New from Guild:
GMCD 74015
Music for the University of Zürich
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) - Academic Festival Overture, Op.80, Edward Rushton (b. 1972) - Concrete (World premiere recording), Friedrich Hegar (1841-1927) - Festive Cantata on the occasion of the inauguration of the main building of the University of Zurich 1914, for soloists, male choir and large orchestra, Op.42 (World premiere recording)
(CH)
Musikkollegium Winterthur, Akademischer Chor Zürich (male voices), schmaz schwuler männerchor zürich, Männerchor Zürich, Wolf Matthias Friedrich (baritone), Soloists: Anna Gschwend, Stephanie Pfeffer, Sofía Pollak, Michaela Unsinn, Tamás Bertalan Henter, Reto Knöpfel, Ján Rusko, Philipp Scherer, Karl Scheuber (conductor), Anna Jelmorini (conductor)
Sound sample here:
http://www.guildmusic.com/shop/wbc.php?sid=1845775981c&tpl=produktdetail.html&pid=16534&recno=1&recno={wbc.srecord} (http://www.guildmusic.com/shop/wbc.php?sid=1845775981c&tpl=produktdetail.html&pid=16534&recno=1&recno=%7Bwbc.srecord%7D)
Didn't think much of the audio samples myself. Was I wrong?
Pity if so - I quite like his string quartet (F-sharp minor) (which Matesic uploaded to IMSLP) and would like to hear some of the other works that have been uploaded there.
Well it just seems odd to have a purely orchestral extract to illustrate a cantata. If it is representative of the whole then the piece must have sounded very old fashioned at the 1914 première.
I'm passing on this one myself. But I'd be delighted to be proved wrong.
The whole thing can be heard here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwSD6udXucg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwSD6udXucg)
It's a celebratory piece, clearly. Fun, but not terribly profound.
I have tried the link just now and it says This video is unplayable... something to do with the rights?
Hmm. You're in Switzerland, right?
Yep. And since I last tried the link, the wording has changed to:
"This video is not available. Sorry about that."
The thing was marked as being public domain, that may be true of the work, but surely not of the recording?
How odd. I just clicked on the link and it came up and played just fine. 7:15 Pacific Daylight Time......Monday
No problem for us in the UK either. Must be a Swiss problem...
It's an Aussie problem too!
In a way, it's correct that not everything is available as a free download. In the past I had been confronted with some 60% of my own CDs on Youtobe - and all in complete form, which I absolutely couldn't approve. Some excerpts for promotional purposes may be ok. In a legal case - and with the support of some foreign Copyright Institutes - we were able to track down quite a few of those uploaders; they were either warned or fined. In 2012, for example, I wrote a message to a guy who had just uploaded Fritz Brun's Third Symphony in full, making him clear that not only he was transgressing sound carrier copyrights, but also composer's copyrights (Brun is still protected). He wrote back to me, insulting me, among other, as being a "pompous ass". I think, at least some rights should be respected. A different case may be broadcasts and live concerts (or old recordings), which are not being released on commercial CDs (or have hopelessly disappeared). Just consider what new CD productions cost; those who paid them should get something back, in a way. The full amount of an unsung repertoire CD may never come back at all, and the fact that many producers issue them is also a work of love, which should be respected. Illegal copies of complete freshly available CDs are an insult to producers and to artists. Another case was one of my G. T. Strong Marco Polo CDs, which was on YouTube before even I knew myself that it had been released and before I had received my free copies.
Unlike Brun, however, Hegar died in 1927 so his music is PD-CA/EU generally speaking with exceptions- performances are protected and particular editions etc. (depending very much on specifics), but not the music just by virtue of his date of death. (The first edition of a work of his- anyone's, as a rule- published before 1923 in the US can generally be considered public domain there (here- which does not translate everywhere or even much outside the US, mind...), as well.)
I have now ordered the CD so I will have something physical in my hands that I bought in the proper fashion. I still don't understand how Youtube "decides" which countries have access and which do not. I, too, think that SOME rights ought to be protected, but the fact that Hegar died nearly 90 years ago had struck me as well.
I completely (and trenchantly) agree with Adriano about copyright on recordings and the way this is sometimes blatantly flouted on YouTube. YouTube should be held responsible in my opinion.
Yes, Wheest (and thanks Gareth!), but there are also other kind of rights, like performer's ones, which in many countries are controlled and working. Once a work/performance is published/uploaded in full (no matter which media), we conductors, soloists and orchestra players get some small percentages. This should also apply to YouTube uploads. On Radio Broadcast, in Europe one gets a fee for every minute of music which is played, no matter if it is a complete work or not. The USA, unfortunately, did not manage yet to collaborate with Switzerland. Would I get conductor's royalties from the USA, I would get quite some money, seeing alone what is being played on Radio Stations. What I get from Germany, Switzerland, Sweden and France is peanuts. And since that absurd invention called "European Union", those peanuts had been reduced for some unexplicable reasons to about 1/4 what they were before. And, just as a reminder: from all those 30 CDs I conducted for Marco Polo-Naxos, no royalties depending from sales were paid by the company: most labels also respect those. Only stars get a lot of money from label royalties.