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You must have ESP, Alan.

I just can't stand the guy, his stupid humour, and his raucous voice....

Funny enough, I enjoy him for the same reasons, but to each his own! I am grateful to him for being a big proponent of unsung works, or what he calls "non-standard repertoire."

I agree with the examples, although I am curious what everyone thinks of recreating works based on memory, and recording those. Consider for example Atterberg's reconstruction of Stenhammar's first piano concerto when it was thought the original score was lost. A possible project in the future is doing a new recording of York Bowen's third symphony, as the score for that was destroyed in a publishing house flood if I remember correctly.

According to the "Jahresheft der Wilhelm-Petersen-Gesellschaft," the concerto was completed sometime between 1943 and 1945.

I thought it was a pleasant work, and agree with ewk that the more appealing movements are the last two. The lyricism is a bit surprising for the 1940s, and the sunny slow movement actually reminded me a bit of Somervell at times.

These types of videos are called Art Tracks. More information on them here:

https://diymusician.cdbaby.com/music-rights/everything-you-need-to-know-about-youtube-art-tracks/

Searching for the exact keywords "Naxos Digital Services" and "CPO" should bring up most of them as they are uploaded. Then you can sort by most recent.

How does it compare to the Sterling recording?

It's still a very fine achievement, Fred. You are rightly proud of the result.

For a partly crowd-funded premiere recording of a 3-hour grand opera with a wonderful chorus and orchestra, we should be grateful for it. Chances of this ever getting recorded let alone performed again are probably slim to none.

Mark,

I haven't watched it yet on YouTube but heard the first 20 minutes. Would you classify this as an opera or more like a musical play? It reminds me a bit of "The Dollar Princess" given the amount of dialogue.

Graziella and Fred have been great in keeping us updated on their projects and the customer service is great. They deserve success for that quality too.

Sound quality isn't ideal, especially for the strings, but I am so fond of Svetlanov's interpretations that I prefer them to the other releases.

The quality is better and less compressed on the 2017 Anthology of Russian Symphonic Music behemouth, but unless you want downloads, it is rare to find.

Found a photograph of Platen on the second page of a flyer for a theater in Fürth:

https://www.fuerthwiki.de/wiki/images/f/f4/Theaterflyer_F%C3%BCrth_1941.pdf

Listened to the album and found it very enjoyable, mainly Une Vie d'Artiste and Mélodie from Cinq pièces dans le style du passé.

I remember reading in a biography about Strong that he composed certain pieces to capture specific emotions which he believed couldn't be depicted in his watercolors.

Yes sorry I meant comic as in a light or lyric opera, not comedic.

This may be an unpopular opinion but I find much of the work to be dull. It rarely goes beyond being merely pleasant and the only part that stood out to me was the conclusion of Act I. It felt like the work was rushed at the end with an abrupt finish as well.

I felt that Benedetto Marcello worked much better as a comic work.