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Benedict's letters and other materials are scattered all over archives with only minimal rhyme and reason, which makes research tricky but not impossible - for instance, Berlin holds a large collection of his letters and writings, including the manuscript of his Weber biography. Another American archive holding a fair number of letters is the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C., which may seem odd except that Benedict wrote incidental music for Henry Irving's production of Romeo and Juliet in 1882 (some of the letters are addressed to Bram Stoker, Irving's manager) and he also composed an overture to The Tempest (op. 77) which was performed at the Exeter Hall on 11 March 1856 and published by Enoch & Sons in full score in 1875. He had contacts all over Europe and the United States, so it makes sense that people who came into possession of his materials (and valued them enough to keep them) gave them to institutions they lived near. The contents of Cornell's particular packet of letters in French were all sent to the same addressee, whose address is not listed in the Olin Library's catalogue. In my paper I quote from an 1844 letter to Ludwig Rellstab requesting help in securing German performances of his recently produced opera The Brides of Venice, which is not in an archive but in a German autograph dealer's list which quotes the passage. As most autograph collectors want the object but not necessarily its contents, I've written the dealer several times offering to pay for a transcript of the whole letter, which he has evidently already made, but have had no response. So it seems I'd have to pay 500 euros to get the letter to make a translation myself, which I cannot really justify or do, but at least I have the reference to the dealer's catalogue.

My biggest discovery was finding out that his journals from 1840 to 1885 (lacking 1882) are at the RCM. It's really surprising that he was such an assiduous diarist - when did he have the time? - though his journals may mostly consist of business matters. I'm making a start at examining them when I come to the UK next month.

He must have had enormous commitment and energy to do as much as he did from when he arrived in Britain in 1836 plus attending to what seems to have been a loving family of a wife and five (!) children. Losing his wife and young son in 1851-52 must have been a shattering blow, and it's a sign of the strength of his character that he emerged in 1854 from a long period of near-total seclusion and threw himself back into his work with the same energy as before, leading up to composing The Lily of Killarney in 1862, his symphony in 1873, organizing and conducting the Norwich Festivals and his monster annual concerts as before, and conducting the Liverpool Philharmonic from 1867 to 1880. His remarriage in 1879 caused some comment, as he was 75 and his bride, Mary Comber Fortey (who had been a student of his for some years and was evidently an excellent pianist), was 23. They even had a son in 1881.

Benedict often appeared in caricatures as he was such an omnipresent musical figure, but occasionally some of them seem, to me at least, a little nasty. This 1873 image by "Spy" (Leslie Ward) seems to refer to Benedict's Jewish background in its pose and the hair "tails" (which he never wore), although he had converted to Catholicism (his first wife was a French Catholic) in 1833. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I'd be glad of others' opinions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Benedict#/media/File:Sir_Julius_Benedict_Vanity_Fair_27_September_1873.jpg

It's an interesting predicament with this piece. Benedict's piano concertos and their opus numbers are something of a muddle: the 2nd concerto op. 89, as you note, begins with much earlier-written material than its "completion" date of 1867, as does his 3rd concerto. The Concertino he played in New York with Timm and the New York Philharmonic would have to be a tremendous reworking of any previous material to give enough "meat" for two pianos, and he would have had to write it in Britain to bring with him - the arrangements for his NYP appearance were undoubtedly made months before, because he had enough to do without him supposing he'd have an opportunity "crop up" to play the piece. He did bring other works to conduct in the US which are seemingly now lost, notably his Festival Overture op. 42, but who knows? That last may have also been published in Germany but hasn't turned up yet. His Crusaders overture was either published or circulated in handwritten parts as I've found notices of it in several German concert programmes into the 1860s, so the Festival Overture may have gone the same path. (I don't even know what occasion made it a "Festival" overture, though op. 42 puts its composition date around the time of the 1st piano concerto, which is op. 45). I keep finding holes and filling them in with unexpected finds in odd places. I just found out there's a small cache of his letters at Cornell University, about 2 hours from where I live, so I hope to go and see them next week.

I've done a great deal more work on Benedict since the last time I posted on this forum, and will be presenting a paper on his first three English-language operas (The Gipsy's Warning, The Brides of Venice, and The Crusaders) at the Music in Nineteenth Century Britain conference at the Open University next month. These three operas were considered lost but I have found scores and parts for all of them in various German archives, where Benedict's operas held the stage for nearly thirty years. I've also discovered a great deal more biographical information about him, some of it quite tragic (he lost his 12-year old son and his 37-year old first wife within a year under horrifying circumstances), and I've located his personal journals as well, which I will examine while I'm in Britain.

To giles.enders list of orchestral works may be added a Concertino for two pianos and orchestra (op. 29), which Benedict and Henry Christian Timm (1811-1892) performed with the New York Philharmonic conducted by George Loder (1816-1868, Edward J. Loder's cousin) on 9 September 1850. That piece is currently lost, as are several of Benedict's other orchestral works, but as things are turning up in unexpected places, who knows?

I know I have occasionally ruffled some feathers here with my championing of Benedict's G minor Symphony (op. 101), and I have to say I don't think his piano concertos are necessarily his best work, but my attention was drawn to a private recording on YouTube of the overture to The Crusaders (1846) which might also startle people on this forum, especially when placed alongside contemporary works like Balfe's The Bohemian Girl (1843; after Balfe conducted the premiere at Drury Lane on 27 November, Benedict handled most performances thereafter as the theatre's resident conductor) and Wallace's Maritana (1845). This was performed on 11 September 1975 at Castle Clinton in lower Manhattan; it was a concert celebrating the 125th anniversary of Jenny Lind's first American appearance at Castle Garden, New York's largest performing space at the time, to an audience of approximately 4500 people. Benedict (who toured with Lind as her accompanist and conductor for the astounding fee of $25,000) led The Crusaders overture at the beginning of the original concert's Part II. (The first piece on the programme was Weber's Oberon overture, possibly used to emphasize Benedict's relationship with Weber.) The orchestra here is the American Symphony under Ainslee Cox, and the parts used at this concert have also vanished; strangely I learned why and how first-hand forty years ago. If there's any question whether Benedict had skill and style at his best, this overture might answer it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQKcUYANDRY&list=RDnQKcUYANDRY&start_radio=1

And I'd still like to know his late violin sonata and string quartet. Nicholas Temperley rather liked them, and Cobbett is not always "right". 

One other thing about the Reissiger symphony - it's possible that the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin has scanned the manuscript, as I remember seeing its last page somewhere online, maybe on their website. Now to locate the Schlesinger parts - maybe in Vienna?

Yelva was something of a standard rep piece in the 19th and early 20th century with provincial orchestras; we used the Hawkes & Son "Standard Overtures" edition, which was aimed at theatre and large resort orchestras. You can hear a cut version (but brilliantly performed) by Arthur Pryor's Band on the Discography of American Historical Recordings. Pryor plays the entire introduction, but the Allegro consists of the recap and coda in order to fit it on a 12-inch 78 disc. Pryor conducts very expressively, and infuses the band with a lot of passion (a sure sign is the prominent ultra-low F in the tubas at the beginning and end).

What's evident here, and I've heard it in other Reissiger works, is that his melodic style has more Italianate lyric gestures than some of his contemporaries, and he also uses Italian-style four-note repeated rhythmic patterns. Anyway here's a link to the band version from 1909: https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/matrix/detail/200008010/C-7049-Yelva_overture

I would certainly say that Amy Beach was as good an American composer as any of her day. She certainly was versatile, and unlike many of her contemporaries (like Chadwick, whom I am very fond of as well) she experimented with style as she got older. Her works from the 1930s are nothing like most of her earlier music, which is people are familiar with, if they're familiar with her at all.

I have to say that her Symphony has always been a little problematic for me; much of the instrumentation is very heavy and it's a very hard work to balance as a conductor. The best performance of it I've ever heard was here in Rochester by the Rochester Philharmonic under Arild Remmereit in 2012; he really was able to get orchestral detail and colour out of it, and the finale was stunningly fiery.  The Piano Concerto is much more nuanced in its orchestration, in my opinion, and easier to get to "sound".

What about Carl Gottlieb Reissiger's Symphony in E flat, op. 120 (1835)? The manuscript FS is in Berlin, but I think Schlesinger published parts and a four-hand piano arrangement in 1838. All I've heard and played by Reissiger seems to be of very good quality - both chamber and orchestral works. His melodic gift was exceptional, much more lyric than, say, Marschner, and his orchestration is masterful. Most people, if they know him at all, know the overture to his opera Die Felsenmuehle, but I've played in several of his piano trios and conducted a run through of his Yelva overture, which is better than Die Felsenmuehle.  He never disappoints me, at least.

I think there's a new and very good recording of Lo schiavo out that has received strong reviews.

He was also a close associate of Victor Herbert for some years as concertmaster of both the Pittsburgh Orchestra (predecessor of the the present Pittsburgh Symphony) during Herbert's tenure as conductor there (1898-1904) and the first concertmaster of Victor Herbert's Orchestra, the ensemble Herbert independently formed after leaving Pittsburgh.

Has anyone looked into performing or recording Rudolf Friml's Piano Concerto in B-flat major? There is something labelled "Concerto for Piano and Orchestra III" with MS score and parts in Boxes 93 and 94 in the Friml Collection at UCLA, and I know of no other work for piano and orchestra by Friml so I am guessing it is that work, especially as in the chronological order of boxes it seems likely (and there is nothing labelled "I" or "II").  As far as I know it has been either given very few or no performances since Friml himself premiered it at Carnegie Hall with the New York Symphony under Walter Damrosch on 17 November 1904, and it was never published. Most sources - including Friml himself - give the wrong date ("1906"), wrong orchestra ("New York Philharmonic") and even wrong key of the work ("B-major"). The earliest orchestral work of his I am familiar with is his 1906 intermezzo "A Garden Matinee", which my orchestra plays and which was recorded by the Victor Orchestra under Walter B. Rogers in New York on 7 November 1906; the little intermezzo is charming, but Friml was known as a good orchestrator, was a brilliant pianist, and had a fiery temperament (to say the least). I expect this concerto, whatever it is, would certainly be worth looking at; if it is the early B-flat work, Friml thought enough of it to keep it to the end of his very long life, even he seems to have only played it in public that one time when he was 25.

This was always regarded as an unsubtle work - one early 1900s opera guide calls it "a crude but effective melodrama" - but it is pretty fierce in this performance. Apolloni's main problem is his orchestration, which is a little rudimentary and the out-of-tune Italian winds in this orchestra unfortunately highlight that. (He does take advantage of the use of valve trombones in 19th-century Italian orchestras, though, and there are a couple of pretty wild passages in the recording by the modern slide trombone players trying to cope with the parts.) Nonetheless, this performance shows why it was so popular in its day, as it has a lot of guts and sheer zest, and Apolloni's melodic sense is very assured. I'm very fond of it.

Hello again - this may be an off-kilter question, but I was scanning the Wikipedia article on Henry Hugo Pierson and it mentioned that the orchestral material for his oratorio Jerusalem (1852) is not extant, though a vocal score was published. Of course Wikipedia is infallible and the source for all world knowledge, but the title page of the J. Alfred Novello VS of Jerusalem lists the individual parts available for hire and/or purchase, from 1st violin to ophicleide and tympani. Earlier this summer, Mr. Eastick of this group mentioned a Suffolk warehouse of Novello's filled with orchestral material where a friend of his had gained access in 2012 through knowing people and persisting at getting in there.  Has there been any further news of this cache, and might the parts to Jerusalem be in there?  The piano reduction in the VS is extremely elaborate, it's a sprawling and decidedly unconventional choral work, and considering how unusual Pierson's music is (whatever other qualities you think it has) and how scarce any of his major works are, would more effort towards accessing the Novello holdings be worth pursuing?

(And at some point I'd like to ask if anyone in this forum has contacts, or contacts with contacts, with anybody at Ricordi to find out about material on Balfe's Pittore e duca [1854] in their "secret holdings" , but I'm already starting to veer way off topic!...)

I'll be very curious to hear this.  I like the ballet music very much, which seemed to have retained some popularity into the 20th century. I have it by the Band of the Grenadier Guards under Albert Williams, who recorded it complete on four 12" 78 sides for Columbia in about 1913-14. That was an unusually lengthy instrumental piece to issue at the time, which indicates both Williams's interest and Columbia's generosity.

Actually, in the op. 19 Symphony the trombones are in each movement except the first. According to the printed score, Silas replaced the slow movement and scherzo he had originally written with those now in the printed score in 1860, which would predate the symphony's earliest known performances.

I would say Silas's style here could be viewed as conservative, but no more so than Saint-Saëns's early symphonic works or Gounod's symphonies. It certainly doesn't feel at all Germanic, at least to me.  After long study I think I like the slow movement and finale best. though all have good tunes (the clarinet solo in the opening of the first movement has real lyricism, for instance).  The finale starts arrestingly with tympani and basses and goes on to an unusual opening theme, the broad second subject first appears for strings alone (actually a string quartet texture - the contrabass is left out), reappears as a bright apotheosis for winds and brass against string figuration, and the piece winds up very succinctly. Silas's orchestral music may well be superior on the whole to his organ and piano music, but there's really only this one work that's accessible at this moment from which to form an opinion.  I've looked at the organ music on IMSLP and was as unevenly impressed (to be kind) as others on this forum.  However, any Victorian who on one hand would predictably write a "sacred drama" eulogizing Joash (who, I'm sorry to say, is as obscure to me as St. Polycarp in Gore Ouseley's oratorio) and on the other pen a "Burlesque Symphony" tied to Punch magazine had something odd in his mind that piques my interest to investigate him further.

[C]

That's the Sibley Library's general ref for the BL's Catalogue of Printed Music published prior to 1980.  I was just going to have one of my students use the printed edition of the Silas A major symphony off of IMSLP as their basis for generating parts. (My wife, the Sibley Library bookbinder, made me a quick hardbound reference copy of it, which makes it much more convenient to study.) I have a friend within the BL who may be able to help me get microfilms (remember those?) of the MS volumes of the two other symphonies, the "Elegie", and at least a survey of what Nitocris consists of (the instrumentation and voice distribution, whether Fitzball's complete libretto is included, etc.)  I think Joash was published so that might be a bit easier to examine, but I'm more interested (at least initially) in Victorian secular rather than sacred drama, heathen that I am. And I am tenuously affiliated with several scholarly institutions as adjunct professor; it means I hold a somewhat shabby hat in my hand as I look up pleadingly for admission through research libraries' golden portals, but I haven't been thrown out on my ear yet.