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Thanks to Michael for initiating the process of unearthing some of this music. Ever since hearing the Nziregzhazi LPs in my local public library back in the early 1980s, I have been very intrigued by him. Not only his playing, which was erratic and shattering in equal measure, but also by the LP liner notes and comments by Harold Schonberg and Gregor Benko, both of whom were spooked by what seemed like a romantic ghost from the past. As word spread, it became apparent that the most enthusiastic response was from the most diehard romantic specialists, those who were most steeped in 19th-Century musical traditions. Also mentioned at the time was the fact that Nyiregzhazi had been composing hundreds of works throughout his life. Knowing his attitude toward Liszt, and his rejection of modernist severities (up there with Lloyd, Bowen, and Medtner, I would think), I really wondered what on earth his music would sound like. Now we can hear a sampling, for which I am grateful.

The Bazzana book, bý the way, is highly recommended, if unfulfilling - a valuable account of a curious and tragic life that did not even remotely live up to its potential. Another missing piece of the 20th Century.

Hi David, perhaps you obtained the article through your university resources? In any case, Vines was certainly a very interesting figure and, as you note, was directly involved with a great many composers. I have the article as well, downloaded from JSTOR (the articles comes from Notes: Journal of the Music Library Association, Dec. 2004 if anyone is interested). I also find that lists such as the one above are a wonderful way to explore and discover unknown music that can potentially enrich the performing repertoire. And as labels like Chandos, Hyperion, Naxos, etc. have abundantly proved, so many unknowns in the early 20th Century were very much romantic traditionalists. For those interested in such composers, archives such as that of Vines are a mine of information. Much of this music is of interest to experienced music lovers, especially those who tend to shy away from the harsher and more impenetrable strands of early 20th C music. I for one appreciate you posting material such as this.

Best wishes,
Herbert

Vlaeva was much praised for her Liszt a few years back by Alan Walker and it is good to know that she has formally recorded the Bortkiewicz Second Sonata. I find some of his music to be of extremely high quality and in a fair world, this Sonata should be standard repertoire. I had heard Vlaeva's youtube performance of part of the Sonata quite a while back and found it to be very fine, full of supple phrasing, and tonally alluring. I have the Trapman Bortkiewicz cycle (6 CDs) which has to be specially ordered from the Nederlands Muziek Instituut. Trapman is to be commended for his work on behalf of the composer and I found much to enjoy, even though Vlaeva is clearly superior as far as the sonata is concerned. There is also a cycle of the piano works by the Finnish pianist Jouni Somero (a student of Cziffra). I have only heard two of the discs (CDs 8 and 9, which unfortunately do not include the Sonata). He is a real colourist and, as one would expect from someone who has hung around Cziffra for a while, definitely has no want of virtuosity. This would be the cycle of choice, I think. His sonata should really be something.

And, to David, it is wonderful that you are devoting graduate studies to Bortkiewicz! Best of luck! You will enjoy the Unsung Composers forum. It is a great resource. I myself am relatively new as a member (although I have been a reader for years...)

It is good to see that someone has turned their attention to these exceedingly rare works. The D minor Concerto in particular is brilliant and should be a real treat if the pianist is up to it. Like Liszt and Busoni (and we could also add Godowsky here as well), Alkan's way of transcribing the classics was uniquely his own, even when (like the others) he was playing it relatively literal or "straight" as is the case with these Mozart pieces. Thus, it is impossible to imagine anyone from the classical era (or more "romantic" times for that matter) transcribing in the manner of Alkan (a rather oblique answer, I realize, to TerraEpon's question). On the other hand, there are those fantastic cadenzas in the concerto. Anyone here who is familiar with Alkan's cadenza to the first cadenza to Beethoven's Third Concerto will roughly know what to expect. I look forward to this series from Toccata.

And, of course, Couzens was a real practical and unflagging supporter of a large number of Romantic tonalists who survived well into the early Modern age but (for a number of reasons) often saw their stars fade in the post-war years. In his musical sympathies he was very much a kindred spirit to Hyperion's Ted Perry and Klaus Heymann of Naxos/Marco Polo. Music lovers, and even historians, owe a huge debt of gratitude to repertoire trail blazers like them. More than almost anyone, it is they who have laid the foundations that will allow us to construct a truer picture of what the broad range of concert music was really like in the first half of the 20th Century. We are all the richer for it, and may he continue to inspire us all.

I downloaded the scores and there are 24 preludes and 24 fugues, each of which is given its own number for a total of 48 pieces. That is where the number 48 comes from.  I am definitely looking forward to a perusal.

Hello Ilya and Tom,

It is only a pdf and is not in epub yet (I did try making an epub but it did not turn out very well because I did not have enough skill editing epub files). However, I did a quick search and found this link which should hopefully help

http://www.wikihow.com/Add-a-PDF-to-a-Kindle

Best, Herb

Hello to the Unsung Composers forum and a big thanks to administrator Alan Howe for pointing out the Musicweb link to my book! I am absolutely delighted and gratified that a few of you have already had a look, and hope that you will find it interesting and even useful. Of course, I happily welcome any and all comments, both good and bad!

My ultimate goal has been to find ways to defend a very large body of music that was long criticized for being too regressive to merit proper scholarly respect and attention but at the same time had always been a big part of my own life, right from my earliest musical memories. As a would-be pianist, I was raised on the standard romantics and very soon became enamoured by the forgotten ones as well when I discovered the local library's Henselt, Scharwenka and Rubinstein LPs of Lewenthal and Wild, not to mention its huge number of Ponti and Rosand Vox recordings.

It did not take long to figure out that there was a long 20th C extension to this wonderful romantic musical tradition, via Rachmaninoff, Busoni, Godowsky, Kreisler, Furtwängler, Casals and too many others to count. When I started university several years later, I, (no doubt like many other music students) slowly began to wonder why such later figures were absent in historical writing even when they were so important in the daily musical world. There was no question that such music occupied a firm place in the hearts of a multitude of music lovers and performers.

It did not take long for the owners of many of the largest independent record labels to capitalize on this fact (especially since they are dedicated music lovers themselves).  And because recordings have made so much of this music (both sung and unsung) easily available to us is of untold value to all (including so many of you who participate in this forum) who are interested in a kind of modern-era music that was composed more in the tradition of what Ralph Couzens of Chandos called the "romantic side" of the 20th century.

Cheers from the Canadian Prairies!