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Glad to hear that you've checked out the CD, Peter. Thanks for listening, and hope it continues to please!

Some of you may be interested to know that Avie have just released the complete string trios of Hans Gal.

And, this time, no Schubert or Schumann to contend with (what is they say about leading horses to water?), but two string trios by Gal's contemporary, Hans Krasa.

The Gal's frame his career quite nicely- the Serenade was written at the height of his pre-War fame and success, the Trio in F sharp minor comes from the 1970's and is truly music in a "late" style. Wonderful stuff.

Available here (and everywhere else)

http://www.mdt.co.uk/gal-hans-and-hans-krasa-string-trios-ensemble-epomeo-avie.html

Hi everyone

I hope you will forgive a well-intentioned interloper dropping in on this very interesting conversation. It is so exciting to read of everyone's interest in Gal's symphonies having spent an enormous amount of work in the last few years getting some of this music recorded.

I'd like to chime in with some behind-the-scenes information about the couplings which some of you have raised questions about. First of all, the Hans Gal Society (and the Gal family) has been very proactive in encouraging contextual programming  of Gal in both concerts and recordings. This is not an economic philosophy but a musical and educational one. In general, they've tried hard, as per Gal's own sense of his place in music history (which he wore with great modesty), to place his output in the context of the Austro-German symphonic canon.  In this sense, there has been a past reluctance to treat Gal too much as an "Entartete Musik" composer, but to show him as an heir to Schubert, Brahms and Schumann.  One can agree or disagree about whether an all-Gal disc would tell you as much or more about Gal as a Gal-Schubert disc, but there is a lot of idealism behind the decision.

The two Zehetmair discs were projects of the Gal Society- the Kindred Spirits pairing was the idea of the Society (in discussion with Zehetmair and the orchestra), not a marketing idea from Avie.

On the other hand, there are very real economic issues that have to be faced to get these records made. An all-Gal disc would cost about twice as much to release because mechanical copyright law, which licenses music under copyright by the minute of disc time).  Avie works on an artist-ownership model (http://www.avie-records.com/about.php). They work like LSO Live or other artist-owned labels, except they're not tied to one particular orchestra, instead working with us at Orchestra of the Swan, TZ and Northern Sinfonia, Bychkov/WDR, Petrenko/RLPO  and they handle all the San Franciso/MTT discs outside the US and so on. What this means is that each disc is funded by the orchestra (not the record company), the artists or a sponsoring organization (like the Gal Society). Each of the Gal discs to date has required years of work to fund. As each disc sells, the proceeds (to call them profits rather stretches credibility!) go back into the artist's Avie account. Eventually, there may be enough in the account to do another disc.

This can be a slow process- the good news, is that as new Gal discs have come out, Leon's wonderful piano disc has improved its sales. Now that the symphonies are out, the Violin Concerti/Triptych disc I did with Annette-Barbara Vogel last year sells a bit more. The more discs out there, the more likely more new discs can be made.

Our series with Orchestra of the Swan is going to be a full cycle of Schumann and Gal symphonies (the next recordings with be Gal 4 and Schumann 2 in December). The only way the project can work (i.e. happen at all) is to tie it to concerts (as most orchestral discs are now done), and record all the rehearsals and the concert. To do an all-Gal concert for a professional orchestra is an economic impossibility at this time (our performance of Gal 3 last year was the first Gal symphony concert since the 1970s).  We considered going in 2 year cycles and releasing 2 Gals on one disc and 2 Schumanns on another next year, but one can't really plausibly fund the second year without the revenue from the first (it also takes at least 6 months for sales revenue to start to return home from all the distributors and retailers).

I happen to love the musical paring of Schumann and Gal, but, of course, I love both composers' music. Gal wrote a wonderful book on Schumann's orchestral works (he also wrote wonderful studies of Schubert and Brahms) and you can learn a lot about Gal's music from what he says about Schumann and Schubert. I agree with the Gal Society (my cycle is an Orchestra of the Swan project, but we work very closely with the Gal Society, and Simon Fox-Gal is producing all our discs) that hearing his music in the context of his forefathers helps bring his music to life, and I also think one learns about Schumann and Schubert by listening to them in new contexts. The Schumann symphonies are a huge labor of love for me, and I know Thomas Z was deeply invested in the Schuberts that appear on his discs (to the best of my knowledge, TZ is not planning a full cycle of Gal). In both cases, the Schu's are anything but an afterthought. I really enjoyed TZ's Schubert 6, and I hope some of you will find something new in our Schumann 3 (and Schumann can be plenty unsung, too!).

The good economic news is that projects like this tend to keep selling for a long time. At some point, we're hopeful that all involved will actually make some money, but that is likely (unless something takes off and becomes a best seller, which we'd love) that that will take many years to happen. To those of you who feel like you don't need or want another Schumann or Schubert, I would just encourage you to think of that half of your purchase price as a small but incredibly valued contribution to the next recording. If all goes well, and we get the project finished, of course, there will be a strong incentive to box up all the Gal symphonies with Triptych and maybe some newly recorded string orchestra works. The important word is "if." Your six bucks/pounds/euros spent on the coupling you may-or-may-not want makes a big difference to us getting all four symphonies recorded. For the foreseeable future, every penny we take in on these discs just goes back into the recording pot towards the next CD, not into the maestros limo fund or Avie's new palatial office suites. If everyone waits, no box happens, because the project runs out of gas.

If I can just make one final plug- we're working on a micro-site within my blog for the 4 year Gal/Schumann project. It's very much under-construction (the disc has only been out 2 weeks), but we'll have all kinds of podcasts, video of the concerts, essays and interviews with players, experts and Gals  there, as well as all the current reviews and news. Lovers of Gal's music will find lots of goodies there over the coming months and years: http://kennethwoods.net/blog1/bobby-and-hans/

Many thanks for your interest

Ken Woods

Hi all

The disc of the Violin Concerto, Concertino and Triptych is now out. Available from Amazon here-
http://www.amazon.com/Violin-Concerto-Gal/dp/B003INBNR0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1278204847&sr=8-1

In the UK-
http://www.amazon.com/Violin-Concerto-Gal/dp/B003INBNR0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1278204847&sr=8-1

There is an early review up here-
http://www.classicalsource.com/db_control/db_cd_review.php?id=8295

I hope some of you will have a listen and let us know your reactions

KW

Hi everyone

I want to thank Jim for commenting on my blog post about Gal, and calling my attention to your discussion.

The CD of the Gal Violin Concerti and Triptych for Orchestra (a wonderful and insanely virtuosic mini-symphony in three movements) is now done, edited and mastered, and in pre-production. It will be released in late May or June on the Avie label. I'm pleased with how it has turned out, and delighted that it is the first complete disc of Gal's orchestral music to date.

Meanwhile, my colleague on that disc, the violinist Annette-Barbara Vogel, has also recorded the Gal music for Violin and Piano, also on Avie, and that disc has just been released. It is easily available through all the usual outlets.

There is more in the pipeline- I'm doing a disc of Gal symphonies with my new band, Orchestra of the Swan, to be recorded in December, and my trio, Ensemble Epomeo, is recording the 2 string trios in 2011. We just gave the American premiere of the Serenade for String Trio, op 41, last week in Philadelphia. We're playing the piece again at the Two Rivers Festival on April 16, and will be touring with it and later Trio in the summer and fall. If you are in the region, please join us for the April show-
http://www.tworiversfestival.co.uk/

I also believe that Antonio Meneses is recording the Cello Concerto for Avie soon.

It's wonderful and very rich, sophisticated and unique music. Incredibly demanding and unforgiving in spite of the lyrical surface- Gal was a great contrpuntalist with a very unusual sense of harmony, so one has to work very hard to balance the parts and to get everything to ring, but it is worth the effort.

I hope many of you will track down the new discs as they come out and look forward to hearing your reactions.

Kenneth Woods

www.kennnethwoods.net