Rarities on the way from Botstein

[edurban]

Having already scheduled a staged production of Taneyev's Oresteia for next summer's Bard Festival, the never-sleeping Leon Botstein now announces his programs for next season's American Symphony Orchestra series at Carnegie Hall.  Naturally, there are a few items for Unsung Composers fans:

Massenet's late opera Ariane on Dec. 15, 2013.

Bruch's oratorio Moses on March 3, 2014

A mixed program on May 30, 2014 which includes Max Reger's Eine Vaterlandische Ouverture, Op.140 and Szymanowski 3.

We'll probably take in the Massenet and Bruch and pass on the Reger .  If anyone knows of a decent recording of Ariane, I'd be grateful for details.

David

[petershott@btinternet.com]

Whao! No desire at all to inflict any damage on Botstein, but it would be splendid for all of us if he was permanently deprived of his sleep! The energy of the man is astonishing. Perhaps thoughts of possible recordings of these events next year are premature......but I wonder what chance there might be if Oresteia in particular was recorded and released on a commercial CD?

How I would love to hear that opera complete, and in a decent performance! Various bits (the Overture, the Temple of Apollo at Delphi in Moonlight entr'acte etc) often come up as 'fillers' on various Taneyev discs, but we've so far been denied the complete work. (Though I do believe it was once available on LP many many years ago when I was in short trousers). From what I've read it is certainly a major piece of Taneyev, and a recording would be hugely welcome.

As would, of course, Massenet's Ariane and Bruch's Moses. Nope, I don't know any decent recording of the former. (Years ago I was a real Massenet enthusiast - and remain so - and acquired just about every recording of the operas I could lay hands on, and then got complacent thinking I must have a more or less complete Massenet library. Dead wrong, of course, for even in very recent years key works emerge in first recordings and one listens and wonders how they could have remained generally unknown.

Botstein of course recorded (on Koch) Bruch's Szenen aus der Odyssee something like 20 years ago. We also have (from CPO, but not by Botstein) Das Lied von der Glocke, inspired by Schiller, and Arminius. I'd be extremely joyful if the shelves were further loaded down by Moses. Bruch I suppose is a composer who has declined in favour in the current century - and so much the worse for this troubled century.

[Alan Howe]

but I wonder what chance there might be if Oresteia in particular was recorded and released on a commercial CD?

Downloads of the concerts might be our best hope....

[BerlinExpat]

I have Massenet's Ariane from the Saint Etienne Festival a couple of years ago. I think it's a superb opera and can only think it's length has mitigated against it. It's a Radio France recording and is very good except for what I guess  are the director's non-Massnet act- introductions which add nothing to the opera. (At least I can't believe that Massenet wouldn't do such a thing). If your dying for 2 hours and 56 minutes of pure Massenet, then I'll upload it once I'm back from Scotland!

[Alan Howe]

That'd be great, thanks!

[edurban]

Yes indeed, thank you in advance for Ariane.

I see on my shelf a Moses from Orfeo conducted by the reliable Claus Peter Flor.  The copyright says 1999...perhaps this is NLA.  I remember being a little less than overwhelmed by Moses, but that won't keep me home...any Bruch being catnip to me (I once wrote a fan letter to his son Ewald when I was a lad...alas, a kind letter from the executor of his estate arrived a while later thanking me, but letting me know that Mr. Bruch had died the week before my letter arrived.)

I seem to remember that Mr. C. Fifield was not very positive about Moses in his biography of the composer, but I can't dig out my copy...

David

[eschiss1]

He does call it a product of Bruch's conservative and unimaginative mind (p.258) (from the Google preview) (following with "His concepts were often original, ..." - mind, that's not all he has to say about it by any means, quite a lot of it just descriptive and interesting even from just preview.)

[Amphissa]

The complete Oresteia has been recorded and had some (limited) commercial distribution twice.

A 1958 performance by the Leningrad Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra was burned to CD by IM Lab, a Russian label, in 2005. The CD can be ordered from Russia and also is available from Japanese record stores online.

There was also a recording by the Belorussian State Opera on the Deutsche Grammophon label in 1979. It was a 3 LP set. Melodiya later released a 2-CD set of this recording. I've never seen the CDs in the U.S. and I think it is long out of print. The LPs do turn up on eBay and I've seen them in various library collections.

The audio of the Belorussian from CD is better than the Leningrad, but a new recording would certainly be appreciated.

[eschiss1]

I seem to recall the Melodiya CD set in Penguin Guide (1990 or so?). Worldcat says the CDs were released in 1988 (from a DG LP set from 1979 - and in turn the DG seems to have been a reissue of a Melodiya LP set from the 1960s?

[eschiss1]

He mentioned too interest in d'Indy's Fervaal in an interview... -- ah, I see he gave a concert performance back in 2009. I suppose there's no harm in asking (... I hope) if anyone heard that?... (I have seen some but not much interest in d'Indy here, probably because there's... some but not much interest in d'Indy here.)

[edurban]

I was there.  It's a long evening, mostly of warmed over Wagner without (largely) the peculiar genius that weaves a bucket of leitmotives into a fabric of melodic and emotional power.  The exception was the 2nd act, iirc, with a lot of stirring stuff for the assembled clans...this falls into the realm of French grand opera (even Meyerbeer!) and D'Indy goes to town.  It was lots of fun...the endless sub-Tristan duets less so.

Part of the problem was the performance: Fervaal himself was a last moment substitute and seemed to be sight-reading much of his enormous part.  Like trying to sight-read Siegfried if you had never heard the opera.  He still had voice left at the end, which was heroic in itself.  Not an ideal situation, though.

David

[eschiss1]

Ah, I forgot, the US premiere of Dohnanyi's "Szeged Mass" is also upcoming (May 2, 2013) in their calendar.  Not a bad series of concerts at all. (I wonder what, in a similar connection, the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players have lined up this year... ah. Volkmann, Dunhill, Parry, August Walter, and others. Went to a concert of theirs with a Thieriot work in it last year. Concert programming in New York is not quite deceased.)

[Gareth Vaughan]

Can you remember which Thieriot work, Eric?

[eschiss1]

the octet Op.62 in B-flat I think it was. The concert, May 21 2012, also had Schubert's not too often heard Adagio & Rondo for piano quartet, and Schumann's second (and more often-heard, though I hadn't I think before heard it live- not counting my poor attempts to play the viola part back in college- too hard for me, with its dips into C-flat major in the first mvt.) piano quartet (the E-flat major, Op.47). If I'd gone to an earlier concert that season I could have heard some Bruch (his piano quintet), or some Naumann (Ernst Naumann trio in D, op.12), or Theodor Kirchner's piano quartet, or Weingartner's octet, or... it's a good series, I think.

[eschiss1]

Looking at the Nov/Dec 1999 Fanfare review of Flor's Bruch Moses and Botstein's Bruch Odysseus (review by Martin Anderson), I see that the reviewer (apologies for third person, I'm aware that he and Mr. Fifield both have viewed these forums ) quotes the latter but finds himself of a higher opinion of Odysseus than Mr. Fifield, at least as conducted by Botstein ("packed with imaginative detail"). (November/December 1999, (volume 23 no.2) pp.226-227.) (The surviving issues from my subscriptions and purchases have considerable wear and tear but fortunately this review, a few others, some interviews, etc. are intact...)