Stanford’s The Travelling Companion to be released on 27th September 2019

[Alan Howe]

Well, yes, but he also wrote:

the NSO's amateur chorus struggled at times, and a plucky small orchestra under Toby Purser's sensitive baton could hardly do full justice to Stanford's romanticism

I'm sorry, but recordings need to do Stanford's romanticism full justice.

[Mark Thomas]

Cost will be the reason, of course. I see that the recent performances of Stanford's Much Ado about Nothing in Leeds also had a "specially-prepared reduced orchestral score". And Stanford such a terrific orchestrator too. What a pity. Well, I am still looking forward to hearing The Travelling Companion, but am prepared to experience only "modified rapture".

[Kevin]

Interestingly, it seems it was Rupert Christiansen who was indirectly responsible for this performance/recording. According to the latest issue of Gramophone he did an article about unsung English operas which the director of the NSO saw: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/opera/11077505/Why-cant-we-hear-more-English-operas.html

Also, according to the Stanford Society the performance of The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, at the Wexford Opera Festival, will be recorded and released on CD http://www.thestanfordsociety.org/2019/05/22/the-veiled-prophet-of-khorassan-at-the-wexford-opera-festival-2019/

It seems to be a very good time to be a Stanford fan.

[Alan Howe]

Good news, although Wexford is often a problematic recording venue. Still, beggars and all that...

[Mark Thomas]

Absolutely. I'll be grateful, that's for sure.

[chriskh]

17 strings? A performance of Parsifal or Meistersinger with 17 strings might leave us wondering (if it was the only performance we could hope to hear) whether Wagner's ability as a composer was equal to his ambition

[eschiss1]

or one of those chamber-orchestra arrangements...

[giles.enders]

Has anyone heard the full recording and if they have, what is their opinion?

[Mark Thomas]

I shall wait a few months until it's available as a download.

[Kevin]

I shall wait a few months until it's available as a download.

Months? Do you perhaps know how long it will take? because I've emailed presto twice and got no reply. Seems strange to me in this day and age there's not a digital option at release day, unless I'm missing something?

[Mark Thomas]

No, I have no inside information, but recently SOMM CD releases have been followed a couple of months or so later by a digital release, so I assumed that this one would be the same. I think that some companies choose to stagger the release dates to give people an incentive to buy the CD and, although I usually buy downloads muself, I can't say I blame them given the speed with which commercial digital releases are pirated and uploaded to YouTube these days.

[Kevin]

Oh well. I've emailed SOMM and lets see if they bother to reply. I still find it baffling... an obscure work is going to be heavily pirated but anyway what do I know.

[Kevin]

Just got a response from SOMM...

We usually have to wait about a fortnight until Naxos USA makes the SOMM releases digitally available for download etc.

[Mark Thomas]

There you go. Thanks.

[Mark Thomas]

Qobuz are giving an 18th October release date for the download.