...coupled with his suite Summerliv:
http://www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/detail/-/art/louis-glass-symphonie-nr-3-waldsymphonie/hnum/4895414 (http://www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/detail/-/art/louis-glass-symphonie-nr-3-waldsymphonie/hnum/4895414)
Great news! The orchestra is bound to better than the dreadful Plovdiv band :)
Beggars can now be choosers!
Indeed! :)
I wonder how the BBCPO/Downes version, ex-BBC radio, that was/is in our downloads section compares.
A communication with CPO indicates that they plan a complete cycle of his symphonies. To me, and I'm sure to others, that is important news.
Great, Mike. Thanks for the info.
Yes, this is billed as "Complete Symphonies Vol.1". And just by the by: it's absolutely glorious.
I just found out about this recording—a full year after its release was reported in this thread! I happened upon some listings of it on eBay and have just ordered one. I certainly do hope that the series continues! It will be a great day when I can throw my copies of the ghastly performances by the Plovdiv orchestra into the garbage where they belong (not that I often listen to them: doing so always causes me so much consternation as I try to attend to the music and not to the playing).
If their recording of symphony 3 was causing so much disgruntlement, there are recordings of syms 3 & 5, from well-known conductors etc., from broadcast that I think can still be downloaded if you search this site... (can't help with the others until cpo releases them, though hopefully Marco Polo did better by sym.6.) (Cadensa lists BBC tapes of sym.5 conducted by Segerstam (Danish radio, November 1990), Sir Edward Downes (April 1990), Downes again (incomplete, August 28 1990)...) for sym. 3 they have Downes (Nov.9 1990, BBC Philh, timing 38:22) and Downes (earlier, UK premiere, September 23 1990 - timing 40:18).
Methinks that we're giving the Plovdiv orchestra too much of a hard time here. While the cpo recording is certainly better, the Plovdiv recordings are hardly awful in the same way that the Omsk Phil was in the Bendix.
That's certainly true, Ilja. The Plovdiv orchestra gave a much better account of themselves than the awful Omsk band.
There's an orchestra on CD worse than the Plovdiv Philharmonic? Well, "Omsk" sounds like a suitably barbarous name for it.
Nonetheless, while one can always find fault with some orchestra or other that doesn't have a big name, would we have even a glimmer of many unsung pieces without those early efforts? Really awful orchestras can be a distraction of course but listening for the music more than for the performance still pays off in many cases. And which critic is willing to fund a "great" orchestra to correct these "terrible" performances? I would rather have a scratchy recording to get an idea of how something I have never heard before than no recording of it at all.
And one can't help noticing that much of the appreciation that great orchestras get for performing very difficult, ensemble-virtuosic works - like Furtwängler's 2nd symphony (Teldec, in this case) - is accompanied - almost always - by some comment that the work itself seemed hardly worth the trouble. (I exaggerate. A little.)
(In that case but with similar in similar cases, iirc - I don't agree and think that Barenboim's recording, in that particular case, doesn't "make a piece sound better than it is", but rather helps explain (so to speak, figuratively...!!!!) why the work is as good -as- it is... - but my opinion, here as in some similar cases, is in the minority, I know :D I remember John Leonard's comment, still, about "after too much of Stenhammar's Second Symphony" - which still rattles, especially since he was generally fairly insightful during his occasional forays into music criticism. Apologies yet again for digression.)
If (as I hope!!!...) I have a point, it's that increasing relative familiarity, and more performances by better and better people/groups, represent the way forward. (My understanding of Medtner's Night Wind and of his piano quintet has improved a lot with the availability of so many performances on YouTube. More, better recordings, a performance tradition (and a tradition against which anti-traditional performances could... well, you get the idea ;) :^) but first a tradition! :) ) of Glass (L.) and the Bendix symphonies should, I think and hope, answer questions as to the quality of the works themselves...