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I can't disagree.  It is my favorite symphony, but, to my mind, all seven of the recordings released on CD so far are flawed in one way or another, be it sound quality, phrasing & tempo, or quality of orchestral playing.  That said, I still enjoy listening to all of them, well, maybe all except Yondani Butt & The Philharmonia on ASV.  That one is absolutely lifeless.

I just found out yesterday that Heritage Records have, in the past few years, been reissuing Unicorn-Kanchana CDs, including several Bernard Herrmann titles.  As noted in a thread from a few years back, all copies of the 1990 CD reissue of Herrmann's 1970 recording of Raff's 5th Symphony evidently suffer from "bronzing," aka "CD rot."  I've emailed Heritage encouraging them to consider reissuing the Raff.

My eternal gratitude will go out to any of you who would do the same.  I'd also note that there are a number of other currently unavailable titles in the Unicorn catalog that might be of interest to readers here, so it can't hurt to let them know there's interest in their efforts.  I'll paste the link to their website below:

https://www.heritage-records.com

Listed on Presto as download only, but I imagine the CD will be listed soon.  The filler is the 9-minute "Sinfonia Festiva."

BIS has a forthcoming SACD of Helvi Leiviska's orchestral music coming soon.  It is "volume 1," so I guess at least one more is planned after this one.

I saw it listed on the HMV Japan website, and not being able to read Japanese, I can't tell what the pieces included are, but their Opus numbers are. 11, 27 and 30.

From a review I saw on www.classicalmusicdaily.com, I believe the Chineke! Orchestra CD also uses the Trevor Weston reconstruction, but am unable to confirm that because Decca doesn't seem to have posted a photo of the inlay card or mentioned it in their promotional blurb.

Now that Nézet-Séguin's Price project appears to have moved from DG to Decca with the second installment, I wonder if they'll take a pass on the piano concerto, there being such a new one already in Decca's catalog.  Naxos, please take note!

Scott

There'll have be to be at least three CDs to cover Respighi.  There's still the two piano (or is it piano, 4 hands?  I can't remember now.) version of the Concerto in Modo Misolidio.  When I emailed Toccata to inquire about that particular piece, the reply was that they were going to include everything.

I sold my LPs off around 1988 or so.  I'm with Alan, good riddance to them.  I would have to say that a large part of the problem was the increasingly poor quality of the pressings.  By the end, I was buying brand new LPs, and the first time I'd play them, my ears were assaulted by the crackle.  Seemed like I was wasting my money on a high end turntable and hideously expensive cartridges.

Sad to say the same kind of thing is happening with CDs.  Jewel cases, which were thick & heavy in the beginning, became thin and flimsy (and easily broken when the the mailman dances on them).  The discs themselves aren't faring much better.  In the first ten years or so of my collecting, I only got one CD that had anything wrong with it (it just wouldn't play on any machine).  Now, the situation is very different.  I order new CDs, and, when I get them and I remove the cellophane, I find scratches on the playing surface.  (and, yes, I know a re-wrap when I see one, having been burned on that many times when buying through Ebay or the Amazon Marketplace).  I'm at the point where I will not purchase CDs on Supraphon or anything manufactured in Italy (Urania being the absolute worst).

Add to this all the labels foisting off CD-r's on unsuspecting customers, unrealistically high prices in the secondhand market, the near extinction of brick-and-mortar shops, rising international postage rates, increasingly poor postal service, having to pay North Carolina sales tax on discs I order from other states, having to order from Japan to get the format (SACD) I want...  Well, let's just say that, when the CD is dead, it won't be just downloading and LPs that killed it.

I guess the one thing I used to like about Hurwitz was that he was often very specific about what he liked or disliked.  That said, I always found it a little hard to deal with his overemphasis on percussion and his eagerness to trash whatever the British critics liked, and, lately, he's pummeling recordings that everybody else praises, including some I'd say were beyond reproach. 

The video reviews are less specific and a bit repetitive and rambling.  I thought it was telling that, in reviewing the Korngold, he didn't even mention the Albrecht on Pentatone, which he gave a 10/10.  Seemed like a very careless omission.

It is a very fine disc, indeed.  I would also recommend Jack Gibbons' two disc set (ASV), which contains the complete Op. 39 set and more.  Marc-Andre Hamelin has several excellent Alkan discs on Hyperion, too.  While I'd rate Gibbons & Hamelin just a bit above Wee, the latter definitely has the advantage in sound.  Nice to finally have this material on SACD.

As Beethoven's 250th birthday is coming up in 2020, lots of boxed sets are appearing in the listings of forthcoming releases.  I'm pretty sure I have all the Beethoven I'll ever need, but this got me to thinking.  2022 will see Raff's 200th birthday.

Any time I am in contact with record labels about anything else, I always try to slip in a good word for Raff's 5th, hoping to stir a little interest.  Now, I actually have an excuse.  Going forward, I'll be asking, "by the way, are you planning any new releases for the upcoming Raff Bicentennial?"   

Luckily, Cesar Franck seems to be the only other composer born that year likely to be competing for attention.

According to the (somewhat hidden in a not very obvious spot) news section of the Karl Weigl Foundation website, the 4th and 6th were scheduled to be recorded in early May.  The delay between recording and CD release of the first symphony was five months, so I guess it's possible we could see 4 & 6 before Halloween.

The older I get, the less patient I become with cycles that take years to complete, though even worse are the cycles that get abandoned because the conductor moves on to another orchestra, Neemi Jarvi's Raff on Chandos being the best (or should I say worst?) example I can think of.

Someone's probably already mentioned it on another Weigl thread, but Capriccio is going to do all six symphonies with Bruns.  The next issue is to be 4 & 6, so those who already have the BIS CD of 6 will have to deal with a little duplication to get Sym 4.

I think the changeover from CD to CD-r for Nimbus/Wyastone Estate labels happened in 2011.  That said, their stable of labels has grown since then and now includes Altus, Cameo, CRD, DMV, Halle, Integra, Lyrita, Red Priest, Retrospective, Saydisc and Sterling. 

Like Arkiv, Presto now has their own licensed, on demand, CD-R thing.  Naxos has been doing CD-Rs of out-of-print Naxos & Marco Polo titles.  Albany Records also do their back catalog on CD-R, but I don't know about their new releases.  Albany also now warehouses and ships for the Berkshire Record Outlet, and I've been getting more CD-Rs in my orders lately, but that could simply be coincidence, I guess.

Polygram, now Universal, was doing some of their own on CD-R for a while, DG mostly, but I imagine they've quit that and left it up to Arkiv & Presto.  Other labels I've gotten CD-Rs on include Bridge, Harlequin, Altissimo!, Rounder, Smithsonian/Folkways...  well, the list just keeps growing. 

I've ordered titles from Amazon and gotten CD-Rs and then ordered the same title from CD Baby or Amazon UK and then gotten regular CDs.  It is all very annoying and hard to navigate.  The one thing I can say for sure about CD-Rs is that, in my decades of experience, they are far more susceptible to heat and humidity than regular CDs.

Maybe there's hope for a reissue, after all.  I was just on HMV Japan, and I saw a listing for Jascha Horenstein's Mahler 3rd, on SACD, no less.  The Unicorn Kanchana logo is clearly on the front, though the label is listed as Silkroad Music in the product details.

Raff's 5th Symphony is my very favorite symphony, so I collect every recording issued on CD.  (We're up to 7.)  Bernard Herrmann's on Unicorn Kanchana is proving to be a bit of a problem.  I've acquired at least half a dozen copies over the years, and they all have bronzing, sometimes called CD rot.  In the past, when I've ordered a used or out-of-print CD on labels like ASV and gotten a bronzed disc, I've noted the copyright date on the inlay card and then searched for another copy with a different date.  If I find one with a later date, I order it, and I get one that isn't bronzed.

My question is, then, whether anyone can confirm that there was or was not a repressing before Unicorn went under.  Used copies, that aren't scratched all to heck, are getting pretty pricey, and I don't want to keep wasting money on bronzed copies.  Every copy I have ever seen is dated 1990, so if anyone has a clean copy with a later date, I would know to continue searching.  I suppose it is also possible that they reissued it without changing the date.  I've read that Unicorn went under sometime in the 1990s, so it is possible that they closed up shop before PDO started repressing the bronzed titles.

...and, yes, I've copied the best one onto a CDR, but it just isn't the same thing when collecting them is a hobby.  I've been hoping for years that Brilliant or Alto would reissue it.