...from Ars:
http://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/julius-rietz-cellokonzert-op-16/hnum/4228364 (http://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/julius-rietz-cellokonzert-op-16/hnum/4228364)
I'm assuming that the Gross Cello Concerto coupling is by Johann Benjamin Gross...
Oo, this is good news. A very tempting release.
Verrry nice. Also contains Rietz' Op.2 Fantasie for cello and orchestra.
Sounds like a period group?
'Bout time we had something Rietz wrote for his own instrument. Can't let the wind players have it all...though that clarinet concerto is a little charmer.
Thanks for this news!
David
Nice music, but spoilt for me by the weedy-sounding solo cello and the awful period orchestra. Authentic? The jury's out. But this is a missed opportunity, I feel. Why do HIP performances have to sound this cold and glassy?
They don't have to be, I've heard some rather good ones, so it's a pity that they often are as you describe...
Have seen the Rietz cello-fantasia in its original parts, and am curious about it. A good performance and recording would be nice! (His output is under-explored anyway :( ) Have been rather curious about J.B. Gross' music too, from what I've seen of it. Hrm. I find myself hoping that if I hear this CD that I like it better than that. Or that better performers etc. will attempt the same program. Or something.
I'd say that the best piece on the CD is Gross' CC, which has a particularly impressive and dynamic opening movement - and I even managed to accustom myself to the horrid period orchestra and their wheezy strings. (Hyperion would do this so much better...)
Hrm. Looking at the Gross worklist at IMSLP, I wonder if it's the otherwise unidentified 1834 work- the other concertos are in D minor, C major and G minor, not B minor. Assuming the worklist is accurate, assuming "B minor" is accurate for the CD. (Several of his concertos are @ IMSLP and can be compared to at least eliminate them as possibilities, though his 1834 one isn't, at the moment. Though a B minor cello sonata of his (Op.7, pub. 1833) also exists- not a usual key for cellos (no open strings for the composer to play with, he thinks, paraphrasing the notes to a recording of one of his favorite string quartets (from 1930...)), I thought, and here he uses it two years in a row...
Though if the sound sample @ JPC is of the opening of the concerto (transposing if needed to B minor if it isn't already, F#-B-B'-F#-D-B-C#-D-B-F#-G-A...) then it's not Op.14 which opens differently (A C# D...)
(actually, Op.38 and a fair number of other works are digitized at SBB. Hrm. Lots of opportunities to see works by Gross there, yep.)
The B minor concerto "in question", in manuscript (1828 estimated date from its RISM-Online listing (https://opac.rism.info/search?id=464111048&db=251&View=rism) ) is also at SBB and digitized (http://resolver.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/SBB00014DFE00000000), by the way. Feel free to read along while listening, and all'that.
Correction: RISM says there's 48 pages of manuscript, but only 4 seem to have been scanned (the first three of each movement, and the color-check.) Not sure what's up with that; not usual for SBB. Something new, or a bug...
Ah. It's a "schriftprobe", according to RISM - not a complete scan, for one thing. Sorry! My mistake :(
THis recording is now available for download, from ClassicsOnline (http://www.classicsonline.com/catalogue/product.aspx?pid=2144595) amongst others, no doubt.