2020 unsung concerts

[eschiss1]

This concert that looks like it's still planned for next Friday the 19th in Valencia, Spain (works of Ries and Beethoven) looks kind of interesting. Hope it's still on, Ries in live concert is rare enough.

Edit: adding in this June 19 live performance of Busoni's piano concerto with Igor Levit too (and the WDR Symphony, Christian Macelaru conducting in Cologne) (Levit's recent series of podcasts about Beethoven's sonatas, btw, may be very much worth hearing if one understands spoken German. In any case, I hear good things about his playing . The intersection of podcasts and less -sung- music is interesting- I've found live podcast performances of Medtner's [lovely] quintet and such things just by a bit of searching - but - that might be worth a whole other thread. )

(Alas, a listed Paris performance of Bonis, Strohl and Fauré cello works has "cancelled" next to it. Hopefully postponed!)

[eschiss1]

The 2020 West Cork Chamber Music Festival has not so much been cancelled as been replaced by a soon-to-come streamed collection of remote concerts, I see. (I'm glad; whenever I've been able to catch even some of it on the radio (remotely over BBC) it's a terrific festival.)

Whether they will be the same concerts- whether eg Bowen's viola fantasy (which was planned for 2 July) will still be played, for example- I don't know. The website is here and promises to update.

[eschiss1]

A number of concert venues are already opening up, it seems. That said, there are still a number of cancellations and postponements, including the Aug. 30 Suk Asrael/Petrenko that was scheduled for Salzburg (guessing the whole or much of the festival is cancelled or postponed).

That said, this song recital with works by Herzogenberg, Friedrich Gernsheim and others on September 15 in Linz (Austria) is worth tracking for those who live anywhere near there- if it's still on as the date approaches a few weeks from now, it sounds interesting.

[eschiss1]

Adding: if you're near Stockholm on September 23 or 24, this concert with Helena Munktell's (by-1898?) (rev. at some point and revision premiered 1919, then pub.1922) tone-poem Bränningar looks interesting enough...

[eschiss1]

did I mention Rufinatscha piano quartet's in A-flat is intended to be performed by the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players October 26 (2020) (New York City)? [edited possessively or anyway apo-strophically.)

[Alan Howe]

Thanks, Eric. Here's an assessment of that work:

Rufinatscha's second essay in the piano quartet genre is the Piano Quartet in A Flat. It dates from 1870, thirty-four years after the first, when he was a very different person and composer than in his youth. First it must be mentioned that the opening Allegro Energico movement and the Allegro Moderato finale share the same material from the corresponding movements of Rufinatscha's Piano Trio from 1868, a piece that had itself reused the adagio from his piano concerto. So at this time the composer, whose production had declined precipitously as he got older, was also recycling earlier material more frequently. The Adagio second movement is one of Rufinatscha's last great slow movements (along with that of his second string quartet from the same year), and shows the composer has not lost his melodic gift. It sounds like a heartfelt elegy to lost youth and hope. A rather dark Scherzo follows, with a disquieting trio which is repeated twice. While the finale shares themes from the piano trio's finale, the mood is darker, lacking the high spirits of the earlier work. The two piano quartets are on a marvellous Tyrol Museum disk played by the Gasteig Trio accompanied by Marlies Nussbaumer on piano.
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2017/Apr/Rufinatscha_article.htm

[eschiss1]

As noted in another thread, and this year especially, it's wise to distinguish "programmed" from "performed"- (I agree!). Even this late in the year, a neat-looking concert which would have contained music of Ferdinand Ries (in Berlin on 1 November - the overture to a Ries opera, plus Hummel and Schumann) has been cancelled (However, as yet, this 24 April 2021 concert in Amsterdam containing Ries' piano quintet in B minor is still on. Hopefully! )

Meanwhile, in Liverpool's Philharmonic Hall, on 12 October, a song recital containing songs by Ireland, Bax, Britten, Weir and Venables is partially of interest to us and of interest to some of us, so may be worth noting.

Maybe most interesting to us is this concert of Reicha's string quartet in C minor on 14 October in Islington, with other works?

[eschiss1]

Looking at Novello/Wise Music's website, I see upcoming performances of Rozycki's piano concerto on 16 October 2020 in Rzeszów, Poland, of Goossens' oboe concerto on 4 October in Washington DC's Lisner Auditorium, to name two works...
From Sikorski's website, Myaskovsky's cello concerto (I think we still regard this as Romantic, but I'll edit this out if I'm wrong) is being performed again December 7 in Berlin at the Konzerthaus. (Dirk Wucherpfennig conducting.) Gounod's petite messe solennelle "Sainte-Cécile" in a modern chamber arrangement is being performed tomorrow in Munich.
Acc. to UE, Mahler's early Totenfeier is getting an outing on the 11th in Nagano, Japan (not under conductor Nagano) with the Nakano-Kumin Symphony Orchestra conducted by Yuta Takahashi; Zemlinsky's Mermaid is being performed (or broadcast, maybe it's happened already?...) on 22 & 23 October with Petrenko conducting the Danish Radio Symphony in Copenhagen, it seems this will be or is being streamed?...  (See UE performance calendar which has a few other streaming links, including to an upcoming performance of Szymanowski's 1st violin concerto.) They also mention an upcoming performance of Jenufa on 17 and 30 January (and 23 March) 2021, and more Janacek (Makropolous Case) in March.

[eschiss1]

btw while a Bachtrack listing for some LPO/Jurowski concerts this autumn lists them as cancelled, the LPO's own website lists them as on but with no live audience, just streaming live, if I understand- so the performance of Enescu's 3rd symphony (+Bach and Kats-Chernin) (a favorite of mine and, I hope, ok for this forum...) scheduled for December 2 is still on but will be online-only, for example.

[eschiss1]

btw, this November 7 performance in Berlin of Albert Becker's B-flat minor mass might be interesting.

Reger's Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Mozart is being performed in Tokyo at Suntory Hall (Yomiuri Nippon Symphony - concert changed but not presently cancelled unlike some others) on October 16 (concert listing.)

[Justin]

Already mentioned this in another thread, but the Berks Sinfonietta in Reading, Pennsylvania will have a digital concert performing Raff's Sinfonietta on November 21.

https://www.berkssinfonietta.org/concerts

[eschiss1]

Belatedly, I see that the Bruocsella Symphony in Belgium intended to - did? - have a performance of Raff's Sinfonietta back on 5 December 2020, too. (https://bso-orchestra.be/season/2020-2021.)