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It's the old problem. No one 'knows' it so therefore no one 'does it'.....and therefore no one knows it! Outside of Scandinavia, for example, I think there are very few performances of Halvorsen although he wrote some excellent music. I performed some incidental music by Halvorsen some years ago in Prague simply because we had a visiting Scandinavian conductor who wanted to do it.
I really enjoyed it and took the trouble to get to know a lot of his other compositions. We have done Pierne (ballet) which is now in the repertoire and I have to say that prior to that I knew very little of his music. The Halvorsen went down very well in performance because it was 'sandwiched' between much better known pieces of music. I think the Pierne - although hardly 'famous' - was a virtual sell out every night for the simple reason that Prague Ballet rarely do 'modern' works and therefore, probably some might say for the 'wrong reasons', the potential audience did not expect to encounter music which they might find 'tough'.
The Halvorsen was also in a 'pops' concert (for want of a better word) and I think people will trust these sometimes even if they don't know a particular piece, provided it is surrounded by pieces they do know or composers whose names they have heard of. A major problem is finding a conductor who wants to programme such a work: the best hope an 'obscure' piece of music has is finding a conductor who wants to promote it!
One 'lost' little piece is the Overture to Bizet's 'Dr Miracle' which fairly fizzes along. We still do the overture Donna Diana by Reznicek but I suspect that's not performed widely elsewhere. Recently rescued from obscurity (and on CD) is the complete Saint-Saens La Princesse Jaune, inspired by the gamelan orchestra that visited Paris for the Paris Exhibition and a beautiful little score.
Sometimes even 'national' composers are not famous elsewhere: I'm sure that Suk and Novak are not played 'much' outside the Czech Republic and, nor for that matter, are Smetana's orchestral works although Ma Vlast seems to be recorded everywhere. I'm not sure how much it is played publicly, however, outside the Republic. The performance by the Czech Phil in the Festival Hall, London, in the 1980's was, amazingly, the first complete Ma Vlast to be played in the hall.
Some years ago I toured with a programme that included Suk's Fairy Tale and people everywhere seemed to love it. It was, indeed, a 'smash hit' and I suspect quite a lot of people in England and Scotland were hearing it for the first time. It is still very popular in the Czech Republic and gives the leader/concertmaster the chance to show off his own skills as a 'mini' soloist.
If a report in a Prague newspaper is to be believed, entry into the European Union will be accompanied by the formation of a 'Czech touring orchestra' to take the Czech repertoire to other parts of the world. A recent estimate was that 60 per cent of the Prague economy comes directly or indirectly from tourism. Although not to everyone's liking we have some 'obscure gems' or at least some interesting music which is not in the international concert repertoire and this must be true of every country in the world. There's a lot we don't know.
The important thing about the Iceland Symphony Orchestra performance of an obscurity that is mentioned is that they have rehearsed it and the parts will be in the orchestral library. It's much easier to do an obscure work subsequently!
When Mr Fedoseyev regularly conducted 'classical pop' concerts in Prague he brought him with, among other things, Vanity Fair by Anthony Collins, Greensleeves and the Norfolk Rhapsody by Vaughan Williams. I think the Norfolk Rhapsody has got 'lost' but Greensleeves and Vanity Fair still turn up in our 'pop' concerts and I think we owe that to Mr Fedoseyev.
Kind regards, Alan M. Watkins
Kind regards, Alan M. Watkins
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