Leo Weiner

[thalbergmad]

I have just spent an extremely pleasant few hours listening to and playing around with Weiner's Concertino Op.15 and wondered if anyone else has experienced any of his works.

Absolutely nothing like Bartok and Kodaly (thankfully) and I find it difficult to classify. Fully tonal, romantically rooted and gorgeously orchestrated, but not a virtuoso piece. In fact, there seems to be precious little hurdles to overcome for the pianist. 

I find myself strangely intoxicated and for once I have only had one pint.

Thal

[minacciosa]

I have just spent an extremely pleasant few hours listening to and playing around with Weiner's Concertino Op.15 and wondered if anyone else has experienced any of his works.

Absolutely nothing like Bartok and Kodaly (thankfully) and I find it difficult to classify. Fully tonal, romantically rooted and gorgeously orchestrated, but not a virtuoso piece. In fact, there seems to be precious little hurdles to overcome for the pianist. 

I find myself strangely intoxicated and for once I have only had one pint.

Thal

An excellent composer. There's a Hungarian Suite on Chandos, and two violin sonatas recorded by Oscar Shumsky, all wonderful scores.

[TerraEpon]

A composer I'm pretty fond of. I have a 2CD set called "The Leo Winer Album" as well as a CD with Divertimentos and a couple other works for orchestra. Also some nice clarinet music on http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=53010 and http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/Drilldown?name_id1=12879&name_role1=1&bcorder=1&comp_id=213028

I first heard his music via the 'Fox Dance' on http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/Drilldown?name_id1=12879&name_role1=1&bcorder=1&comp_id=62571
A lot of his music is very light, but it's tuneful and right up my ally.

[eschiss1]

good concertos for violin and string quartets too, if memory serves.

[alberto]

Once I heard in an actual concert "Pastorale, phantasy and fugue" for strings orchestra (which is on the double Cd "The Leo Weiner album).
The early Serenade for orch. (1906, Weiner twenty-one) and "Prinz Csongor und die Kobold, introduction and scherzo" are among Georg Solti last recordings (the former in the very last studio recording). Both pleasant and entertaining listening.

[minacciosa]

My teacher Eugene Lehner (of the Kolisch Quartet) knew Weiner. He high;y recommended the 2nd String Quartet.

[petershott@btinternet.com]

There are two Leo Weiner CDs on my shelves - and I recommend both with enthusiasm.

One is a Hungaroton CD (HCD32185) of Violin Concertos 1 and 2 performed by Vilmos Szabardi [vn], North Hungarian SO / Laszlo Kovacs.

The other - another Hungaroton (HCD31687) - is the Auer Quartet giving the Op 4 and 13 String Quartets plus the Op 26 Pastorale, Fantasy and Fugue for string quartet.

The Auer is a superb quartet - they have four CDs (again Hungaroton) of the complete quartets of Lajtha which I found exciting and quite marvellous music.

An incidental point, and a slight grumble about the ways of record companies. There are other works by Leo Weiner that I'd like to encounter. But I've never done so since if you buy discs containing them you also pick up large dollops of Bartok, Dohnanyi or other Hungarian composers. Nothing at all objectionable about Bartok or Dohnanyi of course, but the chances are that quite a bit of shelf space is already taken up by recordings of their works and one isn't especially keen to enlarge them further by picking up an odd work of Weiner. Why do record companies have this - to my mind - rather silly habit of trying to sell / promote one slightly off the beaten track composer by piggy-backing her or him on top of another well known composer? Do they have reliable evidence that doing so actually helps sell discs?

[JimL]

Probably, but could you upload those VCs?

[Alan Howe]

Probably, but could you upload those VCs?

I'm sure you can't mean the ones on Peter's CD, Jim! In any case, please would you post upload requests in the correct section? Thanks!

[JimL]

Oh, I'm sorry.  I thought I read Hungariton LP!  My bad.

[Alan Howe]

Oh, I'm sorry.  I thought I read Hungariton LP!  My bad.

Not to worry, Jim.