I was going to post this in the Hans Rott novel thread, but I now see that it is ten years old, so let's start fresh.
Anyway, after JPC shipping to the United States jumped about 350% because of -- well, certain policies of the current American administration, I needed to find fillers to my orders to justify the now high shipping costs. It occurred to me that I might profit by searching to see in detail what our prolific friend Oliver Triendl has been up to. It turns out that in addition to unearthing many a 19th century treasury, Mr. Triendl has made extensive recordings of virtually unknown repertory from the 20th and 21st centuries. I've since collected about 15 discs of Mr. Triendl in performances of 20th and 21st century composers I had until now never heard of.
Now almost all these recordings deal with music far outside our remit, but I found a curious link to our shared area of interest in a disc of Enjott Schneider's (b. 1950) orchestral music, which also brings me back to Nordanland's novel on Hans Rott. There have been films of famous artists and composers, but I think the best ones are those that admittedly play a bit loose with the exact details of the artist's life in exchange for giving the viewer a theatrical experience that explores some aspect of that artist's creativity. By this I don't mean Ken Russell's ridiculous treatments of Liszt and Tchaikovsky, but rather more what Stephen Sondheim did for Georges Seurat ("Sunday in the Park with George") or John Logan did for Mark Rothko ("Red").
Back to Enjott Schneider: in 2015 he completed a 15-minute work for oboe and string orchestra called "Dark Journey" ("Dunkelreise" in the original), based on three fragments of Hans Rott (an idyll, an andantino, and a scherzo). Schneider describes Rott as "a brilliant composer, a pupil of Bruckner, friend of Gustav Mahler, and the creator of a symphony which anticipated future musical developments." Schneider's interest in Rott is nothing new. Previous to this he orchestrated a group of Rott's songs, originally for voice and piano, freely expanding them with his own orchestral intermezzos, which he published as "Balde ruhe du auch!"
The results stay firmly outside our remit, but I mention it because while a free fantasy on the work of a famous composer is not all that unusual, I was intrigued by Schneider's interest in the music of a forgotten romantic rather than one of the heavyweights. Perhaps someday we'll get a "Fantasy on Themes from Raff's Konig Alfred"? In any case, it was pleasant to see a contemporary composer taking interest in romantic music off the beaten path.
Jumping (of course) on the Raff reference, Liszt did compose Andante Finale und Marsch aus der Oper König Alfred von Raff, S.421 for piano! More seriously, Rott is a very interesting case. Not just for the foreshadowing in his rather magnificent Symphony of Mahler's musical developments, but also for his disastrously destructive relationship with Brahms, which culminated in his delusion that Brahms had planned to dynamite a train in which Rott was travelling!