Any recommendations or opinions about this composer?
Heard a few works from a recent Hyperion CD (performed by Room Music) broadcast on BBC Radio 3 a year ago or so. Enjoyable and well-crafted I seem to remember?
Wonderful composer. I've heard and returned many times to the following discs:
Piano Trio in F Minor (coupled with the Goldenweiser Piano Trio) - on Revelation label in an excellent performance by Goldenweiser, Kogan and Rostropovich. Powerful Russian-inflected chamber music.
Violin Sonatas 1&2, Elegy, Romance - on CPO label (Breuninger, Zassimova) - tuneful, lyrical and unique.
He has some quite lovely piano music recorded by Marc-Andre Hamelin.
I return to his chamber music every now an again. As already mentioned - well crafted and pleasurable, but in my opinion not one of the great unsungs. But who knows? Russians are strange, perhaps I have to let the music grow on me a bit more, as if it were Medtner...
I have been trying to get a record company, any record company to record his piano concerto. It is the last substantial unrecorded Russian one from that period. I am aware of a renowned pianist on the international circuit who would like to do it.
Giles Enders
Hear, hear! Catoire's PC is a fine work that deserves a good performance.
I had heard that Hyperion was planning to release it, and actually wrote to them to ask for more information (January 2007) - they replied as follows:
"That Catoire concerto has not been recorded by us (or anyone else) which is why you cannot find it. Marc-André Hamelin was considering it but, in the end, did not feel it was strong enough. We may yet do it with another pianist but nothing has been decided yet, because we already have the next couple of years planned out it wouldn't be for some time."
Maybe things have changed since then, as I also would love to hear this piece.
Write again, Christopher. That's the thing to do.
Did Catoire write any other symphonic or stage works?
There is a fascinating boxed set by Brilliant:
(http://www.jpc.de/image/w600/front/0/5028421930817.jpg)
containing Quintett op. 16, Piano quartet op. 31 and String quartet op. 23.
Sorry, I have no notices about symphonic works.
This is the entry in Grove:
Orch: Sym., c, op.7, 1889;
Mtsïri (after Lermontov), sym. poem, op.13, 1899;
Pf Conc., op.21, 1909
I live in Moscow. I have found so many pieces here which I had previously been firmly told by generalist and specialist sellers in London had "never" been recorded. Often they are on Melodiya LPs which I then transfer to CD. Melodiya seems not to have a comprehensive catalogue of everything it ever recorded (probably not unconnected with the fact that in the Soviet times, certain artists would fall from grace and their recordings withdrawn from circulation). "Unsung" composers, whose pieces I have found despite having been told there were no recordings, include Alexandr Serov, Sergei Taneyev, Dolidze, Paliashvili, Dikranian, Ter-Gevondian, Isaac Dunaevksy, Eugen Doga, Tikhon Khrennikov, Verstovsky, Nikolai Tcherepnin, Rebikov, Chukhajian, Mosolov, Napravnik, etc etc - but so far NOT, alas, Catoire...