Moór Symphony No.2 and PC2 in C minor

[Aramiarz]

Moór will be the 2 symphony And PC in c minor. The symphony is in few words wonderful. Moor Society gave us one recording from one performance recently by hurgarian broadcasting

[Alan Howe]

Fantastic news! Thank you!
Further details of the two works involved:
Symphony No.2 in C major 'In Memoriam Ludwig Kossuth', no opus no. (1895) - pub. Simrock 
Piano Concerto No.2 in C minor, Op.46A (1888) - pub. Rozsavölgyi

[Wheesht]

Brilliant news, thank you very much - greatly looking forward to this!

[Aramiarz]

Boosey&Hawkes has the rights about de 2 symphony "Kossuth", but Doro of Moór Gesellschaft talked with them for our performance. Surely after this recording some much orchestras will want performance Moór. It's Unbelieve the forgotten about his music!

[Mark Thomas]

What exciting news. Truly, we are living through a golden age of unsung recordings.

[Gareth Vaughan]

I am absolutely thrilled. I've been longing to get Moor's music performed and recorded. This is a tremendous start - I hope it will lead to more interest in his work - and more recordings, of course. I know both these pieces through the scores and I think they are really lovely.

[Masterraro]

I would like to join in the chorus of excitement re this news - some of the most exciting news I have heard on this forum. I hope it is the start of a succession of such events!

[eschiss1]

The Moór 2nd symphony WoO 153 (not to be confused with his symphony in C Op.67, though that too is OOCopt) was published in 1895 and is out of copyright everywhere (he died in 1931); a score can be freely downloaded from Sibley iirc and certainly from IMSLP (and parts extracted therefrom). In what sense Boosey owns the rights besides their wishful thinking, I'm not wholly sure... but erm thanks to them.

As to the rest, seconded.  I've skimmed that score (and placed an incipit or two on the IMSLP page) and I look forward to hearing it.

[Masterraro]

Emanuel Moor was never the greatest cataloguer and organiser of his works and manuscripts, having discovered this after many hours Central Westminster Music Library, where there is a rather poorly managed archive. There is also an archive in Lausanne. I can see a little confusion has emerged, cleared up by Eschiss, over the actual Symphony No 2 - Moor did not actually put a number on a Symphony until No 6. His actual Opus Nos go up to Op 151 (his unpublished Requiem of 1916- how I would love to hear that!). His earliest works without Opus Numbers are three symphonies (Nos 1,2 & 4 in my chronogical list below) so they should be WoO 1, 2 & 3, but rather confusingly they have been numbered WoO 152, 153 & 154, to follow on from his actual Opus Nos. One is led to believe in this system that there are WoOs 1-151......This is the picture as I see it at present. Moor wrote 8 symphonies, of which three are unpublished.

The chronology and hence the numbering is as follows
1893   Symphony No 1 in E minor,  unpublished (WoO 152)
1895   Symphony No 2 in C, published by Simrock, dedicated to Kossuth (WoO 153)
1895   Symphony No 3 in D minor Op 44B, published by Rozsavolgyi
1898   Symphony No 4 in B flat, published by Schmid (WoO 154)
1901   Symphony No 5 in A minor  Op 53B, unpublished
1906   Symphony No 6 in E minor, published by Siege, dedicated to Casals
1906   Symphony No 7 in C, published by Siegel, dedicated to Mengelberg & the Concertgebouw
1910   Symphony No 8 in A minor, unpublished

The numbering of the first five symphonies is an assumption on my part, but in my opinion the logical one. The challenge of doing a complete cycle are immense. I did quite a bit of work on the unpublished 3rd Piano Sonata, but it was a very disorganised MS and was in fact incomplete, needing a fair amount of reconstruction. It was also probably written for, though this is not explicit, the double keyboard piano. I suspect that the unpublished symphonies are of the same ilk - in other words they were incomplete
works that were not ready for publication. Until these MSS are found and analysed we won't know.

In his biography of Moor, Max Pirani cites the 2 String Quartets (Op 59 & 87) and the Pieces Lyriques for String Quartet Op 139, as being some of his finest work - what a wonderful CD that would make!

[eschiss1]

BTW sym7 is op.67; sym 6 is op65 and is @IMSLP (I haven't seen Op67 at all!)
The Stiftung site worklist - archived, I hope @ archive.org if it no longer exists? I need to check - contains some useful information along the lines of the above.

I'm fairly sure that some of his manuscript ensemble works received at least one performance, so not all were incomplete, I guess. Op.87 hopefully is among the complete ones, considering.

[Gareth Vaughan]

I think your numbering and chronology of the symphonies is correct, Masterraro. I too have spent some time in the Moor archive at the Westminster Library, It is a great pity they don't have the resources and manpower to catalogue it properly. There's a lot of MS material there. On the work list at the Moor Stiftung site they used to list the works of which they possessed copies by marking the entry with an asterisk, but I don't see that information there anymore. This is a great pity. I know for a fact there are some works at Westminster which the Stiftung don't have - and there are some pieces in neither collection, so they are either lost or elsewhere (the latter, one hopes).

Incidentally, I have a feeling that the MS of Symphony No. 8 may be at Westminster. I might be wrong! Must have a look next time I'm in London. Incidentally, Fleisher has score and parts for a Symphony in C which they have mistakenly catalogued as Op. 67, but as it is listed as having been published by Simrock (1895) it can't be "Symphony No. 7, Op. 67" but must be the WoO "Kossuth" symphony. Fleisher also has score and parts of Symphony No. 3, which is listed as Op. 45 and pub. Roszavolgyi, but with a publication date of 1890.

I would be interested to know of any libraries which hold copies of the published symphonies Nos. 4 & 7.

[Masterraro]

It is good to know that I am not the only one who spent time in the dusty, disorganised archive at Westminster Central! I even offered my services to try and sort it out, but they seemed uninterested. There was a list of works they purported to have there, but it was very inaccurate. I do not remember seeing the 8th Symphony there but I might be wrong, but I need to check on the notes I made (when I can find where I put them). There is another archive of his materials in Lausanne, which I never visited, but talked at length with them on the phone. They may well have Nos 4 & 7. 

Sorry I left out the Op Nos for 6 & 7. Re Op 45 which Fleisher  and the Stiftung lis as Symphony No 3 - Pirani has it listed as a Song 'Desire',  but I see this song in the Stiftung is Op 45a - quite possibly taken from the symphony?  I must admit that 44B and also 53B (53a in the Stiftung) are unconvincing Op Nos as the B implies that they are derivative of the original no., which clearly is not the case with the symphonies.

I have redone the list in the light your feedback, and following the Stiftung over Pirani

The chronology and hence the numbering is as follows
1893   Symphony No 1 in E minor,  unpublished (WoO 152)
1895   Symphony No 2 in C, published by Simrock, dedicated to Kossuth (WoO 153)
1895   Symphony No 3 in D minor Op 45, published by Rozsavolgyi, dedicated to Anita Moor
1898   Symphony No 4 in B flat, published by Schmid (WoO 154)
1901   Symphony No 5 in A minor  Op 53a, unpublished
1906   Symphony No 6 in E minor,  Op 65, published by Siegel, dedicated to Volkmar Andreae
1906   Symphony No 7 in C, Op 67, published by Siegel, dedicated to Mengelberg & the Concertgebouw
1910   Symphony No 8 in A minor, Op 92, unpublished, dedicated to Anita Moor

[Gareth Vaughan]

Yes, I met with a similar lack of interest when I was there. It is sad. Can you give me the contact details of the Lausanne archive, please? It would be useful to know exactly what they have.

[Gareth Vaughan]

Well, well. Interesting what a little online research throws up. The Westminster Music Library list in their catalogue of printed music (NOT the Moor archive which, as we know, has not been properly catalogued) complete sets of orchestral parts for:

Triple Concerto for piano, violin & cello and orchestra, Op. 70
Concerto for piano & orchestra No. 1 in D major (Simrock, 1894)
Concerto for 2 cellos and orchestra, op. 69
Concerto for cello and orchestra, Op. 61
Second concerto for cello and orchestra, Op. 64
Concerto for piano and orchestra No. 3 in D flat major, Op. 57
AND
Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 67

[eschiss1]

Op.45 in D minor seems to have been published in/by 1896, at any rate. See HMB transcription.