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The situation with the Glazunov Violin Concerto as with the Korngold Violin Concerto points up the critical aspect of a big name advocate. Without Heifetz where would both concertos be? My contact with the Glazunov VC was via the Stokowski-Marcovici recording followed by Haendel and Milstein, another great name well known in the US. Even the marginal notoriety of Serebrier got a few people to invest in his Glazunov box. I thank mbhaub for his persistent pestering of the conductor for a rare Glazunov symphony performance.

But the degree of adverse opinion about Glazunov here in the US (not just benign neglect) is reminiscent of Korngold's bad reputation for many years.

Thanks very much for the replies. Yes as my Glazunov recordings were all by Russian conductors, orchestras and string quartets (until 20 years ago with Serebrier), I assumed he was still played occasionally in Russia/USSR. Part of the problem with the earlier recordings was the generally awful mastering by Melodiya. On some business trips to the UK I did find the few UK and German LP pressings of Glazunov which were much better mastered. But CD transfers often just used the Melodiya tapes which resulted in poor CD sound too.

Since this is a UK site, with what seems to be heavy European and UK membership, I was just pointing out the dire circumstances of Glazunov's music in the US. Even in Europe it doesn't appear at all good. There is no getting around the dismal position of Glazunov on Bachtack. (Russian performances might as well be played on the Moon.) The title of the upcoming BBC Phil concert is "Discovering Glazunov" !!

Glazunov is fairly well known for historical reasons but basically unsung musically. I have gotten discouraged about the programming of Glazunov's music. In the US, apart sporadically with the Violin Concerto, his music is never heard in concert halls. When you type "Alexander" into bachtrack search Glazunov's name is number 11 on the list.  Even Scriabin and Zemlinsky are close to the top. (At least they did list an upcoming performance of Symphony 4 by the BBC Phil. in the UK.)

On US based classical music threads there is a fair amount of aversion to his music as weak. Part of the problem is that earlier Western performances were often insipidly played. Glazunov's music is so well constructed that the conductor and orchestra can get through it on autopilot which is what they did. It was only when I ran across the Russian performances by Svetlanov, Fedoseyev and others that I was stunned by it. Serebrier's set did do some good as I have seen occasional posts of people playing that CD box who are otherwise unaware of other recordings.

But yes Glazunov's music should be played mostly hot as Ilja mentioned of the Netherlands Radio performance with Lazarev. He was a Russian composer after all. I wish I had been there. I also really like his two piano concertos and the saxophone concerto. The latter is played once in awhile only because of the paucity of soloist saxophone music.

I have to hope some well known conductor takes him up because that's how these things take off. But I agree totally that his music is good enough to be played regularly.

Yes I saw a few posts but they were years old. I always search before I post something. If these kind of request posts are wrong for the site I apologize but didn't know.

Thank you very much for your reply and link.

One unexpected result in my joining here has been strange new respect for unsung Swiss composers. Robert Hermann is certainly not the technically most assured unsung but there is something unpredictable about the way his music moves.   The only thing that bothers me is his use of cymbals which I would gladly ban from the orchestra if I could. Lauber I am a bit more uncertain about because the few things I was able to find fluctuated between the routine and the fresh.  Also in his long life he seems to have moved into neo-classicism which is outside the forum realm.

On a side note I would mention Othmar Schoeck who I only knew previously as the composer of Penthesilea, a very Stravinskian work to my ears and rather harsh in the recording I heard. But based on adriano's mention of his opera Venus I listened to that as well as a later opera Massamilla Doni which I found quite lovely. Massamilla Doni is not conventionally Romantic but neither is it neo-classical. It's style is rather hard to place but there is definitely a Romantic flavor to it. It was based on the Balzac novella.

Anyway back to Hermann and Lauber, I am having extreme difficulty finding recordings for either. I did see the two Hartmann symphonies CD which I recently ordered but not much else. Lauber seems quite sparsely recorded as well. Any leads and recommendations for these two unsungs?

I guess there hasn't been much interest in this since I didn't see any follow-up. I have this DVD plus Das Wunder Der Heliane mentioned in passing. To answer the question, no, neither of these are Regietheater as the stagings are consistent with the librettos. They are clearly saving on sets as in both cases there is one unchanging location but respecting again the basic action. There are what I would term harmless updatings of costumes to some undetermined 20th C. time. Der Schatzgraber is better sung IMO here than Das Wunder but the latter singing is not offputting or unlistenable.

I read with interest Adriano's comments on these two composers and I agree with him about the loss of singers and sense of style. This can be heard quite clearly with Lehar and Kalman where we have a more extended time frame of available recordings. While I greatly appreciate cpo's devotion to recording these works they are almost wholly lacking a sense of the Silver Age operetta style and I think (with others) also these kind of turn of the century Freudian operas.

This was the second time I saw both DVDs and I must say my opinion of Heliane went up on second viewing. (I did not like the two prior CD recordings BTW.) The score is not decadent at all; in fact I would call it muscular and quite a contrast with Violanta and even Tote Stadt. It seemed to me that Heliane is sort of a tragic Fidelio  where Don Pizarro and Don Fernando are in league with each other rather than opposed with the couple, in this case Heliane and the Stranger. The Blind Judge as obvious symbol of Justice is merely a mouthpiece for the psychotic malevolent King. But there is no sentimentality here. I must commend the conducting of Marc Albrecht. It is excellent in allowing the music to breathe and not always be pegged to 11.

As for Der Schatzgraber the opera plays well dramatically, even though objectively it is farfetched. The jewels that the Queen loses have little to do with her beauty as even the libretto admits but are status symbols that the murderess royal servant Els wants for status as well. Given all the men chasing after her madly already, more beauty is irrelevant. I think the libretto's point is that even the Minstrel Artist is seeking status and is attracted to Els, in the process debasing his art. In the end the only lovers Els does Not kill are the Minstrel and the Court Jester she is forced to marry. 

Yes that (abbreviated) format enables the composer to bury the (troublesome) Finale in a safe place out of earshot. 

Thanks for the additional info.

I certainly agree in general but I didn't know if some members here were updating these unsungs on discogs. Since this site has a scholarly focus for the most part, I would have more confidence in that case. If members have assembled sources or discographies for a given composer here, it might be worthwhile to copy those posts to one place even if on this site. Since there are very few concert performances of these composers obviously, we are dependent on whatever recordings took place. Very few people are score readers to the extent of being able to evaluate an orchestral work in particular in the absence of hearing it.

Do members feel that the unsung composer listings on discogs represent a relatively complete discography for these composers? As a new member I am researching composers mentioned here and trying to find recordings of those that interest me. I am uncertain as to what recordings are actually out there, apart from   discogs and the listings du jour on ebay and amazon however. Thanks for any info.

Thanks very much for this thread. I have been listening to Bruckner for many years and I enjoy his music now better than ever so I guess I'm a lifer. Bruckner has taught me patience. Yes I looked for similar composers rather fitfully but never found any. However I have listened to the suggestions in this thread and do agree with those who said Richard Wetz and Martin Scherber. With Wetz there is an actual kinship I think. With Scherber it is more a modernistic take on Bruckner; harder and sterner than anything in actual Bruckner. None of the others seem Brucknerian, merely German and Romantic. So thank you for introducing me to both.

One issue is that Bruckner's orchestration I think is derived from his extensive experience as an organist. So you have these sudden starts and stops which are easy enough on the organ because they are under the control of two hands and feet. In US orchestras which are not that familiar with Bruckner, I have seen musicians reduced to jelly trying to manage these.

As for the Symphony 9 there were some interesting comments on its unintended 3 movement structure . I think the problem Bruckner had in completing it was due to it being a tragic symphony in form. I guess he didn't realize that until he came to the Finale, but there is no way to follow the third movement directly with a positive Finale IMO. The dissonant chord close to the end of the slow movement is so forceful and harsh that it either mandates a tragic Finale or at least adding an intervening fifth movement to recover from it and then move to a more positive Finale.

 We were talking about symphonies specifically per the thread title (my comment was directed to jasthill BTW) and I think it is fair to say that Mahler's symphonies, whether loved or hated, were pretty well known between 1900-1910 in Central Europe. As Director of the Opera House Mahler was hardly a fringe figure, who at the time was regularly writing large symphonies every other year or so. Leading isn't a synonym for wildly revered as in "leading avant garde composer". Franz Schmidt wrote exactly two symphonies before WW1 and only 2 in the remaining 20 years of his life.  (I happen to love his Sym 1 FWIW.) v.Reznicek also wrote precisely 2 symphonies before WW1 and 4 of his 5 by the end of WW1 while he lived to 1945. The fifth in the 1920s was an atypical symphony he also called 4 Dances.  (I happen to love his Sym 4 BTW.) I apologize for gratuitously responding to jasthill. I'll try to be more focused in the future and I do mean all that sincerely. I do very much like the site and the administrators and have already gotten several additions to the Want List.

We would have to go into an extended and rather technical discussion about the "symphony" in the 20th C to be more precise,  but I think the simplest way to show the difference is to compare Germano-Austrian "symphonic like" writing of the kind you describe with what was going on in the periphery of Europe (Russia/USSR, Scandinavia, England plus to an increasing extent in the US) in the first half of the 20th C where leading composers still numbered their symphonies. Yes the symphonic form was being stretched rather wildly but still was more normative on the periphery than the rather programmatic orchestral works  being composed in Central Europe. I'm talking about the leading composers of the day in these various places because they set the trends. Yes there are always those going along as if nothing was happening outside their house who may be still good composers. By comparison the string quartet form was pretty stable everywhere.

Jasthill raises an interesting question as to what Mahler would have done if he had lived say to 65 thus 1925. On the basis of the Sym 10 which he did complete in short score and orchestrated much of the first half of the work, there is not really a fundamental change. The Sym 10 is not shorter than his other symphonies and the style is still romantic. The main difference I hear is an almost continuous lyricism in the outer movements. Would this have survived WW1? It seems highly unlikely. It's quite possible he would have just retired as a composer like Sibelius and moved to the US. 

I would also note that Germano Austrian composers even slightly younger than him like Richard Strauss and Alexander Zemlinsky never bothered much with symphonic writing after their student days. So he was increasingly alone.