Why the Baltic and Slavic countries not promoting their music? A Wonder.

[calyptorhynchus]

"English and British" = works by English + (Welsh, Scottish and non-nationalist Irish) composers.

 :D

I just spotted the good news about the Diamond 6th too.

[Neil McGowan]

I have a list as long as my arm of English and British music from 1600 too the present that is worthy of being recorded but hasn't been.

Yes, indeed, and it's a rather sore point. At the risk of banging my favourite drum once more..  performances of Arne, Shield, and Linley never get off the starting blocks. The best of that generation - who had operas performed at the Austrian Royal Court in Vienna, alongside those of Mozart, Haydn, Dittersdorf, and Salieri - was Stephen Storace. Of whom you cannot find a single work on disk. The BBC couldn't give two hoots. His astounding Beethovenian heroic 'rescue' operas, such as THE SIEGE OF BELGRADE, THE PIRATES, or THE CHEROKEE are utterly ignored - and written off as 'ballad operas' (which they certainly aren't). His operatic 'thriller' THE HAUNTED TOWER (1789) remained in repertory in Britain unti the 1830s, where it was picked-up as career vehicle for the young tenor John Braham.

[BrianA]

To take a slightly different perspective....

Are the Baltic and Slavic countries really doing such a poor job of promoting their music, at least relative to the rest of us?

To use a couple of more-or-less concrete examples, I have become a great admirer of the music of Imants Kalnins (sorry for the lack of diacriticals).  I doubt if I had heard of Kalnins five years ago, but today I have heard (and have recordings of) a substantial body of his work.  Another Baltic composer whose music I greatly enjoy would be Erkki-Sven Tuur, and Tuur certainly suffers no lack of promotion.

I will acknowledge that I may be confusing two or more issues:  my discovery of Kalnins, for example, is largely a function of my discovery of sites such as this one and my association with you bunch  :D and similar collectives of enthusiasts and I'm not really sure where/how "promotion" enters into that particular dynamic.

By way of contrast, I'm Canadian, and if you want a real example of a country failing to promote it's music (especially "serious"/"classical"/etc music) Canada could be your poster child.

Brian

[guest377]

Ha... I know what you are talking about... i.e.  Canada.... I married a Canadian.. and yes. they have forgotten their heritage.