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Repeating myself, I know.....but the Hadley piano quintet (also included in this invaluable box set of American quartets played by the Kohon Quartet) impresses me as a very fine piece. Echoing Minacciosa, it is a work that thoroughly deserves wide exposure.

I don't wish damage to those veins, LateRomantic, but to listen to some of the chamber works might raise the blood levels even higher. The last CPO disc gave us the Op. 40 Piano Quintet in B minor - in my view the work joins the category of top notch piano quintets (that is praise indeed given what else lies within that exalted category).

I've much enjoyed those orchestral works - but I'm especially grateful to CPO for providing us with not only the work above, but also the Piano Quartet Op. 25, Piano Trio Op. 29, Cello Sonata, Op. 35, and the String Quartet Op. 58. I've found all of them wonderfully satisfying works. Dora Pejacevic is one of my happiest discoveries of the last couple of years. Just think: until recently most of us had never even heard of her. Whoopee for CPO.

I understand, Tom, that the Samuel disc is not released in the UK until 8 October. Be patient!

I don't know the works (not the sort of thing you'd hear at Aldeburgh!), but I'm ordering the disc on the basis of my enjoyment of Volume 1 - and the second CPO disc devoted to the music for Piano Trio.

Looks as if Graener is becoming well and truly adopted by CPO - and I make no complaint about that. Rather wish they'd hurry up, though, in releasing many other potentially treasurable recordings reputed to be hidden away in their vaults. (How about the completion of the Raff string quartet series for example!)

Oh, this one will bring me immense pleasure. Thank you for the alert, Alan.

Let's see if I can beat Mark to it!

You can get both:
Raff, Helene: Joachim Raff - Portrait of a Life (Trans Alan Howe)
and
Raff, Helene: Leaves from Life's Tree (Trans Alan Howe)

from www.raff.org

They are wonderfully handsome books, fluently translated, thoroughly readable, and of much interest to areas and issues beyond Raff himself.

Oooh, I've made Alan and Mark blush!

Thank you very much, Martin. I appreciate your notification of the disc. I'm intrigued by this instrumental combination - and there is only one way to find out what it sounds like. So the disc is ordered (from Amazon UK, and I noted it was the last copy in stock. Don't know whether they will get more stocks - if not, it is a pity since the sharks then move in and prices rocket sky high.)

I shall look forward to the disc - jolly good, for it is around 70+ minutes of the Sextet plus other works. Fetis is a composer who I'm dimly aware of but have not really discovered. I know the E flat Symphony, rather a conservative and portentous thing but with some unexpected flourishes to it which give pleasure. Rather better is the Fantasie symphonique - but played at a decent volume that work can place the chimney pots at risk and attract exasperated yells from my wife several rooms away. Thereafter my knowledge of Fetis ends, so these chamber works will give me another side to him.

Thanks again! (Can't help regretting, though, it is the Fetis work I've ordered, and not the Jadassohn. That would have been something else.)

Thank you Martin! Golly, it would be wonderful to hear the work. Maybe one day - hope so!

I was unaware of the Fetis work, and one point of my post was to ask whether such a piano duet and string quartet combination was unique to Jadassohn. That another work exists I suppose slightly increases the probability of it being recorded if one company was willing to muster up the forces and include both works on a single disc. (OK, I'm fantasising!)

Haven't pursued it, but I'd guess the Fetis would precede the Jadassohn? No influence I suppose from one to the other?

Whooooooshhhh! Thank you so much for this, Eric. What a potentially illuminating piece. I'm no musicologist, and thus have to work hard to grasp all the details (and to test out my understanding by repeated visits to the CD player to listen bits of music - fortunately I have a metre or so of Reger, and especially the chamber music).

Early days yet (or rather hours), but the gist of what you're claiming makes a very great amount of sense. It explains, for one thing, why many Reger pieces don't admit of any easy or relatively straightforward 'access'. First time I listened to the Violin Concerto, for example, I was baffled, couldn't easily follow what was going on, and then after 50 minutes or so it all finished - and just why at that point? The same is true of the String Quartets (and especially the Op. 118 String Sextet surely?) All these works require you surrender your expectations (prejudices?), submit to the music a few times, and then once it has got under the skin, glory in the stuff. (And I do think 'glory' is exactly the right word here.)

I think you've helped a great deal in my understanding of these matters. The 'difficulty' in accessing or getting into many of Reger's works initially is to do with the absence of (in crude non-theoretical language) stops, rests, sections and so on. That's not his way of organising his material. Except in obvious counter-examples such as the Op. 100 Hiller Variations.

Analogy. There are some speakers / lecturers who are especially popular with first year students, and their success is due to the way they lay out material. Clear, easily identifiable paragraphs / sections, emphasisng or underlining of sub-conclusions, summing up, drawing deep breath, make sure audience has got the point, clear explanations of how those sub-conclusions then motivate the next section..... Maybe arrange all the key bullet points on an O/H projector (always hated doing that!). Crudely speaking, you can easily hear the analogue of that in a classical sonata form.

But not Reger. Your suggestion of the music being organised around different 'types of activity' immediately makes sense. When I read your preface to the Symphonic Prologue I was conscious of several light bulbs being illuminated in my otherwise dense head. My first guess is that you've thrown me a valuable key to unlocking Reger and enabling me to explain to myself why I find his music so powerful and compelling. Thank you!

Much more frivolously: do sometime explain the bathroom incident relating to the Op. 72 Violin Sonata - that's something I've never encountered before! (In the literature there are vast numbers of hilarious Reger stories, often at the edge of sheer vulgarity. One of my favourites was after the first Meiningen performance of his Bocklin Tone Poems Op. 128 when Princess Marie of Saxe-Meiningen asked him "Good heavens, Herr Hoffrat, did all the bassoons make those sounds with their mouths?" to which Reger replied - looking her straight in the eye - "I sincerely hope so, your Highness").

I suspect I've a week or so coming up of revisiting Reger chamber works now equipped with your potentially illuminating suggestions. Thank you! I think we're lucky and privileged to have you as an especially active member of this forum (no blushes!)

Let me stick this one on the tail end of an existing thread.

I was browsing through the Jadassohn work list (and lamenting that so many of his chamber works remain unrecorded), and then noted a work which I can't remember spotting before:

Sextet in G major (1888) for Piano-4 Hands, 2 Violins, Viola & Cello.

This is surely something quite extraordinary? I can't think of any similar work with Piano 4-Hands. Anyone know it? Anyone played it? What does it sound like? (Knowing Jadassohn, it is probably rather a good work that leaves one thinking: why hasn't any other composer used 4 hands and string quartet?)

Two other Jadassohn questions: some sources (e.g. New Grove) attribute 2 string Quartets to Jadassohn. I think this is mistaken, and there is in fact only a single quartet - in C minor, Op. 10. True or false?

(Incidentally the New Grove simply reprints a short entry on Jadassohn by Grove himself. It is so full of remarks along the lines of 'much skill but little inspiration' that one is tempted to chuck the thing out of the window. We also get "...as a teacher J was highly esteemed by scholastic authorities, but his pupils often found him uninspiring". That view seems to me to be founded on nothing but unexamined evidence and prejudice, and contradicts what I've read elsewhere. Inexcusable...and what is New Grove doing using an entry that is now (presumably) 100+ years old? To be fair, I'm so busy ranting I haven't checked the on-line Grove but hopefully that has an updated article.)

Question 2: does anyone have any news at all about CPO's plans to record / release the 4 symphonies? There's a now pretty ancient thread going back to 2009 when Alan notified us of CPO's intentions...but sadly all has been quiet since. (In the unlikely event of my winning the National Lottery I think I'd buy CPO so I could release everything stored up in their vaults - plus a good number of out of print CDs that are offered for silly prices in places like Amazon.)

Heavens, Eric! Far more likely for the earth to reverse its orbit than for my love of Beethoven to expire.

And no, Mark, not Mahler. Though I do confess that, for me, he is a once in a while composer, and only in the flesh. (I'm psychologically quite incapable of sitting in my armchair in my own music room listening to, say, the C minor symphony. Other than the songs the only Mahler I could tolerate in less than a concert hall would be his arrangement for string orchestra of Schubert's D810).

Don't worry, FBerwald - just blow raspberries back at 'em. I happen to enjoy Reger very much, but I wouldn't expect everyone to share that enjoyment. The world would be a very dull place if we all converged in our preferences.

Might cheer you up if I confess there's a certain composer who often flits through various threads here who I've decided I really don't like at all. It is not so much the case that he doesn't 'do' anything for me. Far worse than that, I'd probably cover up my ears and run screaming from the concert hall. I find his music clumsy, ponderous, bombastic, usually far too loud and always far too long. Can't understand at all why nearly everyone else regards him in profound awe and veneration. Your view of Reger is probably quite mild compared to mine of ..... And nope, not going to reveal the name for nearly everyone else would wish disease, famine, pestilence, and eternal fire and brimstone on me. Along with a few locusts and a plague or two.

Stand firm against the hordes of Regerians and don't think for a moment that your musical judgments are somehow defective. Now perhaps back to the safer world of The Romantic Piano Concerto Vol. 61.

Oh, the pleasures of dipping into the unsung! Maybe he is someone whom everyone else has encountered save myself. But searching the site for the name turns up nothing, so (fingers crossed) maybe I bring a benefit to others in referring to him.

Adophe Blanc, a French composer 1828-1885. He studied in Paris, but while others gamboled about the opera house he pursued the path of chamber music. I discovered him via an impulse purchase of an ATMA disc (ACD2 2224) containing the Septet for Clarinet, French Horn, Bassoon, Violin, Viola, Cello & Double Bass Op. 40; the Trio for Clarinet, Cello & Piano Op. 23; and the Quintet for Piano, Flute, Clarinet, French Horn & Bassoon Op. 37.

Music that is not sufficient to alter the daily course of the planets, but nonetheless decidedly felicitous. I enjoyed the elegance and polish of these three works. Listening to them produced a satisfied smile upon the face following the well crafted and fastidious working out of melody. Strange to think the working life of this composer, firmly wedded to traditional forms and musical language, overlapped that of Berlioz who was busy making mayhem in the musical world.

Hopefully no-one will tell me to pull up my socks and listen to proper music!

It's a difficult one. Like Alan, my instinct is to agree. Deciding something should not be recorded, which is just about equivalent to banishing it from the public ear, would seem to be just as regrettable as censorship. And none of us would want to play the role of a censor.

On the other hand a certain realism must prevail. Imagine yourself to be whipping up the funds to organise a concert. Wouldn't you feel a little wretched if you knew the proposed works in your concert were third rate, pretty shoddy, and actually not worth a performance? You'd want to preserve your funds for unsung works that you considered at least worthwhile. Same with record companies surely. For good or ill there's a huge amount of music out there, and far more than one could hope to listen to even in a long life of dedicated listening. It just isn't sensible or practical to hope to record it all.

Incidentally, and forgive me, for years of correcting text have produced an ingrained habit: the 'weather' is the thing that rains. You surely meant the subordinating conjunction of 'whether'.

And my experience of reading Spinoza is to engage with unending torrents of hell. Listening to Reger is light relief in comparison. (Earlier tonight I treated myself to the Op. 49/1 Clarinet Sonata. Ha, pure bliss.)

Humph, guess you were top of the class in History, Mark (I never seemed to progress beyond the Tudors). Yes, of course you're right. Just try saying to yourself 'early 19th century Polish composer' and you realise immediately that no-one could fit into that category.

On a very minor point I defend myself by pointing out I did write in parenthesis "with a few notable exceptions" - for I could never neglect Goldmark (up there in the almost top notch in my view).

But I confess I did forget about Volkmann. I've got into the long-entrenched habit of thinking of him as a German composer. After all, he was born in Saxony, and I suppose the contact with figures such as Schumann and Brahms reinforced that habit. (Into the mind pops that claim to be found somewhere in Nietzsche: "'What are our 'truths'? - Nothing but our habitual prejudices.") I had forgotten that Volkmann eventually settled in Budapest, taught there, and finally died in Hungary. So you're vindicated and I hang my head in shame on account of my prejudices!