We shouldn't get into fingerpointing here. No-one is paid to maintain this site. Colin has done a thunderously good job - in circsuntabces mnade much worse by the bloddy-mindedness of the previous managment (including attempted and actual sabotage of the site and its contents.

We need to appoint a team of at least 3-4 moderators who can perform the maintenance tasks of deletinng spam (ehem), steering dicussions on topic, and merging duplicate topics.

The role of the Host - which Colin has also performed - involves seeding discussion and providing a pleasant atmosphere.

Let's appoint these additional modertors NOW.  We do not want to see SG return here ever again.

Yes, that was exactly my point.  Should any audience be 'expected' to have heard of any other works than the ones they've come to hear? 

I feel that Gauk believes (as I do) that it would be healthy for audiences to have listened widely to a variety of music from different nations and periods. But (again, objectively!) in reality it's not realistic to expect any significant or comprehensive knowledge of the output of composers of other countries in all listeners - people simply haven't the time, let alone the resources. Even getting hold of works by Birtwistle (or PMD, or James McMillan, or any other British cmpoosers of present or recent years) is a hard job that requires a lot of effort.  There aren't CDs available of major works, nor can they always be found online.  All you can find of The Mask of Orpheus is dribs and drabs, in disjointed chunks.  Try finding Yan-Tan-Tethera (which I rate as a masterpiece)?  Or The Second Mrs Kong?  There's not a scrap of it to be heard. Frankly, composers (and their pubishers) have themselves to blame - while they sit tight on their output, passed-around on privately-made CDS in hardwritten paper sleeves, the world can rightly say...  'oh, and what have you written?'

I wish Sir Harry a happy 85th birthday,  Perhaps his publishers would make him the birthday present of making available the recordings they're sitting on?  Because if they are waiting to cash in financially on these works, they (and we0 will die waiting. Please don't tell me no-one bothered to record The Second Mrs Kong or Gawain, when they were performed? 

I fear you're not wrong there!   8)   I haven't been to the Wigmore Hall for donkey's years, so I don't know how things zre there these days?

But let's hope their musical acument stretches a little further than our expectations?  In all fairness, I think the situation is very much the same wherever we go.  I found myself having an unexpected interval chat in Moscow last month, trying to explain who Harrison Birttwistle is   :'(

Very well put, and thank you for this highly apposite viewpoint.


If asked this question, my immediate reply would include HK Gruber, of course :) 

Sadly I shall have to wait until my next trip to the UK - which might not be for a year or two, as I have other places to go - before trying Marmite XO.  I look forward to hearing your Tasting Tips, once you venture to crack the jar open?  :)

Meantime, a friend brought me some Marmite 'classic' (the yellow label) from a gig they performed in London recently - so for now, at least, I have Marmite instead of Vegemite  :)

Great!  Welcome to this community!  We are badly in need of civiliased dicussion about a range of music that goes beyond tthe parochial  :)  So please, post away! 

I am entirely in favour of amicable discussion.

Try keeping a civil tongue in your head, We don;t have to tolerate your behaviour here, and you are heading for a ban..

Certainly not, considering who the author is - a persistent internet troll.

The Russian version of Wikipedia has this

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Кладницкий,_Владислав_Иванович

Which is hardly very full at all, but might help you along the way?  ;)

There is no information about his symphonies being recorded on that page. for sure.  But the Russian version of Wikipedia is even less reliable than its English-language counterpart, so there could still be an outside chance that recordings exist, somewhere?   

Personally I am more intrigued by the idea of early-20th Russian operettas....  but sadly Wikipedia doesn't even give their titles, let alone any deeper detail :(   I wonder if they were ever performed, and if so, where and when?  One imagines SPb  (since he was living and working there), but perhaps in other cities in the Russian Empire or the USSR?   He certainly made an adept leap from posh societiy musical comedies to writing the Komsomol Anthem... so he knew which side his bread was buttered ;)  But who can blame him?

His biography is available in Russian on the Russian 'side' of Wikipedia

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Чернов,_Михаил_Михайлович

If anyone badly needs it, I can knock out a quick English tranlation of that page. In essence, his biography was study at the Physics & Maths faculty of SPbniv until 1903.  Subseqently studied composition and orchestration at the SPb Conservatoire with RImsky-Korsakov and Lyadov.  From 1910 until his death in 1938 he himself taught the same two topics at the SPb Conservatoire (where his pupils included Mravinsky).

His output appears to have covered a number of gences, including 3 symphonies, piano music, and a number of comic operas and operettas, along with incidental music for theatre productions. He also composed the music for the Anthem of the Young Communists (Komsomol) in 1928.

Thanks for the heads-up about this YouTube relay - which I would otherwise have missed!

I am enjoying the Martland tribute at the moment - with the DSCH still to come.

It's a pity you missed the Glasgow FIERY ANGEL last year - those who were there said it captured the full intensity of that astonishing score.

Vegemite tastes very much more salty than Marmite, to me - not something I can cite in its favour.  On the other hand, one can simply spread it thinner?  Problem solved!  ;)

I admit to being a life-long Marmite fan.  However, now that it is owned by Unilever, it comes under the list of EU-produced items which are banned from import into Russia.  There could be some hope from Brexit - if Britain is no longer an EU nation, then Marmite - made, I believe, in the UK, but 'owned' by Unilever in the EU - ought to come off the list of goods which Russians may not purchase (or even arrange to have delivered).  Of course, other goodies (such as marmalade, and the huge range of UK-produced cheeses) would also come off the banned list.

Meantime, Vegemite - produced outside the EU, in Australia - remains avalable here in Moscow, and I am reduced to having to eat it - while the 'real thing' is not on sale. Being a lifelong vegetarian,, Marmite is not only a tasty toast topping, but also an essential part of my diet (Vitamin B12 - no naturally-occurring vegetarian food sources for it).  Of course, it was this viatmin component that lay behind the product's original introduction, I believe? 

Hopefully Sunday's  departure of the UK's darling Presiident Porkyshenko in Kiev will see the EU blockade of Crimea lifted quite shortly - and with it, Russia's 'mirror' ban on EU products.  :)  Welcome news for people living in Lugansk and Donetsk, too!!