FOR the record collector who thinks that he has everything, there is always something else to discover and, when it comes at bargain price, it can be a good investment for loose Christmas change.
For example, I had not heard of Maria Pilati until I found the new Naxos disc of his orchestral music. He was 35 when he died in 1938, by which time his music was heard across Europe. But, listening today, one can see why he went out of fashion. Like many British composers of the 1930s, this is superior light music, and none the worse for being revived today. This programme of his Concerto for Orchestra, a Suite for string and piano and three orchestral pieces is delightful and there is a charming Lullaby written three weeks before his death.
We are used to the mountainous broadsides of Bruckner’s brass in his symphonies, so it is interesting to find his Quintet and Quartet for Strings played by the Fine Arts Quartet with Gil Sharon. Here is the Bruckner we know, but successfully confining his mighty thoughts to the chamber music medium, making for easier domestic listening.
The BBC Philharmonic have given us some fine music by the Polish Karlowicz, who died young in 1909, in what might have been a skiing accident. Antoni Wit gives us eight of his symphonic poems on two discs, conducting the Warsaw Philharmonic on one and the New Zealand Symphony on the other. This is ripe romantic music, beautifully orchestrated, giving the orchestra its chance to shine, and lovers of Richard Strauss will find much to admire here.
His contemporary, Szymanowski, was also a denizen of the ski resort of Zakopone, in the Tatras, but he had a longer life, finally departing the scene in 1937, at 55 years of age. His music passed through several distinct stages, becoming increasingly perfumed and exotic. A programme of Choral music, conducted by Antoni Wit, has his Stabat Mater and shorter pieces with soloists and the Warsaw Orchestra and chorus. The Poles came to repair our pipes, it would be nice if their music could follow them into our concert halls.
Charles August de Beriot is a name not often conjured with. He was a 19th-century French violin virtuoso and founder of the French-Belgian violin tradition that was to produce some famous names. Three of his 10 Concertos show a romantic composer who wrote light tuneful music, but looked forward to the fireworks which were to come from Paganini. Philippe Quint makes a good case for his music with the Slovak Radio Orchestra under Kirk Trevor.
Finally of these Naxos discs, an exciting Sibelius programme from Pietari Inkinen and the New Zealand Orchestra, with a wild Night Ride and Sunrise, and some short orchestral pieces whose titles may not be familiar, but whose music certainly is. At this price, one does not have to be brave to find unexpected pleasures.
