Name that piece! The game

[Cato]

Google reveals that Joseph Marx wrote a piano concerto: he was a mystery composer earlier.

[listener]

not MARX, but getting warmer.  I thought this one might be very elementary.

[Amfortas]

You didn't respond to my Stenhammar guess, but he's not Austro-German

[listener]

not STENHAMMER
It's an  interesting sound, this clip is, maybe you can deduce something from the score bit, that's for piano and strings.

[Cato]

pre-war, and the composer is the pianist,

Do you mean the composer is playing the piano in the excerpt?   


Or that the composer was also a pianist?

[Amfortas]

If he means a composer playing his own music on a recording, that should narrow it down


Not Prokofiev?

[listener]

If he means a composer playing his own music on a recording, that should narrow it down


Not Prokofiev?

not Prokofiev, but on the right track.    He seems to have avoided writing for winds, but there is a delicious episode in this piece â la Shostakovich where the accompaniment is piccolo and flutes, basson and double bassoon.  Wrote in most other genres (than wind chamber) but not a lot. 

[Cato]

If he means a composer playing his own music on a recording, that should narrow it down

Given the German score (e.g. "Br." = Bratschen i.e. Violas), we would seem not to want a Russian compatriot of Prokofiev.  Plus the recording quality sounds very modern!

[Hattoff]

Jean Françaix? A composer I like a lot, but I don't recognise the piece if it is him.

[listener]

non, pas français ou Françaix  (neither Françaix or French).    The recording was made in 1957.

[DaveF]

Sorry, guys, but I do actually know this piece - is the etiquette to blurt it straight out or to drop hints?  It's Hungarian...

DF

[mc ukrneal]

Sorry, guys, but I do actually know this piece - is the etiquette to blurt it straight out or to drop hints?  It's Hungarian...

DF

Blurt away...

But if you are right, you are next to post a clip...

[DaveF]

Well, it'll be a techincal challenge, as well as a musical one to find something you cultivated crew don't know.  I guess if it was recorded in 1957, it's the composer himself at the Edinburgh Festival playing his Variations on a Nursery Song - Ernő Dohnányi.

[Brian]

Oh wow! Immediately found a recording and put it on and what a fun piece! The introduction is hilarious 

[Amfortas]

That was a good round. You really had me.
I have to admit Dohnányi is one of the few 20th C composers I never think about and never listen to.

[Cato]

Aha!  I have heard about this work on the radio, when something else by Dohnanyi was played, i.e. that it was probably his most famous opus.  And then they played his First Symphony.

Many thanks to "Listener" for the excerpt! 

[DaveF]

OK, so I need to set up an account at 4Shared, rip a minute or two of something fiendishly obscure from my CD collection, convert to MP3, upload, post link here... anything else?

DF

[Amfortas]

OK, so I need to set up an account at 4Shared, rip a minute or two of something fiendishly obscure from my CD collection, convert to MP3, upload, post link here... anything else?

DF

Not too fiendish we h pe.............

[DaveF]

Well, since Joseph Marx and Julius Reubke have featured recently, not much would qualify as fiendish!

What about this: http://www.4shared.com/audio/asEh4W-d/mystery.html?.  Hints of lots of different composers to my ears, so hope it provides fun.

DF

[Brian]

That's how it's done

Whatever it is, it sounds marvelous, and slightly folk-ish in perhaps a British Isles way. Sounds like a symphonic expansion of one of Arnold's short dances.