Only reference I can Google with this slant ("Joseph Holbrooke: Composer, Critic, and Musical Patriot") suggests some bitterness on the relative lack of success. Particularly in the later years. This is not an uncommon thing for those who know they are falling into obscurity. However, I'd need more references to verify

For recordings of obscure material where the playing is poor, you unfortunately have these type of recordings in context. Everyone probably has a tolerance level for this (I personally have a tough time digesting the lo-fidelity early recordings, at least for classical music, for instance) so I can understand a poor performance being an instant turn-off for some.

Of course, there are many very-good-to-excellent performers / orchestras / conductors who are not "stars". I think the better independent labels releasing lesser known material mainly use these type. The better independent labels also don't really skimp on the engineering and production so airplane noise is not usually a problem, either. :)

Somewhere (unfortunately I cannot find the link) I vaguely remember an article about classical music label business, that said that a secret to "why bother" in the business is that classical buyers often are very loyal at following the performer or conductor (especially "star performers". The implication was how well a CD would sell was way more predictable than the more economically profitable, but very fickle and volatile pop world). Now, it wasn't in the article, but it certainly implied that the composer was often secondary. Some "star performers" correspondingly might chose to "play it safe" and stick with well known repertoire that they know has been successful before. When I look on most classical charts, the top selections often seem to confirm this thought. So some of it might be that.

The indie classical labels in particular have been pretty good at releasing "unknowns" over the years, and there have been some long-running series at some labels that are known for their adventurous programming. My guess is that there also is a market as well for explorer-types that love lesser known material, probably with similar loyalty, probably more niche than performer-driven works, but well-selling enough to encourage some production. (The lack of needing to pay "star performer" fees probably helps here!)

To me, the problem with many later composers in regards to this lumping is the "English essence" part. Without any other consideration, I would consider some of that to be the usage or influence of English (or, at least, British Isles) folk song -- not necessarily a direct quote per se, but at least some influence.

Many 20th century composers are more chromatic / sharp or more experimental, leading to a harmonic sound that is quite far away from the idioms of English folk music. As a result, I would have trouble saying, say, Peter Maxwell Davies's symphonies or Michael Tippett's symphonies as having much "English character", even though they are well thought of as composers, meet much of the other criteria, and in both cases I think do have other non-symphony output that might fits the "folksong" motif.

Possibly the intent was to mean the concert hall?

In the concert hall in the United States, Britain is (from what I can see) mostly represented by Elgar, Gustav Holst's "The Planets", Handel (if an adopted home counts), occasional programming of Ralph Vaughn Williams and Benjamin Britten, and *maybe* a smattering of misc. works. (Our orchestra programmed Delius a couple of times for instance.) Of these, the only symphonies that are programmed are Handel's (being Baroque symphonies an entirely different beast), Elgar's, and RVW's. (Holst wrote a symphony plus a "choral symphony" but I have never seen that programmed.)

Many of the composers that you list I would put in a theoretical "second tier". These are often just-as-good, quality works, but they just lack that special "thing" that makes it repertoire. By this nature, this tier is a bit fluid -- some composers rise in stature over time, and some composers of hugely popular works at the time fall into obscurity. The Arnold Bax symphonic cycle actually would be my top answer for this category. Because as far as I know, the main thing that gets programmed for Bax is a few of his tone poems (like Tintagel) and chamber pieces (like the Elegiac Trio). Which is unfortunate, because IMHO Bax's symphonic cycle is very good and representative. Bax is not unloved in recordings, though.

I guess for me a good candidate for a "third tier", kind of what you are talking about, would be William Alwyn. Even less known than Arnold Bax (at least in the symphonic works world) and much less recordings than Bax, but with IMHO quite a compelling cycle of symphonies. Unfortunately he happened to be producing tonal symphonic music in an era where atonality was fashionable, which did not help the critical standing in the initial day. I think they would be far better received nowadays.

The Discogs link here to Alexander Tchaikovsky suggests exactly that: nephew of Boris Tchaikovsky.

It does seem that the company that made this CD no longer exists. Unfortunately the linked site is dodgy (Malwarebytes flagged it as attempting to hijack) so I would not recommend visiting there to download.

A couple people have posted Kos-Anatolsky piano concertos to Youtube but it's a bit confusing, because two different pieces are labeled as "Piano Concerto 1". One of them is here:

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj_jl0OZEDA
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEsisiMQt5I
Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyx6wQ3TFPc

The other Piano Concerto 1 on Youtube is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR9JVu7om_o

Clearly different pieces, so at least one of these links has the wrong title. Based on runtimes and the little credits / hints posted I'm guessing the first "Piano Concerto 1" is actually same piece as the Piano Concerto 2 on the disk but I'm not 100% certain.

I think that, um, the content of the hyperlink does indeed matter in the end. Elsewise posting recent CDs uploaded to The Pirate Bay or Rutracker or some other torrent site would be entirely kosher.  :P

Youtube's a strange case, though, because it's not explicitly a site for pirates (it has a takedown mechanism and a way to report videos) and it does have a "content ID" system that tries to compensate musicians for the playback, even if they did not upload the work. A lot of musicians are unhappy at Youtube's meager streaming pay rate though (plenty of articles about that).

I think the risk to this forum is non-existent. If the original record companies wanted to take down the copyrighted content, they'd report it to Youtube directly, not to the small sites linking to it. So it's more of an ethical question in the end.

Just because an account says it is someone on the Internet does not make it so. :)

Naxos' official Youtube channel is here not there.

The uploader of this is a certain "Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra - Topic" channel. The real "Göteborgs Symfoniker" Youtube channel (using the correct language :) ) is here.

Youtube allows content providers to make money from content that other people have uploaded, so it very well may be that BIS is "looking the other way" at this, perhaps figuring that the exposure and slight extra revenue is worth it enough not to bother with a takedown notice. So what relm1 says is possibly true. It does *not* smell like an "official post" to me though.

Since the embedded link to clksite in the source is a link to Javascript as well as a banner, maybe one of the ads added some sort of event listener targeting specific iframes of well known social network sites like Youtube. The ads I'm getting when I turn off the blocker don't have anything but an obnoxious "download" button (that directs to a dodgy plugin site) so I really can't say myself.

There's definitely a banner ad service on the top of the page. My bet is this is the most likely source of the problems. The code comments suggest Google but the script is loading from clksite.com which looks semi-dodgy. (Even big players like Google Adsense can be semi-dodgy these days though :p).

Unfortunately this is why I tend to suggest to everyone to add an ad-blocker extension to your browser (like uBlock Origin). It's not great for websites you want to support but IMHO web advertising is not well controlled at the moment.

It's actually not a terribly common combination, to be honest.

IMSLP only lists 11 compositions with this instrumentation.

In contrast to, say, the violin and piano combinaton has 3,971 pieces are listed.

Obviously even IMSLP is limited in scope (only public domain scores, and probably not even all of these) but I doubt the ratio would change that much even if all other works were included.

This one I can see to be honest, depending on how deep the book wanted to go. Although more varied than what he's best known for, Morton Gould was probably one of the leading composers at the time of what would now be called "crossover music".

Anything "crossover" or "light" is not as rigorous as the more academic stuff, but this area (and cinema and theater) were areas that always tended to remain tonal overall in the 20th century, and can produce crowd-pleasing stuff. I do feel that some interesting things can be found in this area, given the constraints of course. (I feel the same about the British "light music" too that I've heard.)

I would've included some of the ones Dundonnell mentioned (like Hanson and Piston at minimum) before Gould though! But Gould is more worthy of inclusion than PDQ Bach. :)

My guess is for a lot of that list, there was a reach for anything relatively modern. These days there probably there really aren't any "big names" of mostly tonal American concert hall composers. For relatively modern examples of American orchestral "beauty", I would've stuck with film composers personally...

Hi, I went ahead and attempted to capture this. I posted the link in the Lithuanian downloads section.

This is my first attempt of doing something like this, so please let me know if there are any issues with the post. Thanks!

Jurgis Karnavicius (1884-1941)
Radvila Perkūnas (opera)
Main starts at 8minutes-40seconds, and finishes at 2hours-6minutes-10seconds

Captured from LRT Klasika Operos Vakaras website -- 2018-07-07

http://www.mediafire.com/file/a1kcp71y42b9g6d/Jurgis_Karnavicius_-_Radvila_Perk%25C5%25ABnas_-_Operos_vakaras_2018-07-07_1810_-_LRT.mp3/file