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I do have a number of John Kersey's recordings.

Disregard the music for the moment and concentrate of the more mundane issues. These are not commercially produced CDs mass produced from a glass master. They are CD-Rs burned using a PC or a CD duplicator. So, they may not work on all CD players and will become damaged or deteriorate more easily. The labels are stuck on rather than printed, the insert appears to be printed using a laser or inkjet printer and they are supplied in a thin CD case, which has no spine or back insert. The sound quality can vary from moderately acceptable to surprisingly poor with a level of hiss akin to an old cassette recording. Finally, the tracking, especially of the older CDs in the "archive" series, can be ungenerous so that a whole set of six pieces is tracked as one long track rather than six short ones.

So, bearing mind the price and these limitations which set the series apart from a normal commercial release, the first decision is: "am I sufficiently interested in the repertoire to put aside these negatives?". If the answer is yes, then John Kersey's performing style is another important factor. Gareth, in another thread, describes it as "uninvolved" and that is spot on. Personally I quite like the fact that he lets the music speaks for itself and doesn't impose his personality, but it really is a mater of taste. He plays the notes very well, but also lacks warmth. Each CD on Kersey's site has one track which you can listen to and you do get a fair idea of his pianistic style from them.

So, what of the music itself? Overall, he has done us all a tremendous service unearthing these forgotten piano works, many of them with Klaus Tischendorf's help and support. Of the recordings which I have, particular favourites are the two discs of music by Heinrich von Sahr, who has a very individual voice, quite unlike the "Schumann with water" of so many of his now obscure contemporaries, such as Adolph Bergt, whose music didn't impress me much. On the other hand, the Bargiel works are as worthwhile as you'd expect them to be, particularly the three movement Piano Sonata.

Kersey's two CDs of Jensen show that he had real poetry and I enjoyed the works very much, although there isn't much meat on some of them. The Kirchner CDs  showcase works which on the whole are pretty but slight and after 20 or so such numbers the ear does wander. This is a typical problem with these compilations; many of these CDs aren't really good for listening to all the way through more than once.

Although I have the Kullak recording, Peter, I can't remember what I thought about either the Symphony or the Piano Sonata, which maybe is a comment in itself!

The other CDs I'd mention as being worth exploring are those with the music of Heinrich Hofmann (deliciously sweet and melodious, if rather shallow), Salomon Jadassohn, Emil Hartmann (I don't have the latest recording), Ludvig Schytte and Carl Reinecke. I found the Huber works worthy but dull and the Cowen slight in the extreme. I haven't heard the last four or five CDs: Röntgen, Hiller, Heller, Emil Hartmann and Mendelssohn.

Personally, I'm prepared to disregard the very real limitations of this series for music that I'm really curious to hear, but I'm a completist. If you are only slightly curious about these works then you'd probably be better spending your money on something about which you feel more passionately.

Slightly off-topic I'm afraid, but maybe Alan will allow me, just this once 

As we frequently do, my wife and I went to a CBSO concert at Birmingham's Symphony Hall on Wednesday. I don't know why we chose an afternoon concert, really, as our experience of them is that, although we are in our 50s, we are always amongst the youngest there. The packed audiences seem to be largely composed of coach parties (here they are at the interval). I probably sound both ageist and snobbish here, but it's clear that the management know their market and as a result the programming is usually unadventurous, with the performances often safe and unexciting to boot.

So it proved on Wednesday. The first half was Freddy Kemf's colourless and tepid interpretation of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto under the baton of Vassily Sinaisky (of whom I'd never heard). Things improved marginally in the second half with a sprightlier Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony but, although there was plenty of polish this being the CBSO, there was no individuality or vitality to the performance. It was more like an conductor-less run-through. As my mother would have said: "very nice, thank you dear".

Then came the change of gear. The final piece was Tchaikovsky's Francesca da Rimini. The transformation was utterly spellbinding. Their numbers doubled, the CBSO played as if their lives depended on it, Sinaisky started actually conducting, rather than merely beating the time, the storms and fires of hell raged with an almost painful intensity, the lovers' music was as meltingly lyrical as one could hope it to be and, wonder of wonders, the previously torpid audience sat up and got involved in the performance. I loved it.

So what was it? The weird programming of passion-overloaded Tchaikovsky after classically reserved Mendelssohn? A piece which stretched the orchestra after two they could play on autopilot? A simple increase in volume because there were 100 players on stage after only 60? The effect of a Russian conductor performing Russian music?

I don't know, but I came away thinking both what an odd programming juxtaposition it was and how glad I was for it. Does my experience ring any bells?

A rather "flat" review, I thought, for three works which I wasn't over-impressed with when I first played the CD but which, in the case of Nos.2 & 3 particularly, have grown on me over the intervening months. The Third is a pretty fine work overall.

As for quoting the review in full, Jim, I think a simple link and summary would have sufficed and especially as I know that Len Mullenger is rightly very protective of his copyright. So I've changed your post accordingly.

On different days you get different answers from me but overall Alan has pre-empted me by writing pretty much what I would have written. Nos. 2-5 show Raff at his best.

Amongst the Seasons quartet though, the Spring, Summer and Autumn symphonies are let down for me only by their finales whereas, in contrast to Alan, I still find only the slow movement funeral march of the Sixth Symphony a really convincing piece of work. Isolated movements of some other symphonies are touched with genius too but overall I relegate the First, Seventh and Eleventh, enjoyable though they are, to the status of definite also-rans.

That said, overall the Symphony No.5 Lenore would be my choice if I had to narrow it down to one. The soaring, joyful first movement and the tender, sexy second are perfect illustrations of different aspects of love and the finale is as sure footed and downright exciting a piece of programme music as anything in the Sinfonie Fantastique. Sure, the third movement march sounds a bit simplistic on a recording but it's very effective in the concert hall, and the Trio section is a wonderfully tragic evocation of separation which comes as a shock in the middle of all that military triumphalism. The whole work has all of Raff's characteristic melodiousness and imaginative orchestration whilst still needing quite modest forces. To cap it all, it concludes with that serene and increasingly ethereal apotheosis which, even after knowing the work for almost forty years, seldom fails to move me.

Suddenly, without any recent intervention from me, the editing buttons for enhancing text and creating links when you write a message have started working again. I assume that the host company had changed some setting and have now restored it. Or maybe one of the changes which I tried was the right change but took some time to work through.

Either way, normal service has been resumed.  The smiley's work too, sdthom

It started, as you'd expect, with Raff. Coming from a home devoid of music, I discovered classical music at university in the early 70s. The first LP I bought was Barenboim's performance of Tchaikovsky's Fourth. Being a logical (some would say unimaginative) soul, I reckoned that if I liked that, I'd like all his symphonies, so I bought them all and loved them. So then I thought: "Hmm, he was from the mid-19th century, so I expect I'll like other symphonies from around then". Next, I think was Dvorak, all of whose symphonies (from Kertesz on Decca for preference) I soon mopped up. Within a few weeks I'd chanced upon Herrmann's classic recording of Raff's Lenore. I didn't know that Raff was a total unknown then, I just assumed that he was up there with Tchaikovsky and Dvorak and was duly utterly bowled over by it. When I went back to the shop to buy more Raff I was dumbfounded to find that there was none.

My tendency to vacuum up everything I can find by a particular composer or in a particular genre or era once I have developed a taste for it quite naturally meant that I soon discovered the Genesis and Vox labels and my interest in Raff's fellow unsungs was aroused and has never left me. I suppose it's fired by two things. In the case of Raff in particular as well as a love of his music there's the sense that he has suffered a real injustice and that posterity has denied us things of real beauty. In the case of unsungs generally, there is (still, after all these years) an insatiable curiosity for the new, the thought that the next "new" piece I hear will be a hidden masterpiece.

Of course the advent of the internet meant that I soon realised that I wasn't alone in my dedication to Raff, which lead in the late 1990s to the web site and, eventually, this Forum.

My life has been enriched hugely by it all and in particular by the many friendships, both physical and virtual, which I've been lucky enough to make as  a result. And the good thing is: it goes on and on...

It's the same reason. Until I get it fixed, you can still type them in :-)

For the techie amongst you, the problem appears to be a Javascript error. The software can't find the Javascript file which works the buttons in the editor. Unfortunately, beyond that I have drawn a blank as nothing has changed in the set up since we resumed service on the now Forum. So, you'll just have to grin and bear it for the time being until I can get to the bottom of the problem.

I can't find any other impairment to the Forum's functionality, but if you do come across something else can you please post it here as it may help me track down the problem.

Thanks.

For some reason, the buttons which enable features such as adding italics, bold and links to posts have stopped working. I'm investigating.

You can still add these features to posts by entering the code directly into your post. Simply type square opening and closing brackets before and after the word or words you want to change thus: []Word[] and then between the pairs of brackets type the code letter for the feature in the opening pair and the same code letter preceded by an oblique stroke: / in the second pair.

The most commonly used codes are bold: b, italic: i and to make a clickable link: url.

Using the imaginary code z, the finished result looks like this:

[z]Phrase to be formatted[/z]

Just substitute b, i or url for z to get the feature you want. I'll post here as soon as I have got to the bottom of he problem.

Yes, "hear, hear" to that. It's a very persuasive release which shows these four works in the best possible light. Even cpo's usually tortuous/tedious sleeve notes are lucid and interesting!

The Rufinatscha pieces are a mouth-watering prospect,  Alan. I do hope that you'll give us report on them, Ilja.

Great news about the recording, Alan. Coincidentally, Ilja, I will be in that part of Austria this summer but not until August I'm afraid. Looks like you'll have to hold up the "Hello, Mum!" banner for all of us...

Although clearly I disagree with Amphissa on the merits of the Górecki, I do agree entirely with the sentiments of his third paragraph. Well said. We should all enjoy what we enjoy.

I don't know the Messiaen. I do know the Górecki. It was quite in vogue in the UK 10-15 years ago. It's very accessible but IMHO pretty much a naive "Johnny-one-note" one-trick pony. The mood of lamentation and grief is effectively built up but, because it and the uniformly slow pace are maintained throughout the whole work, it looses its impact because there is no contrast, nothing to throw things into focus. Very much a case of "more is not always better".

Later this month cpo will be releasing Bruch's Oratorio Arminius in a two CD set and continue their Herzogenberg-fest with the first of three CDs covering his string quarrtets. This one has the String Quartet No.5 coupled with the early Piano Quintet. Two must-buys in my book as everything is a recording premiere I think.