances is really quite a gross generalization. Yes, I've heard some glorious performances in close-to-ideal halls, and would say that those occasions surpass any recordings I've ever heard. But those occasions were rare indeed.

That said, I am not thrilled with most recordings either. Multi-miking, obscenely unnatural balances of instruments, spotlighting, audio compression, and strange engineering make a lot of recordings less than ideal quality-wise. Headphones won't fix what is screwed up in the recording. What headphones can do best is isolate the audio from other distracting intrusions.

It's funny, though. I was reading an article just recently about how a lot of young people are taking off their earphones, buying turntables and LPs. Why? Because the ear pieces do isolate so well. Music has so much to offer as a shared experience. And this is why, despite the imperfect venues, I always seek out live performances, whenever I can. It's unfortunate that so few include the music of unsungs.

For those who might be interested, I've added David's String Quartet No. 3 to the downloads. I detect no orientalism (faux or otherwise) in this piece. I have not seen any commercial recording of this quartet. Does anyone know the date of this piece?

Gulangyu is an interesting composition. I have never heard it before. I have not listened to the Piano Concerto movements because I do not like listening to parts of works. Is the complete concerto available?

There are other compositions by this composer on YouTube, including a piano solo piece called Chinese Rhapsody, which is probably his most familiar work, and his Violin Concerto, and other orchestral works.

I like his music. It is mostly tonal and Romantic in its idiom .......... with some modern incursions that may be too radical for the mods here at UC. 

I guess the implied, but not explicit, thought in my previous ramble is that the well-established orchestras often do have better musicians and other advantages, and are thus able to offer better performances compared to the orchestras in smaller cities. So, I would think that those orchestras could make better recordings.

However, there is often something more to excellent recordings than the talent and experience of musicians. Ideally, I'm sure Naxos would have preferred to have one of the more renowned American orchestras for its series of American Classics recordings. And Naxos was able to find a couple of decent American orchestras along the way. However, most of the recordings have been made by marginal ensembles from other countries, conducted by people who might never have even set foot on the continent.

And the results are exasperating in some cases. A lot of American music has an element that is peculiarly American, derived from jazz, blues, even Hispanic roots. There is no way to write that into a score. It comes naturally to American musicians because they grew up with it. I once had the agonizingly unpleasant experience of listening to one of the great German orchestras play Bernstein's West Side Story suite. On another occasion, I sat in dismay as a touring European orchestra and a soloist of international repute played Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. In both cases, they played all the notes. The tempi were fine. But there was no "swing" to the music. It was flat.

My point is, there is often an idiomatic aspect to music from any country that can be missing, no matter how accomplished the orchestra. Less famous orchestras often may not be able to achieve the same big, coherent sound and precision of major orchestras, but they may bring out idiomatic aspects of the music that outside orchestras cannot.

I am usually very interested to hear radio symphony orchestras of Eastern Europe play music by their national composers. Even if their ensemble is not as polished as one of the great orchestras, I usually feel as though, if there are regional roots to the music, the inflections will be there.

So, the original question is a difficult one for me. Yes, in many cases, I think we could have much better recordings of unsung composers, which would show the music to better advantage. But I'm not sure a polished, homogenized take on a composer always would tell us all there is about the music.

All that said, a recording of an unsung piece by an orchestra from  a distant country (culturally or geographically), led by a conductor equally divorced from the roots of the music, is unlikely to offer the best possible performance of a work.

Just my off-the-top thoughts.

I am a great supporter of regional orchestras and orchestras that are not in the largest cities, having served on the board of several and helped with searches for conductors and principals. But I've also lived in large cities (NY, SF and Houston) and frequently attended concerts in other large cities (Atlanta, Chicago). There is, in fact, a substantial difference in performance, which is most commonly evident in strings and horn.

But also, there are other advantages that large, well-established orchestras have. First, although every orchestra seems strapped for funds, the large orchestras often have a much larger library of scores and have the resources to acquire scores much more easily than do small orchestras. Second, large orchestras usually provide a lot more programming each season, and so have the ability to schedule less familiar pieces. (Sadly, they don't do so as often as they could.) And finally, not only do they invite the big name conductors as guests, but they often invite the best and brightest up-and-coming conductors.

With all those advantages, you would think that we would hear more unsungs performed by these great orchestras. And I suspect the results would be remarkable. Unfortunately, here in the U.S., it just doesn't happen much. Unlike Europe, where orchestras often play music by composers from their country -- composers who are not so well known around the world. Luckily, they often broadcast the performances, and our UC archives are filled with those performances.

How often do we hear recordings/performances that truly do justice to an unsung work? To state the *obvious*

More performances and more recordings increase the possibility of better quality. If a conductor decides to champion a work, performing it with different orchestras, he will discover nuances to the music that may not be evident upon first reading. But also, if more conductors perform the work with different orchestras, there will be varied interpretations.

Just off the top of my head, here are some unsung composers with selected works that have been performed and/or recorded multiple times with different conductors and different musicians/orchestras:

Martucci piano concerto
Paderewski piano concerto
Suk Asrael Symphony
Gliere 3rd symphony

Myaskovsky -- most symphonies have been recorded more than once, but symphonies 2, 5, 6, 21, and 27 have received the most attention, which has resulted in some varied and very good readings. His cello concerto and cello sonata have been pergformed and recorded many times.

These are just examples. But it raises further questions.

Are there "sung" works by "unsung" composers? I think the answer to that question is yes, just based on the examples above.

At what point does an "unsung" composer become a "sung" composer? This is a more difficult question that we grapple with on this site constantly. Are composers like Saint-Saëns, Korngold, Kabalevsky, Hanson, Rubinstein, and Bruch really unsung? The concert hall repertoire has shrunk to a small set of warhorses, so most of these composers are rarely heard in performance. But they have enjoyed many recordings.

I had not seen your commentary on the Raff board, Mark. At that time, I had never heard the piece. It was only later, after obtaining the MP3 and then the Trittico recording that I appreciated the difference in approach taken in the performance. Shall I upload the MP3? To my knowledge, it has never been released commercially, but I cannot remember where I obtained it.

To my surprise and delight, I actually had occasion to hear this fine quintet performed live some years ago. It was early May, 2006, during a return visit to NY city. Purely by chance, I heard about a performance scheduled at the Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church. The wonderful thing about a great city like NY or London is that there are many opportunities for musicians early in their career (as well as more experienced performers) to play music that interests them. It was a very pleasant evening out -- in the 60s and clear, with only a light breeze. The performance was by musicians I had never seen nor heard of, and I almost didn't go because it was not a particularly convenient location. But as it turned out, it was a fine performance.

This performance was an interesting contrast to the Trittico recording. The 3rd movement was played with a slower tempo, more gravity. The final movement was also played just a little slower. Of course, the audio was not as good as a studio recording, but I liked the performance. An MP3 of the performance did  make its way into the wild.

Eric, were you in NY at that time? Did you by chance attend this performance?

I have several recordings of this.

There is a CD on the Decca Eloquence label that pairs the Grieg Symphony with another unsung, Goldmark's Rustic Wedding Symphony.

Vol 4 of Grieg's Symphonic Works on Audite SACD by Aadland conducting the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln.

There's a Naxos recording, of course.

There is Neeme Jarvi's take on DGG.

And on LP, Andersen with the Bergen Symphony.

Grieg is not really unsung, but I suppose this work is played less often than his other orchestral works. It's rather generic and has no real sense of national roots. The engineering of the recordings is variable of course. I rather like the Eloquence pressing, maybe because I prefer the coupling on the disc. The SACD audio of the Aadland recording is good -- in comparison, the Jarvi sounds rather strident. But I have so many recordings of the Grieg Piano Concerto that I never put this on the deck for listening.