Potter Symphony No.1 etc.

[semloh]

Thank you for all this information and for the upload of the BBC broadcast. All very generous, as usual. 

[Mark Thomas]

Spurred on by the recent BBC broadcast of his first Symphony (G minor, 1819), I've been enjoying rediscovering Potter's other symphonies. As joelingaard pointed out above, all but two of the nine surviving works have been recorded, and I thought I'd share the three symphonies broadcast by the BBC in 1995: the Symphonies in C minor (No.3 - 1826), C minor (No.8 - 1834) and D major (No.9 - 1834), together with the rather fine Tempest Overture and a replacement slow movement for the F major Symphony (No.5 - 1828), which Potter composed when he revised that Symphony in 1846. They're all now available in our Downloads Board here. They aren't my recordings and the sound could be better, but the quality is certainly good enough to enjoy these uniformly impressive works.

Symphony No.1 has just been broadcast (jperdrix's recording is downloadable here) and Nos.4,5 & 6 are, or at least were, available commercially (although labelled Nos.7, 8 & 10!). Hopefully it won't be too long before we can hear the B♭ major Symphony (No.2 - 1821) and the first D major one (No.7 - 1833).

[Gareth Vaughan]

Why not write to those companies and suggest they consider Potter's symphonies? Experience has shown they do take notice of comments from informed members of the listening public.

[Alan Howe]

...and Howard Griffiths would do a great job. Why not try cpo first, then?

[Hector]

I wonder - and this is just a passing thought - if when we think of British orchestral music we think of a late Romantic sound and therefore don't regard composers like Potter as being typically British and worth recording.

(By the way - thanks for the upload, this will keep me happily occupied for ages)

[Alan Howe]

Certainly it's not customary to think of us having a significant symphonist writing in the 1820s/30s. Good point. And then in the next generation, although overlapping with Potter, there's Macfarren. And probably others too.

[Mark Thomas]

It's interesting that, as joelingaard has already mentioned above, Potter's symphonies were sufficiently highly regarded by A. Peter Brown in his seminal survey Symphonic Repertoire for him to put aside quite a few pages to analysing them, and his verdict is very positive. I suspect that it's a British thing to disregard virtually every one of our symphonists before Elgar, and it probably doesn't help that Potter himself only composed in the first half of his career, IIRC correctly there's nothing of significance after 1846, yet he lived into the 1870s.

[eschiss1]

G McFarren seems to have written good chamber music too.

[Alan Howe]

I don't think Macfarren is shown at his best by symphonies

You may well be right. But we don't have a great deal of evidence to go on (two out of nine symphonies). And, as I said, there are probably others...

[Ilja]

That's a bit unfair, I think, and I greatly enjoyed the McFarren symphonies. They're not spectacular, admittedly, but if we're really honest neither are Potter's. Solid late classical fare, and we're all the richer for it.

[Alan Howe]

That's about right, I'd say.

[rosflute]

G McFarren seems to have written good chamber music too.

I have published most of the flute repertoire (sonata, concerto, recitative & air, Trifle no.1) as well as a transcription for oboe & piano of the Entracte to Act 3 of Robin Hood Act - and it is indeed good stuff.
You can hear audio and page samples:
https://trubcher.com/search.php?search_query=macfarren

[Justin]

As this seems to have turned into a general discussion of Potter's symphonies, I'll make this announcement here since it is related to the conversation:

I have just uploaded the 1995 BBC radio recording of Symphony [No. 4] in F major (1826) [styled No. 7 by the composer].

As a reminder, there is another recording of this symphony by the Czech Chamber PO on Classico from 2005, styled as No. 7. It falsely claims itself as the world premiere recording.

[semloh]

Thank you for uploading this, Justin. A performance of a symphony by Potter is always welcome.

It reminds me that Hilary Davan-Wetton was such a great champion of Unsung music back in the 70s and 80s (and perhaps still is), esp. by British composers, and so many performances under his baton were broadcast by the BBC (and popped onto my reel-to-reel at the same time!).

[Hector]

Yes, thank you. I think I prefer this performance to the Czech Chamber PO version in which I think the woodwind sounds too prominent and tempos are bit inflexible.