Messages

I'm listening to a quartet on youtube that must be the one you mean
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QhixhjRWRs
The duration is given as 24'49" so it seems the CD doesn't represent very good value for money!

It surprised me to find that none of Czerny's quartets is listed on IMSLP so presumably they all (how many of them can there be?) remain unpublished. Judging from No.28 their quality isn't all bad, hardly justifying Cobbett's dismissal: "The compositions of Czerny are without interest to modern players of chamber music".  I'll bet he never even set eyes on any of the quartets.

Thanks for the tip Mark, 4K Video Downloader seems to work very smoothly. Of course you have to make sure you download the app itself and not some other geegaw they try to foist on you in a green square.

Thanks for showing us this. I can't help but agree with the verdict of posterity, that the greatest time for British chamber music was yet to come. I wish some enterprising organization (the BBC?) would collect, perform and record as many entries for the Cobbett competition as can be located because this was clearly a major influence on future development. By 1906 even "Scotland's greatest composer" hadn't got into his stride.

Mark, I'm sure they weren't of your devising, but the conditions I've agreed to comply with (for the first time in any web forum, unless in the past the small print was always better hidden) seem absurdly, even offensively dictatorial. Of course none of your regular contributors could be accused of  vulgarity ("lacking sophistication or good taste") but to disbar three quarters of the population..!

I'll keep trying Mark. More often than not the music I choose to listen to isn't music I know and like, but my mind-width seems to be reaching its natural limits!

Infected by Hurwitz's enthusiasm, I immediately called up Aronsky's recording on youtube but sadly (as with so much of Raff's music) I find I can't join the chorus of approval. My loss I'm sure, but maybe my reaction could throw some light on why he's still awaiting promotion to the big league.

Hurwitz describes the PC as "unalloyedly wonderful" which unintentionally puts the finger on one thing I miss - the cutting edge of steel! "Mellifluous" might also describe it pretty well. Themes follow one another effortlessly and I find I can often predict fairly accurately what's coming next.  A short passage in the slow movement has the epic quality that's an element of all the "great" romantic piano concertos (maybe not Chopin's), but it's over too soon and seems to mean little in the overall context of the piece. Raff clearly found composition very easy. I truly believe he might have worked harder to make it sound difficult - hewn out of stone rather than moulded from clay.

Mark, thanks for giving me the prompt way back then. My favourite of Raff's quartets that you directed me to is No.8, his ingenious "Suite in Canon Form", which has emerged on CPO and can be streamed by subscribers to the Naxos Music Library or IMSLP. The Mannheimer Streichquartett are absolutely the real deal.

Aw Eric, you are kind. I'm delighted to see the first movement of my hack-through has had all of 456 downloads in a decade. More than half of them listened to the other three movements as well! A few hundred more have found it on youtube, not put there by me but by a wicked algorithm.

By the way, IMSLP's "Play" button doesn't work for me any more but "Download" initiates streaming and it takes a couple more clicks to actually download the file. Does everyone have the same experience with audio files on IMSLP?

Lots more fascinating stuff on that web site. Most of it seems to be pre-romantic but Strauss's Don Juan played on two pianos is a new experience for me. One slight downside is that many of the CD sleeves are reproduced too small to be easily decipherable. I've bookmarked it here: https://klangraumtirol.musikland-tirol.at/Musikgenies/praesentation.html
Clicking on each CD cover brings up its playable list of tracks. There's tons more if you explore around

It was good that Mike's CD of Percy's chamber music played by Ensemble Kopernikus got an airing followed by complimentary and perceptive words on last Saturday's Radio 3 Record Review.

I also tend to think of the work as more forthright than in the Carpe Diem's interpretation (so far as I've heard it). Maybe they're taking more time on account of the over-resonant acoustic? The sparsity of the audience is very like we get for chamber music concerts in our local churches and town hall.

Percy's most promising orchestral work was probably his short cello concerto (more accurately "concertino") that nearly got performed at the 1908 Henry Wood Promenade Concerts. From his correspondence in April of that year we learn that piano rehearsals with cellist Bertie Withers were going swimmingly, until at short notice Percy received an offer to tour Australia as an examiner for the Associated Board of London music colleges. It appears his time on the liner and the far side of the globe was so fully occupied that he never got around to finishing the orchestration. Withers then seems to have returned the score addressed to "My Friend Herbert Withers", perhaps with justifiably strong words because Percy then struck out the dedication in his Catalog of works.

My attempts to adapt the piece for viola or violin are too grotesque so for the time being this is the closest we can get to how it may have sounded in rehearsals. If it been a hit with Timber and his promenaders Percy's career may have taken a completely different course.

https://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Miles,_Percy_Hilder

It seems UC doesn't like the specific link to the concerto but you can find it yourself from there!

Very entertaining! I was trying to find a kinder word ("emulative"?), but for me le mot juste for the first movement of the string quintet is "derivative", practically every bar conned to some degree from the Debussy and Ravel quartets. The second movement is much more diverse but feels more like separate short movements than variations. The finale is a blast, totally empty of "music", but who cares! Fabulous playing. Now for the piano quintet.

Mit ausdrucksvoller Kussen?

Boulez and co are very much part of the past, I'd say! No chorus of approval necessary.