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Very welcome! I should maybe add that many years ago, britishcomposer uploaded a broadcast performance of this work for us. I enjoyed it a lot, the complete ballet is somewhat more dramatic than the suite on the Chandos CD might suggest. So I am happy to see that it will come out on CD soon. Capriccio are really doing a fine job for rarity hunters at present, though a good number of those releases are probably beyond the remit of this forum.

Thanks, Adriano. I also have a recording of this symphony – even in wav format – which I got from another collector many years ago. I haven't checked whether it might be identical with any of the recordings discussed here. Just one small annotation: the final chord is in C Major, in fact.

Moreover, as Savoir_Faire pointed out above, we should not forget that the CPO recording is somewhat faster than quaver = 88, more like quaver = 100 or so. This pretty well corresponds with a factor of approximately 2½.

By the way, when I listened to this symphony for the first time a few weeks ago only and actually after most of this discussion had already taken place (the pile of new CDs on my desk is large, so there is usually some delay), I thought that the relative sameness of the symphony's movements and music in general which was pointed out in one of the above contributions might also be related to the fact that the slow movement is taken rather briskly. Now reading about the metronome issues this seems to be confirmed up to some degree.

By the way, some members who are capable of reading German might also be interested in the following review:
http://www.klassik-heute.de/4daction/www_medien_einzeln?id=22625

I now also got my copy of these symphonies (it took quite a while until the disc was available via jpc) and listened to it last weekend. I enjoyed both symphonies a lot. They are certainly not fully "romantic" any more but more dissonant (though still fully tonal) and with an extended use of percussion and orchestral piano.

The liner notes reveal some interesting details about Nowowiejski's symphonic output. There have been three early symphonies from his study years with Max Bruch, the first of them called Nordlandfahrt (must have been composed around 1900), a symphony in A Minor (1903) and finally a symphony in B Minor (1904), the latter called No. 1. However, all three works are lost today, so no hope for any recordings.

So there remain three extant symphonies by Nowowiejski (besides the two on this disc, there is No. 4 Op. 58 "Peace Symphony" for Soloists, Choir and Orchestra from 1941). The two symphonies on the Dux CD, in turn, both have subtitles as well:

No. 2 Op. 52 Labour and Rhythm (1937/38)
No. 3 Op. 53 The Seven Colours of Iris (1936–40)

Up to some degree, these subtitles already provide some hints about what to expect from these works: No. 2 is a one-movement work dominated by rhythm and energy, pretty loud and vigorous. No. 3 is more lyrical and comes with sparkling orchestral colours in parts.

As a footnote, the Third is very often referred to as the Białowieża Symphony (referring to the forest in Eastern Poland of this name). However, recent research has revealed this was an error: Nowowiejski did plan a Białowieża symphony but only in form of sketches, he never actually came round to composing such a piece. The Third really has the title given above.

There is one detail I must correct about my short comment above (from December 31, 2017). The Third actually does not have that vigorous and somewhat defiant C Minor ending I spoke of about. When I played the disc I merely realized that "our" broadcast recording was incomplete, since after those chords there are still some minutes of quiet coda leading the symphony to a slow, peaceful and gentle D Major ending after all. In fact, according to the liner notes the CD recording of the Third is the first recording of the piece (that is, as compared to older radio recordings) without cuts, and actually it's more than 10 minutes longer than the recording we had, and this is not only because of the missing ending.

As for the change of style in Nowowiejski's output, the liner notes quite precisely date it as having happened in 1934 when Nowowiejski visited Paris and got acquainted with some current tendencies, which made him renewing his own style as well. In particular, it seems he was fascinated by Albert Roussel's music.

I highly enjoyed this disc and will give it repeated listens for sure.

Just as a footnote (I don't have the disc yet - it will be part of my monthly jpc order next week alongside the Lachner and van der Pals discs): I have a good deal of Naxos discs with La Vecchia conducting (most of this is repertoire outside this forum's interests), and his recordings are typically rather slow, often slower than any other recording of the same works available. Therefore, I am not astonished about the five minutes difference between his recording and Ola Rudner's new version.

I bought the Naxos recording when it came out years ago, and I remember this symphony as a powerful and very interesting work. I am looking forward to Ola Rudner's new recording which will no doubt be fine. Years ago when I was still at school we had to do a two week work experience of our choice. I did that at the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie. By chance, Rudner was the conductor of the concerts they were preparing, so that I had the chance to attend the rehearsals and concerts. That was really a great experience.

By the way, Svetlanov's (Soviet-time) recordings of Glazunov's symphonies and other orchestral works have only recently been reissued by Melodiya as part of a large anthology which presents Svetlanov conducting Russian and Soviet music:
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/aram-khachaturian-anthology-of-russian-and-soviet-symphoniy-music-vol-2/hnum/7619111
Of course, these are 55 discs costing €400 and therefore mostly for enthusiasts (in fact, I recently decided to buy a copy).

Frankly, I have no idea. From time to time things like that just happen. It's already a little strange that the key signatures of all four symphonies are omitted in the track list...

The reason is that I have absolute pitch. I already identified the key of the symphony a while ago when I newly got the CD and made an entry in my collection catalogue (I always try to have information as complete as possible).

It's in E flat Major.

We once had the Third Symphony in our Downloads (but the link is defunct now). Anyway, I downloaded it years ago and I can affirm the symphony is still fully tonal (though, as far as I remember, it moves from a D Major beginning to a somewhat defiant C Minor ending), a vigorous, broad piece which I am glad to have on CD soon.

In fact, I must admit I do not really understand the problem. I know this piece for maybe ten years or even more, I have the original Melodiya LP in my collection and there can be no doubt about the order of the movements. I have just tried one of the YouTube versions (which I personally didn't check before – admittedly I am often a bit uncomfortable about the sound quality of all these YouTube videos) and all is right there. The work in fact starts with a kind of slow introduction, a dialogue between violin and clarinet. The actual first movement is then an allegro in F Minor. Then we have the scherzo and the slow movement. The whole work is characterized by a mood of plaint and sorrow, and the finale is no exception indeed. However the final minutes do serve as a sort of climax, the overall mood turns more agitated and the last bars then more and more move on to F Major, which leads to a kind of solution of the work's "inner conflict" if you want.

I guess the version Blaine posted seems to come from classical-music-online.net (or at least it can also be heard there). Note that on that particular site, multi-movement pieces are usually presented as one file even if the source originally consisted of several tracks. I assume that in case of the Taktakishvili concerto, the files were just joined in the wrong order.

I cannot find any trace about a potentially different version. I know this work pretty well, and even if I did not play Blaine's version in total all I heard perfectly corresponded to what I knew before. I also don't think a reverse order of the work's movements would make sense with respect to the work's "drama" / development.

This discussion put aside, I consider the work to be a great concerto, certainly a favourite of mine.

Hello,

I don't know whether this is the right place to answer to the question about the unknown violin concerto from the Downloads Section. In any case, I can confirm that the concerto in question is definitely Taktakishvili's Violin Concerto No. 1 in F Minor from 1976 after all. The only issue is that for some reason, the order of the movements is reversed in this version (probably an error by somebody who joined different files): first the finale is heard, then the third movement, then the second one (a brief scherzo) and the last movement in this recording is in fact the first movement of the concerto.

Hope to have helped.

Regards,
Holger

Volkmann's is a persuasive work too, although rather more episodic than Smetana's. It's always marred for me, though, by his incongruous injection of a Scottish folk tune mid way through. I suppose that, sitting as he was in Budapest, Volkmann thought it gave the work British colour, but to this Englishman it jars, which is a pity because the Overture is otherwise a strong composition.

A while ago, a friend of mine from GB also pointed out the appearance of the Scottish tune in an email he sent me. (I hadn't taken note of it before since I simply didn't know the tune.) At that point, I did some research about the background and finally found out that in essence, it's a sort of mistake by Volkmann. He believed the tune was an old English war song and therefore thought it would fit well into the context of Shakespeare's tragedy.

Op.2 (Qt. No.1) and Op.46 (Vars.&Fugue) are missing, however.

Just a note on the quartet Op. 2 as I now got my copy of that CD and had a look at the liner notes. In fact, the new CD more or less does give us a recording of the Op. 2 quartet after all. This early quartet had been a work in the usual four movements. Later on, however, Atterberg wasn't satisfied with its outer movements any more, feeling they were too much indebted to Brahms' Third Symphony and Dvořák's New World Symphony, so that he finally destroyed them. However, he reused the middle movements later but composed two new outer movements for them (the new first movement actually makes use of material from the first movement of Op. 2). The result was then called Op. 39. So in a way, Op. 39 is a sort of revision of Op. 2, which is not preserved itself on the other hand. It thus makes sense that the Swedish MIC labels Op. 39 Quartet No. 1 and Op. 16 Quartet No. 2. It also implies that the new disc actually gives us all full-scale string quartets by Atterberg.