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Thanks for this thread. I purchased a CD of Theriot's chamber works (Octet in B flat and a Quintet). Very satisfying music. I hope more of his chamber works can be issued. As for the symphonies the outlook is increasingly dim IMO because of the economics. I did like the Symphony 5.

Before 1990 or so the classical recordings were heavily weighted towards orchestral and solo piano music - chamber music not so much as it sold rather poorly. So that is why Schumann, Mendelssohn, even Schubert chamber music was spottily represented in the catalogs. They were really scarce in the US. Europe had a bit more but I didn't discover those until the 80s and 90s. The reverse has happened now as chamber works are cheaper to record and not many are eager to buy the usual orchestral suspects from latter day conductors when there is a plentiful supply from 1955 - 90.

While I appreciate the plethora of releases on CD I do feel sadly that the newer performances are often a bit generic or antiseptic. This particularly affects the unsungs and lesser sungs as there are not many older recordings as alternatives. I discovered Adriano about 30 years ago and think he has the older musicality but of course he had to deal with different orchestras of variable technical ability and motivation. I also have been impressed by the skill shown in some historical recording restorations.

It is gratifying that worthy "lost" music has at least some catalog now for those who want to listen to it.

I finally got the Scherber CD with the Sym 1 conducted by Adriano plus a collection of Scherber's songs for tenor. First of all I must commend the sonics of this CD. They are wonderfully natural with no apparent digititus. Secondly, Scherber is a much more substantial composer than I ever suspected. Third, the Symphony although closer to Bruckner than the more radical Sym 3 is still a fine work and conducted wonderfully by Adriano. Then there are several collection of songs for tenor added to the CD. I must admit that Lieder for voice and piano is not a format that I am overly fond of because of the constraints that the piano puts on the voice. However these songs by Scherber are marvelous with very flexible piano accompaniment.

I did not think Bruckner's symphonic style to be particularly good as a model for others but on the evidence of Scherber and Wetz I was wrong. These two composers made adroit use of the general music style of Bruckner without copying him and the results are interesting and satisfying. 

Scriabin's Symphony 1 written around the same time as the Mahler 4 has a Finale with two soloists: soprano and tenor but the chorus puts it more on the Beethoven 9 side. 

The specific point I was making before was that Mahler was not in any way a fringe figure like the Unsungs. He was a famous conductor who conducted his own symphonies. He had disciples in Zemlinsky, Walter and Klemperer who also performed his symphonies. It's just that they were not highly regarded by the audiences of the day which is different than being unplayed or unknown. But it was not difficult for younger composers to hear his music and obtain scores and thus be influenced by him. As I mentioned with the Sym 10 and Mr Howe pointed out here, in the WW1 aftermath this type of grandiosity seemed suspect and dated. But this was also true of Stravinsky's pre WW1 music, although he was young enough to radically shift gears.    The younger composers who in the absence of WW1 might have carried on some Mahlerian tradition were swept away.

As for the symphonic form I'm rather more pessimistic about its viability. As Mr Howe noted the symphony was a name being used very arbitrarily in the 20th C. and no longer implied a stable form of music with a given fiat structure and sonata development. On the evidence, modern concert audiences are prepared to listen to new concertos but not so much new symphonies. Even attempting to introduce non repertoire symphonies of the past of high quality is proving difficult.

Scherber's First Symphony is definitely a Bruckner homage :-)

Adriano,

 It's on order but I haven't received it yet! BTW I have others that you did for Marco Polo. I think the first one I got was the Honegger Film music. 

Before the internet it was labor intensive to do the research even if one lived in national capitals or the largest cities. Similar frauds can happen even in the sciences if the research area is well out of the mainstream with only a few scattered researchers. And of course back in the 20s recordings of this repertoire were almost entirely nonexistent.

I did also have the Glazunov Seasons on a Capitol LP in addition to the VC. It was in the early 90s where I started to read some favorable comment about Glazunov and Korngold but I am not sure where. It might have been the initial book version of the All Music Guide which I no longer have to verify. But that's when I started intensively to get Glazunov, Korngold, Scriabin and Zemlinsky recordings (and even a Schreker bootleg Die Gezeichneten) who were then still at low points. 
 
With respect to Christopher's post, the Middle Ages Suite is highly recommendable.

I got the Wetz LP of Sym 3 with the Berlin Sym as well as the Col Legno CD of the Scherber Sym 3 and can recommend both recordings, both for themselves and as likely to interest Bruckner fans. I have also started listening to the CPO CD box of Wetz complete symphonies and violin concerto. I have to thank the Rheinland Pfalz orchestra for most of the available Wetz recordings plus the Scherber. I find Scherber quite interesting too. Many thanks to this site for mentioning these two composers.

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.