Can a Sung Composer have Unsung works such as Saint Saens first two symphonies?

[eschiss1]

Hrm. Unsung Brahms- is his Zigeunerlieder sufficiently unsung? I remember hearing that in my first week of college and thinking something like "this is Brahms?" ... Mind, I enjoyed Brahms, but this was a whole new side to him. (Then there was the chamber music student-initiated seminar I took the next year- better-known music, but not music _I'd_ heard...
I had the joy of running into this music -and-, at the recommendation of an earlier acquaintance, Berwald and some others, at about the same time, so I remember both the joy of horizons beginning to expand and the worry that my coursework was going to (it did) suffer with my spending more time on music than on my assigned college material. (Listening to a tape of the to me then-recently-discovered Mahler 6 while trying to study for my medieval-history final (interesting course, excellent and offbeat teacher, but hard class of course- bad for concentration, the tape... not good at concentration, sometimes.) 
... But that... erm.

and yes, the finale of the G minor piano quartet, well, not for nothing is that a Rondo alla Zingarese too...) (Rheinberger did that, very effectively, a few times too- 1st piano trio, A minor string quintet... but yes, I'm digressing again...)

[adriano]

Looking at the few recordings done so far (and. surely rare concert performances), Brahms' "Rinaldo" could still be considered an unsung piece.

[eschiss1]

Malcolm MacDonald in his (imho fine, even excellent) "Brahms" felt the Triumphlied undeservedly unsung, as well... (haven't heard it yet, though maybe I should just check YouTube...)
(Briefly/tangentially on the subject of biographies I often reread the one volume I have of Walker's Liszt trilogy, and -he- seems to have a few suggestions himself in FL,TOSF's connection, unsurprisingly; we've covered one - Elisabeth (from Volume III, not the volume I have)- recently. I am currently borrowing Refardt's book on Huber- _very_ interesting, and mentions something about symphony 8 I'd never heard before... but that'd be for another thread, since of course Huber's not sung...)

[alberto]

"Triumphlied" -it seems-to me was recorded fairly recently by Sinopoli (but not by Abbado).
Both Abbado (some decades ago) and Sinopoli (later) recorded the rare (but less rare) "Rinaldo".

[mjmosca]

Perhaps a new category- Semi-sung! What is more alarming is to realize just how arbitrary the development of the "standard repertory" is! So much superb music now never seems to be played in the concert hall- thank heaven for the proliferation of CD recordings. All four of the early Saint-Saens symphonies are superb works- beautiful and characterful; I have been trying for years to get my local symphony (Baltimore Symphony Orchestra) to program the Symphony #2, so far to no avail.

[adriano]

Sorry for my mixup! Oh dear, I meant "Schickalslied" instead of "Triumphlied"! And "Schicksalslied" (which was recorded twice by Abbado!) is a real masterwork.
Yes, alberto, "Triumphlied" has been recorded by Sinopoli and not by Abbado. I never heard the versions by Järvi (Chandos) and by Andreas Delfs with the Milwaukee Chorus/Orchestra...
I have thus deleted my earlier erroneous message.
And, after all, "Rinaldo" does not seem to be unsung on recordings as I thought:
It has been recorded for the first time in stereo (as far as I remember) by Abbado and James King on Decca. The Kollo/Sinopoli came later. Another version I like very much is the one with Steve Davislim on EMI (conducted by Plasson). The other ones are by Stig Andersen/Albrecht, Johan Botha/De Billy and Karsten Süss/Rilling. The versions by Pold/Couraud (DF) and Kerol/Leibowitz (Vox) were mono recordings.

[eschiss1]

In regards Triumphlied, there is a broadcast version here, it seems.

[JimL]

I would say the vast majority of Bruch's concertante works and all 3 of his symphonies meet the criteria of this thread.  Unless you want to consider Bruch a semi-sung rather than unsung composer a priori.

[eschiss1]

Hrm- sung composers, unsung works - Respighi's Sinfonia drammatica (and his concertos (some more obscure than others); and most-to-all of his chamber music - all, really, are, by most definitions, relatively unsung - and his operas... ), Mascagni's sinfonia in F major (?) (listed in SBN.it - I'm not quite sure what that _is_... ) ; Borodin's early chamber music (his -late- chamber works really got me into classical music, via "Kismet", but then one day I heard his- less characterful, but still- interesting!...- piano quintet on the radio... e.g.) (unless Borodin himself -is- now unsung, regrettably and hence doesn't fall into "answers for this question" cat-meow. Time and fashion... don't know ) ... a lot of other Liszt works might be mentioned (but then, he was among the more prolific* of the now rather famous Romantic composers... Alan Walker made a case for his songs and melodramas as worthy of much greater renewed attention, just-for-example...) ; Tchaikovsky songs and piano music (with a few better-known exceptions e.g. All But the Lonely Harp... erm... Flute... erm... Heart...)

*putting the most famous of the more dance-and-operetta-concentrating composers to one side if only because my familiarity with their music is small and I admit I'm more interested in "un[der]sung works by Liszt/Brahms/Beethoven/Tchaikovsky/Saint-Saens/..." than "un[der]sung works by the (Johann) Strauss family/...".  ... Then again, .. "more prolific", not "most", I see I wrote, so - eh- bother, said- someone in a Pooh novel...

[TerraEpon]

Liszt was far more prolific than Johann Strauss Jr, no real need to justify that I don't think....