Alfrēds Kalniņš (1879-1951) Piano music

[Alan Howe]

Completely missed this one:
https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/8496308--alfreds-kalnins-moments-musicaux

[eschiss1]

did Alfrēds Kalniņš write 7 symphonies too? I know Imants Kalniņš (b.1941) did (also known as one of his country's premiere rock musicians and composer of a well-regarded rock opera), and that a recording of them was reviewed in 2021 by MusicWeb- I've heard one of them myself, I believe- but that would be an interesting coincidence.

[Christopher]

Which Kalnins are you referring to? There are (at least) four:

Alfrēds (1879-1951) - I don't think he wrote any symphonies, though he wrote a fair amount of other work (some of it recorded on Soviet era LPs...so ineligible for upload I guess) which would be of interest here. His major work was the opera "Banuta";

Imants (1941-) - has written at least 6 symphonies.  His music wouldn't meet the criteria of this website (though the second movement of his 4th symphony is very celebrated in Latvia and rather beautiful (melodic and harmonic, deploys dissonance in the Prokofiev way), fyi it was used in the 2017 US movie "Battle of the Sexes" about the 1973 tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs - here's a recording for those curious, 8 mins: https://youtu.be/qfohhYibNFk);

Jānis (1904-2000) - wrote 4 symphonies;

Aldonis (1928-) - mostly choral.


The surname is a relatively common one in Latvia so I don't know to what extent they may have been related.

Some Alfreds Kalnins works on youtube:

Autumn (a lovely 3-minute work for orchestra) - https://youtu.be/Vk1fsJa_yH0

Autumn (piano version) - https://youtu.be/x4x8d54Dcqc

My Homeland - https://youtu.be/lcaGBJqi268

Banuta (Act 1) - https://youtu.be/NEISZ5Rz2NI
Banuta (Act 2) - https://youtu.be/R9pvwMjlAgY
Banuta (Act 3, I love the finale of this act) - https://youtu.be/kk5DWXl6fW4
Banuta (Act 4) - https://youtu.be/CmPbqF4_FpY

The Sea, cantata (choir and orchestra) - https://youtu.be/nvrX_tGKPLI

Doomsday cantata (choir and orchestra) - https://youtu.be/HxofBeJw6Ho

[eschiss1]

Latvian Wikipedia for Imants gives only 6, but Musicweb also lists a 7th written in 2015. It doesn't give a relation between Imants and Alfreds but does say that Imants' brother is a well-known author, Vik Kalnins. (Edit: I haven't compared the 2 lists as I should have- maybe Latvian Wp lists the 7th as no.6 but combines the versions of no.4 but the recording gives 2 versions of the 4th different numbers which would affect the numbering of the others, just as an example of something that might happen off the top of my head. Will check in a bit...)

[Febct]

Yeah - my recordings are of Imants' symphonies.

Gotta pay more attention. 

[Christopher]

See also this post from 2022 with more recordings: https://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,8710.msg90066.html#msg90066 - it includes piano music.

[Alan Howe]

Thanks, gentlemen. Let's stick to Alfrēds Kalniņš' piano music here.