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The music from the Swedish film is an arrangement of the slow movement of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon and orchestra, K. 297b.

Perfect, thank you so much! This is a piece I've honestly never listened to, so thank you for clarifying that!

Also, in the "arrangements" section on the IMSLP page for this Sinfonia Concertante, there is a score with an arrangement for 4 instruments and piano, with those 4 instruments being written either as woodwinds or strings (including the possible arrangement for clarinet and strings), and the piano matches the the recording from the movie. Even the timeline of the arrangement seems to line-up with the film's setting, so that was excellent research on their part. This is 100% it, thanks so much for solving this conundrum!

[most of them stylistically far removed and maybe anachronistic to the setting]

Anyone sufficiently familiar with the repertory of Classical winds-and-piano chamber music might be more able to help recognize whether it's from one of the works they've heard, on listening to that part of the movie...

This is what I'm hoping for myself - I'm admittedly not very well-versed in classical-era music, especially for wind ensembles.  So, if it rings a bell for anyone here who is, please let us know!

In my understanding, early large scale piano chamber music (bigger than a piano quartet) are usually seen as scaled-down piano and orchestra works. The rise of original piano quintet is a quite late phenomenon, I think the majority of them appears after 1860. But these are mostly quintets for piano and strings (and quite a few for only winds). The instrumentation of quintets for piano, winds and strings appears much later, though examples of quintets for piano and winds only are written by Mozart and Beethoven (one each).
I think it is unlikely that a string part in a piano quintet with strings would be arranged for a wind instrument. In reverse, substituting wind instrument for string instruments is a usual option in chamber music, but substituting some of them?
If it is an original work and not a pastiche, I think it goes against an analysis of the major trend......

Then there is bottomless hole of the possibility that this is a down-sized arrangement of a work with larger instrumentation for in-home playing and as a preview of the "whole" work.

Anyway, last year I started to compile a list of recorded piano quintets and I can list the ones that features piano, clarinet and strings (on the assumption that the quintet in this film is an already "known" one) that is not modern, though clearly none of which is the the answer to your question (most of them stylistically far removed and maybe anachronistic to the setting):
1. a variation by Ernest Walker
2. Josef Labor's Op. 11
3. Franz Schmidt's two quintets for this instrumentation
4. Weingartner's

There are 3 more works for this instrumentation from modern period that I know of, and there is an equal amount of  recorded quintets written for two winds, two strings and piano (Draeseke's quintet with horn is much rarer example of a quintet for a wind that is not clarinet, strings and piano among the recorded piano quintets).

Then I realized there is another possibility: that the piano part is originally for harp. Is there a harp quintet like this? I don't know...

You have an interesting perspective on the matter. At this point, it seems to me that either the piece was composed for the film (for which I would have to applaud the composer for making a very convincing-sounding short classical piece), or it is an arrangement of a piece for a different ensemble. I think if it is an old piece of music, then it is very unlikely to have originally been written for this ensemble, considering so few pieces have ever been written for this ensemble, and that those few on IMSLP don't include this one.

In holding out hope that it is a classical/early-romantic-era piece, perhaps it's a "concerto da camera" arrangement, maybe from a clarinet concerto (the two most prominent instruments are the clarinet and the violin, so this seems more likely to me). Or, perhaps like I said earlier, maybe it's from a vocal piece.

The end-credits mention 'Stefan Nilsson' under the category of music for the film. Is it possible that the music was specially composed?

It's very possible. But I am a bit unsure of this is because when I look up the film music tracks for this movie (which can be found on YouTube, and which were released on a CD of other soundtracks by Nilsson), this piece was not one of them. Of course, that doesn't mean it wasn't composed by Nilsson, as it has happened before that releases of OSTs omit some tracks from the film score. Besides this, the quintet only appears once in the film, and the rest of the soundtrack - beautiful as it is - is in a different style from this piece, quite minimalist in style.

Later in the film, several scenes make use of other older pieces of music, mostly German and Swedish hymns (since part of the film is set in church). All of this made me think the quintet might be something older, but I don't really know.

Hello everyone,

A few years ago, I saw this beautiful but rather uncomfortable Swedish period drama film called "Den Goda Viljan" ("The Best Intentions", based on the relationship of Ingmar Bergman's parents), and early on in the film, there is a scene in which a quintet for clarinet, violin, viola, cello, and piano, is played at a dinner party. The scene can be watched here starting at exactly 9:00: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR_3XRIgiNY

Does anyone know what this piece is? It sounds like it's from the late classical era, perhaps late 18th/early 19th century, but I honestly have no idea who wrote it or where it's from. I have a feeling it might be an instrumental arrangement of an operatic number or a song, since I could find no such quintet on IMSLP which would match the style, time period, or musical content. It kind of sounds like something Mozart would have written. Unfortunately the end credits don't provide any info on this piece, and IMDB mentions nothing about it.

What do you think? It is a rather lovely piece to my ears.

(Edit - feel free to move this to "Composers and Music" if it feels inappropriate for this channel.)

... wait, Op.109, yes, my library will interloan that, since it's at Cornell, right next door to us and with .. never mind. I will put in a request as I can (but fair warning, I kind of, erm, suck at scanning, ask anyone. I may try again e.g. with Josef Bohuslav Foerster's quartet no.1 in E major which I have in front of me on loan from Georgia Southern University, but... carefully and maybe just its scherzo-adjacent movement...). Yes, right. I'll put in a request soon. I think it's Op.92 I may be more interested in because that's the one we have a recording of, and btw NYPL has both in score...

As to Aleksandrov and the local library, besides some of his piano sonatas, I see that we also have the vocal score of a late opera of his (Levsha: opera ili tragikomicheskoe predstavlenie v dvukh deĭstvii︠a︡kh, s peniem, tant︠s︡ami, razgovorami, simfonicheskoĭ muzykoĭ i podkovannoĭ blokhoĭ, soch. 103"). That intrigues... well, me, anyway.

Wow, thank you so much! I really hope it works out! And if it should, as long as it is legible, any scan is welcome

I have a vinyl of "Levsha" (it's also on classic-online) - it's a lot like a children's musical, as there's a great deal of talking, I think more than singing. This is the piece from online: https://classic-online.ru/uploads/90800/90763.mp3. A lot of it is mostly the same as this Soviet cartoon, which has the same overture and is about the same length (though I think there are some differences): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr-iGFd3g9A&t=17s. I will say, the vinyl has a very beautiful cover design.

Hello everyone,

I have a question about a seemingly unknown version of a famous piece, Ernest Chausson's Concert in D major (or Concerto) for violin, piano, and string quartet. There are many recordings of this brilliant work, but every recording I found seems to be of only one version of the Concert. I say "only one version", because it appears that a second (possibly earlier?) version of the Concert exists only in the manuscript score in the Morgan Library, which at time features a dramatically different piano line. The most notable part in my opinion is in the climax in the 3rd movement - while the piano line in the version most frequently recorded and performed has briefly-arpeggiated chords (where the arpeggios only appear as grace note at the beginning of the bar), the manuscript version has arpeggios playing all throughout the bars, and throughout the climax section, resulting in a much more virtuosic and complex piano line than in the version most frequently performed. This difference can be seen in Bartje Bartmans' score video with the manuscript (the recording is the "grace-arpeggio" version, while the manuscript has the "constant-arpeggio" version): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsrypUDnlcw

I understand the reason why most musicians play the "grace-arpggio" version - it is the version that was  printed in the first edition publication. Notwithstanding this, does anyone know of a recording of the Concert using the manuscript version? Both the manuscript and print versions are available to view on IMSLP. And speaking of - the manuscript has a hand-written note in French to the editors, which I would have loved to have been able to read, if it gives any clue as to these discrepencies (if I only spoke French).

Perhaps this doesn't belong in the "Recordings and Broadcasts" channel, but I'm really interested to hear a recording which follows the manuscript version. I would love to hear what you all have to say!

P.S. - I apologize if this has already been discussed on the forum. It's possible it has, but that I simply haven't seen it yet.

I would be so grateful if you could get the score for the 2nd symphony. (Besides that, I wish I could access things from NYPL, so many amazing things are there, but I can't request any of them from where I live.)

It would be absolutely amazing if you could get the 2nd symphony in B-flat! I have the score for the 1st symphony, which you can see here: https://classic-online.ru/uploads/000_notes/128900/128809.pdf (it was scanned by a friend of mine at my request). I was never able to get the 2nd symphony, though I've tried to request it via interlibrary loan several times.

Btw, I also have the sores for all 4 of Alexandrov's String Quartets. It does seem like only the 4th quartet was recorded, but I can share what I have here (though the scan of the 3rd quartet is kind of messy, and I would like to clean that up at some point).

I've seen somewhere that Sym 2 is an orchestration of his Piano Sonata No. 8

I've never heard this, but that would be interesting to confirm! I guess that would make the 2nd symphony fairly short compared the 1st, since the 8th sonata is only around 16 minutes long.

To my knowledge, only the 1st Symphony in C major has been recorded (besides the Concerto-Symphony), two times by Igor Blazhkov and Evgeny Svetlanov. Both Symphonies have been published, though only the 1st symphony is currently available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJAv-6PDNas&t=1413s

I have not seen any mentions of this on the forum, so I thought I would share this here. A string trio by Mozart was just rediscovered a few days ago, titled "Serenata ex C - Ganz Kleine Nachtmusik", composed sometime in the 1760s. Here's a score video of one of the new performances: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzmRRIIlGTo

I think this is hopeful news that we may one day be able to uncover other major works by Mozart thought to be lost forever, such as the Trumpet Concerto and the Cello Concerto.

It seems we have finally reached the conclusion of the search for Catoire's cantata "Rusalka", and by extension the search for the album in which it is included, along with the Symphony in C minor and the symphonic poem "Mtsyri". The much-discussed album was released in March of this year, performed by Sergei Kondrashev and the Orpheus Radio Symphony Orchestra, along with the Grand Choir Masters of Choral Singing and Anastasia Alyabyeva as a vocal soloist.

EDIT: Perhaps this comment should be its own post? Just because a lot of posts here in the "recordings & broadcasts" portion of the forum are about specific releases of new CDs and albums, and this is a new release of an album (I don't say CD because I can't find a CD version of this available atm).

I remember the videos, but I can't find them either The musicians were either Chinese or Korean, but they were students at the Moscow Conservatory.

For now, this might be your best option: https://vk.com/video243248949_171845845. It's only the first movement, but the performance is quite good, even though the recording quality isn't great.

I'll keep looking for those videos, though.

New score video of the String Quintet Op. 4a: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE2WoIo2fj8

It could be a misnomer - Rozycki's Op. 2 is a set of 5 preludes for piano: https://imslp.org/wiki/5_Preludes_for_Piano,_Op.2_(R%C3%B3%C5%BCycki,_Ludomir)

Does the piece sound the same as Op. 18? For some reason that piece is often called "Ballade no. 2", but I can't find any other info on what would be "Ballade no. 1".

It may also be worth checking the lengths of the other tracks, to see if one of those is actually 8'34. Hope this helps!

Hello everyone,

I don't think this has been posted here before, but correct me if I'm wrong. I found out that apparently Nikolai Rubinstein wrote an orchestral Overture in A minor (linked manuscript score). As far as I know, this piece has never been recorded, but seeing as I couldn't find out any information about it, I doubt it was even performed or published; the score is dated to 1880. Most articles on Nikolai Rubinstein say he only wrote some short piano music and songs, but this is a work for full orchestra.

Maybe somebody here already knows about this piece and has more information? If so, I would love for you to share it here!