Messages

Woyrsch #1, #6 and perhaps #"0" have also been recorded and I wouldn't mind being able to listen to them.

Or cpo keeps a closer watch on us than we thought. Hmmm...

In which case, what other long lingering recordings can we persuade them to let loose from the basement?

there's a difference between "never wrote" and "never FINISHED

Yes, that's true. And, I suppose, there are these sub-categories:
1. Never wrote at all (AI?)
2. Only left sketches (Elgar 3; Schubert Unfinished scherzo; Bruckner 9 finale; Mendelssohn 6)
3. Full scores superseded by later versions (Bruckner symphony movements)
4. Speculative orchestrations (Elgar Organ Sonata; Piano Quintet)

Speaking personally, I don't much care for 1., find 2. of interest, am intensely annoyed by 3., and often enjoy 4.

Of course, nobody gets worked up about Ravel's orchestration of Mussorgsky's Picture at an Exhibition or Schoenberg's orchestration of Brahms' Piano Quintet in G minor.

Sometimes if you can, you should...

3. Rather depends. I would hate to lose the early versions of Sibeliius's 5th or Finlandia, which show us interesting possibilities. The quadzillion Bruckner versions on the other hand...

In general, though, so long as something shows genuine creativity I'm okay with it, but it does depend on the result.

I laughed out loud at times, as I watched this. 

Justin mentions Atterberg's take on the Stenhammar.  Frankly,I prefer it to the original.

Ah, I'm not alone here!

Anyhow, the differences are not huge and a real testament to Atterberg's musical memory.

I won't. Gloria dwarfs anything by Lachner in terms of self-indulgence. To paraphrase Carl Sagan, great ambitions require great execution, but there's far too little of the latter to justify the former. Das Meer is already stretching artistic believability, but it's tolerable (and musically more interesting than Gloria). However, from the rest of Nicodé's oeuvre it's clear that his strength lay in much more concise works.

Nikolai Tcherepnin has mostly become known because of his work for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. He created music for the ballets Le pavillon d'Armide in 1907, and Narcisse et Echo in 1911. The latter one is particularly interesting because it is quite similar to Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé, premiered the following year, in just about every way: dramatic subject, construction and certainly its overall mood. Just listen to their opening: Narcisse vs. Daphnis. Tcherepnin usually wears his Rimsky-Korsakov on his sleeve though, and that's the late Rimsky of Le coq d'or and Kitezh. Even his late trio of symphonic poems Le destin from 1938 is clearly inspired by his teacher. Interestingly, it almost sounds like a social realist composition even when Tcherepnin never returned to the Soviet Union post-revolution. That in itself may reveal something about the evolution of Rimsky's legacy in a more modernist setting. That's not to say he's a mere Rimsky-Korsakov clone though; there are other influences and some of his compositions are more idiosyncratic and individual (e.g., his Piano Concerto in C♯ minor from 1905).

Alexander Tcherepnin is a very different composer, and, at least after his very first period, not really suited for discussion here.

Hello all,

I wanted to draw your attention to a new recording by the NDR Radiophilharmonie under Stanislav Kochanovsky on Harmonia Mundi. It contains Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol (meh), Tchaikovsky's Symph- er... Suite in G major (more interesting) and an absolutely stunning rendition of Nikolai Tcherepnin's La princesse lointaine prelude, Op. 4. It's an early piece, and shows him at his most Rimsky-Korsakovian, and I've never heard it being played better than it is here. The Tchaikovsky Suite receives a very good effort, too (and I'm collecting the courage to brave the saccharine cheerfulness of the Capriccio).

By the way, I don't mean to imply that the F minor is anything less accomplished, it's just a different work in terms of ambition, I think, and radiates an altogether different energy and vigor. It's even a more cohesive work than the E minor, whose Adagio perhaps doesn't quite reach the pinnacle of the other movements.

Purely personally, Hiller is one of those composers who could always put a smile on my face. Even when it's not always that profound (or even aspiring to be), it's always great fun. There are very few composers that have that quality (Gouvy and Saint-Saëns are two other examples).

This recording shows him as someone capable of displaying true depth though, particularly in the E minor symphony. The recording, the playing and the interpretation are all nothing short of superb; a great disc.

I'm greatly looking forward to the next instalment. The "C major" that Griffiths refers to is presumably the same as the one published on YouTube by Tuomas Palojärvi – which, by the way, Tuomas is adamant can't be from the 1830s.

Dare I ask your source, Ilja?

go to the Cliqmusique page; there is a "see back cover" button beneath the image.

The VPN itself isn't illegal; inhowfar it is immoral to use it to bypass geolocking is a personal decision. However, replying the "Have you paid your license fee" popup with "yes" when you haven't is at the least a violation of the BBC's terms of service.

Eric, this should answer that:

A long overdue bolt, though! And we needn't even wait that long.

Full agree on the baroque/classical elements in Lacher. I've always regarded his symphonies as a sort of example of how Weber's might have sounded had he lived longer; they exude a similar energy and use of rather short melodic arcs. Meanwhile, Mozart and Gluck still audibly lurk somewhere in the background. But that does not mean that they're conservative for their time.

That said, I remain of the opinion that Lachner had real issues with pacing and timing; the symphonies often feel more like elaborate improvisations than that are consciously built up according to some underlying concept. Perhaps, this structural nonchalance is due to Lachner's focus on melodic development, which was arguably his greatest gift.

If we look at the waveforms (Weigle at the top and Pflüger at the bottom) the image seems pretty conclusive. Weigle is even a bit quicker in passages, particularly during the first third. About a minute of music cut by Pflüger can be found around the four minute mark in Weigle, and there's another minute or so at 14:00.

Now everyone seems to believe the overture was conducted by Pflüger due to an apparent "typo". But the conductor is actually Hans-Peter Frank according to the Sterling CD cover.

You see, that's why I'm tolerant towards innocent mistakes. Ahem. This is on me.