Dave Lampson wrote:

>[Apparently the Hyperion is the only modern recorded performance.
>According to the liner notes: "before the present recording it had not
>enjoyed a fully professional performance for over forty years".  The
>options are probably very limited, especially currently available on
>CD. Is the Hyperion the first I wonder?  -Dave]

Quite probably.  There have been any number of composers "discovered" by
the CD era - to pick a few just from Britain: Truscott, Boughton (save for
The Immortal Hour, of course), Moeran, Bantock, Bowen, Sorabji (though his
"ban" on performances hardly helped his cause), Simpson.

Not to say that nothing of theirs was perviously recorded, but it was
spottily and often only in the 78 era.

Heavens, when I was first collecting records, in the 1960s, and again
limiting myself to British composers, there was only one recording of most
of Vaughan Williams symphonies actually available and that in mono, I don't
recall ever encountering a recording of Truscott, Boughton, Bowen, Sorabji
or Simpson, although I know there were a few in existence, but their
availability was virtually nil

And even composers whose music today is almost over-available: Bruckner
and Mahler, say, were hardly thick on the ground.  In 1965 (IIRC) Jochum's
Bruckner cycle appeared on DG.  For me this was the first opportunity to
hear nos.  1 and 2, whose only previous appearance I could find in the
Gramophone catalogue was Adler (no.1) and I think Georg Jochum (no.2) on
Everest or Delta or some such label.  I tried to order them but they never
arrived...

There was no complete Mahler cycle in 1965, Bernstein's was under way, as
apparently was Solti's (although he remade his LSO performances - not IMHO
for the better - in Chicago) and perhaps Kubelik's? Certainly Abravanel's
whose stereo 8th was advertised as the first such in the programme for
Bernstein's 1966 LSO performance.

Was there a stereo 7 available then? I can't think of one.

To sum up: (at last, they cry) although their was a remarkable range
of music recorded during the 78 and LP eras, for sheer *depth* as well
as breadth, the last 20 years have oustripped them by some margin.

Who, for example (I thought he'd finished) in 1965 would have predicted
that less than four decades later the collector, with a little searching -
again much easier in the age of the WWW - would be able to choose between:

     3 complete sets of the Godowsky/Chopin Studies
     2 recordings of Sorabji's mammoth Opus Clavicembalisticum
     4 or perhaps 5 recordings of Busoni's Piano Concerto (first
       recorded by Ogdon in 1966 (in one Abbey Road studio while the
       Beatles were making Sergeant Pepper in another) and not
       again until the CD era
     Perhaps 10 complete Bruckner cycles, and virtually every version
       of every symphony has now been recorded
     Too many Mahler symphony cycles to count
     2 complete Webern cycles (admittedly both under Boulez)
     5 or 6 complete Vaughan Williams symphony cycles
     at least 3 Sibelius cycles which include Kullervo, first r in
       1975 IIRC

The list goes on.  In terms of the availabilty (however briefly - stand
up EMI, inter alia) of recorded performances, both contemporary and
historical, and in terms of both breadth and depth of recorded repertoire,
we are truly living in a golden age.

deryk barker
([log in to unmask], http://www.camosun.bc.ca/~dbarker)