Unsung Works about Battles/Wars or other military engagements

[TerraEpon]

Contributors might be interested to know that there is one recording of most of the soundtrack, with numbers in the order they appear in the film (they are re-ordered for the cantata). It is available on RCA Victor with the St Petersburg Phil conducted by Yuri Temirkanov. It lends an interesting comparison to the cantata and contains some excellent music that didn't make it into the concert work.

And there's a much better recording of the whole thing, on Capriccio, http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/Drilldown?name_id1=9744&name_role1=1&comp_id=2269&bcorder=15&label_id=1074
I sold my RCA version after getting it.

[Ilja]

There's of course the portrayal of the Battle of Poltava in Tchaikovsky's Mazepa, which I think qualifies as 'unsung'. There are some battles in Rimsky-Korsakov's operas as well: in Kitezh and the Golden Cockerel at least.

Then there are Peter Benoit's massive oratoria De Schelde (the Scheldt River) and De Oorlog (The War), which gained fame in 19th-Century Belgium (particularly Flanders); abd the finale of Cornelis Dopper's 7th Symphony 'Zuiderzee' is a portrayal of WW1.

[chill319]

Framing this forum's topical calendar ...

Somewhat akin to Wellington's Victory, though much earlier and for different forces, is Dussek's sonata for piano, violin, cello and percussion entitled The Naval Battle and Total Defeat of the Dutch by Admiral Duncan (1797, Craw 152).

And at the other end, there's Shostakovich 7 and Khachaturian 2, still tonal.

[sdtom]

Perhaps we should call Victory at Sea by Rodgers a work. I realize they are individual but put them together and you have a very credible job.
Thomas

[M. Henriksen]

Although Edward Elgar is a sung composer, his 3 works for speaker and orchestra composed as a reaction to the German invasion of Belgium in WWI are seldom heard today for obvious reasons.

Carillon, Op. 75 (composed 1914)

Une voix dans le désert, Op. 77 (composed 1915)

Le drapeau belge, Op. 79 (composed 1917)


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