I will start with the work that spurred me on to write this: Wilfred Josephs’ 4th Symphony, which I listened a few days ago from an old BBC radio broadcast.
Next year sees the centenary of the publication of Joyce’s Ulysses and with the possible exception of Matyas Seiber’s Three Fragments from A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man, I am dearly hoping somebody will finally record what for me is the most compelling setting of Joyce, namely Humphrey Searle’s The Riverrun. Based more on Finnegan’s Wake than Ulysses a work of this stature deserves any possible excuse for a commercial recording. If some company does have the decency to do so they could not go far wrong with coupling it with his hauntingly beautiful Poem for 22 Strings written the year before The Riverrun.
Nikolai Tcherepnin’s 1934 oratario The Descent of the Virgin Mary into Hell is another one of my prime candidates. I was delighted to see Chandos release symphonies by the great Armenian Avet Terterian in 2019. It would be marvellous if, in the same vein, they could see to it to recording the 5th symphony of the Azerbaijani composer Jovdat Hajiyev.
Last but not last, Supraphon I am looking at you, could we please have a recording of the electro-acoustic piece from 1972 by Miloslav Kabelac called E fontibus Bohemicis.
If I am mistaken and any of these pieces have already been commercially recorded, in whatever format, I would be very grateful to anyone if they could let me know more information.
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Len Mullenger - Founder of MusicWeb