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I understand that we can expect Raff's final opera Die Eifersüchtigen to be released on a major label later this year, probably sometime in the autumn. It's a live recording, taken from the 2022 Zurich performances, with some studio infill and I can vouch for its quality. More, as soon as I know it.

Extracts form the album can be heard here. Apart from the Lieder des Alters set, all of them could have been written pre-WWI.

[A further update]

A further update:

Now that Ilja has completed his promised visit to the Franke Foundation archive in Dresden, it's a good time to post an update on our investigations into the Franke fraud, as it has clarified a number of issues:

Firstly, it's clear that, despite our earlier suspicions and the lack of evidence for the pre-war biography quoted in reviews, articles and recordings, Hans Franke did actually exist and wasn't the creation of someone else. He was a jobbing musical administrator in Dresden and the surrounding Saxony area of Germany and it seems likely that he began his plagiarisms of 19th century compositions after suffering continued rejections of his own, poor quality, works. The "premieres" of those fraudulent works began in the war years as Franke no doubt took advantage of the Nazis' policy of removing Jewish and other "degenerate" music from the repertoire, thereby creating a gap which he could fill, although even then these performances were in secondary venues and given by spa or resort town orchestras. There is no evidence, despite his claims, that the Concertgebouw or Berlin Philharmonic ever played any of his symphonies. We are still investigating the role in all this of the Nazi music director of the Sudetenland, Bruno Schestak.

Secondly, there is no evidence for Franke's claim to have composed 800+ works and it's likely that the surviving 87 are his compete catalogue. Although he was living in Dresden at the time of the February 1945 fire storm air raids, his house was not in a part of the city which was bombed and it has survived, making it unlikely that the remaining works were destroyed.

The manuscripts of the 87 works are all impeccably written in the same unvarying hand and are largely free of corrections, implying that they were copied out over a comparatively short span of time - a decade perhaps, rather than over a composer's adult life.

Finally, we have now contacted both the publisher of Franke's compositions and the principal of the Archive with an outline of our discoveries in the hope that they will appreciate that getting to as near the truth as we can is in their interests and that they'll co-operate in our investigation as it continues.

Since the last update no new plagiarised works have been identified but UC members eschiss1 and Reverie have kindly agreed to join the investigation and their skills in identifying plagiarised scores and making digital reconstructions of samples of Franke's works will be great assets.

The thread is now unlocked but we ask members to restrict their posts to concrete evidence about Hans Franke's and Bruno Schestak's lives and identification of Franke's plagiarised compositions. 

There's already a pretty decent live recording of the Sonata by Antonio Pompa-Baldi on Centaur, of course, also coupled with the Six Pieces but with the bonus of Respighi's Piano Concerto. I must look it out, haven't played it for ages.

Good spot Martin! It's a fine concerto and deserves a quality commercial recording. I don't know the Borkovec concerto at all but Kaprálová's work is a compact single span work from 1935 which can be heard on YouTube here. It's not too aggressively 20th century for my ears at least.

Thanks again, Martin. It's all very retro and safe for 1885.

I'm with Alan on this, extended passages of chromaticisn do get very wearing.

Yes, I saw this and have wavered over downloading it. Still am.

I've always wondered what Kubelik's Symphony was like but, to use JP's delightful phrase, unfortunately much of it is definitely on "the outer borderlands and edgy fringes of Unsung Composers' obscure repertoire domain" I'd say.

if I pay any of you initial funders the price you paid, will any of you send me the recording

I don't think we have the right to do that.

I have yet to hear a major work by the composer that I've thought to be really significant musically or historically.

Alan's spot on here but, whilst I don't look to Moszkowski for profundity or daring, I do find evidence of plenty of craft and get a lot of simple enjoyment from his music.

Thanks for letting us know. It's good news.

That's terrific, Martin. Very many thanks.

See piano888's post above, Feby.

Having listened to it a couple of times I don't think Suppé's Fantasia Symphonica comes anywhere near Bizet's minor masterpiece. The opening movement certainly tries to exhibit some symphonic heft and has a certain busy seriousness but it's all a bit half-hearted. The other three are little more than dance movements with the finale returning to the portentous percussion-heavy opening of the work at the end. Clearly Suppé was a man of the theatre - this was not his finest hour.