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This review by Christopher Weber (Jacques Offenbach Society Newsletter #105) on the website of the Operetta Research Center calls the new double CD of Offenbach's La Princesse de Trébizonde "as complete a version as is possible". The link to the release is at the very end of the review, the whole recording is also on Youtube.

The Swiss label Cascavelle has released a CD with two quintets, one by Gustave Doret (1866-1943) and one by Fritz Bach (1881-1930). More information and sound bites here.
Fritz Bach also wrote a symphony, and this was performed by the Orchestra de la Suisse Romande under Ernest Ansermet in February 1921. I'm not sure if the score has survived but there is a digitised file of the piano reduction available, together with other scores, here.

Some forum members may be interested in a new book about Ethel Smyth, Rebecca Clarke, Dorothy Howell and Doreen Carwithen, published by Faber. A review can be found in today's Spin Doctor column on the Europadisc Website for example.

Fritz Hart (1874-1949) was mentioned here previously, for example in a thread about Australia's Unsung Symphonists back in 2010. His 40 minute symphonic suite 'The Bush' came – and went – on CD and was reviewed on MusicWeb after that post. It has also found its way to Youtube since.

Here is an interesting concept album: Swiss pianist Kathrin Schmidlin has recorded first works by eight international women composers for Claves . Some truly unknown names and works are included in this beautifully played disc.

The French festival Un temps pour elles presents 14 programmes in locations in the Val d'Oise.
 
The main topic is 'Female composers and the Grand prix de Rome'.

On 18 June the Stabat Mater by Clémence de Grandval will be performed.
The closing weekend on 8 and 9 July will feature the piano quintets by Maria Bach and Amy Beach among others.

Concerts include works by Amanda Maier, Clara Schumann, Laura Netzel, Charlotte Sohy, Marguerite Canal, Vally Weigl, Camille Saint-Saëns, Florence Price, Fanny Mendelssohn, Hélène Fleury-Roy, Alice Verne-Bredt, Nadia Boulanger, Lili Boulanger, Gabriel Fauré Colette, Mel Bonis, Louise Farrenc, Marie Jaëll, Cécile Chaminade, Marguerite Canal, Poldowski, Rita Strohl, Grace Williams, Hedwige Chrétien, Rosy Wertheim, Pauline Viardot, Hedwige Chrétien, Marguerite Roesgen Champion, Liza Lehmann, Ethel Smyth, Maria Bach, Julia Klumpke.

Information & reservations

Countess Stephanie Wurmbrand-von Stuppach was a Hungarian pianist, composer and writer. In 2019 a book was published about her for the first time. Unfortunately – for me at least ;-) – it is in Slovak, but there is a German abstract of the book that runs to 8 pages (I am happy to provide a copy to anybody who is interested, please PM me). Her Wikipedia entry is rather short but does give quite a detailed work list.

As for actually hearing her music, the only piece I have been able to find is this piece from her piano cycle op. 33 'Die schöne Melusine' in two recordings on Youtube:
https://youtu.be/kD6hKTCOqfs
https://youtu.be/Fy5TE3q8U1w

Most of her works appear to have survived, though, so more recordings may become available at some time in the future.

The Swiss city of Basel's first film lasts less than 50 seconds and was shot in 1896 – and Hans Huber can briefly be seen at the very beginning on the right of the shot with a moustache, large white collar and medallion. See here for information on this fascinating story.

[86th birthday will find him still at piano]

Charles Haubiel, the winner in the American Music category of the 1928 Columbia Schubert competition, is a composer who has only been mentioned in passing here at UC, and that was a long time ago.
When I recently gave some of my old LPs a spin, I came across one with works by him on the Orion label and found that they are now also on Youtube and the Internet Archive.

He won the Schubert competition with 'Karma'.

Other works currently available on Youtube include:

Portraits for Orchestra, Gothic Variations and Solari.

Recordings from an LP with two other orchestral works and his cello sonata can be found here in the Internet Archive.

There is rather a dearth of information about him in the 'usual places' but some digging has resulted in a link to the The Charles Haubiel papers which are held at the Washington State University Libraries and in this article from the Los Angeles Times on the occasion of his 86th birthday, shortly before his death:

Los Angeles Times, 29 January, 1978:

86th birthday will find him still at piano

Los Feliz–Dr. Charles Haubiel is busy as ever writing music. The internationally known composer of three operas, 30 chamber music compositions, three cantatas, 23 symphonic works, numerous songs and instrumental solos expects to rise Monday (his 86th birthday) and be working at the piano in his upstairs studio by 8 a.m.
"I'm working on a cantata for soprano, chorus and orchestra," he said. "It's to honor Margot Rebeil of New York. Perhaps she will have [an] opportunity to sing it in London later this year or next."
Haubiel's birthday will not go without fanfare. Women of Phi Beta, a national fraternity of music and theater arts for which Haubiel long has been a patron, have scheduled a party in his honor in the Glendale home of Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Koller Lucke.
Haubiel, who is 6-1 and 150 pounds, figures he put his first music on paper at the age of 6 while living in his native Delta, Ohio.
_"My sister Florence, who later become a concert pianist, already was into music," he recalled. "She influenced me greatly. Probably copying her, I put notes down on paper.
They were scribbled-down melodies, no doubt."
Haubiel said he finally learned piano at 10 and his first good composition was "a morning song of two or three pages."
The family had moved to New York and Haubiel's concert debut was at New York College of Music "on 58th St., as I remember."
Later he studied in Berlin and Vienna "because in those days there wasn't much in the higher echelons of piano education in the United States, as there is today."
He toured America as a concert pianist, taught at New York's Juilliard School of Music and New York University for more than a quarter of a century. A publishing firm he recently sold produced more than 600 works by 140 American composers.
Haubiel feels his best effort was a 40-minute orchestral symphony entitled "Of Human Destiny" (originally called "Karma"). It won first in an international competition in 1929.
Haubiel wants to write another opera from a play authored by Josephina Niggli.
His most-performed opera is based on a Niggli play called "Sunday Costs Five Pesos."
Of concern to Haubiel are people composing classical music today "with contrived melodies.
"It is a dangerous situation. They are abandoning traditional disciplines of composing, using new devices and equipment to create new sounds.
"They intentionally create discordance in the effort for something brand new. They add notes for shock value. They believe they are expanding the resources of musical expression. Actually, they are betraying, destroying music," he said.

A review of a new recording of the original 1907 version of Florent Schmitt's 'La Tragédie de Salomé' is available on the Europadisc website. This version, which was apparently only recorded once before, is nearly twice as long as the suite symphonique from 1910.

"Herr Dandolo", comic opera after an Italian play by Rudolf Siegel, was first performed in 1914 and appears to have been quite popular for a short time. It got generally favourable reviews. The vocal score with piano is available in the Internet Archive. Siegel was a pupil of Engelbert Humperdinck and Ludwig Thuille.

Gaetano Braga was both an opera composer and a leading cellist, and he has never been mentioned here.

I find this Bongiovanni CD with chamber works featuring the cello very attractive.

More about the composer on the schroeder170 project website, dedicated to the life and musical career of Boston Symphony and Kneisel Quartet cellist Alwin Schroeder (1855-1928).

The latest entry on Europadisc's The Spin Doctor informs us that Libor Pešek has died. A great loss.

The Austrian composer Frida Kern (Vienna 1891 - Linz 1988) was a student of Franz Schmidt and Eusebius Mandyczewski among others and left a body of 280 numbered works in all genres. The Belgian-Israeli harpist Rachel Talitman has released a CD of chamber works by Kern on her independent label Harp & Co.. Getting hold of a physical disc is not so easy, it seems, but the recording can be found here for the time being.

In addition to the recently released piano music CD with works by Beer-Walbrunn, there is also a new double CD with lieder by Beer-Walbrunn, Carnap and Furtwängler: "Im Abendrot" – with Angelika Huber, soprano and Mamikon Nakhapetov, piano.

It's only mid July but as it is my birthday today, I have decided to look forward rather than reminisce about what might have been...
The Swiss Orchestra have just announced concerts for May 2023: Swiss Dreams with Hermann Suter's Violin Concerto and George Templeton Strong's Le Livre d'Images, Suite Nr. 3. It is to be hoped there will be a radio broadcast.

Ida Georgina Moberg (1859-1947) was a Finnish composer and conductor. She studied composition with Felix Draeseke and wrote a substantial body of works, quite a few of which are sadly lost. One work that has survived is her violin concerto 'Tondikt'. This was given its world premiere in Helsinki in November 2020 by Mirka Malmi and the Wegelius kammarstråkar. Digital score and parts, from the manuscript, are available from the Savo Music Society, where the YT link for the concert can also be found. 

This poem for Piano, Organ and Voices received its first modern performance 96 years after its premiere in Barcelona in 1911. This article tells the story of the rediscovery of this composition (which I think is very beautiful and certainly unusual in its combination of instruments and voices).
There is a recording available on Youtube with Douglas Riva as the soloist here and one of the Australian premiere with Carolina Estrada, which I like at least as much, here .

For a fair number of years I have been interested in and intrigued by the life and career of the composer Carita von Horst, née Partello. Apart from a few songs from her 1926 operetta 'Kavalier Jack' which Bernard Etté and his Dance Orchestra recorded on 78s and which I have not been able to trace, except in discographies, nothing of her music appears ever to have been recorded. I have been able to obtain scans of the piano reduction of 'Kavalier Jack'(Gentleman Jack) and also that of her 1921 opera, 'Die beiden Narren' (The two Fools), and recently I have had scans made of six songs and a Sarabande, Barcarolle and poème d'amour for cello and piano from 1910. I'd be delighted to share these with anyone who might be interested.
For more information on the composer, see this article which I wrote for the Operetta Research Center.

A new French website dedicated to female composers has gone live. Despite the partly English title, it is so far only available in French. It is apparently run by the same people who started the new label that brought out the Charlotte Sohy 3-disc box set last month.