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cilgwyn
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Some of the music on the Chandos and Marco Polo/Naxos cd's are early works & a good deal of them are merely extract's from his operas,some of which have been revised as concert pieces. This is why I only bought the emi and Schwann cd (and the Nimus cd with ballet,The Birthday of the Infanta) because they include the more substantial works. I was actually just trying to be philosophical about his concentration on opera at the expense of concert music. While extract's are enjoyable (or bleeding chunks!) I feel Vorspiel zu einem Drama and Vorspiel zu einer großen Oper (Memnon) The Birthday of The Infanta and Chamber Symphony are so good & contain such gorgeous orchestration that I can't help wishing he'd focused his attention on orchestral music. I just can't help thinking of how such music with a man of his talent & imagination would have developed. Some pieces like the Romantic Suite are enjoyable enough,but they are lesser pieces,imo. As it stands,orchestral and chamber music seem to have been of secondary importance to his operas. Vorspiel zu einer großen Oper (Memnon) is in his later style. It took a little longer to appreciate and I like it very much,now. Again,this was composed as a prelude to an opera,which in this instance ,never materialised (his death put paid to that). Again,it's not an original concert work. I can only speculate what a man with his imagination and mastery of orchestration might have achieved if his main focus had been on writing original concert works for the concert hall & stage ( ballet).
Rutland Boughton's another one. I enjoy what I have heard of his operas (or music dramas) and I wish funding could be found to record more. But every time I listen to his Symphony No 2 "Deirdre" and Symphony No 3 (and there's a Hyperion cd of some other,rather nice,orchestral works,too) a part of keeps wishing he'd focused more of his attention on orchestral music (less problems too with hokey,dated sounding librettos!).
Oh,well! ::) ;D
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