Very great composers still without recognition?


'Emanuel Moór, Donald Tovey and Julius Röntgen (above). These are three very great composers still without recognition. But I feel sure their time will come' - Pablo Casals

Now read about Furtwängler and the forgotten new music.
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Comments

Pliable said…
After hearing Casals' performance of Röntgen's Cello Sonata, Grieg wrote: 'This man does not perform, he resuscitates.'
6:32 pm
Pliable said…
YouTube yields this performance of Röntgen's Kommt her zu mir alls -

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=owePFhHehVU
7:20 pm
rhapsody407 said…
I recall that a CD of Moor's cello sonatas (three I think, or two sonatas and a couple of pieces) was released a few months ago. I remember taking it from the New Releases section at WHRB. I recall being unsurprised that Moór wasn't better-known. The sonatas struck me as being quite good, and quite grounded in romanticism; but lacking in a sometimes-dissonant, brooding quality of the big contemporary symphonists: Mahler, Strauss, Nielsen. Not to say that cello sonatas need have that quality; but as the only music of his I've listened to it's the only thing I have to go on. Anyway, there are examples abound of great composers born in 186x/187x whose music wasn't "modern" enough to be brought into the fold: Moór ranks among them. (Ludwig Thuille and Kurt Atterberg I would say are further examples).

As for Tovey, his cello sonata and solo suite have failed to move me. I vaguely recall commenting "rubbish" on the CD insert, next to the solo suite.

Oh, I managed to find that Moór CD online:

http://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/music/pid/7602850/a/Mo%F3r:+Sonatas+For+Cello+And+Piano+%2F+Szab%F3,+Krausz.htm
5:29 am
Garth Trinkl said…
Not completely forgotten new music, but I am intrigued that Yakov Kreizberg and the National Symphony Orchestra (Washington)will be devoting the second half of a program to Franz Schmidt's Symphony No. 4 in C major this coming autumn. Fairly recently, I admired the work on a recording.

(Last night, I listened to a less than fine recording of the Prokofiev Symphony #2 [1924], under Rostropovich, and wondered whether I would ever hear that work in concert. I would like to.)
2:32 pm
Anonymous said…
That's a tantalizing quote, especially since I completely agree with him about Julius Roentgen. If JR didn't do much to advance music, he created some beautiful works in traditional styles -- making him more of a Mendelssohn than a Beethoven, but isn't that good enough? I'd especially recommend the KOCH disc of his two-piano works and the NM Classics disc with his 1930 Symphonie.

So given my love of Roentgen, and the fact that I've liked the two Tovey pieces I've heard so far, I've got to investigate Moór, who's a completely new name to me. Thanks!

-Jim Moskowitz
The Unknown Composers Page
http://kith.org/jimmosk

P.S. For some reason blogger.com seems to be garbling my livejournal account name, giving it a hyphen instead of the underscore I'm actually typing into the 'identity' field, just FYI.
1:47 am
Pliable said…
Jim, can you let us know what you find out about Emanuel Moór? - a lot of readers are interested.

Thanks.
8:27 am
vcsam said…
Now the Concerto for 2 Cellos and Orchestra has been recorded TWICE. Before these two were released in the spring of 2014 there had never been a recording. And the one on Hungariton includes the very first recording of the Concerto No 2 for Cello and Orchestra, the very one that Casals used for his Vienna debut in 1906. I adore this music and I honestly feel that Moor had something special to say.
10:41 pm
Post a Comment

Recent popular posts

David Munrow - more than early music

Image
'David Munrow and the Early Music Consort of London transformed our view of medieval music. The impact of their performances far surparssed any that had gone before: by demonstrating how medieval music could sound normal, they created a niche for it in the concert hall and on record that it has never lost' ~ From Daniel Leech-Wilkinson's notes for Music of the Gothic era May 15 2007 is the thirty-first anniversary of the death of David Munrow. His contribution to the acceptance, understanding and performance of early music almost defies summary. He was born in 1942, and learnt the bassoon and recorder as a child. Between school and university he travelled and taught in South America , and started the collection of ethnic instruments that were to give him, and the world, a new perspective on early music making. He read English at Pembroke College , Cambridge, and was encouraged by Thurston Dart to take an active role in the music-making of that most musical of cities. ...
Read more

She was not just a woman

Image
My passion  for the music of Alice Coltrane  is shared by  a number of prominent musicians .  This passion was reawakened recently by listening to albums such as Journey in Satchidananda , Illuminations and above all  World Galaxy when travelling in Kerala down in the south of India. That header photo shows  Swamini Turiyasangitananda  - aka Alice Coltrane - at the Sai Anantam Ashram which she founded in 1983 in the Santa Monica Mountains, California. In 2018 the Ashram, which had been closed for a year, was  destroyed in the Woolsey wildfire ; a demise which neatly symbolises society's progression from the the metaphysical to the material.  Alice Coltrane is one of those great women musicians who are still overlooked because they do not fit into the rigid pigeonholes defined by today's virtue signalling culture . (Another great but totally overlooked woman musician has sold millions of albums and influenced, among others, Bob Dylan and Ro...
Read more

Classical music must be doing something wrong

Image
Classical music's website of choice Slipped Disc  today runs a story on the latest RAJAR UK radio listening figures . This story states that a "...record number of individual hours was spent listening to [BBC Radio 3]. They must be doing something right". Which is good news; but only for those who believe that facts should never stand in the way of a good story. Because simple arithmetic shows that BBC Radio 3 is not doing very much right, while UK classical radio in its entirety is doing something wrong.   In the quarter ended September 2024, BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM audiences were 2.039m and 4.416m respectively. Which gives a total audience for the two classical stations of 6.455m. For the same quarter in September 2023 the audiences were 2.002m and 4.467m, giving a total classical radio audience 12 months previously of 6.469m.  So BBC Radio 3's "something right" turns out to be a fractional increase in its audience year on year, and a contribution ...
Read more

Soundtrack for a porn movie

Image
"No, you have not landed on Slipped Disc by mistake. Respected electronic music pioneer Klaus Schulze tells the story himself.  The origins of " Body Love " are quite funny. I received a call from a movie producer named Manfred Menz and I wound up becoming his principal composer for a period of time. Amongst others, I composed the "Barracuda" soundtrack for him [1978, previously unreleased on album]. This led to a friendship which lasts till today. Menz now lives in Malibu, California where I visited him a couple of years ago. Anyway, this guy calls me and asks if I would compose the score to a porn movie. I said: "Porn? Nah, I don't do that kind of thing".  As it turned out, the director of the movie, Lasse Braun, had already shot it and had used my albums " Timewind " [1975] and " Moondawn " [1976] as a kind of "working soundtrack". This was obvious because the couples in the film were moving in time to my gro...
Read more

All aboard the Martinu bandwagon

Image
Depressing, but predictable, to see the mainstream media scrambling aboard the Bohuslav Martinů bandwagon as soon as BBC Radio 3 announces a cycle of his superb symphonies . Equally depressing, but a sign of the times, to see the Independent publishing an appreciation of the composer's symphonies by a writer who confesses elsewhere to never having heard a single note of them. As Norman Lebrecht famously wrote in the Evening Standard back in 2006: ‘... until bloggers deliver hard facts … paid for newspapers will continue to set the standard as the only show in town’. Sadly the hard facts now show that Norman is no longer at the Evening Standard , and, as from next Monday, the Evening Standard will no longer be a paid for newspaper . But you can find pre-bandwagon appreciations of Martinů here and here . Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of ...
Read more

Late night thoughts after listening to BBC Radio 3

Image
My thoughts about Radio 3 today are summarised very well in this saying attributed to the sixteenth century  Hindu mystic poet Meerabi . I have felt the swaying of the elephant's shoulders, and now you want me to climb on a jackass?   Try to be serious.  More than a thousand sacred songs - bhajans - and Hindi poems are said to have been composed by Meerabi. Header image is cover artwork from the album Ineffable Mysteries from Shpongleland by the Goan trance duo Shpongle .
Read more

Nothing but malice, unchecked egoism, rawness...

Image
German violinist Christian Tetzlaff has explained his decision to cancel his American concerts saying "I feel utter anger. I cannot go on with this feeling inside. I cannot just go and play a tour of beautiful concerts". Tezlaff then goes on to express a sentiment that many of us share: "There seems to be a quietness or denial about what’s going on". This prompted a post by the ever-wise Alex Ross headlined The Spirit of Casals . Which in turn prompted me to reread articles I wrote many years ago after visiting Casals' beloved Catalonia . These reminded me that Casals' wisdom is still as painfully relevant today as it was when he was railing against Franco's authoritarian regime. Here is one example  of that wisdom: Music must serve a purpose; it must be a part of something larger than itself, a part of humanity; and that, indeed, is at the core of my argument with music today - its lack of humanity. A musician is also a man, and more important than his...
Read more

The Berlin Philharmonic's darkest hour

Image
Wilhelm Furtwängler was born on 25th January 1886. He was Music Director of the Berlin Philharmonic from 1923 to his death in 1954, and held this position for the twelve years that Hitler was in power. In January 1945 he was conducting in Vienna, and fled from there to Switzerland where he remained until the Battle of Berlin ended in the defeat of the Nazis. The musicians of his orchestra remained in Berlin during its darkest hour. Here is their story: On 28th March 1945 the Russian forces commanded by Marshal Georgy Zhukov were just twenty miles to the east of Berlin. A month previously Albert Speer had been replaced as Nazi armaments minister after trying to persuade Hitler that defeat was inevitable. Speer now turned his energies to preventing the musicians of his adored Berlin Philharmonic from perishing in the inevitable final battle. Reich Commisioner Dr Joseph Goebells, who was in charge of the defence of Berlin, had ordered the entire orchestra to be drafted into the Vol...
Read more

Echoes of ECM

Image
Pierre Boulez used the term musique savant to describe 'knowing music' that transcends conventional categories. In the same way should we not now be using the term musique sans frontières to describe classical music that transcends the conventional frontiers between East and West? An excellent example of musique sans frontières is the newly released CD Mantra , seen above. Musical conversations across the Indian Ocean is the disc's subtitle and it brings together The Orlando Concert and Indian forces. Mantra takes as its starting point the mix of Catholic liturgy and Indian instruments heard in the churches founded by Portugese missionaries in Goa in the 16th century. These medieval experiments in musique sans frontières were not notated so the CD is an exercise in conjecture rather than scholarship. Which is not a problem as it is the music that matters and musically this is a very adventurous and stimulating release. If you want to hear what the plainsong Salve Re...
Read more

Is this the greatest-ever woman musician?

Image
Recent celebrations of women musicians as part of International Women's day started me musing on the question of who was the greatest-ever woman musician? There are many great contenders for the title, from Hildegard of Bingen to Maria Callas and Edith Piaf to Janis Joplin. It can be argued convincingly of course that debating greatest-ever rankings is meaningless as any such judgement is subjective and highly personal. But stay with me, as my nominated contender is particularly noteworthy because she is not the stereotypical white Judeo-Christian celebrity woman musician. Despite her ethnicity Om Kalthoum has a very strong claim on the title of greatest-ever woman musician. When she died in 1975 four million Egyptians attended her funeral, and the diva's recordings continue to sell around a million copies a year. Moreover, her claim to the greatest-ever title is not just based on popularity: among those who have acknowledged her influence are not only Maria Callas, but also B...
Read more