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Messages - Edward

#1
In case anyone is interested, Librettist Modeste Tchaikovsky is composer Piotr's younger brother...
#2
I found an article by Mr. Green.   Maybe this will give some background...

Preserving the Legacy of My Grandfather, Ignatz Waghalter

New Facebook Page with Short Video
#3
Composers & Music / Re: Emilie Mayer
Saturday 08 December 2012, 22:10
Quote from: rosflute on Saturday 08 December 2012, 09:02
Edward, is your posting a wind-up or merely deliberately provocative?
I think we have travelled way beyond the idea of music being 'masculine' or 'feminine'. The image of woman as some sort of non-scientific, weak and feeble creature capable only of quaint insignificant thought is surely long out of the window.
and I think the majority of husbands will assure you that toughness and resolve is a feature of most women  :)

I never mentioned weak and feeble.  It is a subjective remark, and not meant as provocative.   And as to resolve?  My wife of 17 years has tons of it, so you do not have to make that argument with me either...
#4
Composers & Music / Re: Emilie Mayer
Saturday 08 December 2012, 07:44
Fair enough.  I do think her music has a surprising masculineness.  That is clear.  But it could be as a result of toughness and resolve owing to her father's suicide.  And... the impact such an event would have on a person...
#5
Composers & Music / Re: Emilie Mayer
Friday 07 December 2012, 22:07
I was unfamiliar with Mayer, but thanks to good old Youtube search, I found the Symphony #5 is up there .   The music has a nice even flow and is clear.   But as with so many fine composer of that era, she is using more well-known masters as a model.   In this case, I think  Mendelssohn and Schubert are her models.  Is there anything that specifically gave her an individual fingerprint?  I can't pick up on it, and would have to listen to more of her work.  But the problem is  just that...  she needs something that will make her music individual.  In the context of the times she lived in, that would have helped with her becoming more widely known.  I fully understand the anti-woman bias.  But I think she would face the same stylistic issues if she were male.  If she were male, she would be like Felix Draeske  who faced the stylistic issues of being a lot like Liszt and Wagner....
#6
Also near the opening of Glazuonov's "Stenka Razin, Op 13"
#7
Quote from: giles.enders on Monday 12 November 2012, 11:16
Oh! Please don't rescue Cui, let him stay undisturbed where he is.

;D  ;D  ;D

Agreed, and this from a fan of his comrades, Borodin and Mussorgsky!

Undisturbed and Cui?   

Just for you Giles...  Cui's Grave in St Petersburg, Russia

BTW: Since the subject is Bortkiewicz, This might be useful:
Catalogue of Bortkiewicz Orchestral Compositions
#8
Composers & Music / Re: Saxophone in Chamber Music?
Tuesday 04 December 2012, 18:25
Quote from: saxtromba on Monday 03 December 2012, 16:38
Although the saxophone didn't really make its way into the orchestra until the 20th century, there were several composers in our period who used it orchestrally (Thomas, Bizet, Debussy, Strauss, etc.).  But what about chamber music?  Does anyone know of any chamber pieces whatsoever written during the 19th or pre-Great War 20th century which used the saxophone (not counting arrangements, if any such exist)?

Of course its not before World War I, but there is a Saxophone Quartet by romantic composer Alexander Glazunov, written near the end of his life in the early 1930's -

Glazunov - Saxophone Quartet, 1st Movement

It would be interesting to know what his teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov would have thought of this...
#9
Good idea - If the interest in him takes off, it would be nice to be consistent
#10
Quote from: Mark Thomas on Wednesday 28 November 2012, 07:48
It won't help the cause of Rufinatscha's music if two numbering systems for the symphonies are perpetuated. Although I do have a lot of sympathy with what Hovite is saying, I don't really mind one way or the other provided there is agreement on which one to use and then we stick to it.

Musicological discoveries are welcome but they do disrupt numbering systems dreadfully! About a dozen years ago I was asked to come up with WoO (Werke ohne Opuszahl) numbers for Raff's works which had no opus number. The result was a neat, logical, sequential system for the 56 pieces, which has been adopted widely since then. But within a year of its publication someone unhelpfully found a song cycle mouldering away in a library and since then a further sixteen pieces have come to light! Wonderful to have them, of course, but it was quite impracticable to go back and change the WoO allocations to the original 56 works. So, the discoveries have been slotted in chronologically using letter suffixes. Not as satisfying as my original system but at least it works and it won't cause confusion with all the recordings and publications which have adopted the original WoO numbers.

The champion for that is of course, Dvorak's Symphonies...   And then we probably don't want to talk about the numbering of Mozart's symphonies...  Some of the numbered ones he didn't write (like #37 by FJ Haydn's brother Michael) , and some he did, didn't  get numbers....
So, Rufinatscha can join the numbering confusion as well...
#11
Composers & Music / Re: Charles Koechlin (1867-1950)
Tuesday 04 December 2012, 11:01
Quote from: semloh on Tuesday 04 December 2012, 08:19
Quote from: Richergar on Tuesday 04 December 2012, 00:06
The only piece I have real familiarity with is the orchestral suite based on movie stars (I'm blanking on the name of it, though I have it on black disc) and I have never really appreciated any charms. ......

Yes, I bought that CD (RCA, The Seven Stars Symphony; 4 Interludes; L'Andalouse dans Barcelone) years ago - it sounded so promising, but it transpired to be an example of what I referred to on the thread about reviews, namely the reviewer raves about it and I find it dreary and uninspired! In case he was just having an off-day, I then bought the double CD The Jungle Book, but that was no better to my ears. The discs sit on my shelf, gathering dust!  ;D

Like Richergar, I too bought a record of "Seven Stars Symphony" in the 1980s after hearing a movement on the radio, but was unimpressed overall.   I am listening to works posted with slideshows on Youtube, and feel that most of the works...  One  sounds like the next.  Pleasant, but seemingly in a style that make me think he is sort of an ambient music composer before his time...  Vers la voûte étoilée (To The Starry Vault),  Le Buisson Ardent (The Burning Bush),  and Vers Ispahan (Toward Ispahan) - These as an example, seem to be invoking his own imagery - They are  are pleasant, restful almost, but seemingly formulaic, and I guess that formulaic nature is what might give them an air of seeming uninspired.
#12
The problem with Siegfried Wagner may be in that so much was expected from him all along due to his DNA.  Remember that there was not only his father, but that his paternal grandfather was Franz Lizst.  And everyone at the time was looking at his compositional talent was looking at it through that lens...   He is not the 1st famous artistic son to have to deal with that...   

Franz Xaver Mozart music anyone?    During their lifetimes, Bach's four sons were prominent... moreso than their father, but as time wore on, the father's stature  gradually overwhelmed them...   

I think comparisons to the Wagners can be looked at from that aspect as well.
#13
This piece impresses me by the way it sounds.   It was played by accident on a classical station I was listening to 30 years ago...   I immediately liked it, and have ever since.
#15
Quote from: saxtromba on Monday 23 July 2012, 20:34
He's actually considerably more conservative musically than his father. He wrote a pleasant violin concerto, for example, which wouldn't have been out of place decades earlier.  While I enjoy what I've heard of his music (which isn't a whole heck of a lot), I've always felt that he composed because it was expected of him rather than because he was driven to do so.

The point bolded above  I agree with...