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Messages - Christo

#151
Quote from: Albion on Wednesday 19 October 2011, 18:46
I'm holding out hopes for the Serenade (1898) and the Bucolic Suite (1902)!  :)

Me too. And for The Solent (1902-3), Burley Heath (1903), Harnham Down (1904), Boldre Wood (1904? lost), Pan's Anniversary (1905), Three Nocturnes (1908), The Future (1908), Folk Songs (Ward the Pirate, Tarry Trowsers, And All In The Morning, The Carter, Minehead Hobby-Horse, Phil the Fluter's Dancing) (1912).  8)

And, after we discovered that the incidental music for Maeterlinck's play The Death of Tintagiles (1913) proved so succesful, I would also like to hear the incidental music RVW wrote shortly after to: The Merry Wives of Windsor (1913), Richard II (1913), Henry IV (1913), Richard III (1913), Henry V (1913), The Devil's Disciple (1913) and much later for The Mayor of Casterbridge (1950).  ::)

May I even ask for a few extra's? Last year Australian conductor Kynan Johns - a RVW lookalike, BTW ! -  conducted, with the Limburg SO in Maastricht (here on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uNexM9PlCI - recommended!) the orchestral version of On Christmas Night (1938), I would like to have that one too.  ;)

Perhaps even more? The Suite for Pipes (1938), The Abinger Pageant (1934, a cooperation with E.M. Forster!), The orchestral Suite Roy Douglas extracted from Folk Songs of the Four Seasons (1949), Solemn Music for the Masque of Charterhouse (1950), the Cello Concerto (1942-58, no doubt somebody is going to finish it). But maybe some of you won't count these as `early' works.  ;)
#152
Recordings & Broadcasts / Re: Hopes for 2012
Tuesday 15 November 2011, 20:35
My wish list is very modest. I would be completely satisfied if Dutton, or another label, would embark on symphonic cycles of:

Arnold Cooke (6)
Stanley Bate (3, after the First was withdrawn - but Peggy Glanville-Hicks claimed he wrote "a dozen or more symphonies"!)
Léon Orthel (6)
Ruth Gipps (5)
William Wordsworth (8, isn't it?)
#153
Composers & Music / Re: BBC Top 9 Symphonies Poll
Tuesday 15 November 2011, 20:15
Absolutely impossible.  8) Sticking to the BBC scheme of 1 til 9, I would think of a row like:

1. Arnold Cooke 1
2. Lennox Berkeley 2
3. Stanley Bate 3
4. Joly Braga Santos 4
5. Camargo Guarnieri 5
6. Eduard Tubin 6
7. Havergal Brian 7
8. Vagn Holmboe 8
9. Ralph Vaughan Williams 9

Alternatively:
1. Kaljo Raid 1 / Brian 1
2. Léon Orthel 2 / Vermeulen 2 / Wordsworth 2 / Alwyn 2 / Barber 2 / Erkin 2 / Gipps 2
3. Joly Braga Santos 3 / Madetoja 3 / Glière 3 / Guarnieri 3
4. Einar Englund 4 / Langgaard 4
5. Carl Nielsen 5 / Shosta 5
6. Ralph Vaughan Williams 6 / Holmboe 6 / Martinů 6
7. Malcolm Arnold 7 / Mahler 7
8. Havergal Brian 8 / Shosta 8
9. Robert Simpson 9 / Holmboe 9
10. Edmund Rubbra 10 / Holmboe 10

#154
I agree strongly with all those, here, who regard Cooke a major symphonist. Of the symphonies on cd (1 and 3), especially the impressive First is truly symphonic, also in the (I am among those who grew up with Robert Simpson's `The Symphony' part two, a Pelican book. I received a copy as a friend's gift back in 1982 and followed it for years as a personal guide through the world of the modern symphony - helping me very much to `discover' for myself names like Holmboe, Brian, even Schmidt - long before I met other people with similar weird preferences in forums like this one. :-)) sense of Robert Simpson. [oofff]

From what I heard, so far, of the Fourth (1974) and Fifth (1979), that I both downloaded from this site - many thanks indeed, Colin! - I would say that he continued that line. Indeed, very much so, because the Fifth is basically in the same idiom as the First (from 1947).

BTW, I also own a rare cd with his Concerto for Recorder and String Orchestra (1957) in four movements, played by John Tyson with `Collaborating Artits' [sic] and recorded in Wellesley, Massachusetts in 1987/1988. It was released in 1990 on Titanic Ti-169.

For years, it was the only Cooke I owned on cd, and I bought it because I remembered and cherished the old Lyrita LP with his Third Symphony (1967) and the Suite from Jabez and Devil. But only with the belated release of the fine recording of the First Symphony on Lyrita, a couple of years ago (belated, because the recording dates from February 1989!), did I realize what a major voice Cooke is. And that he had only died in 2005, short of his 98th birthday ..