A chance for Unsung Composers buffs to shine !
Picked up yesterday in the marvellous Gramex shop in Waterloo a Marco Polo disc of Guatemalan composer Ricardo Castillo(1894-1966); a ballet score Paal Kaba, incidental music from another Quiche Achi, plus a Rhapsody for Orchestra, Symphonic Poem & several other pieces. Much based on Mayan legend & Amerindian musical sources, according to the blurb, and very listenable too, thank you !
Internet research thus far has failed to throw up anything about him, so over to you !
And while we're at it, any more real 'one-offs' out there that people have come across ? Come on, Ladies & Gentlemen, how about a real 'Obscurities Corner' on USC ! If they're as pleasant as this, which I'm listening to now, it'll be a delight to discover them - this of course is where you tell me 'Oh, we've had a page devoted to him/this topic for years' !
How about Hugo Staehle (1826-1848) who wrote a wonderful Symphony in C minor available on Sterling?
Gosh! So many to name.
Since the Sterling label was named, I'll nominate Josef Otto af Sillén, represented thereon by his Violin Concerto and Third Symphony.
Quote from: febnyc on Saturday 03 March 2012, 21:49
Gosh! So many to name.
Since the Sterling label was named, I'll nominate Josef Otto af Sillén, represented thereon by his Violin Concerto and Third Symphony.
Lovely - that exists on You Tube, so can 'discover' him at leisure, thanks !
Bet you won't discover a recording of anything by Joseph Speaight or Otto Nietzel; nor Oskar Raif, come to that.
...nor of - according to Toskey - one of the best unsung Romantic-era VCs, namely No.1 in A minor (1876) by Reinhold Becker.
Re Oskar Raif, there is an edited edition of a piano work of his at LoC (and now IMSLP), though, so there's at least something (and given an interested pianist or sequencer, a brief recording, so again, something. Likewise a few lieder by Becker.
To a list of really obscure composers I'd add Salvatore Pappalardo (1817-84; though he was once better-known - well, so were several of these others), composer of Italian chamber and choral works and I think one opera; at least 6 string quartets, the last of them fairly ambitious, and 3 string quintets; only some of these published); perhaps Eugène Cools (1877-1936) (student of Gédalge, Fauré and Widor; published 100-odd works including a well-regarded symphony (1907)); Olga von Radecki (1853-1933) (Riga-born pianist and composer, resident in Boston much of her life; dates mentioned in exactly one place - a 1933 issue of Baltische Monatshefte (viewed in Google Preview as a Snippet - can't tell which issue, and not as sure of the dates as I'd like to be, given the possible failures of OCR))...