Wrote something about Tchaikovsky in my music profile I want to keep while I put something else in ;) I may use this one post, rather than a series of posts from here on, for this porpoise. Too much stuff requiring I come up for air this morning.
Edouard Lalo, symphony in G minor, written
around 1885-6 (not his violin and orchestra Symphonie Espagnole written for Sarasate). (Apparently he wrote two other orchestra-only symphonies which have not been published; this is news to me. http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/summary_0199-453201_ITM ... though it's (Joseph) Guy-Ropartz, fellows, not Guy Roparts- Guy was not the first name of that fellow, whose own music is very interesting and often surprising stuff!) There have been a few recordings of this symphony- many fewer than of the somewhat better known Symphonie Espagnole, maybe a pity since the G minor symphony's scherzo, say, is a delight. (The link goes to a catalog listing but for a different recording than the one I'm listening to on the radio, which is played by the Royal Philhamonic Orchestra, conducted by Yondani Butt. Yes, that is his surname, not a bit of NSFW stuck in there. Recording was released on what was then a label called ASV, Academy Sound and Vision.)
adding, from later date:
February 28 2007 -
Felix Draeseke's first sonata for viola alta and piano (I have what I think is the only recording, played on the usual viola. You can hear the second sonata at the website played on a viola alta- explanation there, with talk, in Real Audio format, and essays too. The music suggests Schubert sometimes, maybe Liszt- Draeseke's mentor- maybe Brahms. As pointed out in the insert notes, maybe Wagner too, in that it will hardly land on a rest point before going somewhere else- the movement is unsettled in many ways, much of his music is, but it is made to work on the right levels, I think (try the second sonata out at least).
The first sonata, in that "fateful" key of C minor, is from 1892, going by memory just at the moment, and the slow movement, in F major, goes at its own pace- not slow not hurried, lyrical-singing (gah I sound like I'm translating German words but somehow those conjoined nouns seem right so often!...)
Edit the who-knows-
March 16 2007 - symphony no. 4 - written about 1930 - by Sir Arnold Bax, conducted by Vernon Handley and the BBC Philharmonic, from a BBC broadcast of March 14 (the performance was a few years ago I think, and later released on a Chandos Records
set of all seven of his symphonies.)
Edit the who-knows-plus-one -
Music of March 27 2007 - Bax sym 4 again. (Interesting opening,
very chromatic but anchored by repeated E-flats... I think Vernon Handley's recent recording may be one of the best and most satisfying of the - well, few there have been of it; including one earlier of his that I haven't heard (on LP only?), one conducted by the late Bryden Thomson (on Chandos like Handley's newer version), and one conducted by David Lloyd-Jones (on Naxos).)
