I have a particualr interest in composers (and writers) banned, persecuted or murdered by the Nazis. Any perceived enemy of the Nazis is a friend of mine!

Fortunately Ilse Fromm-Michaels survived the war and now we hear her wonderful Symphony.

I find it complex and fascinating because it is short (only 20 minutes), but it contains all the elements of a classical symphony (1st movement, slow movement, scherzo and finale) and in such a short space sounds amazingly lonmg-breathed, in places almost Bruckerian. I find it very satisfying.

I understand that most people who like and listen to classical music are stuck on the standard repertoire (SR), even if some pieces from the SR are definitely inferior to some pieces from the non-standard repertoire (NSR).

However, what I don't understand is why the NSR has so poor a showing in the recording catalogues. Why is it we have 300 recordings of a piece from the SR and 0 for a piece from the NSR, why not 297-3, or whatever?

[BTW there are 600 recordings of Beethoven's Op111 piano sonata, and not a single one has the correct tempi in the finale (the charleston variation should be an adagio, the pianistic tradition consistently misreads Beethoven's markings). So even recordings of the SR aren't always as high quality as you might hope].

I like the Bezděk Symphony No.2 a lot too. Many thanks for uploading it.

It reminds me of Janacek.

Does the title mean "Making my soul beautiful?"

I have the same probes with the first two movements of 34 (last three are fine).

(And thanks for all this fine music!)

Interesting, probably one of the best paeans to Lenin ever! The first movement after the prologue I found very good, it had a striving, coming into being sort of quality, the other instrumental movements were very good too.

Ivanovo Symphony No 13 "symphonia humana" has spoken word commentary between the movements (in Latvian, obviously).

Does anyone know what the gist of this is?, I am enjoying the music immensely (ditto the rest of Ivanovs' symphonies).

"Ragnar Söderlind (b. 1945)

Symphony No. 5 ‘Kvitsunn’ Op. 60 (1995)"

What does Kvitsunn mean? I get "white health" out of Google Translate!?

 Re: Nina Karnitskaya Piano Concerto played by the North Ossetian SO and the comment "note: this area was recently taken back by Russia from Georgia in 2004"

In fact it was South Ossetia that was occupied by Russia in the 2004 war. North Ossetia never left Russian control. The Ossetians are speakers of an Iranian language and are the remnants of the Scythians of classical times.

I mistakenly ordered the Brilliant Classics complete Dowland lute works. This is a licensed reissue of the Bis Jakob Lindberg set. I already had this, but for some reason I  had the idea it was by Paul O'Dette and that the Brilliant Classics was a third complete lute works (the Naxos with North being the second).

Anyway, happy to give this to anyone who is interested.... who lives in Australia (sorry, postage would be too expensive anywhere else).

I do like Aldo Finzi's music, but, as you say, it can be difficult to find.

Just two points

1. He probably was a distant relative of Gerald Finzi as GF's family came from Italy in the early C19.

2. Aldo Finzi's and his family, being Jewish, had to go into hiding during WW2 and the stress of this caused AD to die of a heart-attack at the age of 48 just before the War ended.

As I've intimated here and there (including on the GMG Composer Discussion forum), for me Brian is a preeminent composer because his music embodies what Nielsen described as the 'current' that all music must possess.

That is, for the very first bar, harmony, rhythm and melody shape the piece so that the listener is led through it and, at the end, the impression left is completely inevitable organic growth, which, however, continues to exhibit new facets on every listening.

Most pre-modern composers had this has a mysterious ability, but after Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn the ability seems to have been lost throughout the C19 (except for Bruckner) and wasn't rediscovered until Nielsen and Sibelius. In the C20 other composers who demonstrate it almost all the time are Brian and Robert Simpson, and others display it frequently, eg Mahler, Vaughan Williams, David Matthews, Shostakovich, Janis Ivanovs, David Diamond &c

However, other C20 composers who are discussed on these forums (whom I won't mention for fear of offending people), hardly display this quality at all.

Brian, for me, displays this quality the best of all in the C20 precisely because his music is so concise and elliptical that it front stages it. It's frustrating that he doesn't have more recordings of his works (but you could say that about many C20 composers eg Diamond, Ivanovs &c, it's strange how the recording industry chooses its darlings (many of whom aren't very good at all), and there are 20-30 recordings of pieces which won't bear much listening at all.

If we only had one or two recordings of two or three Mahler symphonies and had to make do with poor quality radio broadcasts of the rest I don't think many people would be on to Mahler either.

Vasks' Sala sounds rather English in places. You don't suppose the island in question is Britain, do you?

Thanks

(Amazing how many composers such a small country has produced in the C20).

And another query.

Which od the Latvian composers symphonic cycles shall I tackle next after Kalnins (information: my favourite mid/late C20 symphonists are Vaughan Williams, Robert Simpson, Havergal Brian, Shostakovitch, David Diamond, Alan Petersson, David Matthews)

There's certainly a surfetit of symphonic cycles here on the Latvian music thread!

I'm going through the Kalnins cycle at the moment. Can anyone tell me what the texts in the 2nd & 4th movements of his 6th symphony are?