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A few others I don't think have been mentioned yet:

Bridge 'The Sea'
Elgar 'Sea Pictures'
Rubenstein Symphony No 2 'Ocean'
Ravel 'Une Barque sur l'Ocean'
Bax 'On the Sea-Shore'
Bantock Hebridean Sea Poems (Caristiona, The Sea Reivers)
Bantock Hebridean Symphony
Flagello 'Sea Cliffs'
MacDowell 'Sea Pieces'
Hanson Symphony No 7 'A Sea Symphony'

and of course:
Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture
Beethoven 'Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage'

Morten,

Just FYI, the booklet is in English, German and French, but the libretto is only in German sans translation.

I can send you a scan of the booklet for the Dennis Russell Davies recording, which does have the libretto (I assume this is the EMI recording you refer to). If you send me an email address I can email it to you.

Now that Spring is here and the air is filled with the songs of birds, I'm inspired to introduce the following topic:

What composers have incorporated bird songs (actual or imitated) into their compositions? Those that immediately come to mind:

Oliver Messiaen, who was an ornothologist, and incorporated specific bird songs into many of his works culminating in his Catalogue D'Oseaux and Oiseaux Exotiques.

Rautavaara has his 'Cantus Arcticus' a Concerto for Birds and Orchestra.

Resphighi's Fountains of Rome includes imitations of bird songs and more explicitly in his suite  'The Birds'

Saint-Saens has several birds in the 'Carnival of the Animals'

Vaughan Williams in the Lark Ascending (several other works evoke birds as I recall).

Swans are well represented in the aforementioned Carnival, Sibelius' Swan of Tuonela, Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake (if somewhat obliquely).

The bird and the duck in Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf.

Contemporary Japanese composer Tokashi Yoshimatsu (who I heartily recommend to those unfamiliar with him) has many bird song inspired works as well as his better known older contemporary Toru Takemitsu.

Biber incorporates bird songs in several of his violin sonatas, the most explicit is the sonata 'Cock, Hen & Quail'

Vivaldi's flute concerto 'The Goldfinch' explicitly imitates a bird song and there are definite bird song parts of 'Spring'.

Handel has his organ concerto 'The Cuckoo and the Nightingale'

Couperin has several harpsichord works based on bird songs, notably 'Le Rossignol-en-amour et Double'.

Janacek has the somewhat obscure chamber work 'March of the Bluebirds' (Pochod Modrácku)

And jazz musician Paul Winter frequently includes recordings of live bird songs in his music (and uses the bird songs and other natural sounds as inspiration for improvisations).

But most of the above examples are pretty well sung composers (excepting possibly Biber and Yoshimatsu). So where are the unsung compositions using bird songs. The only one that immediately comes to my mind is Holbrooke's 'The Birds of Rhiannon' (James MacMillan has also composed a piece based on this Welsh legend, but I don't recall any specific attempts to imitate birds in it), and more obscurely Chris Sainsbury's 'Symphony of the Birds' (excerpts here:
http://www.sainsburymusic.com/sounds-and-scores).

In addition most of those listed already I would add Hovhannes' 2nd, 'Mysterious Mountain' as one of those I re-listen to frequently, especially the Reiner recording.

For something more on the unsung side, the Raff 2nd has always been one of my favorites of his.

I'd like to put in a plug for Fr. Lorenzo Pelosi. The Italian label Bongiovanni has done yeoman's work in bringing the composition of this very unjustly neglected composer to light. I was first introduced to his music via his choral works. He was a Catholic priest and wrote many very beautiful masses in a traditional manner. As I explored the recordings further I then discovered his chamber works which I also found charming and beautiful, well crafted, memorable melodies. Finally I discovered his large scale choral works (there are several large impressive oratorios) and his orchestral works and concertos.

I think he is one of the most unjustly underrated Italian composers of the 20th century and deserves a wider audience.

For some reason I don't quite understand only about a third of the Bongiovanni discs of his work are available from the main retailers (Amazon, CDConnection, ArkivMusic), but this Italian internet retailer seems to have the entire catalog:

http://www.ibs.it/cd/ser/serpge.asp?ty=exa&x=25137


If anyone else is familiar with Perosi, I would love to hear of your impressions.

There's also a string sextet by Rimsky-Korsakov, an early work. There's a recording on Czech label Praga. I don't have the recording, I'll have to get a copy. You can hear some short excpts here:

http://www.editionsilvertrust.com/rimsky-korsakov-string-sextet.htm

In addition to Gade, I would add Glinka and Gliere.

Does Glinka have a string sextet? I am only aware of the Grand Piano Sextet.
Also Gliere has written three string sextets, I'm not sure all have been recorded (Op 11, the 3rd has several recordings, I'm not sure about the first two).

Here are some others you might like to try:

Boccherini wrote several nice ones.
Borodin (not complete, but quite lovely like all of Borodin's very limited output)

There are also string sextets worth exploring by:
Frank Bridge
Max Reger
Joachim Raff
Ludwig Norman
Julius Rontgen
Erwin Schulhoff
Andrzej Panufnik
Louis Glass
Eduard Franck (2)
Mihaly Mosonyi
Vincent D'Indy
Richard Strauss - String Sextet from Capriccio

in a more modern vein:
Charles Wuorinen
Bachara El-Khoury (not a traditional sextet it is for all violins, avail on Naxos arr for orch of 24 violins)

A bit off-forum (not classical unsung composers), but there is also quite of beautiful Arab/Persian/Turkish inspired jazz worth hearing. A few recommendations:

Anouar Brahem
Kayhan Khalor
Ghazal
Khaled

Some of John Zorn and John Surman have middle east flavors.

And more traditional:
Faramarz Payvar
Hossein Alizadeh

Also Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan is always worth hearing as well, his more traditional stuff is wonderful and he just did a beautiful semi-classical style piece last year with several rock/pop stars (Linda Rondstadt, Alanis Morrisette), John Williams and the English Chamber orchestra called "The Prayer Cycle" which has a lot of middle eastern influences.

A few other thoughts:

Arensky: Egyptian Nights ballet
Balakirev: Islamey
Ron Goodwin: Arabian Celebration for orchestra

Like most members here, the difficulty lies in just picking one or two 'tops', so I will just mention the first things that popped into my head which were the Atterberg Requiem and the Foulds Cello Concerto.

The contemporary Latvian composer, Peteris Vasks, has a lovely concerto for cor anglais and orchestra.

It's interesting that the Romantics who did write for oboe solo seem to have largely been drawn from those best known as opera composers. I suspect it is because of the vocal quality of the oboe that composers like Verdi, Rossini and Bellini had a natural affinity for it.

His large scale choral work "Bethlehem" and his opera "The Immortal Hour" immediately come to mind as worthwhile. I also have a recording of his 3rd symphony, but it left no distinct impression, I'll have to give it another listen.

I recently started a conversation of oboe concertos and Boughton has a nice one as well as a pair of oboe quartets. I only have a recording of the first, but it is quite lovely as is the other chamber music that I have heard. (There is not much recorded, not sure how much there is).

Gentile,

As for why the oboe concerto fell in disuse during the Romantic era, I find it difficult to tell. The appearance of the clarinet as a competitor may have something to do but, in general, Romantic composers were not too attracted by wind concertos of any type. Perhaps because the Romantics conceived the concerto for virtuoso soloists and the wind performers were not of the same stature as the contemporary giants of the violin (Paganini, Joachim, Sarasate, Ysaye,...) and piano (Liszt, Rubinstein, Thalberg...).

I think your explanation probably goes a long way in explaining the dearth of oboe concertos in the Romantic era. Still the clarinet seems to have fared better both in concertante works and chamber music.  The need to write for the concert hall where you needed a big name virtuoso to draw a crowd (not so different from now) would've caused composers to focus on getting pieces for the well known players. While the classical and baroque composers were much more focused on writing pieces to keep the musicians in the court or local orchestra well employed. The revival in the 20th is certainly part of the general 20th century movement to explore orchestral 'colors' more, which is why a much wider range of instruments for both chamber and concertante works are used.


Thanks for the additional 20th century recommendations. I will have to add them to my 'look for' list. I have a recording of the Canzonetta, I agree it is lovely. I wasn't aware that it was intended to be part of a larger work.