Messages

Chris is very busy at present; in addition several of us are in touch with him anyway, so there's no need to e-mail him with regard to the forum.

John: Lachner 8 is planned for 2010 - the date has yet to be confirmed.

Rats! You beat me to it, Mark. Looks interesting indeed...

I don't know of any (Romantic-era) anonymous symphonies. I remember that the 'Jena' Symphony was once thought to be an early work by Beethoven - but we now know that it was composed by Friedrich Witt. It actually sounds much more like Haydn...

Yes, that's true, Mark. I've always thought that Wagnerians must have immense patience! Mind you, the actual compositional idiom of Wagner is so powerful, his use of the orchestra so wonderful that, when the big moments come, they are beyond anything most operatic composers can offer. Act 1 of Die Walküre in the Karajan performance, for example, is just full of magic in the orchestral performance and vocal execution...

MusicWeb is also good for reviews...
http://www.musicweb-international.com/index.htm

I listened to Act 1 of Sigurd today - very much French grand opera, but with a dose of Berlioz too, I thought. It is very declamatory stuff - I'm hoping Act 2 will relax a bit, but wow, it's powerful music.

George Frederick Bristow and John Knowles Paine. I particularly like Bristow's Symphony in F sharp minor on Chandos - marvellous Mendelssohnian stuff!

Like Mark, I read IRR - it's much better than Gramophone in that its reviews are in greater depth. It also reviews releases of more unusual repertoire (e.g. the Dietrich works on cpo) which its rival won't touch.

Otherwise I agree that Fanfare is excellent - but very expensive to subscribe to from the UK. I gave up my subscription for that reason. It's also very bulky to keep, being in a paperbook book format.

I don't really know anything apart form what I've already posted. I don't even know whether there will actually be a Klughardt cycle - although I hope there will be.

If you want me to guess: I believe that Dutton will record the Cliffe VC with Philippe Graffin and the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by David Lloyd-Jones, although the English Music Festival programme which includes details of the performance on May 23rd at Dorchester Abbey doesn't give any hints that this is the case. As I said, just a guess...

Having now heard a dub of the radio performance of the Klughardt VC which will form the basis for the cpo release, I can honestly say that I believe this to be a major addition to the late-19thC violin concerto repertoire.

The concerto is 42 minutes long, making it just a bit longer than the Brahms VC. It consists of a long, mainly serene first movement which is connected to the glorious slow movement by means of a dramatic declamatory section for both soloist and orchestra. The finale marries fanfare-like material with what sounds like folk-inspired themes. The overall mood is one of relaxed lyricism and contentment.

And the idiom? Well, the breadth is definitely Brahmsian and the idiom is conservative for the mid 1890s, but overall it is a most beautiful and memorable work. Certainly a missing gem.

Isn't it the Melartin symphonies on Ondine? There is a set of the Madetoja symphonies on Chandos.

The problem I have is often entirely the opposite: something which I find immediately attractive may - for me at any rate - not actually have much staying power; something which is also attractive, but which gives up its secrets more slowly may actually do more for me. I really enjoy going back to a piece and finding more in it each time...

I don't have the time to go into much of an answer - except to say that opinions about music need to have time to develop and settle. I, for example, find Martucci's symphonies intensely memorable - I can hear the first movement of the second symphony in my mind's ear, so to speak, even as I write this. But then, I've known probably known the symphonies for at least five years.

It's certainly not fair on Martucci to make a comparison with Raff who was one of the great tunesmiths of the nineteenth century - any more than it is fair on, say, Brahms to compare him with Tchaikovsky in the memorability department. Some composers simply exert a much more immediate appeal than others.

With the unsung we have to make an effort to listen to them because in the normal course of events we would not encounter them, e.g. on the radio or in the concert hall. This means that there is a special need to give them time to 'sink in', as it were.

Let me give you a personal example; I was originally led to the symphonies of Franz Lachner by our good friend, John White. Unfortunately, I just didn't spend long enough on them when I first heard them to understand the sort of epic symphony which he was attempting to write, I believe, in the wake of the 9th Symphony of his close friend, Schubert. It was in fact the prolonged process of coming to grips with the hour-long Rufinatscha 6 (firstly through the recording of the version for piano 4-hands) which prompted me to give Lachner the sort of attention which I hadn't given him first time round. I now find Lachner's symphonies fitting into a symphonic strand which had once seemed to me to be rather difficult to discern (i.e. Schubert 8/9>Lachner5/8>Rufinatscha 4/5/6>Bruckner).

'Unsung' for me just means 'neglected' - and where this is coupled with an apparent injustice (there is plenty of justly unsung music too!), then you have something worth pursuing.

They'd have to be good: Stanford 1 is a glorious piece.