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I played the Romanze at this month's chamber music club in Ashburton, Devon. As it was the end of the season there was only a small gathering of musicians, none of whom had heard of Schmidt but the piece was well received. I referred to his five chamber works, which I've listened to, but obtaining parts might be a challenge!

I can't find this work covered elsewhere. I've obtained a copy from the distributor in Marseille and am busy practising it. The preface describes it as Schmidt's only piano work for two hands (as opposed to those for left-hand only), composed around 1922 and rediscovered in 1950. I've been an admirer of Schmidt's music, especially the symphonies, for many years. The very chromatic bars in the Romanze will need some careful practice but I hope to play it at our informal chamber music gathering here in Devon next month. I'll report back on its reception.

Berwald and Arriaga quartets. I think the Berwald septet is fairly well-known but his piano trios and quintets are not - the piano writing is sometimes a bit clumsy. 

Since starting this thread, I've bought CDs of a number of works from the period covered by this book - Symphonies 1 to 3 by Draeseke, 1-4 by Gernsheim and those by Dietrich, Grimm and Goetz, as well as the violin concertos by Dietrich and Goetz. Of course, finding a live performance of any of these is a different matter altogether.

I've just come across Ludwig Thuille (and thanks for the pronunciation tips - I shall say "twillah"). I'd never come across his name until a week ago, when our chamber music group suggested we look at his sextet for piano and wind later in the year, in which case I will be getting the piano part.

I've just listened to it on YouTube and it's quite an attractive piece worthy of performance. We will only have time to look at one movement and, as I'm the one with the most notes to play, I usually get to choose! I'll report back on how we get on.

He's variously described as German and Austrian. As he was from South Tyrol, surely Austrian is correct. Since 1918 it's been part of Italy - the home of tennis star Jannik Sinner who's Italian but with a German-sounding name.

I've been away from this forum for some time but have just seen that the Golo Berg/Münster recording of Grimm's Symphony and Second Suite in Canon Form was released on CD on 4th July, according to the Presto Music website. Is this the first CD of this work ever to appear? I've not come across another. If so, hopefully it will help to increase awareness of this work. The recording appears to be the one which has been available on YouTube for a while.

Jonathan Berman's mention of Dohnanyi is interesting as I had wondered if he and Schmidt knew each other. I have the piano part of Dohnanyi's Sextet in C major at the moment and one passage in particular reminds me of Schmidt. Good to see another set of the Schmidt symphonies. I have the Sinaisky/Malmö Symphony Orchestra set but my first encounter was over 50 years ago with the Mehta recording of the fourth.

I've read on Facebook that the Vorisek symphony is being performed by the Borders Chamber Orchestra in their concert on 2nd November 2024, at Melrose Parish Church at 7 pm. Too far for me but someone who's a bit nearer may be interested.

Earlier this week I listened to Reinecke's first symphony, the finale of which is described by Chris Fifield as an anti-climax, a view with which I have to agree, although the first three movements have much to enjoy. His second symphony is to be performed by the West Mendip Orchestra in Somerset later this year. This is the orchestra whose performance of Robert Volkmann's first symphony I attended earlier this year so they are definitely aware of this repertoire!

As reported elsewhere, I acquired this book a couple of years ago after discovering Felix Draeseke's quintet for horn strings and piano. I moved on to his symphonies and read the long treatise by Alan Krueck. At some stage Chris Fifield's book came up in my search and this led to a period of discovery, listening to symphonies (mostly) by composers whose names were unfamiliar - Grimm, Dietrich, Gernsheim and Goetz. Some of the composers he covers are not German (e.g. Gade), who qualifies as he spent time living and working in Germany. Definitely money well spent!

I have the Rumpf CPO recordings of the Dietrich symphony and violin concerto and have been listening to them again this week. I seem to be transported to the Viennese world of Johann Strauss on three occasions, something I've not experienced in a symphony or concerto before - in the symphony, the second trio of the scherzo and the theme beginning at around 35 minutes 20 in the finale; also the concerto finale at letter E. The symphony predates all of the Strauss operettas, while the concerto is contemporary with Die Fledermaus. Did Dietrich and Strauss meet or know each other's music? Unlikely perhaps. Any ideas welcome!

I attended the West Mendip Orchestra's concert on Friday and the Volkmann symphony seemed to be well received by the audience. Members of the orchestra I spoke to enjoyed playing it. The conductor liked to choose unusual works and was aware of Christopher Fifield's book on the German symphony, so perhaps he'll come up with one of the other works reviewed on this forum. 

Volkmann's Symphony no. 1 is being played by the West Mendip Orchestra at Uphill, Weston-super-Mare, on Friday 22nd March. I'm in Exeter so could get there. No idea what the orchestra is like or how they came to choose this work. The similarity of the opening, which I've just listened to on YouTube, to the start of Borodin 2 has already been mentioned.

I was recently asked to play the piano part in the Coleridge-Taylor nonet with our informal chamber music club and managed to get my fingers round most of the notes! It's a remarkable work for a student piece, although clearly showing the influence of Brahms and Dvorak.

As a result, I bought the Chandos CD of chamber music performed by the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective - this includes the piano quintet and piano trio as well as the nonet, all from Coleridge-Taylor's student years and probably not performed in public for more than a century. This ensemble has corrected numerous errors in the earlier performing editions, the manuscripts having remained in the RCM archive since the 1890s.

The Chandos recording of the nonet unfortunately suffers from a very prominent wind section, at the expense of the strings and piano which are on occasions difficult to hear clearly. The recording engineers must be at fault here - microphone placement? - although the balance is better in the two works without wind.

The finale of the quintet suddenly breaks into a fugue on an Irish sounding jig which seems a bit incongruous (although the subject is based on the trio from the scherzo) - but perhaps we shouldn't be too critical, considering the composer's youth....

Next up for me is the 1935 sextet for clarinet, horn, string trio and piano by Dohnányi.

I tuned into Radio 3 in the car this lunchtime (Georgia Mann's "Essential Classics"), in the middle of an orchestral piece, described on my screen just as "Prelude to Romeo and Juliet", which turned out to be by Raff. This programme has no detailed listing in Radio Times. I didn't make a note of the orchestra. Evidently this is one of the Four Shakespeare Preludes and I've just listened to it all on Youtube, played by the Jakarta Concert Orchestra. The producers of Radio 3 do therefore feature our unsung composers occasionally - does the BBC, or Classic FM for that matter, respond to requests from forum members?