Messages

Hurwitz thinks Sullivan was the greatest British composer. The Savoy operas are fab, of course, but what else did he write that's great music? Answer: nothing. Hurwitz is welcome to his opinion, but the problem is that he does somewhat dominate the market in YouTube videos of classical recordings. And that's a bad thing for objectivity...

The Suppe is trash.

Congratulations! What's the music like, please?

Did he mean it ironically? That'd be his only get-out clause.

Marco Enrico Bossi would be another name to explore as much of his output pre-dates WW1.

Others would be Michele Esposito and Leone Sinigaglia.

By the way: the Pannon Philharmonic (from Pécs in south-western Hungary) are a very fine orchestra. There's an exciting performance of Nielsen 3 on YouTube conducted by Gilbert Varga.

Thanks for the heads-up, Eric. Very helpful.

I decided to give this another listen after all these months and I'm as convinced as ever about the merits of this orchestration. It's absolutely majestic - finally we have a mature-sounding symphonic statement by Schubert to put alongside the Unfinished and the Great C Major.

When you hear this, it seems as if Rufinatscha is just round the corner...

Yes pre WW1 Italian composers have a pigeon hole (opera) that they must reside in or they will be ignored by the critics and then the public

Nevertheless, Sgambati and Martucci are two very impressive Italian pre-WW1 non-operatic composers. Two of my absolute favourites, especially in their symphonies and piano concertos.

I suppose one issue would be how complete the new version will be in comparison. Secondly, though, I've never been a fan of McCracken's rather woolly and effortful tenor in the old recording and I suspect that Osborn might be better. I've listened to the soprano and mezzo on the new recording and they're both pretty good, so I had no hesitation in ordering it - especially also with the LSO and Elder at the helm.

Sometimes it's just nice to have another recording of an old favourite such as this - after nearly 50 years!!

I note that this is a co-production with Bru Zane - interesting:

Try this YouTube recording of the Cathedral Scene (30+ mins, audio only), evidently from the same performance in Aix-en-Provence on 15th July last year. I'm assuming it was recorded from the radio broadcast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tl995uHhDqo

I can hear an awful lot of pre-echoes of Verdi here: the Auto-da-fé scene in Don Carlos comes to mind....

How different from the direction Raff was to take just a few years later in Samson - I'd like to hear his earlier opera König Alfred (which is roughly contemporary with Le Prophète) for comparison purposes...

By the way: I've put my (pre-)order in for Le Prophète straight away - the singing sounds exceptional (for once!)

An 8-minute video (in German with English subtitles) is now available at jpc:
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/detail/-/art/johanna-senfter-klarinettentrio/hnum/11170347

Thanks. That's a useful update on current developments.

Even more excerpts are now available at jpc:
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/joachim-raff-samson/hnum/11860991

That's a very exciting prospect, if it's a possibility.