William Alwyn: Symphony #3 [Hickox, LSO].

Thomas Arne (composer of “Rule Brittania”): Six Organ Concerti.

Kurt Atterberg: Symphony #2 Op.6 [Westerberg, Swedish RSO].

Samuel Barber:
Symphony #1 Op.9 [Zinman, BaltoSO].
Violin Concerto† Op.14 [NadiaSS, LSO, Maxim Shostakovitch].
Knoxville: Summer of 1915 Op.24 [McNair, AtlantaSO, Levi].
Toccata Festiva for Organ & Orchestra Op.36.

Béla Bartók:
Duke Bluebeard's Castle Op.10 [Howell, Burgess, BBCNatOrchWales, Elder].

Arnold Bax:
November Woods.
Evocatively Arthurian Tintagel [Downes, BBC Philh].
If music can be said to have a Romantic's Romantic, it is Arnold Bax.
His magnificently WW1-enraged 1921-1922 Symphony #1 [Fredman, LPO (1971 premier recording, funded by film-maker Ken Russell, who simultaneously backed the same ensemble's premier recording of Bax' other searing symphony, 1924-1926's #2)]
Symphonic Variations‡‡, a work which was the lifetime property of pianist-vamp Harriet Cohen for whom Bax, one of the prime too-neglected geniuses in the history of romantic art, permanantly abandoned his wife — presumably apt excerpt here: the “Strife” variation [Fingerhut, LPO, Thomson].
The 1953 Liz2 *Coronation March, whose stately grand theme — the equal of Elgar — 1st appeared in Bax's WW2 Malta, GC filmscore [Gamba, BBC Philh].

Beethoven:
Choral Fantasy [or Symphony #6.5?]
Op.80 [Grimaud, SwedRSO, Salonen]
— the 1808 duck-billed platypus of music history: part symphony, part concerto, part choral work, concluding with a theme closely presaging that of The Ninth's ultimate Ode to Joy (premiered 1824), suggesting a question as to how early he actually began mentally evolving towards the latter work.
Though the Egmont Overture — Beethoven at his dramatic apogee — is much-celebrated, it is little known that the overture is actually the prelude section of a full 10-part Egmont suite Op.84.
[Incidental music to Goethe's VERY-loosely-historical work Egmont, which converts into freedom's beacon the Count of Egmont, whose actual history includes arranging the marriage of Bloody Mary to Spain's Prince Philip, thus mid-1550s King of England, later Emperor Philip 2 of Spain, triggering a serial disaster culminating in the 1588 Armada — which among other consequences, ultimately caused the arrest-for-atheism and faked-death-escape (1593/5/30) of spy & already-famous playwright Christopher Marlowe, who (1593/6/12) adopted as a front hitherto-unpublished, semi-literate moneylender & (hitherto-sometime) actor WmShakespeare and just kept on writing.]
The suite concluded with its pointedly-named 1 minute
“Victory Symphony” [Davies, Orch of St.Luke's] (reprise of familiar Overture's blood-stirringly heroic conclusion), signalling the projected triumph of liberty over the Roman church's formerly-growth-industry Spanish Inquisition (which beheaded Egmont all the way north in Brussels, Belgium, 1568) — an 1809 musical project that was so dear to non-Christian Beethoven that he (astonishingly, for him) refused payment for the score. On hearing the suite, Goethe felt that it well embodied the spirit of his work.
[Dr.Eliot's Harvard Classics included only Part 1 of Goethe's more famous Faust, but provided Egmont entire. Given such associations, it is one of the sadder consequences of passing P.C. that Mt.Egmont, the southern hemisphere's most beautiful volcano — the Mt.Fuji of New Zealand — is suffering a reversion-to-Maori de-naming.]

Leonard Bernstein:
On the Waterfront [Bernstein, NYP].

Ernest Bloch:
Symphony #1.

Luigi Boccherini:
Guitar Quintets.

Arrigo Boito:
Nero. (His uncompleted 2nd opera. Of two. Neither's principal is cuddly. Prior was the better-known Mefistofele, the only opera with bells&whistles.)

Jacques Bondon:
*Concerto de Mars.

Brahms:
Es tönt ein voller Harfenklang Op.17 #1 (women's voices, harp, & 2 horns)
[MonteverdiC, Wynne, Halstead, Rutherford, Gardiner].

Max Bruch:
Suite for Organ & Orchestra Op.88b [Mikkelson, TübingenArtOrch, Kirchmann].
(A concerto version of Op.88b, for 2 pianos & orchestra [Op.88a] was surprise-recovered 1st [c.1970] — as a result of a Baltimore posthumous auction of the effects of the once-renowned Sutro sisters duo-pianist team.) The work's opening four notes are used (unattributed) as fanfare-opening for the 1935 Boris Karloff film Bedlam.

Anton Bruckner:
Integral Symphony #9. See DIO 4.2 [1994] ‡8 n.1 [p.72]. Finale's completion now carried (by the Bruckner Society) far beyond that there-cited, in a version commercially available via Kurt Eichhorn's recording with Bruckner Orchester Linz.

Ernest Chausson:
Poem of Love & of the Sea Op.19.
Symphony Op.20 [Tortellier, BBC Philh], which worships Franck's Symphony while perhaps exceeding it — so Chausson's shade needn't be offended if we start advertising his own grand Symphony as “Franck's 2nd”?
(The old Stock-ChicagoSO 1942 recording effectively transformed into an organ version for the final minutes of the work.)
Concerto for Piano, Violin, & String Quartet Op.21.

Aaron Copland:
Symphony for Organ & Orchestra — the one the premiere's conductor (W.Damrosch, NYP) said showed the composer was capable of murder.

Claude Debussy:
Fantasy for Piano & Orchestra.
Songs of Bilitis (promoting a lesbian-legend hoax by Debussy's fellow atheistic Dionysiac, classicist Pierre Louys).
Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, condemned by the Archbishop of Paris on 1911/5/16 as “offensive to Catholic consciences”.
Canope (Prelude #22) [Louise Sibourd], evidently evocative of the pagan Serapic miracle-cure temple at Canopus (Egypt), where worked geocentrist astrologer Claudius Ptolemy c.160 AD. (See D.Rawlins Queen's Quarterly 91.4:969-989 [1984] p.972.)

Fritz (→Frederick) Delius:
Florida Suite [Handley, UlsterSO];
Piano Concerto.

Ernst von Dohnányi:
Piano Concerto #1 Op.5.
Piano Concerto #2 Op.42 [Baranyay, BudapestSO, Györiváth].
The two concertos were composed virtually a half-century apart, premiering in 1898 & 1947, resp. The 2nd appeared shortly before Dohnanyi left Europe for the US, and a recording of it by Dohnanyi (RPO, Adrian Boult) appeared a decade after. Upon arrival here, Dohnanyi held a lifetime post at Florida State University, which now boasts DIO's former Editor, Dennis Duke — who shares with B&DR an enjoyment of the music of both the world-class composers who spent considerable time in Florida: Delius and Dohnanyi.

Paul Dukas:
Ariadne & Blue-Beard [Ciesinski, Chor&NewOrchPhilhRadioFrance, A.Jordan].
(DR's great aunt Gay Rawlins saw the opera performed at the Met a century ago. Her copy of the program [35¢] is preserved in the DIO Collection.
B&D Rawlins sense possible influences upon, resp, Puccini's Turandot and Florent Schmitt's Psalm 47.)

Henri Duparc:
Lénore.

Antonin Dvorak:
Piano Concerto Op.33 [Hayroudinoff, Ehnes, BBCP].

Edward Elgar:
Snow Op.26 #1 (urged on DR by Polly Connor).
Film version (Liz1) of the beloved
“Nimrod” variation from Enigma Variations Op.36
[Wheeler, New London Consort, Pickett].
Symphony #2 Op.63 [Barbirolli, Hallé Orch]
(2nd movement: listen carefully for the conductor's transported sighs at 11m1/3).
Music Makers Op.69, which includes a choral version of “Nimrod”.
[When one thinks of noble music, Brahms & Elgar come readily to mind. Yet their first musical jobs were in, respectively, a bawdy house & a crazy house. Evidence of fortunate over-compensation?]

Manuel de Falla:
Vida Breve.

Gerald Finzi:
Introit [Hatfield, Northern Sinfonia, Griffiths].

Peggy Glanville-Hicks:
Transposed Heads.

Alexander Glazunov:
Symphony #5 Op.55.
King of the Jews Op.95, written for Konstantin Romanov's play — just before the end of the Romanovs.

Reinhold Gliere:
Symphony #3 “Il'ya Murometz” Op.42.

Karl Goldmark:
Violin Concerto Op.28.

Howard Hanson:
Choral Extended Theme, based on his “Romantic” Symphony #2 Op.30
[NMC HS Ch, WorldYouth SO Interlochen, Hanson] (easily the favorite, through all the years of DIO's blind-testing of what appeals to the public when it doesn't know whose music it's hearing).
Merry Mount Op.31, a Hawthorn-based opera (devoted to anti-Puritanism) of which — despite decades of sensational successes with audiences — only excerpts had ever been recorded until Gerard Schwarz's Hanson-centenary 1996 performance (e.g., the Overture [Schwartz, Seattle Symph]).
Hanson's Symphony #3 Op.33 (commemorating Hanson's Swedish-immigrant ancestors) is such an unjustly forgotten work that both its 1st [Schwartz, Seattle Symph]) and 2nd [Hanson, Eastman-Rochester Orch] movements are linked here.
Piano Concerto Op.36 [Carol Rosenberger, Seattle Symph, Schwartz].
Elegy in Memory of My Friend Serge Koussevitsky Op.44 [D.Montgomery, Jena Philh Orch].

Roy Harris:
Symphony #3 [N.Järvi, DetroitSO] (the best-remembered of a slowly-being-less-remembered deeply “American” composer's works).
Symphony #7.
Fantasy for Piano & Orchestra.

Hamilton Harty:
Piano Concerto.

Bernard Herrmann:
Citizen Kane (Susan Alexander's aria reminiscent of Sibelius' 1896 opera Maiden in the Tower; and see DIO 1.2 [1991] n.178).
Day the Earth Stood Still.

Gustavus von Holst (→Gustav Holst):
Choral Symphony Op.41, the finale of which slightly presages that of Vaughan Williams' Dona Nobis Pacem.

Alan Hovhaness:
Symphony #2 “Mysterious Mountain” Op.132 [Reiner, ChicagoSO].

Vincent d'Indy:
*Fervaal Op.40, of which only the Overture [Schippers, ColumbiaSO] has been recorded.
Istar Variations Op.42 — named for an Assyrian version of Venus, this is a clever ecdysiast-reversal of the old variations-on-the-opening-theme norm: instead, as the raiment of variations lift, the lovely-lush-lullaby post-passion theme at the work's core is ultimately bared.
Symphony #2 Op.57 [DePriest, MonteCarloPO]. (A century ago, this refined symphony was damned by US critics as incomprehensibly modern!)
Summer Day on the Mountain Op.61, with an “Aurore” [Janowski, OPRF] that compares in charm if not style with the soon-after famous dawn of Ravel's Daphnis & Chloé.

Leos Janácek:
Lachian Dances [Conlon, RotterdamPO].
Taras Bulba [Ancerl, CPO].
Glagolitic Mass original version.
[Janácek was one of the few genuinely scientific composers, keeping notebooks of the music that he discerned in people's ordinary speech — an approach which did not at all prevent him (why should it?) from writing in a signature dramatic-romantic style. The other composer with a scientific approach (also not at all restricting his humanity) was Vaughan Williams, who understood that non-written folk music's appeal drew from its evolution during centuries of serial-replaying's mutations, through the lethal filter of audience taste. (See his National Music [1934]. His family was related to the Darwins.) He and Holst collected folk music in rural England; meanwhile, Kodaly & Bartók did so in the countryside of Hungary-Romania — as Brahms & Remanyi had a generation earlier.]

Ludwig Irgens Jensen:
Partita Sinfonica “The Drover” [Ruud, OsloPO]
— one of the most drømantic of all inexplicably-forgotten works. (Jensen is the only one of the composers cited here who is not listed in the Norton/Grove Concise Encyclopedia of Music [1994 ed].)

Dmitri Kabalevski:
Cello Concerto #1‡ Op.49 [Ma, Philad Orch, Ormandy].
Piano Concerto #3 Op.50 [Stott, BBC Philh Orch, Sinaiski].

Vasily Kalinnikov:
Symphony #1.

Khatchytunian:
Violin Concerto†† flute version (arr. Jean-Pierre Rampal).

Zoltan Kodaly:
Summer Evening.
Concerto for Orchestra.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold:
Dead City Op.12 [with his father Julius Korngold]
(in the 1987 film Aria,
the opera's ethereal “Marietta's Song” [Hendricks, Philad Orch, Welser-Möst] was unadornedly adorned by early Hurley [Liz3]).
King's Row [Gerhardt, NatPO].
Violin Concerto Op.35.
Symphony Op.40.
[Korngold's earliest works appeared under Austrian Emperor Franz Josef 1&Only. But he later wrote film music (also used in the Violin Concerto) glorifying Benito Juarez [for whom Mussolini was named], who killed FJ's brother Maximilian for trying to turn Mexico into FJ's Maxico.]

Edouard Lalo:
Piano Concerto.

Peter Lange-Müller:
Once Upon a Time Op.25 [Schønwandt, DRO&C],
concluding with Denmark's traditional annual
Midsummerfest Song [Schønwandt, DRO&C].

Lars-Erik Larsson:
Disguised God Op.24 [Salonen, Swedish Radio SO&Chor]. Proof that Nielsen's aural aura survived him.

Daniel-Lesur:
Symphony of Dances.
(The work's stately Sarabande movement [Chachereau, OrchBCalmel] appears related to the music for the 2001 film The Third Reich in Color.)

Anatole Liadov:
Enchanted Lake Op.62.
Fragment from the Apocalypse Op.66.
Nénie Op.67.

Franz Liszt:
Alternate Totentanz opening (arr. Raymond Lewenthal).
Orpheus.
Prometheus.
Dante Symphony.
Hunnenschlacht.

Leevi Madetoja:
Symphony #1 Op.29. [Premiered 1916 (Helsinki): occasional reverse-echoes of Hanson 2 (1930) & Shostakovitch 10 (1953)?]

Bohuslav Martinu:
Bouquet of Flowers.
Cello Concerto #2 [Fukacova, OdenseSO, Csaba].
Piano Concerto #3 [Palenicek, CPO, Ancerl].
Violin & Piano Concerto #2 [Matousek & Kosárek, CPO, Hogwood].
Piano Concerto #4 “Incantations”.
Symphony #6 “Symphonic Fantasies” [N.Järvi, Bamberg Symph].
Piano Concerto #5 “Fantasia Concertante”.

Giuseppe Martucci:
Song of Remembrance, Piano Concerto #1.

Nikolai Miaskovski:
Symphony #21 Op.51.
Symphony #25 Op.79.

Ernest Moeran:
Rhapsody #2.
Cello Concerto [Wallfisch, BournemouthS, Del Mar]. (Moeran's cellist-wife has left her rendition of this work, recorded a generation ago in his memory.)

Jerome Moross:
Big Country [Bremner, PhilharmoniaOrch].

Ignaz Moscheles:
*Concertante in F.

Modest Mussorgski:
Rêverie [Simon, Philharmonia].
“Gritzko's Dream” (arr. V.Shebalin) from Sorochinski Fair, a choral rendition of Night on Bald Mountain.
Piano Concerto version of Pictures at an Exhibition
[arr. Lawrence Leonard], starting with the “Promenade”,
and ending with the picture which lovers of Boris Godunov will bond to,
the “Great Gate at Kiev” [Ungár, Philharmonia, Simon].

Carl Nielsen:
Symphony #1 Op.7 [Leaper, Nat SO Ireland].
Hymnus Amoris Op.12 [Bonney, Hansen, KbhBoysCh, DNRSO, Schirmer]. (See DIO 1.1 [1991] p.48 n.26 for the [thin] connexion between Nielsen & Claudius Ptolemy.)
Saul & David Op.14 [Serov, OdenseSO].
Symphony #3 “Expansive” Op.27 [Bernstein, Royal Danish Orch].
Symphony #4 “Inextinguishable” Op.29.
Violin Concerto Op.33.
Fyn Spring Op.42 [Salonen, SwedRSO].

Paderewski:
Piano Concerto.

Paganini:
Maestosa Sonata sentimentale [Accardo, LPO, Dutoit], made special by concluding with a brief SWING version of Haydn's hymn, “Deutschland Über Alles” (Haydn Op.76 #3) — presumably as sacrilegious to Nazis (could Paganini have assassinated Hitler by heart-attack?) as the boisterous versions of the Roman church's holy funereal Dies Irae by Berlioz (“Witch's Sabbath” [Op.14 finale]) and Liszt's Totentanz are to VatCity.
[Berlioz' 1834 Harold in Italy Op.16 was inspired (and allegedly much funded) by Paganini (1782-1840). DR wonders if Berlioz also helped touch up the incomplete orchestration of the 1838 Violin Concerto #5 of Paganini (by then wrecked in health & finance).]

Andrzej Panufnik:
Sinfonia Rustica.
Sinfonia Sacra.

Wilhelm Petersen-Berger:
*Violin Concerto. (May have influenced Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco's Guitar Concerto #1.)

Ildebrando Pizzetti:
Concerto of Summer.
[Unavailable for over 40y on commerical recording (and thus asterisked from the outset here), this irresistible atmospheric gem finally re-emerged in 2008, thanks to Naxos, M.Michailidis, & the Thessaloniki State SO .]

Sergei Rachmaninov:
ConcertoElégiaque Op.9 (arr. by Alan Kogosowski from Elegiac Trio Op.9).
Symphony #1 Op.13. [Suppressed for nearly a 1/2 century 1897-1946 after its disastrous premier, it is now recognized as a unique work (much as Copland's First), since the composer soon after went in different directions. The final movement's opening fanfare has lately been used by the St.Petersburg Symphony as its trademark.]
Piano Concerto #4 Op.40.
We here link to the composer's performance of the immortal Variation 18 from
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini [Rachmaninov, Philad Orch, Stokowski], recorded on 1934/12/24, just weeks after its Baltimore 1934/11/7 world premiere — and by the same artists.
Rachmaninov's final work (1940) appeared in two versions:
the virtually unknown Fantastic Dances [Shelley & MacNamara] for Two Pianos Op.45.‡‡,
later orchestrated into the version (also neglected despite recordings by Ormandy & Leinsdorf — until the late-1950s release hearable here): Symphonic Dances Op.45 [Kondrashin, MoscowPO].

Joachim Raff:
Symphony #5 Op.177.
Piano Concerto Op.185.

Ture Rangström (aka Ture [Sturm-und-D]Rangström):
Symphony #1 [Jurowski, NorrköpingSO].
Divertimento Elegiaco [Sundkvist, SwedishCO] — moodily Swedish Herrmann-Hitchcock ambience.
Symphony #4 [Segerstam, HelsinkiPO] — understandably included in the 1997 Finnish album, “The EARQUAKE Experience”.

Ottorino Respighi:
Four Church Windows (also piano version of #1-#3).
Ancient Airs & Dances Suite #2 [Hickox, Sinf21].
Rossiniana [Janigro, ViennaSO] — spectacularly FUN music, based upon squirreled-away raunchy tunes by Rossini which the older composer had gotten too rich and rotund to bother orchestrating himself (having largely retired from public composition at 37, a lamentable move which Henri Duparc later duplicated much more rigidly).

Josef Rheinberger:
Organ Concerto #1 Op.137.
Organ Concerto #2 Op.177 [Rehfeldt, KantOrch Tübingen, Ader].

Nicolai Rimski-Korsakov:
Symphony #2 “Antar” Op.9.
Piano Concerto Op.30.

[The secret 1892 love-nest of Tsarevich Nicky & prima ballerina Mathilde Kschessinska was owned by Rimsky. Yet his final opera (Le Coq d'Or) models “King Dodo” on since-crowned Tsar Nicky2.]

Joaquín Rodrigo (blind from age 3, he dictated his music to his wife):
Zarabanda Lejana.
Three Old Airs & Dances #1.
Four Love Songs #4 (“I Come from the Elms”) [de Los Angeles, OrchSocConcConserv, de Burgos].
Pavana Real #3 “Zarabanda de Amor”.

Hans Rott:
Symphony. (Robert M. Bryce deems this prematurely-doomed depressive's lone symphony as: Mahler-ere-Mahler.)

Albert Roussel:
Bacchus et Ariane Op.43 [Pretre, ONF].

Edmund Rubbra:
Symphony #7 Op.88.

Camille Saint-Saëns:
Piano Concerto #1 Op.17 [Roget, Philh, Dutoit].
Piano Concerto #5 “Egyptian” Op.103.

Pablo de Sarasate (Sherlock Holmes' fave fiddler):
Zigeunerweisen Op.20 [Kantorow, New Japan Philh, Inoue]
— a fiendishly furious finale constitutes the last 100s.

Florent Schmitt:
Psalm 47 Op.38.
Tragédie de Salomé Op.50.
Piano Quintet Op.51.
[Recordings (1930 & 1935, resp) survive of both the latter works, with Schmitt conducting (1930) and soloing (1935), resp. Salomé impressed the young Stravinsky. The Quintet has debts to Chausson's Concerto.
In 1958 Summer, the last symphonies of Schmitt (age 87) & Vaughan Williams (age 85) were premiered. Both composers died that August.]

Svend Schultz:
*Serenade for Strings.

Robert Schumann:
Manfred entire Op.115.

Dmitri Shostakovitch*@*:
*A Year Is Worth a Lifetime (paean to Karl Marx).
Symphony #11 “Year 1905” Op.103.

Jan Sibelius:
Kullervo Symphony Op.7.
Press Celebrations of 1899 resistance to Czarist censorship (before Finland separated from Russia in 1917), concluding with the immortal Finlandia Op.26 #7; the intermediate revised finale is little known, yet may be the most effective of all the versions: [Vänskä, LahtiSO].
King Christian Op.27.
Belshazzar's Feast Op.51 [Paasikivi, LahtiSO, Vänskä].
Symphony #5 Op.82 (1915 orig. ed.).
Symphony #6 Op.104.

Max Steiner:
Gone With the Wind.
[Well-known (no need to link) but few recordings and even fewer concert-hall performances.]

Wilhelm Stenhammer:
Three Fantasies Op.11 #1 [N.Sivelöv].

Richard (is there any other?) Strauss:
Zueignung Op.10 #1 (Strauss' earliest hit in original 1885 piano-accompaniment arrangement, but his 1940 orchestration [Mattila, LSO, Thomas] was unknown for decades after).
Aus Italien Op.16 (supercharged “Funiculi, Funicula” at close [Kosler, SlovakPO]).
Love of Danae (Symphonic Fragment) Op.83.
Japanische Festmusik Op.84 [Strauss, BavarStateOrch] — the 1940 first (and last?) recording, by the composer himself of his brandnew Heil-Hirohito glorification of the Axis' 1940 Anti-Comintern Pactmate and (the alleged 2600th anniversary of the line of militarist-deities culminating in) the Emperor who was by then top war criminal of the east: in-on every genocidal globalist decision by Tojo's “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”.
The Brook Op.88 #1 [Schwarzkopf, LSO, Szell]. Dedicated to Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. Near the song's close (from 1m1/3 to 1m3/4 in the sensitive rendition here by Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, Hitler's fave soprano and Stormin' Norman's auntie), almost a half-minute is given over to a lingering triple repetition of the phrase, “mein Führer”.
[Strauss' most sensational prank was to produce his Domestic Symphony Op.53 (depicting mommy, daddy, baby, etc frolicking at his home) back-to-back with his Salome Op.54, chronicling Wilde times in Herod's family: incest, ecdysiasm, murder, necrophilia — climaxing with Salome high-pitching her love at the severed head of John the Baptist. Presumably, it was such deliciously audacious incongruity that moved Mencken in 1912 to sum up Strauss' music as: “Old Home Week in Gomorrah.”]

Josef Suk (Dvorak's son-in-law, whose music won 1st-prize at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics):
String Serenade Op.6 [Krcek, Capella Istropolitana].
Four Pieces for Violin & Piano Op.17 (the center of the Appassionato movement [Josef Suk (the composer's violinist-grandson) & Jan Panenka] briefly presages the sylvan ballerina of the later Fantasy).
Fairy Tale Suite Op.16 [Pesek, CPO].
Under the Apple Tree Op.20 [Pesek, CPO].
Fantasy for Violin & Orchestra Op.24 [Suk, CPO, Neumann] — the exquisite Andante is Suk's self-confessed drømantic vision of a maiden glide-dancing through the Czech woodlands — so effectively brought to artistic life that he needn't have confessed.
Fantastic Scherzo Op.25 [Belohlavek, PragSO]: irresistible.
Symphony #2 for Large Orchestra “Asrael” Op.27. Suk's life-creativity sadly crested in this vast 1907 opus. Named for the Angel of Death, its first 3 movements commemorate his mentor Dvorak (d.1904), and the last 2 recall his prematurely-deceased wife, Dvorak's daughter Otilka (d.1905). The final movement [Neumann, CPO] ends with a memorably loving aural resurrection chimera.

Otar Taktakishvili: Piano Concerto #1.

Randall Thompson:
Symphony #2 [N.Järvi, DetroitSO]. A (later) Harvard composer-in-rez at play.

Joaquín Turina:
Rapsodia Sinfónica for Piano & Strings Op.66.

Ralph Vaughan Williams:
Songs of Travel*** [Tear, BirminghamSO, Rattle] (“Bright Is the Ring of Words”).
Sea Symphony (set to Whitman) [Marshall, PhilharmoniaO&LSC, Hickox].
London Symphony [Boult, LPO].
Two Piano Concerto [Vronsky&Babin, LPO, Boult] (premiered [inadequately] by Harriet Cohen in its original [1933] one-piano version).
Symphony #5 [Boult, LPO].
Dona Nobis Pacem (set to Whitman, John Bright, etc).
Pilgrim's Progress (the libretto-edit [from J.Bunyan] for which was partly accomplished [entire “Vanity Fair”] by his 2nd wife, Ursula Wood, at whose amiable home B&D Rawlins enjoyed a lively afternoon tea in 1975 — and who died only in 2007 Oct, just after RVW's 135th birthday):
Paradise of 1943 BBC version [Leggate, BBC NorthernSO&Singers] (thanks to R.Bryce for alerting us to this rendition);
Paradise of 1951 Cambridge version [ex-physicist John Noble, LPO&LCO, Boult].
Symphony #5 (which shares music with Pilgrim's Progress).
Antarctic Symphony [Boult, LPO] (1951, from the 1948 film Scott of the Antarctic) [ideal music for planetaria].
Oboe Concerto [Indermühle, OrchBretag, Schnitzler].
Oxford Elegy.
Symphony #9 (at age 85) [Previn, LSO].

Antonio Vivaldi:
Four Seasons flute version (arr. Jean-Pierre Rampal).

Wagner:
Siegfried Prelude. [Solti, VPO]. [Used, to great effect, throughout the 9hour 1983 film Wagner, which successfully elevated his post-1848 life to a music drama in itself.
The intense effect of the Ring of the Nibelungs is due to the same secret that made Turandot pre-eminent among Puccini's work: the superficially-inconsistent interweaving of love's purity with heroism's power.]

William Walton:
Richard the Third [Marriner, ASMF].
(Some of the music is an upgrade of Walton's WW2 Spitfire Prelude.)

Charles Widor:
Symphony #5 for organ [Daniel Chorzempa] (played at the conclusion of the 1993 funeral of DR's stepfather).

Alexander Zemlinski:
Lyric Symphony Op.18 [J.Johnson, SWF-SO, Gielen].

† The unexceedably-romantic Violin Concerto of Samuel Barber (who belatedly received an honorary doctorate at DR's Harvard graduation) was premiered in 1941. The person who commissioned the work abandoned it. Though B&DR have had a special affection for it from their earliest days together, its recordings languished for decades in little-label-land. An occasional lp came&went (e.g., Louis Kaufman & Rob't Gerle); but, by the time of Barber's 1981 death, 40 years after the work's creation (& for years thereafter), exactly one commercial recording was available (Stern-Bernstein-NYP). Now, when it can do Barber no good, his concerto is regularly recorded by the leading soloists of the world and is the most-performed of any US violin concerto.
(For Hanson's happier-ending, see DIO 1.1 [1991] pp.18-19. His 1930 “Romantic Symphony”'s music graced the highly popular 1979 film Alien, while he yet lived.) [Critics' bedazzlement by ephemeral “progressive” rages such as 12-tone music needlessly discouraged such romantics as Barber.
In truth, the artificial (artistically-indefensible) 12-tone non-repeat rule (which relates to the brain's mathematical not musical sense) actually restricts a composer's freedom — about 29 times more than sticking to a key, since 7 to the 12th is 28.9 times bigger than 12 factorial. (More exactly: larger by a factor of 29 − 7108457/68428800.) Has this startling (perhaps amusing) ratio been previously computed and published?
Of course, 12-tone music is sublime art compared to the commercial ear-beer which has increasingly become the enforced exclusive fare of most youngsters today, thanks to corporate greed's bottom-line fixation on ephemerality. (And unit-cost profit-edge, in nations [such as the US] with substantial culturally-primitive sectors.) Result: most children end up exposed to 100.0000% lowest-common-denominator aural-kleenex. Must our eventual recourse be establishment of anti-monopoly legislation, to protect the underaged from censorial elimination of refinement and from the product unrelievedly blasted at children? — forceable assault upon their ears and taste? I.e., can the mob-affiliated (via L.Wasserman et ilk) “music” industry be indicted for statutory rap?]
What separates deeply inspirational music from the old soporifics?
[Haydn even put a joke tutti-fortissimo into the Andante of his 94th (“Surprise”) Symphony — just to wake those listeners who'd dozed off after getting the general idea (of Haydn's intentions) from the previous 93…. (When published in 1994, this DIO remark drew some expected outrage.)]
The great pioneers of music each introduced or hyper-refined an element that augmented the separation: Beethoven, drama; Berlioz, mystery; Wagner, fire; Mussorgski, evil; Debussy, hedonism; Sibelius, depth.
(DIO 4.2 [1994] ‡9 §K4 [p.82]. See also note DIO 2.1 [1992] ‡1 §D4 [p.6].)
Sibelius is perhaps the most unique of all these composers; Stokowski astutely noted that, if he had left nothing but the Swan of Tuonela (for cor anglais & orchestra) [question: why speak of the english horn in French and the french horn in English?], Sibelius would have been remembered forever for that work alone. And his (& Arnold Bax's) 1st and 2nd are among the most searingly dramatic of symphonies. Yet even among his most most dynamic passages, Sibelius is ever singing.

‡‡ Bax's sprawling, typically ultra-romantic Symphonic Variations has been almost exclusively the domain of lady pianists. It was originally the property of Harriet Cohen. (Bax's longtime mistress; and friend of Elgar, Busoni, GBShaw, HGWells, and Prime Minister Ramsay Macdonald.) The current CD is by Margaret Fingerhut. But the 1st lp (1970) was by Joyce Hatto, lately notorious for perpetrating for decades the most successful series of music-recording frauds ever, palming off performances by largely obscure pianists as her own, and drawing raviews from “critics” and the growth of a cult of admirers. (Presumably libel laws inhibited wide recognition of the truth. It looks indicative that exposure occurred not long after her death.) The most penetrating comment published so far is by New Zealand fellow-freethinker Denis Dutton (International Herald Tribune 2007/2/26 p.6); more detail at his website.
There was a similar incident in the 1960s, when a “long-lost” recording of Chopin's 1st Piano Concerto, allegedly by Dinu Lipatti (who had died prematurely in 1950) was released, to some ecstatic reviews.
High Fidelity (1966 Dec, H.Goldsmith): “a major addition to the scant legacy of one of music's lost generation …. The performance is one of pristine distinction, indeed one of Lipatti's best recorded mementos. This artist had the uncanny ability to set a line in flexible motion, avoiding affetuoso nuance on the one hand and brittle aloofness on the other…. A disc not to be missed.”
The New Republic (1966/10/29 B.Haggin): “It's as though one of the art galleries had put on view a newly discovered Cezanne … a performance of Chopin's Concerto No.1 by Dinu Lipatti which was unknown until now …. Lipatti's marvelous playing — so simple-hearted, as one listener observed, and at the same time so sophsitcated in its elegance and subtleties of melodic and rhythmic inflection … make it the finest playing of Chopin I know.”
(Note well that the final superlative applied not just to this concerto but to our entire Chopin recording heritage!)
But the performance eventually turned out to be by Halina Czerny-Stefanska (Czech Philharmonic, Václav Smetácek), whom critics hardly noticed before or since. Anyone who has taken the trouble (as DR has for decades) to scientifically test his preferences for performers by blind-testing will find it a humbling experience. The extent to which an artist's reputation rests upon glamour and hype (as against genuine ability, interpretation, and sensitivity) can be difficult to extract-out from the relation one has to a particular performance.
Popular-journal critics are justly suspect in any field.
[On controversial matters in DR's areas of expertise, pop-writers are largely just careerist echo-chamberpots for gurus — at best worthless (and easily-replaceable), often outright damaging to truth and pioneers therein. Only a forum as totally independent as DIO can laugh at them (through the scathing sardonic scorn they merit) and survive their power-asserting vindictive ire.]
But in the sphere of music, where we are dealing with matters of taste — trying to measure the immeasurable — it should not be surprising that runaway imagination and even corruption are often on the loose. (Though happily less so in music than in the world of paintings which is now corrupted beyond all reason by mega-money: we note that it has long since become the norm at auctions that the biggest applause is not for the paintings but the sale-price's magnitude.)]
DIO 2.3 [1992] ‡1 §A1 [p.91]: “In 1990, rich Japanese businessmen purchased a Van Gogh [$80,000,000], a Renoir [$50,000,000.], and Peru.
Peru was cheapest.”
[The Van Gogh cost over $80,000,000; the Renoir, over $50,000,000. The bill for winning Peru's Presidency was not reported, but the (over-the-table) cost of a Presidential campaign in the much larger US is [1992] only a few hundred million dollars, so a Peruvian election probably costs just a few million. Japanese may occasionally have paid more for another of their favorite Western land-acquisitions: US golf-courses.]
There's a wise saying that sums up the state of the art scene:
nobody pays a hundred million dollars for a painting because he thinks it's beautiful.

‡ Kabalevski's Cello Concerto #1 was recorded by Daniel Shafran — way back in the platterday 1950s. (It then lacked a number, since #2 was 1964. And dedicated to Shafran.) Kabalevski's 1959 conducting of the work with the Boston Symphony at Symphony Hall, when he and Shostakovitch appeared there together (B&D were outside, part of a dense mob of ticketless disappointeds), was such a sensation that the dark-song 2nd movement was actually repeated. (Time 1959/11/23 p.72.) Immediate reaction: the 2nd commercial recording (see above) was rushed to market, about 3 decades after Shafran's — in 1983.
(Partial causes: ColdWar; pre-digital limitations; Ma was 4 years old in 1959.)

†† Among Aram Khatchaturian's remarkable achievements: he became a composer despite not reading music until his late teens. (At the same age, Shostakovitch was already world-famous for his amazing Symphony #1 Op.10.) DR has heard K scorned all the way from the Harvard Music Dep't to detective fiction. Raymond Chandler The Long Goodbye Chap.12: “at three A.M. I was walking the floor and listening to Khachaturyan working in a tractor factory. He called it a violin concerto. I called it a loose fan belt and the hell with it.” DR's mother, a sensitive poet & novelist, did not read Chandler, but she (who didn't like violin works, anyway) agreed with him on K and requested the Fanbelt Concerto's absence from the family's home music collection. Years later, DR snuck it back in by the expedient of giving her a recording of the Rampal flute-transcription of the same work. Only when she exclaimed how delightful it was did DR confess the subterfuge. Fortunately, she was a tolerant parent. Which should surprise no DIO reader.
[Though purists predictably have seizures at the very idea, re-doing composers' works has a long and often fruitful history. (DR's attitude: if one doesn't like a revised version of a work, he can simply ignore it and access the original — or his own preferred revision. Where is the harm in bold experimentation? — which is, after all, the very spirit and process that made Beethoven and Wagner immortal….) Present-day performances of major orchestral works by, e.g., Schubert, Schumann, Chopin [&Hummel?], Dvorak, and Mussorgski routinely and profitably use non-original versions. Mahler even questioned the perfection of our most sacred symphonic heritage — and altered the orchestration of Beethoven's major symphonies. The young pianist Hélène Grimaud's 2005 recording of Rachmaninov's Sonata #2 melds portions from each of his 2 versions of that much-neglected opus, fearlessly selected according to her personal artistic judgement. (Earlier, Horowitz arranged his own personally-arrived-at versions of the same work, both before and after the composer's death — the former approved by him.) Rachmaninov's friend Fritz Kreisler re-did Paganini's Violin Concerto #1 his way, etc, etc. In a similarly probing and helpful spirit, one might try improving the flagrantly awkward ending of Sibelius' otherwise dextrous Symphony #5 by occasionally experimenting: using, e.g., the original 1915 version's ending. (Or just trying the effect of skipping most or all of the work's last chords, chords which initially may indeed seem curiously jarring — but which simply become tedious upon repeated hearings.)]

‡‡ Symphonic Dances was Rachmaninov's final work, written on Long Island in 1940, while his health was declining.
[By a remarkable coincidence, the best childhood friend of DR's mother (the late Patsy Taylor, who worked at Fort Dietrich for many years) was in Long Island in 1940 and accidentally encountered Rachmaninov, who amiably took her for a spin in his motorboat! She recalled that he mentioned to her that he was composing a new work.]
Symphonic Dances survives (almost uniquely for Rachmaninov) in both a two-piano edition and the now far better-known orchestral version. The latter was completed with an indeterminate amount of assistance from the world's then-#1 professional orchestrator, Robert Russell Bennett. (Some orchestration-help in a composer's illness-debilitated last years is neither unusual [e.g., Debussy & Nielsen] nor regrettable.)
Several of Rachmaninov's other works have been orchestrated in some degree since he left them to us; e.g., the Elegiac Trio, both two-piano suites, five Etude-Tableaux (by Respighi), and at least three Preludes. But by far the best such opportunity has yet to be seized.
It finally dawned on Dennis Rawlins (2005/5/18) that anyone who has listened carefully to both versions of Symphonic Dances will long to experience a wedding of the former's agility and the latter's power.
[Some may object that the very title implies a purely symphonic work. Yet the original title was Fantastic Dances. But, even if one grants the point, we know that other works for solo instrument and orchestra which have been regarded as overly symphonic, are classics nonetheless — e.g., Berlioz' Harold in Italy and Brahms' Piano Concerto #2.]
So, we await the musician(s) who will at last fuse the already-written piano-version with the already-written orchestra-version of the Symphonic Dances, and thereby leave to the world an inevitably memorable artistic high — perhaps among the most potent of all profound piano-orchestra works:

(We used to suggest 5th, but that title's since been taken by the welcome conversion of Symphony #2 into a piano concerto.)
And, given Rachmaninov's original title, it could be legitimately nicknamed

The Fantastic Concerto

If the arrangement is ever accomplished, one can hope that the premiere will be at the theatre which has for a century been Baltimore's parallel to NYC's Carnegie Hall, as well as the site of all five of Rachmaninov's Philadelphia Orchestra performances in Baltimore — the Lyric Opera House.

[DR still recalls his 1st adult visit to the Lyric: the Eugene Ormandy concert included Isaac Stern doing Bruch 1 & Lalo on one program. Also Bizet's Symphony. (No one [and, yes, I've heard of Mozart] ever wrote a more appealing work at age 17.) Either the same evening or shortly after, following a Philad Orch concert, DR and a date were waiting at Baltimore's Penn Station (so he could catch a train north back to Harvard), where

And he hardly had to bend over. (Ormandy was well under 5ft tall, shorter even than Leonard Bernstein.) Ormandy took over the Philadephia after the renowned Stokowski but — armed with Rachmaninov's favorite orchesta and his own prodigious brain — swiftly grew out of LS' shadow.

[Ormandy was born in Hungary without his later-famous name. He said he named himself (U.G.Normandy?) after the ship that brought him to the US: the French luxury liner Normandie. (Which later burned in NY harbor while France was occupied.) There used to be a rumor-tale that he was originally named Gene Goldman, but changed his name to Eugene Ormandy because it rang classier. Not a rumor: US-born nordic-heritage polar-explorer-promoter-writer-realtor (& Gingerichesque establishment-operative disguised as Mr-Judicious-Neutral) Bill Stephenson did change his name to Vilhjalmur Stefansson to sound more nordic-arctic.]
Ormandy shone for nearly a half-century at the Philadelphia's helm, and is one of the indelible memories which several generations of music-lovers will be ever grateful for.]

** Though Baltimoreans take for granted that Mencken & DR are unbelievers, many religious folk would be shocked (since music is seen as a “spiritual” experience) at the majority percentage of the great composers — including almost all writers of the most beloved masses & requiems — who were religiously unorthodox, heretical, deistic, or frankly atheistic. (As also most famous explorers and most of the US' founders, in private.) Though a few of the great composers were fervently pious (esp. Franck, d'Indy, Bruckner, & Elgar), the majority seem to have been as individualist in philosophy as in creativity. Among these: Beethoven (deist); Berlioz; Bizet (atheist); Brahms; Debussy (atheistic classical aesthete); Delius (atheist); Holst (eastern-mystic); Janácek (atheist, whose last words are said to have been to a Roman-churchly attendant-nurse [who was trying to rack-up a deathbed-conversion on her own celestial scorecard] — Janácek told her: “you obviously don't know who I am”); Mahler (who, when forced to convert to Christianity to keep his job as head of the Vienna Opera, confided to friends that the transformation was as deep as putting on a new suit); Meyerbeer (whose operas The Huguenots & The Jew were described [1907/1/30] by Saint-Saëns as virtual legal briefs against the Roman church); Mozart (Freemason); Nielsen (agnostic→Platonic deist); Prokofiev; Schubert (atheist); Scriabin (erotic mystic); Shostakovitch; Strauss; Tchaikovsky; Vaughan-Williams (“Christian agnostic”); Verdi; Wagner (self-deified).

*@* Shostakovitch's 5th Symphony was his response to Stalin's unsubtle pressure to get serious again (after DS had gotten diverted into too much trivia), putting the continuation of the composer's career in danger. The 5th Symphony issued from this dark time — dark for him, and for a nation that knew the capitalist West would attack it shortly for its nurturing the feared plague-infectious heresy of wealth-redistribution. (See DIO 16 [2009] ‡4 n.19 [p.43] on UK hopes that Hit&Muss would snuff Bolshevism.) The work probed so deeply into human emotion that many in the 1937 premiere's audience openly wept; and, upon the explosion of applause at its conclusion, conductor Mravinski's hand raised the score above him as one would a flag after a military triumph — signalling the redemption of the composer, and the advent of the work which soon became and has remained the most-performed of all modern symphonies. Given its impetus-origin, would it not be just — as well as amusingly hyper-enraging (both here & in Russia) — to henceforth call #5 the “Stalin Symphony”?

*** Along with “Silent Noon”, Songs of Travel is Ralph Vaughan Williams' earliest enduring music, based upon late R.L.Stevenson poetry — though both artists' creations occurred in their thirties. (RVW lived nearly twice as long as RLS.) Song #15 of the RLS set is “Bright Is the Ring of Words” an appropriately touching, slightly vain, and un-slightly sentimental consideration of the survival and ever-renewed vitality of emotions in music and poetry — long beyond the passing of the creator. Published in vol.16 (1900) p.216 of the Thistle edition (Scribner's 1898-1901) of the complete works of RLS, it soon after became RVW's choice as finale of his original 8-song selection (posthumously augmented to the present 9-song rendition), fortunately one of three he orchestrated — and the music is magical in the depth of its sharing of Stevenson's perception and feeling:


Bright is the ring of words
  When the right man rings them,
Fair the fall of songs
  When the singer sings them.
Still they are caroled and said —
  On wings they are carried —
After the singer is dead
  And the maker buried.

Low as the singer lies
  In the field of heather,
Songs of his fashion bring
  The swains together.
And when the west is red
  With the sunset embers,
The lover lingers and sings
  And the maid remembers.