The Romantic Violin Concerto, Vol. 16 - Busoni & Strauss

[Christianv12]

The Romantic Violin Concerto, Vol. 16 - Busoni & Strauss

[Alan Howe]

Very nice. But no new concerto here - such a pity when, for example, the two Gernsheim VCs are yet to be recorded. (Although I suppose the Busoni could benefit from greater exposure.)

[eschiss1]

We'd probably help them out on that point by finding a violinist who knew the Gernsheim concertos and wanted to record them, given the ground rules of the RVC series being (as I recall them). At least a study score of the first has been published (I was only able to track down a reduced score, awhile ago. From the online preface I gather materials for the first concerto can be had from C.F. Peters. That's worth knowing...)

Even the Busoni and Strauss, while not new, are nowhere near as "repertoire" as the Tchaikovsky's VC or PC No.1 (in the most commonly encountered version of the several) (and to be fair-ish to RPC No.50 belatedly, I remember how excited I was once to finally hear the _2nd_ concerto; it can be all a bit relative anyway. And me only 44. But I really do take your point...)

Though I do think the Busoni - though like the Strauss a work of youth, and a discarded work of youth (in Busoni's case) besides- may deserve a place in their series somewhere anyway; formally I think there's something a bit revolutionary about it, and even though Busoni's aesthetic later on was maybe more unclassifiable than Romantic, the work itself is still high-Romantic and highly expressive. (Anyhow, the notion that "revolutionary" and "Romantic" are incompatible would come as a huge, stunning surprise to - say- Liszt among a fair number of others...)

[Mark Thomas]

It really is a crying shame that the Gernsheim Violin Concertos (and his Piano Concerto, come to that) remain unrecorded. Still, I don't know the Busoni, so that might be an interesting work to investigate. All in all, though, Hyperion's RVC series has thus far been a disappointment, to me at least.

[Alan Howe]

I know of a violinist who is definitely adventurous enough to do VCs such as those by Gernsheim.