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Messages - Adrian Harrison

#1
Composers & Music / Re: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
Wednesday 05 October 2022, 10:02
There are, as Alan says, multiple competing versions of the Violin Concerto, some marginally more accomplished than others but none of them is a dud. This one is as good as any. This two CD set has some advantages, though. The only complete recording of the Othello music is that conducted by Malcolm Sargent and dates from 1932. The vesrion on Naxos conducted by Adrian Leaper (and recently re-issued) omits the Funeral March.

The African Suite recorded here is not otherwise available: the first three movements are orchestrated by Chris Cameron in a manner so completely idiomatic that had I not known otherwise, I would have accepted them as the composer's own work. SC-T orchestrated the last movement himself, of course, and this had been recorded several times.

Also, the performance of the Petite Suite de Concert, conducted by the American Anthony Parnther, is a real winner. It reminds me of George Weldon's recording with the Philharmonia Orchestra; there's something peculiarly English about it as if it had been recorded by a top flight municipial orchestra on a seaside bandstand! Maestro Parnther also observes the repeats in the first movement which can only benefit a piece that I wish were longer in any case.

I would categorise the recording of the op 33 Ballade conducted by Kalena Bovell as 'acceptable' but it doesn't supplant the wonderful performance by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under Grant Llewellyn, which contrasts the sections more effectively and is more full of character.

Finally, I must say that I feel Avril Coleridge-Taylor's Sussex Landscape, while a pleasant enough thirteen minutes, shows that she didn't have a quarter of her dear old dad's talent.
 
#2
Composers & Music / Re: Röntgen by Hurwitz
Monday 22 February 2021, 16:49
There's Michael Tippett's concerto for violin, viola and cello, but that falls outside the remit of this forum, of course. Just saying.

Röntgen is a fine composer and I sincerely hope that your labours in producing a printed score and parts of this work will be widely appreciated. I know from personal experience how taxing this kind of work is!   
#3
Thanks for the heads up on the BBC 4 documentary. I thought it was pretty well done (some minor factual inaccuracies aside).  However, the Florence Price recordings that are the subject of this thread were made for and broadcast during her stint as Composer of the Week on BBC Radio 3 earlier this year.
#4
Composers & Music / Re: Brahms' destroyed compositions
Sunday 30 August 2020, 11:28
As Santo Neuenwelt says above, "... composers are not always the best judge of what constitutes their best work". While Double-A poses an interesting question, I wouldn't attempt to answer it, except to say that among the works which Mendelssohn apparently thought 'unworthy' was the Italian Symphony. I have never been able to understand his rationale for this opinion. Surely, it ranks as one of his most glorious achievements.
#5
I have some sympathy with Alan's and Gareth's view but it does seem to me that there is a dichotomy here, best summed up by Felix Mendelssohn:

Die Leute beklagen sich gewöhnlich, die Musik sei so vieldeutig; es sei so zweifelhaft, was sie sich dabei zu denken hätten, und die Worte verstände doch ein Jeder. Mir geht es aber gerade umgekehrt. Und nicht blos mit ganzen Reden, auch mit einzelnen Worten, auch die scheinen mir so vieldeutig, so unbestimmt, so mißverständlich im Vergleich zu einer rechten Musik, die einem die Seele erfüllt mit tausend besseren Dingen als Worten. Das, was mir eine Musik ausspricht, die ich liebe, sind mir nicht zu unbestimmte Gedanken, um sie in Worte zu fassen, sondern zu bestimmte. (People often complain that music is too ambiguous, that what they should think when they hear it is so unclear, whereas everyone understands words. With me, it is exactly the opposite, and not only with regard to an entire speech but also with individual words. These, too, seem to me so ambiguous, so vague, so easily misunderstood in comparison to genuine music, which fills the soul with a thousand things better than words. The thoughts which are expressed to me by music that I love are not too indefinite to be put into words, but on the contrary, too definite.)

Letter to Marc-André Souchay, October 15, 1842, cited from Briefe aus den Jahren 1830 bis 1847 (Leipzig: Hermann Mendelssohn, 1878) p. 221; translation from Felix Mendelssohn (ed. Gisella Selden-Goth) Letters (New York: Pantheon, 1945) pp. 313-14.

All right, back to Unsung Tone/Symphonic Poems...
#6
OK, let me put it another way. I know from personal experience how many hours of painstaking, laborious, eye-straining work are involved in converting orchestral manuscripts into printed scores. Moreover, Tobias makes the fruits of endeavors free to download. I find it insensitive and disrespectful that the initial response should be the deployment of the language teacher's red pen.   
#7
Interesting as this philological debate may be, it seems to me rather discourteous to Tobias that it should apparently be regarded as more important than thanking him for making the score available.   
#8
How about the Scherzo of Schubert's violin sonata in A major D574? ;)
#9
Composers & Music / Re: Halvorsen VC rediscovered
Tuesday 13 September 2016, 20:21
And now a video of the complete performance given by Henning Kraggerud under the direction of Bjarte Engeset in Stavenger, Norway in July 2016 as part of the International Musicological Society's annual conference: https://tv.nrk.no/serie/hovedscenen-tv/MKMF21013516/04-09-2016 The programme starts with a documentary (which might be somewhat difficult to follow if your Norwegian is not too hot). The performance begins 43 minutes in. It's well worth listening to, IMHO.
#10
Suggestions & Problems / Re: Name that tune
Thursday 08 September 2016, 18:55
It's the finale of Beethoven's Piano Sonata in F Minor op 2 no 1.