The Operatic Pianist II - Divine Art

[thalbergmad]

Andrew-Robert Commagere had collected and privately shared just about everything that was available by Litolff.

Regretfully, he is no longer with us, but i am sure he would not have minded you having access to his collection.

Thal

[Gareth Vaughan]

Do you know where his collection is? Was it kept intact after his death? We owe him a great debt for the joy of the discoveries he gave us on those Genesis LPs.

[thalbergmad]

Much of it was digitalized, but what percentage that represented i do not know.

I am unaware of any instructions he may have given his family as to what to do with the originals.

Thal

[Mark Thomas]

As an aside: I had no idea that Robin Commagère had passed away, what an unpleasant surprise. A couple of years ago I had quite an extensive correspondence with him, and always found him the friendliest and most open-minded music lover. His Genesis label was one of the cornerstones of the revival of interest in the unsung romantics in the 70s and 80s.

[Gareth Vaughan]

Yes. He was a lovely person. We corresponded on many occasions. Latterly, I lost contact - and now to hear he has died is very sad.  Thal, do you have contact details for his family or access to his digitalised holdings?

[Martin Eastick]

I do have an original copy of the Litolff Op20 if this is any help, and I also have (apart from much more, some of which has already been mentioned above!):

Teresa Carreno - Reminiscences de Norma Op14 & Fantaisie sur l'Africiane de Meyerbeer Op24.
Napravnik - Les Adieux - (2nd) Fantasy on Czech National Themes Op5.

Although I don't have any copies myself, I see that Arthur Napoleao was quite prolific in this field of composition, and may be worthwhile investigating further (I do have some of his original works as opposed to fantasies/variations etc.)

[arpeggio]

Re Halka, it would make a good centrepiece of any potential programme, but on a purely pragmatic basis, the amount of work needed to get it to the required level is such that I'm sure I could learn four "normal" paraphrases in the same time! There is also the argument that there are several recordings already extant (there is a live video by Giulio Draghi on youtube, incidentally), and perhaps the time would be better deployed working on unrecorded material.

I do have an original copy of the Litolff Op20 if this is any help, and I also have (apart from much more, some of which has already been mentioned above!):

Teresa Carreno - Reminiscences de Norma Op14 & Fantaisie sur l'Africiane de Meyerbeer Op24.
Napravnik - Les Adieux - (2nd) Fantasy on Czech National Themes Op5.

I'm interested in the Litolff and the Carreno. I'm slightly repertoire-constrained, almost by semantic definition, in that if I do plan any sequel album, to keeping to operatic source material. I'll send you my email address by pm should you wish to pass the scores on.

[thalbergmad]

Gareth - over a period of about 15 years I sent a copy of everything I digitalized to Robin and he did the same to me. Regretfully, I did not keep records, but Litolff, Dreyschock, De Meyer, Dohler and Zichy come to mind as composers he was interested in.

I have no contact with his family and only knew of his passing via Facebook posts from his family.

He was in the habit of including RC in the title of his pdf's, so they should not be difficult to search and I will endeavour to make a list. He did restrict the circulation of his efforts, so really I would not know what to do with them.

Thal

[eschiss1]

These are PDFs of piano works only or does it also include his operas, concertos in reduced and full score, etc.? (Edit: I seem to have been thinking Hiller, not Litolff. Wake up, Eric. Hrm. Still, even a quick look suggests there's more to Litolff than the piano solo works and the 4 surviving piano-orchestra works; there are those overtures, several operas, etc. and some chamber works (quartet Op.60) and piano trios besides.)

[Gareth Vaughan]

It would be very good to have a list of Robert's collection. Some of the Litolff I would be extremely interested to see. There is a lot of Litolff's solo piano music in the BL but the cost of obtaining copies from them is now prohibitive - at least, it was when last I investigated. They used to charge something like £25 for one work up to 100 pages, so it was £25 whether it had 2 pages or 100. And you couldn't carry pages over, as it were. If you wanted another work it was £25 again. So two short pieces, maybe totalling no more than 10 pages, would be £50. similarly, if your piece was 101 pages, you paid £25 for the first 100 (not bad, you might say) but another £25 for the extra 1. Ludicrous!

[arpeggio]

I should have added earlier that, for those who have been kind enough to get hold of a copy, unless you get a physical copy, you probably won't be getting the digital booklet, which is available here:
https://d2ajug1vehh95s.cloudfront.net/25153booklet.pdf and I hope it is a useful complement to the music!

Thal, I assume all the Zichy is left-hand only? I think Artur Cimirro has recorded it. I've seen little Dohler, but the Norma paraphrase which I played through a while back really didn't seem inspired at all.

[thalbergmad]

As far as Litolff is concerned, Robert had digitalized Op.3, 6, 19, 12, 51, 55, 61, 66, 70, 71, 82, 90, 98, 104,106,110, 114,125 and a couple of WOO's.

Over a period of perhaps 10 years, It appears he sent me over 300 works of about 30 different composers, but a lot of Czerny, Dreyschock, Friedman, Gutmann, Herz, Jadassohn, Mayer, De Meyer, Rive King, Taubert , Volkmann and Zichy. He was certainly one of us.

He certainly left me no instructions on what to do with his scans, but he did restrict his circulation to private individuals especially to avoid the Mombeek creature.

I will do a proper list, but perhaps a new thread would be in order as our divine admins rightly do not like digressions and i feel his work is worthy of further discussion.

Regards

Thal

[Gareth Vaughan]

Thank you very much, Thal. That's most kind of you. He is certainly worthy of a new thread.