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In the 1970s Franck's Symphony was so frequently programmed and broadcast that, to be honest, I got bored with it and even now don't play it that frequently, although I do acknowledge its quality. The same thing could be said about Weber overtures which were once staple concert openers but have all but vanished from the repertoire now. On the face of it these disappearances are inexplicable unless, of course, it's the reaction of generations of audiences, performers and promoters to that over-exposure 50-60 years ago.

I wonder what that means for the music that is now overplayed to death (Rachmaninov various, Rimsky Sheherezade, Bruch VC1 etc etc.  Subject for another thread, I know, I know!)

It's news to me that the Franck Symphony used to be such a staple, I will listen to it some more.  On previous listenings I've thought it very pleasant but for whatever reason haven't rushed back to it.

Hello - I have just discovered Cliffe, and very much like what I have heard. Obviously I thought to check on UC if there are further recordings and I came across this thread...does anyone know if there are any copies of this recording still available?

The National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine is currently touring the UK.

https://nsou.com.ua/en/

The unsung piece they are playing regularly is Lyatoshynsky's Symphony No.2 (and sometimes his Grazhyna Ballade, Op.58)

Other works ks they are performing include Beethoven's Piano Concerto No.4, Bruch's Violin Concerto No.1, Richard Strauss's Don Juan, Sibelius's Symphony No.1 and Finlandia, Liszt's Mazeppa, Maksym Berezovskyi "Ukrainian Symphony".

18 Oct - Croydon (Fairfield Halls)
19 Oct - London (Cadogan Hall)
20 Oct - Guildford
21 Oct - Basingstoke
22 Oct - Cardiff
24 Oct - Birmingham
25 Oct - Cambridge
26 Oct - Bradford
27 Oct - Manchester
28 Oct - Perth
29 Oct - Edinburgh
31 Oct - Middlesborough
2 Nov - Sheffield
3 Nov - Liverpool
4 Nov - Nottingham
5 Nov - Norwich

This is the version as sung at the Coronation - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ze3GdB3L2Oc

And this is another recording that I have since discovered and like - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCDZATJvBZg

But youtube links aren't the same as having a CD, especially of an occasion like that.  I'll bottle that rant before it gets out of control, save to say that it's also insulting to the singers and orchestra and crew - the rehearsals and overall hard work for it must have been particularly intense.

Thanks for that Alan, much appreciated. Funnily enough it's the Bruckner that I bought it for.  I'd never heard that piece before and it blew me away.

I apologise if this isn't appropriate here (in which case moderators please do delete!).  Does anyone have any contacts at Decca Classics (part of Universal)?

I bought a double CD of "The Official Album of The Coronation: The Complete Recording", a Decca Classics CD.  Over a third of the music is missing.  I wanted to give to classical-music loving friends overseas as an example of British music, and British performers, at their finest (I think most, whatever their views on the Monarchy, would agree that the music was pretty special, and exceptionally performed).

I rang the number given on Decca Classics website, my heart sank when I got someone very trendy saying "Universal Music", who then proceeded to tell me that she hadn't heard of "that album" or "the artists who sang it" and put me through to a dead voicemail box.  I rang again and got someone else, who insisted that Decca could choose to omit items on a CD that it had included on streaming. I would dispute this - if they had won the rights to produce the "Official" album, and call it "The Complete Recording", then something is wrong here!

The full list of works performed is listed here: https://www.deccaclassics.com/en/catalogue/products/the-coronation-of-their-majesties-king-charles-iii-and-queen-camilla-12992

 - however the following pieces are missing from the 2CD (they are ALL from the first hour of the ceremony, making me think an oversight has happened and that this should have been a 3CD):

- Bach: Magnificant anima mea
- Bach: Christmas Oratorio BWV248 Pt.5 "Sunday after New Year"
- Bach: Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, BWV190
- Bruckner: Ecce sacerdos magnus
- Bach: Alla breve in D major, BWV589
- Holst: The Planets "Jupiter"
- Jenkins: Over the Stone
- Walton: Crown Imperial
- Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on Greensleeves
- Purcell: Trumpet Tune
- Handel: Solomon, The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba
- Handel: Joshua, Oh had I Jubal's lyre
- Handel: Flourish for an occasion
- Vaughan Williams: The Preludes for Organ "Rhosymedre"

I had particularly wanted it for the Bruckner "Ecce sacerdos magnus", an amazing piece I had never heard before!

Hello - does anyone know if this performance of The Atonement was recorded/released?

There's a concert including newly-discovered SCT works on 2nd October in London's Cadogan Hall as follows:

https://cadoganhall.com/whats-on/london-choral-sinfonia-in-windsor-forest/

PERFORMERS
The Choir and Orchestra of London Choral Sinfonia
Michael Waldron conductor

Join the Choir and Orchestra of the London Choral Sinfonia for their season premiere this autumn.

This concert brings together the music of two early 20th-century powerhouse composers, both pupils of Charles Villiers Stanford: Ralph Vaughan Williams and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.

Featuring recently rediscovered choral works by Coleridge-Taylor, the concert includes the sublime Whispers of Summer and the more energetic Sea Drift.

Alongside this, substantial works by Vaughan Williams will be performed by the Choir and Orchestra of LCS: the much-loved Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus and the magical In Windsor Forest.

Duration: approx. 2 hours (incl. Interval)

PROGRAMME

J.S. Bach (arr. Vaughan Williams) - 'Giant' Fugue
Coleridge-Taylor - Sea Drift, Whispers of Summer, Song of Proserpine, The Lee Shore, By the Lone Sea Shore
Coleridge-Taylor (arr. for strings by Owain Park) - Three Short Pieces for Organ: Melody, Elergy, Arietta
Vaughan Williams - Fantasia on Greensleeves
Vaughan Williams - Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus
Vaughan Williams - In Windsor Forest

Monday 2 October 2023, 19:30

https://cadoganhall.com/whats-on/london-choral-sinfonia-in-windsor-forest/#details

https://www.thelcs.org/

I never get why people say "sorry" for not liking something - I didn't write it  .

But you do go to all the effort of telling us about these rather obscure works, Christopher, and providing links, and often uploads too! 

I think it was actually the mix that Mark noted that I didn't like, However, in view of the rather more positive comments from Alan and Mark, I'll give it a more careful listen. So... thanks!

Well I enjoy doing so, and value all civilised feedback, regardless of whether people like the pieces or not. (By the way I don't necessarily like everything I post up - but I believe that if it's unsung and of our era/style, it's worthy of being posted as others might see value even when I don't.)

Sorry, Christopher, but although you often unearth music that I enjoy, this isn't for me. The performance and recording are rather poor, and I find the music wholly unmemorable. I wish that wasn't the case, given the composer's sad life history. Maybe I am being unfair, and others on UC have a more positive reaction.

I never get why people say "sorry" for not liking something - I didn't write it 

I agree that either the performance of the audio (technical) quality aren't optimal, though I also think there is an improvement throughout the duration (the finale of the first movement, as I mentioned, being particularly impassioned).

This, I believe, could be rather a substantial find. There is nothing folksy or fleeting about it at all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdyOgFomWm8&t=389s

Boris Kudrik (1897-1952, Ukraine)

Symphony in E minor

Chernivtsi Symphony Orchestra
Yosyp Sozansky - conductor

40 mins long.

A very serious work in the late-romantic style, with a passionate first movement (I particularly like its defiant finale, around the 14 minute mark).  Kudrik wrote it in the gulag prison camp in Mordovia in 1951, where he had been imprisoned since 1945.  He died shortly afterward, in 1952. It's described in the book excerpt below as his swansong, and as his salvation from the inhuman conditions in which he found himself.

More about him here (in Ukrainian, you'll need google-translate):
http://mus.art.co.ua/ukrainian-live-borys-kudryk-portret-kompozytora/
https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Кудрик_Борис_Павлович

Boris Kudrik
(JUNE 10, 1897, ROHATYN - MARCH 28, 1952, POTMA STATION, DUBRAVLAG CAMP)

Kudryk Borys Pavlovych - Ukrainian composer, musicologist, folklorist and teacher. His work is sometimes considered by researchers as ,,a real anachronism and a kind of miracle in the development of modern Ukrainian music"* and compared with the music of Joseph Haydn**, but it would be more correct to attribute his legacy (and only partially) to the so-called ,,Galician Biedermeier"*** - a local manifestation in art, which poetized everyday life, glorified the lives of ordinary people, the beauty of rural nature and local folklore. In German and Austrian art of the 1830s and 1840s, this style was both the antithesis of the aristocracy of the classicist style and the tumultuous romanticism as a reaction to the events of the French Revolution of 1789. The mood of interwar Galicia contributed to the revival of this style with its tendency to seek harmony, simplicity and tranquility.

Borys Kudryk was born into a priest's family (perhaps that is why the basis of his future creative work is choral). He graduated from Rohatyn Gymnasium. Since childhood he played the violin, piano, sang in the choir.
He studied at the Academy of Music and the University of Vienna (he studied musicology, philosophy and German philology), later at the Polish Conservatory in Lviv and Lviv Universi-ty. Among the teachers who had the greatest influence on his development - Ukrainian and Austrian musicologist and composer, teacher of the Vienna Academy of Music Evseviy Mandychevskyy.

Contrary to a complex historical epoch, Kudryk's work is distinguished by a surprisingly light, childish worldview. Although the style of his works is quite diverse, they are all united by ,,childhood". According to the memoirs of contemporaries, the composer was always as if in a parallel reality, listening to only one audible otherworldly music. His musical erudition knew no bounds due to his phenomenal memory: any of the scores he knew, and there were many of them, he could reproduce by heart on paper with perfect accuracy.

The year 1945 turned out to be fatal for Kudryk.
He was in the third district of Vienna, which was later to be in the British sphere of influ-ence. A few months were not enough. Prior to the official demarcation, the Red Army began sweeping, and on April 11, the composer was detained by officers of the First Smersh Counterintelligence Division. The confusion in Kudryk's answers recorded in the transcripts of the interrogations testifies to the detainees' conscious desire to accuse the composer. He was eventually sentenced to 10 years in prison with confiscation of property and sent to a camp in Mordovia. There, in December 1951, he fell ill with pneumonia complicated by hypertension and died in 1952.

Symphony in E minor
This is one of Kudryk's two symphonies written in the concentration camp. Ironically, before that, being free, the composer did not turn to this genre - the top in the musical genre hierarchy. He began writing the 40-minute work in May 1951, less than a year before his death. He did not have time to finish: there are gaps in the manuscript and there are no last bars. This work was a salvation for the com-poser, and despite the inhuman conditions, it did not lose the most important features of his work: tenderness and a certain amount of sentimentality. Even its sad nature refers more to Schubert's songs than to Mahler's despair.

The manuscript of the work is a ,,ragged" notebook with a hand-lined musical note and text written in pencil. Its premiere took place in August 2019 in Chernivtsi by the Chernivtsi Academic Symphony Orchestra conducted by Yosyp Sozanskyi and edited by him. The amazing intertwining of folk-song intonations and extremely sincere personal expression creates a unique and recognizable style of this ,,swan song" by Kudryk.

Footnotes:
* Rudnytskyi A. Ukrainian music: historical and critical review -
Munich: Dnieper wave, 1963. - P.181
** The same.
*** This term was introduced into Ukrainian musicology by Kudryk himself, in particular in the article ,,We will all go to the meadow with braids". Musical-historical film of the Galician Biedermeier (3 occasions of the 120th anniversary of the birth of Mykhailo Verbytskyy
1815 - 1935). // Ukrainian music. - 2015. - Number 1-2. - P. 118-122.

 - from "The Forbidden Music", Collegium Management - Ukrainian Live Publishing, 2021, Publisher - Olexandr Savchuk, Kharkiv

There's a new recording of his piano concerto. I would say better than the previous recordings put up on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfK2XfTcgxE

Oksana Rapita, piano
Lviv National Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra  of Ukraine
Andrii Savchuk, conductor
   

Myroslav Skoryk Lviv National Philharmonic,
Lviv, June 10, 2022.

See this thread, with a comment on this very performance from July.  The names of the individual pieces are earlier in the same thread:

https://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,7562.15.html

Funnily enough, with this recent thread in mind, I noticed a plaque in his memory on the wall of the courtyard of the Armenian Cathedral in Lviv just five days ago. I had no idea of his connection to the city but it turns out that he was the director of the Galician Music Society and professor at the GMS Conservatory there.  He is buried in the nearby Lychakiv Cemetery. There's a long biography here - https://musical-world.com.ua/en/artists/mikuli-karol-2/

Picture of the plaque here - https://www.shukach.com/ru/node/59289

And of his grave here - https://lviv-lychakiv.com.ua/en/photogallery/famous-personalities/308-karol-mikuli

FYI - a bit of discussion (and youtube links to) his piano music too, here - https://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,7387.msg77921.html#msg77921