More from "Steve's Bedroom Band" :)

[eschiss1]

Was just listening very happily (if I can say that about a rather depressing movement in E minor...) to a pair of movements from Straesser's 4th string quartet here-

imslp.org/wiki/String_Quartet_No.4_in_E_minor,_Op.42_(Straesser,_Ewald)

(there is a reason why only those two but hopefully it's a "so far".)

Also, the string quartet no.2 (ca.1907?) in D major, op.68 by César Antonovich Cui can be found in scores, parts and now a recording here-

Cui quartet 2.

I do recall that Cui's quartet 2, and the other 2 also, have received some adverse criticism in this forum. I did find no.2 worth hearing and enjoyable, anyway.  But the Straesser, especially its finale, is a finer work, I believe.

A category with all or most of the performances by the 'band' is at this IMSLP category address, btw. (Unlike some pages on the site, it doesn't seem to have an RSS feed.)
(I am, yes, a fan, and again hope this is an appropriate use of the forum. Anyhow, must dash...)

[Rainolf]

There's now a recording of Wetz's 1st string quartet. How long I have waited for a recording on real instruments!

http://imslp.org/wiki/String_Quartet_No.1,_Op.43_(Wetz,_Richard)#IMSLP114823

Thank you, Steve & co!

[Josh]

Who are these amazing Steve's Bedroom Band people?  This surely has to be one of the most fantastic contributions ever made to the Internet in its entire history, in my opinion (and I'm not even kidding).  Some of the works they've put up - FOR FREE - are really outstanding, and without Steve's Bedroom Band, probably would never have been heard at all by most of us.

[albion]

Who are these amazing Steve's Bedroom Band people?

It's literally a one-man band: Steve Jones' modest profile on IMSLP -

I'm conscious of having contributed a disproportionate number of recordings to IMSLP lately (disproportionate to my musical ability, that is). Definitely not "performances", because there's only one player involved and the "cello" is a really a viola in digital drag, these are intended to be realizations in sound of just a few of the previously unrecorded scores that proliferate daily on this amazing site.

The printed notes are one thing, but how many of us are really able to "hear" scores in our head? To make matters worse, the majority of string chamber pieces are preserved not as scores (if a score was ever published) but as individual parts, calling for stupendous feats of simultaneous reading or memory. A sound picture is surely worth a thousand blobs on the page. Having got my head round the basics of the Audacity program and learnt how to play the viola in a variety of clefs (just the one for the violin), I couldn't resist the temptation to "realize" some of the pieces that seemed to have little or no chance of performance, let alone recording, by professional musicians.

It's a time-consuming business (Wilm's nonet was something of an epic), but what astonishes me is how few of the pieces I've tried have ultimately struck me as not worth the effort. My top recommendations have to be the string quartets by Maximilian Steinberg (classmate of Stravinsky) and Alexis de Castillon. Amongst my countrymen I feel I should give a special plug to Henry Rowley Bishop, John Lodge Ellerton and George Alexander Macfarren, but the man who stimulates the most affection is the even more obscure Percy Hilder Miles, whose composing career seems to have stuttered and slowly died after he failed to win the hand of his pupil, Rebecca Clarke.  If only he'd managed to complete his cello concerto in time for the 1908 Proms...

Encouraged by certain of your editorial brethren (Eric, please stand up), my target for 2011 is to record and upload a "new" piece every week. For goodness sake don't expect immaculate performances – just something that will give interested parties an impression of what the piece sounds like, hopefully without too many wrong notes and "train-crash" noises. There must be others out there who could do a similar thing for different sectors of the repertoire. Go on!

What a magnanimous chap!

[Mark Thomas]

Steve Jones is definitely one of the good guys. From some private correspondence with him I know that he'll value any feedback he can get from those of us who value what he's doing.

[jerfilm]

Alas, if only Steve would add a piano to his Bedroom Band. 

Jerry

[JimL]

Steve Jones?!  Surely not THAT Steve Jones!  Well, on the other hand, why not?

[Mark Thomas]

I imagine that there are tens of thousands of Steve Jones' in the UK alone - probably almost as many as there are Mark Thomas'.

[eschiss1]

As far as I know, he doesn't play piano, and with the takes and retakes involved to get his recordings even as near-right and synchronized as they are, another person, be they pianist - or I suggested woodwind player (e.g. Straesser's clarinet quintet) - would have to be patient indeed- pardon grammar please. Anyhow, thinking through the process as he describes it, I take his meaning.  I think he did write in a talk-page conversation on IMSLP that a pianist (unspecified; this was entirely hypothetical, not a "this is in the works" sort of thing) and he could record a violin sonata or other duo in the usual sort of way and upload it - that's done all the time, he might have to create a new category for it to credit the pianist, or not use the bedroom band category and just list the players, but that might happen. So with apologies for speaking for him (if he reads and uses this forum or if he doesn't, either way) he didn't exactly say never, but did explain why the same process would be unlikely to be useful for more than one person (and he only mentioned playing violin and viola, and as you can hear in the Gernsheim In Memoriam Op91 for strings and discreet organ , he does add sampled computer organ sounds.)

(Listening to the Wetz quartet he added, composed around the same time as his 1st symphony - which I admit to really enjoying, unlike quite a few, I think. The third movement main theme, I notice from the parts- have had to take a break from listening but will get back soon- seems to hint at a theme from the symphony (symphony: C An Bf Df F Dn Ef... - quartet: Ef C Df F Dn Ef - Af) ... relation my imagination, I think.  Anycase, 1st movement of quartet -really- good, which bodes well for that rest.)

[jerfilm]

Well, I mentioned the piano only because string quartets are just not my cup of tea.  As lovely as some of them are, it's just too much of the same sound for too long.  Now add the piano to a trio, quartet, quintet - and suddenly you have a mini piano concerto.   But that's just another one of our personal preferences......

Jerry

[JimL]

I imagine that there are tens of thousands of Steve Jones' in the UK alone - probably almost as many as there are Mark Thomas'.

Yeah, I thought so.  I believe THAT Steve Jones resides out here on the Pacific Rim along with yours truly and a whole host of others.

[eschiss1]

therefore disproving Schoenberg's claim, in a brief essay on orchestration, "consider the string quartet. now no one feels a lack of color there"...