Jakab Gyula Major Concert Symphonique (1888?)

[eschiss1]

Of course, most of Mihalovich's music remains in ms and available at best through a Hungarian library. I respectfully disagree regarding Liszt's music- my opinion is as opposite as my "opinion" of the spelling of his family name as he wrote it.

[Alan Howe]

It's been put right, Eric.

My own feelings towards Liszt are rather mixed: I think his symphonic poems are a fusion of sublimity, excitement and banality - probably about right for the experimental form that they represent. However - and it's an important 'however' - I firmly believe that his Faust Symphony is a blazing masterpiece: every bar of it grips me, and I think it's significant that many good-to-great conductors have recorded it - e.g. Beecham, Bernstein (twice), Solti, Barenboim, Sinopoli, Masur, Ansermet, Fischer (Ivan), Muti, Chailly, Thielemann, Rattle, Noseda, Dorati, d'Avalos, Dausgaard, Conlon, Inbal - and probably others I've forgotten. In other words, far more conductors than those who have conducted just the odd symphonic poem or two.

So, to return to Mihalovich and Major, I'm hoping that some of their symphonies/concertos might turn out to be worth reviving. Mihalovich wrote four symphonies; Major wrote six symphonies, two further PCs, one VC and one Cello Concerto!
For Major's works list, follow this link:
https://imslp.org/wiki/List_of_works_by_Gyula_Major

[Gareth Vaughan]

There are also the 3 Concert Fantasies Op. 63 for piano & orchestra, mss. of which are in the Szechenyi Library.
I'm not sure that the E major PC without opus number is complete. Szechenyi never replied to my enquiry about that  which, admittedly, I sent during the COVID outbreak.

[semloh]

I too trust your judgement, Gareth. I am sure many people would simply hear that Youtube piece and dismiss him. Clearly, that would be a mistake.

[Darrel Hoffman]

Thanks for listening.  I'm aware that the sound quality was less than ideal in some of these earlier works on my channel.  I've since switched to MuseScore for the sound fonts, and I've been considering "remastering" some of my earlier transcriptions.  (I still do my initial transcription in the Mozart program just because it's just much, much faster.  MuseScore has a lot of good features, but the actual "entering of notes" part is seriously cumbersome.)  It is possible to export MIDI from Mozart and import them into MuseScore, though they do require significant cleanup after doing so.  I tried this with the Major concerto after getting some similar complaints on the channel.  It's an improvement, though I'm not sure if it's enough of one in this case to warrant a reissue yet.

The truth is that these simulated performances may never fully do justice to romantic era pieces, but that was never the point.  My goal is to make these lesser-known works available to listen to in some form, in the hopes of inspiring a real performance and recording.  This is one reason I've shifted focus to some older works - I still prefer romantic pieces, but they take a good deal more work, so my plan is to intersperse romantic concertos with a few easier classical/baroque works in order to give myself more time to work on the romantic ones.  (There's also a much smaller of pool of unrecorded romantic works to choose from - the more recent stuff is far more likely to have existing recordings.)

[Alan Howe]

Thanks. All I can add, as a complete non-specialist, is that renderings made using Sibelius/NotePerformer result in a very listenable experience - so much so that repeated auditions are not merely possible, but are actually a real pleasure.

[Darrel Hoffman]

Both of those programs are outside my budget.  I make no money doing this (at least until I reach the 500 subscriber mark, which I don't think is quite likely any time soon given the niche market that would be interested in this).  Sibelius has a free version but it only supports 4 instruments, which is clearly not enough.  I use Mozart because I already had it, and because it has by far the easiest and fastest note-entry of any program I've tested.  Its sound quality is clearly insufficient, which is why I've switched to MuseScore, which is free, but I still do the entry in Mozart and export to MuseScore for the sounds. 

If you listen to my more recent works, starting with the Kleeberg concerto, you should hear an overall improvement in the quality.  If there's enough interest, I could give this treatment to the Major concerto as well.  As I said, I did an early test of this, and found the quality improved, but not sure if it was enough to warrant the time and effort it would take to do the full piece.  (The import process involves a good deal of clean-up.)

[Ilja]

I perhaps need to point out that entering scores into Sibelius can be rage-inducing. The issue with much of these software products is that they continue to use interface elements from decades past because it is what the user base is accustomed to, even if they don't make much sense on their own. The sheer terror of working myself into a heart attack is what is keeping me from continuing to work on this sort of thing. I know that Tuomas is using Dorico. That may be better, but it's also more expensive.

[tpaloj]

Dorico is just wonderfully efficent for making instrument parts (there is no equal in the market) and perhaps I just prefer its workflow compared to Sibelius. Darrel, I'm curious what makes the Mozart software so fast to input things for you? Dorico is pretty good in this regard - its default key scheme is robust and quite well thought out. I use a combination of mouse/shortcuts/keyboard. Would be faster to learn to input with keyboard only but guess I'm too partial to use the mouse out of habit.

[Darrel Hoffman]

I haven't tried Dorico yet - it does seem to be the most expensive of the options, perhaps for good reason?  The main thing that makes Mozart so fast is that you can do literally everything from keyboard alone.  MuseScore pretty much requires constant switching between mouse and keyboard, and many features are not accessible from the keyboard at all (e.g. dynamics, ornaments, etc.).

You CAN enter notes in MS via keyboard, but it seems the only way to do so is by typing the letter of the note (A-G), which is enormously inconvenient and unreliable - e.g. if I type a "C", I either get the C above the current note or the one below it, almost at random (I think it picks the closest, but sometimes it goes the other way if it thinks the note is out of range - which is often wrong).  This also requires an extra mental step of translating the position of the note on the page into the letter note, and of course the keys A-G are not located consecutively on any standard computer keyboard.  (If I could hook up my piano keyboard, it might not be so bad, but that requires hardware that also isn't cheap.)  It's much easier to place notes by sight - i.e. it goes on this line here, and the next is two lines above it, etc.  (Especially when reading unfamiliar clefs - as a pianist I know treble and bass very well, but it still requires a bit of a brain-leap to read alto/baritone clefs.  Then you have those weird outdated ones like the Soprano clef I had to read for an old baroque harpsichord concerto...)

Small things, yes, but when you're doing it over and over again to enter an entire concerto, it adds up.  I can do the basic note entry in Mozart for an average concerto in about 2-3 days.  Trying to do the same in MuseScore would take over a week, because you pretty much have to use the mouse, and it can be very fiddly landing on the right line/space unless you zoom all the way in so you can only see a few measures at a time.

[eschiss1]

I don't know if there's anyone who uses LilyPond for projects these sizes, but I'm guessing so- I can guess at the advantages and disadvantages from my own use of the software. Not for speed, arguably, but allows very accurate placement of various things (notes, slurs, dynamics, ...) relative to each other to match how the composer wanted them, especially compared to other software I've tried out.

[Alan Howe]

In the final analysis it's the objective that determines the choice of software: there is a big difference between trying to achieve a rendering that approximates to the sound of an orchestra and one which simply aims to give an idea of what the music might sound like.

[eschiss1]

I'm told, and have no reason not to believe, that LilyPond is probably your last choice among programs that "can" do both, if it's a sound file rather than a typeset that's your primary goal, I should clarify...

[Darrel Hoffman]

Yeah, since my videos use the original manuscript for visuals whenever possible, I don't care so much what it looks like in the program.  The audio quality and ease of use are the only things that matter to me.

[Alan Howe]

Try this extract:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JazSKSYZ0QY

What a wonderful, sparkling work this is!