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Hello, from out of a distant past...

I started reading things here again after a passage of some years, and thought to ask about Frederick Corder's Nordisa (1887), the one opera commissioned by the Carl Rosa company that came close to being a hit (they regularly performed it until Rosa's death in 1889, then dropped it). Has anyone here in the past written about it, so I can look through the archives?

My interest stems from a conference in Newcastle I attended two years ago which took place in the 1869 Tyne Theatre and Opera House, a Victorian wonder which still has all its original stage machinery in working order. I was called upon at very short notice to play the opera's 2nd act finale, which culminates in an avalanche, in order to demonstrate the theatre's "thunder run". A thunder run is an inclined semi-enclosed chute loaded with cannonballs which runs down across two of a theatre's rear walls to simulate thunder (one in the Theatre Royal, Bristol, runs along three walls). In "semi-enclosed" I mean that it is basically open but with iron hoops set across the chute at intervals to prevent the cannonballs flying loose. Unfortunately, at one performance at the Tyne Theatre of Nordisa by the Carl Rosa a cannonball escaped the chute at high velocity and killed a stagehand, whose spirit is now supposedly the theatre's ghost.

Despite the sad history of the opera in Newcastle, I was intrigued by the music - it seemed very attractive and dramatic - so I sought out a vocal score of the whole opera. The entirety is indeed very attractive in my opinion, and the libretto (by Corder himself) more sensible than many English 19th-century operas. (Corder and his wife had done the earliest English translations of the Ring, so he had a nodding acquaintance in a literary sense of Wagnerian dramaturgy.) It is still something of a number opera with a full overture, though Corder divides the three acts into "scenes" rather than individual pieces, and although there is dialogue it is minimal (certainly in the context of English Romantic opera). It may rank with MacCunn's Jeanie Deans and Stanford's Shamus O'Brien as a late-Victorian opera worthy of staging, certainly of recording as the Stanford has been.

There's very little Corder left either printed or in MS, unfortunately. Corder had two children, Dorothy (Dolly) and Paul, and he taught Paul composition at the RAM. Paul became a professor of composition himself in 1907, but he and Dolly moved to Looe Island, Cornwall, in 1921, while their father remained in London. (The island was purchased by selling off Frederick's collection of rare first editions.) I don't know why this happened, but it may have been for Paul's health. It's a pretty isolated place, and the whole business seems rather odd. Frederick Corder married his second wife in 1927 and died in 1932 in London; Paul died in 1942, and evidently Dolly was so distraught at Paul's death she burnt all the manuscripts she had of both of them. (Dolly lived into her nineties.)

The MS full score of Nordisa still survives at the RAM, though, along with a few other works. (Corder wrote a concerto for cornet, for example, but only the second movement is extant.) I have a PDF of the vocal score, which was published by Forsyth Brothers in Manchester. Some of you may know Corder's Prospero overture, which was published and Hyperion recorded it with David Lloyd-Jones conducting. I find Prospero rather lovely and effective, and it and Nordisa show Corder was a fluent melodist. I haven't pursued this much, but I wonder if others have?

Both the Ballet russe and Luigini's later symphonic poem Carnaval turc (op. 51, dedicated to Saint-Saëns) have been recently recorded but are only on YouTube, along with an interview with enthusiastic conductor Stefano Zinetti, who leads the rather unlikely Orchestra Sinfonica dell'Università di Parma. (I didn't know any Italian universities had orchestras, especially one as ancient as Parma.) They seem to be very decent performances, but they're recorded in an astoundingly reverberant room - rather like hanging a single microphone from the top of the Albert Hall.

Ballet russe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBRUvM-iXrs
Carnaval turc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQN5Nvj6Qsg
Interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hwlk4YuInsU

Zinetti's assertion that "this music has never been recorded before" (referring to the Ballet russe) is of course untrue, as Mr. Harrison points out at once with the Barbirolli recording. (It was in the HMV catalogue for only a very short time, and I'm lucky to have the original 2-disc set.) The "Valse lente" and "Marche russe" had been recorded acoustically by Alick Maclean and the New Queen's Hall Light Orchestra for HMV in 1920, and the entire suite by Percy Fletcher and the Vocalion Company's house "Regent Symphony Orchestra" in 1924. The "Marche russe" remained popular with military bands for decades, and was recorded as early as 1908 by the Grenadier Guards band under Albert Williams for Odeon and the "National Military Band" under E. W. Seymour for Edison in 1910.

Here are the Maclean sides (he puts in a couple of repeats to flesh out the movements, as they're rather short - especially at his tempos), plus a cracking performance of the "Marche russe" by the Band of the Life Guards under Lt. W. J. Gibson, recorded for Broadcast (Vocalion) in 1929 using the at-best-functional Marconi electrical process.

"Valse lente" (Maclean) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guCtSXKGSj0
"Marche russe" (Maclean) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGKAHrfFtb4&t=52s
"Marche russe" (Gibson) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbvEWs9DeX4

According to the old 1908 Catalogue of Printed Music in the British Museum, materials for Cusins' Piano Concerto are in the British Library, Additional 34539, 34540, and 34543. The first volume is the autograph score, the second is a fair copy of the same, and the last is the piano part in Cusins' hand. I noticed this concerto some years ago and remarked on this forum that the last movement seemed to be an unexpectedly jolly tarantella, and that Cusins must have had some serious piano chops. (I think he was related to and studied with Lucy Anderson, possibly the greatest early Victorian pianist and the first woman pianist to play for the Philharmonic Society.)

Fiona Palmer's excellent Conductors in Britain 1850-1914 - Wielding The Baton At The Height Of Empire contains an informative chapter contrasting Cusins' experience conducting the London Philharmonic Society's concerts with Julius Benedict's tenure leading the Liverpool Philharmonic. (I'm currently working on a Benedict biography - he really was an extraordinary man and musician.) Cusins seems to have been a well-intentioned though rather untalented conductor, and later in his career as Master of the Queen's Music he kind of ticked-off the Royal Household, but he seems to have written some interesting music. I'm looking forward to hearing his overture.

Benedict's letters and other materials are scattered all over archives with only minimal rhyme and reason, which makes research tricky but not impossible - for instance, Berlin holds a large collection of his letters and writings, including the manuscript of his Weber biography. Another American archive holding a fair number of letters is the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C., which may seem odd except that Benedict wrote incidental music for Henry Irving's production of Romeo and Juliet in 1882 (some of the letters are addressed to Bram Stoker, Irving's manager) and he also composed an overture to The Tempest (op. 77) which was performed at the Exeter Hall on 11 March 1856 and published by Enoch & Sons in full score in 1875. He had contacts all over Europe and the United States, so it makes sense that people who came into possession of his materials (and valued them enough to keep them) gave them to institutions they lived near. The contents of Cornell's particular packet of letters in French were all sent to the same addressee, whose address is not listed in the Olin Library's catalogue. In my paper I quote from an 1844 letter to Ludwig Rellstab requesting help in securing German performances of his recently produced opera The Brides of Venice, which is not in an archive but in a German autograph dealer's list which quotes the passage. As most autograph collectors want the object but not necessarily its contents, I've written the dealer several times offering to pay for a transcript of the whole letter, which he has evidently already made, but have had no response. So it seems I'd have to pay 500 euros to get the letter to make a translation myself, which I cannot really justify or do, but at least I have the reference to the dealer's catalogue.

My biggest discovery was finding out that his journals from 1840 to 1885 (lacking 1882) are at the RCM. It's really surprising that he was such an assiduous diarist - when did he have the time? - though his journals may mostly consist of business matters. I'm making a start at examining them when I come to the UK next month.

He must have had enormous commitment and energy to do as much as he did from when he arrived in Britain in 1836 plus attending to what seems to have been a loving family of a wife and five (!) children. Losing his wife and young son in 1851-52 must have been a shattering blow, and it's a sign of the strength of his character that he emerged in 1854 from a long period of near-total seclusion and threw himself back into his work with the same energy as before, leading up to composing The Lily of Killarney in 1862, his symphony in 1873, organizing and conducting the Norwich Festivals and his monster annual concerts as before, and conducting the Liverpool Philharmonic from 1867 to 1880. His remarriage in 1879 caused some comment, as he was 75 and his bride, Mary Comber Fortey (who had been a student of his for some years and was evidently an excellent pianist), was 23. They even had a son in 1881.

Benedict often appeared in caricatures as he was such an omnipresent musical figure, but occasionally some of them seem, to me at least, a little nasty. This 1873 image by "Spy" (Leslie Ward) seems to refer to Benedict's Jewish background in its pose and the hair "tails" (which he never wore), although he had converted to Catholicism (his first wife was a French Catholic) in 1833. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I'd be glad of others' opinions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Benedict#/media/File:Sir_Julius_Benedict_Vanity_Fair_27_September_1873.jpg

It's an interesting predicament with this piece. Benedict's piano concertos and their opus numbers are something of a muddle: the 2nd concerto op. 89, as you note, begins with much earlier-written material than its "completion" date of 1867, as does his 3rd concerto. The Concertino he played in New York with Timm and the New York Philharmonic would have to be a tremendous reworking of any previous material to give enough "meat" for two pianos, and he would have had to write it in Britain to bring with him - the arrangements for his NYP appearance were undoubtedly made months before, because he had enough to do without him supposing he'd have an opportunity "crop up" to play the piece. He did bring other works to conduct in the US which are seemingly now lost, notably his Festival Overture op. 42, but who knows? That last may have also been published in Germany but hasn't turned up yet. His Crusaders overture was either published or circulated in handwritten parts as I've found notices of it in several German concert programmes into the 1860s, so the Festival Overture may have gone the same path. (I don't even know what occasion made it a "Festival" overture, though op. 42 puts its composition date around the time of the 1st piano concerto, which is op. 45). I keep finding holes and filling them in with unexpected finds in odd places. I just found out there's a small cache of his letters at Cornell University, about 2 hours from where I live, so I hope to go and see them next week.

I've done a great deal more work on Benedict since the last time I posted on this forum, and will be presenting a paper on his first three English-language operas (The Gipsy's Warning, The Brides of Venice, and The Crusaders) at the Music in Nineteenth Century Britain conference at the Open University next month. These three operas were considered lost but I have found scores and parts for all of them in various German archives, where Benedict's operas held the stage for nearly thirty years. I've also discovered a great deal more biographical information about him, some of it quite tragic (he lost his 12-year old son and his 37-year old first wife within a year under horrifying circumstances), and I've located his personal journals as well, which I will examine while I'm in Britain.

To giles.enders list of orchestral works may be added a Concertino for two pianos and orchestra (op. 29), which Benedict and Henry Christian Timm (1811-1892) performed with the New York Philharmonic conducted by George Loder (1816-1868, Edward J. Loder's cousin) on 9 September 1850. That piece is currently lost, as are several of Benedict's other orchestral works, but as things are turning up in unexpected places, who knows?

I know I have occasionally ruffled some feathers here with my championing of Benedict's G minor Symphony (op. 101), and I have to say I don't think his piano concertos are necessarily his best work, but my attention was drawn to a private recording on YouTube of the overture to The Crusaders (1846) which might also startle people on this forum, especially when placed alongside contemporary works like Balfe's The Bohemian Girl (1843; after Balfe conducted the premiere at Drury Lane on 27 November, Benedict handled most performances thereafter as the theatre's resident conductor) and Wallace's Maritana (1845). This was performed on 11 September 1975 at Castle Clinton in lower Manhattan; it was a concert celebrating the 125th anniversary of Jenny Lind's first American appearance at Castle Garden, New York's largest performing space at the time, to an audience of approximately 4500 people. Benedict (who toured with Lind as her accompanist and conductor for the astounding fee of $25,000) led The Crusaders overture at the beginning of the original concert's Part II. (The first piece on the programme was Weber's Oberon overture, possibly used to emphasize Benedict's relationship with Weber.) The orchestra here is the American Symphony under Ainslee Cox, and the parts used at this concert have also vanished; strangely I learned why and how first-hand forty years ago. If there's any question whether Benedict had skill and style at his best, this overture might answer it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQKcUYANDRY&list=RDnQKcUYANDRY&start_radio=1

And I'd still like to know his late violin sonata and string quartet. Nicholas Temperley rather liked them, and Cobbett is not always "right". 

One other thing about the Reissiger symphony - it's possible that the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin has scanned the manuscript, as I remember seeing its last page somewhere online, maybe on their website. Now to locate the Schlesinger parts - maybe in Vienna?

Yelva was something of a standard rep piece in the 19th and early 20th century with provincial orchestras; we used the Hawkes & Son "Standard Overtures" edition, which was aimed at theatre and large resort orchestras. You can hear a cut version (but brilliantly performed) by Arthur Pryor's Band on the Discography of American Historical Recordings. Pryor plays the entire introduction, but the Allegro consists of the recap and coda in order to fit it on a 12-inch 78 disc. Pryor conducts very expressively, and infuses the band with a lot of passion (a sure sign is the prominent ultra-low F in the tubas at the beginning and end).

What's evident here, and I've heard it in other Reissiger works, is that his melodic style has more Italianate lyric gestures than some of his contemporaries, and he also uses Italian-style four-note repeated rhythmic patterns. Anyway here's a link to the band version from 1909: https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/matrix/detail/200008010/C-7049-Yelva_overture

I would certainly say that Amy Beach was as good an American composer as any of her day. She certainly was versatile, and unlike many of her contemporaries (like Chadwick, whom I am very fond of as well) she experimented with style as she got older. Her works from the 1930s are nothing like most of her earlier music, which is people are familiar with, if they're familiar with her at all.

I have to say that her Symphony has always been a little problematic for me; much of the instrumentation is very heavy and it's a very hard work to balance as a conductor. The best performance of it I've ever heard was here in Rochester by the Rochester Philharmonic under Arild Remmereit in 2012; he really was able to get orchestral detail and colour out of it, and the finale was stunningly fiery.  The Piano Concerto is much more nuanced in its orchestration, in my opinion, and easier to get to "sound".

What about Carl Gottlieb Reissiger's Symphony in E flat, op. 120 (1835)? The manuscript FS is in Berlin, but I think Schlesinger published parts and a four-hand piano arrangement in 1838. All I've heard and played by Reissiger seems to be of very good quality - both chamber and orchestral works. His melodic gift was exceptional, much more lyric than, say, Marschner, and his orchestration is masterful. Most people, if they know him at all, know the overture to his opera Die Felsenmuehle, but I've played in several of his piano trios and conducted a run through of his Yelva overture, which is better than Die Felsenmuehle.  He never disappoints me, at least.

I think there's a new and very good recording of Lo schiavo out that has received strong reviews.

He was also a close associate of Victor Herbert for some years as concertmaster of both the Pittsburgh Orchestra (predecessor of the the present Pittsburgh Symphony) during Herbert's tenure as conductor there (1898-1904) and the first concertmaster of Victor Herbert's Orchestra, the ensemble Herbert independently formed after leaving Pittsburgh.

Has anyone looked into performing or recording Rudolf Friml's Piano Concerto in B-flat major? There is something labelled "Concerto for Piano and Orchestra III" with MS score and parts in Boxes 93 and 94 in the Friml Collection at UCLA, and I know of no other work for piano and orchestra by Friml so I am guessing it is that work, especially as in the chronological order of boxes it seems likely (and there is nothing labelled "I" or "II").  As far as I know it has been either given very few or no performances since Friml himself premiered it at Carnegie Hall with the New York Symphony under Walter Damrosch on 17 November 1904, and it was never published. Most sources - including Friml himself - give the wrong date ("1906"), wrong orchestra ("New York Philharmonic") and even wrong key of the work ("B-major"). The earliest orchestral work of his I am familiar with is his 1906 intermezzo "A Garden Matinee", which my orchestra plays and which was recorded by the Victor Orchestra under Walter B. Rogers in New York on 7 November 1906; the little intermezzo is charming, but Friml was known as a good orchestrator, was a brilliant pianist, and had a fiery temperament (to say the least). I expect this concerto, whatever it is, would certainly be worth looking at; if it is the early B-flat work, Friml thought enough of it to keep it to the end of his very long life, even he seems to have only played it in public that one time when he was 25.

This was always regarded as an unsubtle work - one early 1900s opera guide calls it "a crude but effective melodrama" - but it is pretty fierce in this performance. Apolloni's main problem is his orchestration, which is a little rudimentary and the out-of-tune Italian winds in this orchestra unfortunately highlight that. (He does take advantage of the use of valve trombones in 19th-century Italian orchestras, though, and there are a couple of pretty wild passages in the recording by the modern slide trombone players trying to cope with the parts.) Nonetheless, this performance shows why it was so popular in its day, as it has a lot of guts and sheer zest, and Apolloni's melodic sense is very assured. I'm very fond of it.

Hello again - this may be an off-kilter question, but I was scanning the Wikipedia article on Henry Hugo Pierson and it mentioned that the orchestral material for his oratorio Jerusalem (1852) is not extant, though a vocal score was published. Of course Wikipedia is infallible and the source for all world knowledge, but the title page of the J. Alfred Novello VS of Jerusalem lists the individual parts available for hire and/or purchase, from 1st violin to ophicleide and tympani. Earlier this summer, Mr. Eastick of this group mentioned a Suffolk warehouse of Novello's filled with orchestral material where a friend of his had gained access in 2012 through knowing people and persisting at getting in there.  Has there been any further news of this cache, and might the parts to Jerusalem be in there?  The piano reduction in the VS is extremely elaborate, it's a sprawling and decidedly unconventional choral work, and considering how unusual Pierson's music is (whatever other qualities you think it has) and how scarce any of his major works are, would more effort towards accessing the Novello holdings be worth pursuing?

(And at some point I'd like to ask if anyone in this forum has contacts, or contacts with contacts, with anybody at Ricordi to find out about material on Balfe's Pittore e duca [1854] in their "secret holdings" , but I'm already starting to veer way off topic!...)