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Going through the stash of radio recordings given to me over the years I was surprised to find one which I'd quite forgotten about: Bizet's 1860 Ode-Symphonie Vasco da Gama. From the title you'd expect something along the lines of Félicien David's Le Desert or Christophe Colomb, with a narrator, some purely orchestral sections, chorus and maybe a soloist or two. Vasco, however, is more like a dramatic cantata, there is no narrator or stand-alone orchestral numbers, and the choir is led by a bevy of four soloists. It lasts about 25 minutes, but I've read online that this is the only completed part of a much larger work which Bizet planned, and there was to have been a narrator. The score was published posthumously (and is available at IMSLP). It's an attractive, if not very individual work. Joan Sutherland recorded it's brief Bolero.

The recording appears to be complete, but is unfortunately of very poor quality (lots of background noise, massed page turning, bumps and bangs and heavy bass) but good enough to get an idea of the music. The piece is sung in French, but the announcer's language is, I think, Romanian and it appears to be a recording of a jubilee concert in which Vasco is followed, of all things, by a complete performance of Gomes' Columbus. I can't decipher the names of most of the performers, but the orchestra is the Budapest Symphony Orchestra "George Enescu" conducted by Manuel ?, the choir appear to be the Chœur Henri Duparc, soloists include Carmen ? and Fernando ?, and Placido Domingo also gets a mention, though I can't really believe he took part in such an obscure production. Stupidly, in deleting the unwanted beginning of Columbus, I also deleted the announcement after Vasco. Despite several hours determined googling, I can find nothing whatsoever about the concert online.

Does anyone have any more information about this performance than I have gleaned? I'd love to know more, especially about the artists. Of course, as the work isn't available in a commercial recording, ideally someone will pop up with a better recording, but I suspect from the high level of "stage" noise that it's a bootleg of dubious origin.

I've recently been reminding myself of the music of the Swedish composer Otto Olsson (1879-1964), familiar from a couple of Sterling CDs of his orchestral and piano music. His sole Symphony in particular is a very fine piece, written on a grand scale and of novel construction (a fugal Scherzo and a slow movement twice as long as any other movement?). It was written when he was in his twenties, but only discovered after his death. The performance on Sterling from Mats Liljefors and the Gävleborg Symphony Orchestra is adequate but rather detached, unfortunately. However, I've recently come across a greatly superior one from Stig Westerberg and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Westerberg's interpretation is much more dramatic and taut, shaving five minutes off Liljefors' timing, and the orchestra play with tremendous virtuosity and commitment. All in all it reveals Olsson's Symphony as a fine, if rather quirky, symphony - would that all unsung works were treated to such a performance. The recording is available in our Downloads Board here.

I have a very poor recording of a Swedish radio broadcast of a 1979 performance of Otto Olsson's lovely Piano Quintet, played by Elisif Lundén-Bergfelt and the Stenhammar Quartet. Googling reveals that it's been played from time to time by Swedish radio, the last time as recently as 6 April this year, but unfortunately recordings are only available online for 30 days after broadcast. I wonder, does anyone have a decent recording of this work and, of so, could they post it here at UC?

Thanks.

Hot on the heels of Sterling's release of Per August Ölander's 1876 opera Blenda, comes the news that their next issue will be of the sole symphonies of the Swedish composers Joseph Dente and Bengt Wilhelm Hallberg, together with the latter's Concert Overture No.2. A recording of a radio broadcast of the same performance of Dente's 1887 Symphony used to be available here at UC (the link is now defunct), and it's an attractive, compact piece of work. Hallberg (1824-1883) is a new name to me. Although he was a pupil of Berwald, his similarly small-scale Symphony (c. 1870) and the Overture (c. 1853) are written in a style perhaps best described as very early romantic, and so undeniably anachronistic for their time.

It's good to see Sterling get back into the swing of things with these two releases, licensed from radio stations, and even more welcome, if it happens, will be their proposed issue of the excellent radio recording of Raff's last opera Benedetto Marcello. Fingers crossed!

This autumn Naxos will be issuing Raff's five violin sonatas, played by Laurence Kayaleh (violin) and Jean-Fabien Schneider (piano). See this announcement on YouTube - which includes an extract from the Violin Sonata No.3. It's a welcome surprise and it'll be interesting to see how their interpretations measure up to the two contrasting, but equally valid, ones of cpo's Turban and Nemtsov (full of nervous energy) and Tudor's Daskalakis and Ishay (lyrical and intense).

Now this might be interesting. I've never heard of the pianist and, judging by the audio extracts, the piano sounds way too far forward, but this might be worth a punt to hear Järvi's take on Rubinstein.

Last November the BBC broadcast the premier (in Cardiff a few weeks earlier) of Stanford's last major work, his mass commemorating WWI - Via Victrix. I've added a link to a recording of the broadcast in our Downloads Board here. The mass is written on a large scale for four soloists, choir and orchestra, its six movements lasting 67 minutes, and the Welsh forces give it a fine performance. It's not a war requiem as such, it doesn't dwell on the futility of conflict as later such works would do, but rather celebrates the Allied victory whilst mourning the loss of so many lives. Others may well disagree, but as a Stanford enthusiast I found this dramatic and atmospheric work both thrilling and a genuinely moving experience. I understand that a commercial recording of Via Victrix, based on this performance, will be issued by Lyrita next year.

The two piano concertos of the Australian Miriam Hyde have been mentioned a couple of times here over the years, but the CD on which they were available has been very hard to find. The recordings, together with a couple of short orchestral works by her are now available for download at Qobuz here (and maybe elsewhere), and I thoroughly recommend both the music and the performances. Both works date from the 1930s IIRC, but they're completely romantic is style, rather reminiscent of Rachmaninov in harmony, orchestration and their melodic generosity. If you like a traditional, old-style barnstorming piano concerto then you'll love these two.

... and now not just piano concertos:



Also announced is an upcoming recording of Koczalski's Cello & Violin Concertos.

Rued Langgaard's rather chaotic music isn't to everyone's taste I know (I've only recently acquired it myself), but the bargain of the year must be DaCapo's re-release in a single box of Thomas Dausgaard's fine cycle of all 16 symphonies on seven CDs. It's available from several UK retailers comparatively cheaply, but the best price I've found is at jpc - a giveaway at  €19.99!

I'm aware of another arrangement for orchestra of the Quintet's Adagio, but not one of the whole work. Here's a new recording of just that, made by Gerd Schaller. Oddly, his orchestration of the string Intermezzo, is placed between the Quintet's third and fourth movements, making it a five movement quasi-symphony.

In another post, Hadrianus wrote:

A sensation: Next thursday, Johann Geortg Kastner's Symphony "Les Cris de Paris" will be performed and broadcasted from Montpellier. Kastner was a teacher of Berlioz; he lived from 1810 till 1867.
https://unsungsymphonies.blogspot.com/2010/10/impossible-symphony-kastners-les-cris.html

This is really intriguing and it's well worth following hadrianus' link. The only online recording I can find of anything from Les Cris de Paris is this one of the march referred to in the article on Kastner's symphony. It certainly sounds like the whole work might be a fascinating listen, although I can't discover when it will be broadcast by Radio France.

Does anyone know of a CD or digital recording of Lanchbery's score for the ballet Mayerling, for which he used various works by Liszt? I only know of the Opus Arte DVD of the ballet.

This thread has unaccountably disappeared and I'm at a loss to explain why. Only moderators can delete threads and none of us have done that. Apologies to all who contributed to it. The site is regularly backed up of course, but unfortunately individual threads can't be restored in isolation, so all posts in every thread made after the last backup would be lost in the restore process.

A new recording of Meyerbeer's spectacular opera Le Prophète on the Oehms label is due out on CD on March 16th, downloads are available now. Details and soundbites here. It's a live recording of the recent Essen production using the definitive critical edition of the score. Whether it'll replace the pioneering CBS/Sony recording with Horne, Scotto and McCracken in my affections remains to be seen, but the production itself certainly had great reviews.

Martin Anderson, in a recent Facebook post, sums up my own attitude to the question of "unsung composers" better than I could ever hope to:

Alex Ross makes some excellent points in this New Yorker article, which go to the very basis of what Toccata Classics is trying to do. It's not as if there is great music and then everything else. Instead, there is a continuum of quality: next to the Brahms and the Beethovens and the Bruckners, there is excellent music which richly deserves a hearing, and next to that good music which deserves to be known (etc.) -- and even music which shows only moderate attainment provides a context in which the achievement of the great composers can be better understood. The more we know of the entire spectrum, the richer our musical lives.

The New Yorker article about Florence Price which prompted his post is also an interesting read, and I'd certainly recommend listening to Price's enjoyable, if rather naïve, Symphony No.1, available on YouTube.

New member Razorback has asked for this to be posted on his behalf:

Based on information from our site, I sent the following email to Archiv Music. 

About 1 year ago,  I purchased a CD of a cello concerto from you that was a copy of an LP on the Turnabout label.  I can't remember specifically what it was.  Thank you for that service.  I appreciated it very much.  Although I am unfamiliar with exactly how it works, I understand that you have an arrangement with certain record companies to transfer music from an LP to a CD; such was the case with the Turnabout CD I purchased from you. 

I am a very serious music collector with over 3,000 CD's.  Currently, I am into 19th century Romantic composers and am often frustrated when I can find their music on LP but not CD.  Since I am an 'older' guy and have an extensive physical CD collection, I am not into downloading at this time.  In addition, many collectors - including David English at Fanfare Magazine - have essentially given up on the standard repertoire – after all, how many Beethoven 5th do you need? We are buying either 'my kind of music' or modern avant garde releases.  In any case, we're all tired of the same-old, same-old.  I would like to think that this creates a 'golden' marketing opportunity for Archiv.

This brings me to Hans Bronsart von Schellendorf and his Piano Concerto in F-Sharp Minor, Op. 10.   You probably have had this inquiry before but here it is again.  Bronsart's PC is very desirable to us Romantic music lovers but, unfortunately, is available only as a download or on LP.  My computer search revealed two LPs with Bronsart's PC, one on Candide CE 31076 and VOX 2206.  Michael Ponti is the pianist on both so the music is the same.  If I want a 2-record set, I can purchase Vol. 4 of VOX's Romantic Piano Concerto series.  I can also purchase the entire VOX series from Archive for around $100.  HOWEVER, WHAT IF I JUST WANT BRONSART AND PONTI on a single CD.  Can you accommodate me?  In other words, can you transcribe this concerto from LP to a single CD?  Please tell me you can! 

Here is the response I received from Archiv:  Thank you for getting back to us -

The labels that you have referenced: Turnabout, Candide and VOX, all exist under the umbrella of the VOX label group.

We spoke to the owner of VOX about the album you are inquiring about being brought back into print in CD form and he confirmed that this specific release will be brought back as a CD and available on ArkivMusic at some point in the future, but we don't have a strict date yet.
VOX will start bringing formerly out-of-print CDs back into print in April 2018, and albums will continue to be reissued over the next 12-18 months, so this album will be reissued within that time period. This will include releases from the Turnabout and Candide labels. Also, albums that were previously available only on LP that have never been available on CD will be made available as CDs starting in April, and those albums will continue to be released over the next 3-5 years.

You can sign up for the VOX newsletter at this link  to get an announcement about these VOX catalog reissues: www.voxcd.com. These will include announcements regarding release of recordings that have never been released on LP or CD before.

Stylistically speaking, all but the last of Braunfels' music is within our remit, even though his most successful works date from the 1920s and 30s. In his orchestral music, he often wears his debt to Richard Strauss enjoyably on his sleeve with works like the Phantastische Erscheinungen eines Themas von Hector Berlioz and the Don Juan Variations, but I have recently discovered his monumental Te Deum in a recently re-issued Orfeo recording, which has totally bowled me over. Although I have enjoyed most of Braunfels' compositions that I've heard, it came as a complete surprise that the impact and sheer musical quality of this massive four-movement 53-minute work approaches the Verdi and Brahms' Requiems and the closing stages of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony. Highly recommended.

Here's a new recording from Musique en Wallonie of Jongen's Cello Concerto and the two Poèmes for cello and orchestra. Henri Demarquette is the soloist, with the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège, conducted by Chritsian Arming.

Did anyone record the BBC Radio 3 broadcast on 8 March 2017 of Fanny Mendelssohn's "Easter" Piano Sonata? It's no longer available at the BBC site. It was long thought to be by her brother Felix, but recent research has established that it's by her. Here's the story.