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Topics - Alan Howe

#22
Composers & Music / Reger vs Senfter: a comparison
Monday 11 March 2024, 19:09
If you compare, say, Reger's late Violin Sonata, Op.139 (from 1915) and Senfter's Violin Sonata, Op.26 (dated somewhere between 1914 and 1918), the kinship is obvious. However, it's difficult not to sense that the pupil (Senfter) is sometimes pushing slightly harder at the boundaries of tonality than the master - and that this is the direction in which she would go further over time, without crossing over into atonality. Senfter's music, very beautiful, seems to say 'this far and no further'.
#23
Composers & Music / Reger Gesang der Verklärten
Monday 11 March 2024, 12:58
I was going to post this in the Senfter thread, but decided that the music deserved a thread of its own:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M-ckm7kgJk

It's gorgeous, isn't it? And it gives us an important context for the discussion of Senfter's music. Reger wrote this in 1903, well before Senfter entered Reger's composition class at the Leipzig Royal Conservatory in October 1908. The difference, I think, is that, while Reger's use of constantly evolving chromaticism here is very obvious, somehow he manages not to lose us 'in the sludge', as Dave Hurwitz would put it. And this - i.e. 'getting lost 'in the sludge' - is the difficulty I have with Senfter's orchestral music.

Clearly, I need help...

From Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesang_der_Verkl%C3%A4rten

<<The work was first performed in Aachen on 18 January 1906 by the municipal choir and orchestra (Städtischer Gesangverein and Städtisches Orchester), conducted by Eberhard Schwickerath. A. von der Schleinitz reported in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik:

It is not enough to call Reger's Opus 71, the ink still wet on its pages, the strangest and weirdest thing that has ever resounded in notes. With its dauntless accumulation of huge masses of sound, its unbridled and randomly modulating counterpoint, its strange harmonies leaping over every commonly accepted connecting link and progression, its audacious agglomeration of ugly sounds rarely interrupted by melodic flow, and its difficulties for every participant, far exceeding anything known to date, it may well reach the outermost limit of musical expression altogether, just as it sometimes seems to be an absurd game played with musical forms by a master whose command of his craft borders on genius.>>
#25
Another release from SPMK, a 2-CD set containing:
Zelenski Piano Trio in E major, Op.22
Szeluto Piano Trio in D major, Op.81
Fitelberg (Grzegorz) Piano Trio in F minor, Op.10


https://spmk.com.pl/en/publikacja/zelenski-szeluto-fitelberg/

#28
Recordings & Broadcasts / Enescu Symphonies 1-3/etc.
Tuesday 27 February 2024, 20:40
...forthcoming from Cristian Măcelaru, conducting the Orchestre National de France (on DG):
https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/9607401--enescu-symphonies-nos-1-3-romanian-rhapsodies-1-2
#29
Recordings & Broadcasts / Mel Bonis Violin Sonata, Op.112
Wednesday 21 February 2024, 17:21
Wow! This is a very passionate and beautiful work, with soaring lines, very French, in a style somewhere between Fauré and Franck. In the new Chandos recording it is coupled with Fauré's 2nd Violin Sonata, Renaldo Hahn's Violin Sonata and a Nocturne by Lili Boulanger.
Here's an appreciative review:
https://musicwebinternational.com/2024/01/bonis-faure-hahn-violin-sonatas-chandos/
#31
Recordings & Broadcasts / Peter Benoit Choral works
Thursday 08 February 2024, 10:29
A reissue featuring some (or all?) previously released material in a 5-CD collection:
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/heaven-and-hell/hnum/11745280
#32
Composers & Music / Beethoven arr. Gevaert 'Symphony' in C
Wednesday 07 February 2024, 17:54
An orchestration of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No.3 in C major, Op.2, No.3 (1795) by Belgian composer François-Auguste Gevaert (1828-1908): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG82Ugme5Vw
#33
Recordings & Broadcasts / 'Swiss Dreams': 2-CD set
Wednesday 31 January 2024, 22:55
An interesting miscellany of works:
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/stalder-swiss-dreams/hnum/11689619

Contents:

Joseph Franz Xaver Dominik Stalder: Symphony in E flat
Edouard Dupuy: "Jugend und Leichtsinn" ("Youth and Recklessness"): Overture
Franz Xaver Schnyder von Wartensee: Overture in C minor
Hans Huber: Serenade No.2 "Winternächte" ("Winter Nights")
George Templeton Strong: Suite No.3 "Le Livre d'Images"
Hermann Suter: Violin Concerto in A major, Op. 23
Paul Huber: Concerto for Dulcimer & String Orchestra

Performers:
Michael Barenboim (violin),
Christoph Pfändler (dulcimer),
Swiss Orchestra,
Lena-Lisa Wüstendörfer (conductor)
#36
Conductor Golo Berg has kindly told us that cpo are shortly to release his recording of Julius Otto Grimm's Symphony in D minor, coupled with same composer's Suite in Kanonform.

To consult our previous thread on the Symphony, please follow this link:
https://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,8198.0.html

Following the release of the CD, the download of the radio broadcast will, of course, cease to be available from this website.
#37
Recordings & Broadcasts / Franck: Hulda (Bru Zane)
Sunday 31 December 2023, 22:48
We've discussed the opera at some length and mentioned the Bru Zane release, but perhaps we need an opportunity to debate its merits here...

To kick us off, my initial impression is that the Bru Zane recording features a more disciplined orchestral response, but I haven't come to any firm conclusions about the singing - yet. It's certainly an enormously sophisticated score; when I think back to pre-CD days when I was fascinated by Franck and his followers, I would never have imagined that a recording would be made one day - and now we have two!






#39
Recordings & Broadcasts / Dubois Symphony No.3
Monday 25 December 2023, 23:22
...in A minor, dating from 1915 (published in 1923) and dedicated to Saint-Saens:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m-ZHQ_1VGg

#40
Recordings & Broadcasts / Dubois: Miguela (opera)
Monday 25 December 2023, 21:51
An intriguing brief excerpt from Dubois' opera Miguela:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIGAtTM0lIg

Wikipedia has this entry:

Miguela, opéra (3 acts) (Originally unperformed, except prélude and second act tableau from Act 3, concert perf. 23 February 1896, Paris.) f.p. 18 May 1916, Opéra, Paris.