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I have long had the LP of Zukerman playing the Fifth in my collection, and,fairly recently,acquired the famous 1935 recording of Haifitz in the Fourth.   But it has been severely cut, about 20% of the orchestral music excised,which might have been acceptable in its day,but is really not now,especially when Vieuxtemps was a decent orchestrator.   However, I have just been re-listening to the transcendent, world-class, Misha Keylin in the Naxos series (especially the Second Concerto), and,showy and superficial it might arguably be, but it works a treat!

I have just ordered the Naxos CD of Keylin ,playing the First and the Fourth. The Fourth is six minutes longer than Haifitz's bowdlerised performance. The reviews are too good to ignore.

I received yesterday from Presto Music this CD on the Accent label. I particularly liked the second  Sinfonia Concertante, in F major, on the cusp of Romanticism,for flute,oboe,bassoon,horn and orchestra. The CD has been around for about a year and is played with great affection by Harmonie Universelle, a name previously unknown to me.  I don't know the precise date of the Clarinet Concerto ( yet another discovery by Klocker), but the other two works were apparently composed in 1814 or shortly thereafter.

The CD arrived in tandem with the Ysaye E minor violin concerto, which I will now try to get to grips with.

I am playing the second volume of Naxos's new Marschner series ("Overtures and Stage music") as I type.  Assembled and conducted with elan by our distinguished colleague, Dario Salvi.

It is a box of delights, and I reckon the orchestra, which I have never come across before - the Hradec Kralove Philharmonic - gives full value.

So I am giving a shout out for a CD full of pacy, melodious, well-constructed and highly enjoyable music!

Back in the 70s, there was a spate of Gottschalk orchestrations on LP. Over the top, and none the worse for that. I was reminded of these when I recently purchased a CD, entitled Chopinesque, issued by Naxos (available at Presto and jpc), of seventeen works by the composer of the glorious overture Maritana. Sixteen of these are piano minatures that Wallace used to play on tour, especially in the States. They have more than a whiff of gaslight Victoriana about them, and Rosemary Tuck plays them with joie de vivre. In one of them,she duets with Richard Bonynge.

The standout piece on this CD, and one that I have returned to again and again, is the 14-minute Grande Fantaisie La Cracovienne for piano and orchestra. The orchestral parts are lost, so Jeremy Silver has come to the rescue with his sympathetic orchestration, which the octogenarian Bonynge conducts. To quote Lord Charteris (referring to Sarah,Duchess of York), this piece is "vulgar,vulgar,vulgar". and utterly delightful from start to finish. It is almost as if Wallace envisaged a composition by Chopin expressly for the Hackney Empire.

I referred elsewhere that I have failed to warm to Magnard's earlier symphonies (I have possessed an LP of his Fourth for many years and find even that heavy going). I have a feeling that Alan is up to the challenge of pointing out the error of my ways.

A dull,dreary day in Marbella. A herd of wild boar were trampolining the garbage skips last night. But.........
my spirits have just been lifted by a runthrough of Lane's Kullak.   Never fails to bring a smile to my face!

I have just been bowled over by the F-sharp minor Violin Concerto by Jose White Lafitte ( apparently better known as Jose White).I purchased the box set of the Black Composers Series on amazon.de for a mere 25 euros,including shipping,covering 10 CDs, last week, and the money was worth it for this concerto alone. I see it is also still available to download from Presto.This is ,quite simply, the best violin concerto I have come across in the last thirty years, beautifully played by Aaron Rosand and the LSO under Paul Freeman. To my mind,this is up there with the Wieniawski First for sheer lyricism.   I never knew it existed and had never heard of this Latin American composer. Has anyone heard it in the concert hall?

Memory (which might be playing tricks) recalls that a CD of this symphony was once available, according to Mike Herman's discography. The relevant pages of that discography have been unavailable for download for many months, so I cannot check. I am not referring to any radio broadcasts, but an actual CD.  Can anyone confirm my recollection,please?

Mention has been made of Rietz´s momentous Concert Overture, and, more recently by Alan,of Horneman´s multi-tiered and moving Aladdin Overture,so I was hoping for such a hidden gem from my recent purchase of vol 96 from the Landesmuseen ,"Ouverturen".
There are eight entirely unfamiliar overtures on this still-available CD, the first four of which date from the first half of the nineteenth century and my personal preference to the later four.
For those of you who,like me, enjoyed the early morning overtures played on the Third Programme on the drive to school, there is a real find amongst these first four - Josef Netzer´s Overture in D,dating from the late 1830s. This is a frothy frolic of the kind Beecham chose for his "lollypops" and deserves repeated playing on Classic FM.
Listen to this piece of escapism,and enjoy!

As promised, but with a sense of trepidation, here are my brief impressions of this symphony (CD43 in the Landesmuseen series). I say, with a sense of trepidation,as I came to Rufinatscha when I acquired his Third Symphony and found the sound too brassy. (I now understand that the orchestration was done by Michael Huber, so this is not the composer´s or the orchestra´s responsibility.)
I was immediately put in mind of Hubert Parry as this noble,weighty,sober, work thundered on.
I have since read that Alan has nicknamed the symphony as "Elegiac", which hits the nail squarely on the head. It is certainly a symphony for the serious-minded,but,being perhaps of a shallow,frivolous,disposition, I am obviously unworthy of it as it left me unmoved.
I think that I have better leave it at that, with apologies to everyone else who will think differently.

The Landesmuseen has sent to me two CDs of compositions mainly for woodwind. The first of these is entitled Concertino  (Musikmuseen 28) and contains three  spirited but fairly ordinary overtures,and some works for flute,clarinet,bassoon,and horn which are easy on the ears. The main work on this CD is a Clarinet Concerto by Martin Goller (whom I have never heard of) dating from around 1800, but this piece is Classical and outside our remit.
What I particularly wanted was the CD containing Gansbacher´s Clarinet Concerto, dating from 1819 (Musikmuseen23) and Dr Holzmann kindly sent it to me gratis. As I expected, Gansbacher has crossed the threshold into Romanticism. He was apparently, according to the booklet, a friend of Weber, but this work reminded me of Spohr at his most sedate. Surely the third movement, entitled Tempo di Polonaise, should have been performed with more attack?
This second CD contains the Baermann Adagio (formerly attributed to Wagner) which is lovingly performed. It also includes some modern works, the longest being a composition " Vitus Dance"  by Michael Huber, yes, the same guy who orchestrated Rufinatscha´s Third. It lives up to its name.

I was lucky indeed to receive this CD the other day from the Landesmuseen and my first impressions are very favourable. I expected that it would be rather similar to Raff´s genial Symphony In the Alps but I reckon the flavours here are slightly more subtle, especially in the misty opening movement. By the time we get to the third movement, we are in the realms of Goldmark´s masterly and felicitous Rustic Wedding Symphony.
We are in the Tyrol, but I would say South Tyrol . The more the symphony developed, the more I was put in mind of Impressions d'Italie, as if Charpentier had ventured across the late-nineteenth century frontier.
There is a sprightly Spring Overture and a Cello Concerto which is Late Romantic (composed near the end of Pembaur´s life ,in 1910). I will have to give this darker and more melancholic concerto a few more outings before I am sure I am suitable for its nuances.

I have now played through this Symphony three times and I whistled along to it, with my cockatiel also responding. But I didn´t find it a particularly individual work. And I am surprised at its dating, as I would have put it some fifteen years further.
If I had been listening to it blind, I would have said it was a newly discovered Weber Symphony. So,nice enough, if derivative
Curiously,it seems to appear twice on CDs issued by the Landesmuseen.  I have it on No 58 (coupled with his Festmesse, which passed me by) and that is still in stock. A more rewarding coupling is the CD No 51, as the more individual (but less Romantic) Symphony of Gansbacher is there as well, but that CD seems to be found now only in the deeper recesses of the warehouse

Gansbacher´s  Symphony sounds a fine work, on first hearing. He is influenced by Haydn, and, I reckon, Paul Wranitzky (whose symphonies seem to be making a comeback) but it stands up pretty well on its own account. I have been mentally comparing it with the contemporaneous Symphony in F major by Anton Reicha, and it seems to be one step nearer Romanticism..
It is pretty well played as a whole, although I found that the string section sounded underweight at times. This CD (No 51 in the catalogue and entitled Tiroler Symphonie, coupled with the Nagiller) is officially not listed as available, but ,once again, Dr Holzmann discovered at least one in the warehouse.
I have also acquired this composer´s Clarinet Concerto from the Landesmuseen and will be giving a short overview of that in a few days time. As this composer has quite an individual voice, and the Concerto is a later work, I will be interested in hearing what strides towards Romanticism that work makes

It must have been nearly fifty years ago that I bought the City of Hull´Youth Orchestra´s LP of German´s Second, and I have always been rather underwhelmed by it. Having acquired last week the Dutton Epoch recording of his First (CDLX 7156) from a third party seller on Amazon, I begin to suspect a  frontline orchestra would have made me sit up more in the "Norwich".  Because his First is really rather fine, bringing to mind more the pastures and hills of nineteenth-century Bohemia than,say, of Shropshire. It has, for some reason,made me think it Volkmannesque, although I´m not at all sure that German ever heard that composer´s very underrated Second Symphony. Derivative, it may be thought, but German´s First has surprised me with its wealth of melody and gentle spirit.

I have just acquired a CD on the Bongiovanni label from amazon.de of this composer´s orchestral works. The recording seems no longer to be available from the issuing company and  dates from around 1994. It is that rare beast, an Italian- Croatian -Ukrainian collaboration and features an orchestra I have never come across, the Donetsk Opera Symphony Orchestra. Despite the sound recording being reminiscent of what was available in the 1930´s and a string section inclined to the scrawny at times, this CD is a find. The enthusiasm of the players in what must have been totally unknown territory shines through,especially in the gem of the Serenade. And the substantial Symphony in D minor dating no later than 1888 is a young man´s work (think of Chapi´s only Symphony) ,which the booklet notes compares with Franck but sounds to be fresher,lighter,more naive. Has anyone else come across it ,and,if so, what´s your verdict?

This is the first work on a CD of Bavarian rarities on the Musica Bavarica label (MB75129).  It is available from amazon.de, as adriano advised, and has been around for a while.  The other works on the disc are a couple by Cannabich fils,dating from the early years of the nineteenth century, and which smack of Eybler without the twinkle in his eye (a slight late Classical work for two violins and orchestra and an even less listenable dollup of ballet music from themes of Salieri), and a concerto for two horns by Witt that sound as if it dates from even earlier. The latter work has a slow movement entitled Romanze, with ,I´m afraid, the same motif as Three Blind Mice and  a Rondo straight out of ´We are Poor Little Lambs that have Gone Astray´

Fortunately, the Lachner harp concerto is worth the price of the disc. More a concertino than a concerto, it is one movement,theoretically allegro but actually moderato.. A meditative adagio for orchestra  leads into a work, that at around 18 minutes, does not outstay its welcome and I reckon antedates his Flute Concerto of similar length.  The harp is well balanced with the orchestra, the melodies are quite lovely, with a reflective calm reminiscent of the early part of  Beethoven´s Choral Fantasy. I would say that this is a very spiritual work and that Lachner was probably acquainted with the harp concertos of Bochsa, the first one of which was probably composed only a handful of years before this.

There are rumours circulating that a recording of his Symphony No 3  will shortly be released  by cpo. I don´t want to acquire the recording by the Moravian Philharmonic if this happens to be true.  Has anyone heard anything concrete?     

Thank you, Gerd

I loved the rendition of the 2nd and put my ´thumbs-up´on YouTube.     

Have to say that the 5th, to which I have listened about fifty times, is a comfort to me in these troubled times.

Nick Woodward (aka Terry Martyn)

I was recently listening once more to the Marshev CD and thinking to myself that I would love to hear this fine concerto in the concert hall (Brull´s op.88 is at the top of my wishlist there, but that´s for another day). Dismissed as frivolous, the final movement is poignant to my ears. Does anyone know whether there is truth in the story that Pabst was so put off by the reaction of the critics that he decided never to orchestrate anything again?