Vasily Andreyevich Zolotarev 1873-1964

[Christopher]

Absolutely - thank you Reverie!  Seems you are in a race with David Dhibbard who has mentioned that he is putting it onto Sibelius.

I think it's worth saying that there isn't enough of his work recorded out there to pass a judgment on whether his work has merit or not.  And yet he seems to be the subject of a huge number of postings across various fora. Given that there are many many Russian (etc) late romantic composers whose works have never been recorded, why does this one attract so much attention and speculation?  Apparently Rimsky-Korsakov, for one, didn't rate his work...

[Alan Howe]

We're going round in circles again. I suggest we wait until we've actually got something to listen to. Then we can (finally) make a judgment.

[Reverie]

Absolutely - thank you Reverie!  Seems you are in a race with David Dhibbard who has mentioned that he is putting it onto Sibelius.

I think I'll leave this one to Dhibbard 

I have other irons in the furnace.

[Christopher]

I discovered on another forum that someone has made a MIDI version of Zolotarev's 1st symphony - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXpZyqdSV74&t=1s - maybe we can now start to get a sense of whether his music is any good.

[Alan Howe]

Not a great-sounding rendering, unfortunately.

[Christopher]

Would you say it's the rendering rather than the piece? I'm finding it difficult to tell so can't give an opinion.

I note that the creator of that Youtube channel, has "orchestrated" a lot of unsungs from our era - this is his list of works: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMecG2I4vEDzoD0HW4DxylA/videos )

[Alan Howe]

The renderings are universally terrible in sound - such a shame.

[Gareth Vaughan]

Yes. They are all awful I'm afraid.

[Alan Howe]

Back to square one with Zolotarev, I'm afraid.