Topic: Julius Röntgen

[SymphonicAddict]

A nice addition to what has been recorded from the vast oeuvre of this composer. Once again, Röntgen knows how to write music making it sound fresh and engaging despite being very traditional. The Romanze from the 3rd PC is gorgeous, expressive and tender. The heart of the piece IMO. The 6th PC sounds like a Rhapsody or a Fantasy for piano and orchestra rather than a proper PC. The 7th PC has fine moments, with some apparent Baroque-sounding passages (?). Granted, it's not groundbreaking music, but it is utterly pleasant. It's a lovely disc altogether.

[springrite]

I first became curious about Rontgen when I read that, when asked about his favorite living composers, Rontgen was the first composer Brahms mentioned. Of course, with Wagner being so popular and with so many followers, Brahms was surely going to mention composers with relatively conservative idioms.

[Christo]

Just received my copy of this volumnuous & heavy (two kilos) tome today: 600 pages by music historian Jurjen Vis (who's untimely death earlier this year meant a genuine loss for Dutch musical history; Vis wrote a couple of fine monographs, the most impressive I read being the one about the young composer Leo Smit (1900-1943), murdered in Sobibor & leaving almost no archive behind, which meant Vis was forced to reconstruct the few fragments of his life we now know almost from scratch; hence its title 'Silhouettes'.

'Gaudeamus' being BTW the name Röntgen gave to the "Norwegian" villa he had himself built at Bilthoven, a place his close friend Edvard Grieg never saw, since it was buit after (also untimely) Grieg's death (I visited it one month ago and attended a concert there). All of this, of course, for those who manage to read Dutch (but one could choose to learn it for the sake of Röntgen alone  ).

[SonicMan46]

Well, now reviewing and listening to my modest collection of Julius Röntgen's works - last time mentioned (2nd quote at bottom) was nearly 2 years ago in this thread when I had 10 CDs - now I am up to 15 discs (1 MP3) (first quote) - I've been starting w/ mainly the chamber works (7 of the 8 shown below) - attached are numerous reviews of nearly all of these recordings for those interested and just wondering what to purchase first (or stream - many Röntgen albums are available on Spotify).

I'm enjoying all of these performances; the first 2 CDs shown are great 'starters' w/ excellent reviews - love the Lendvai Trio gals but would probably recommended the middle two volumes.  The Storioni Trio is also quite good and there is a 2nd volume.  Julius was a long-lived and prolific composer w/ well over 600 works to his credit - a detailed list can be found HERE - will post my remaining recordings in my next entry - not sure that I want to add much more (maybe the 2nd Storioni Trio recording)?  BUT, much is missing, e.g. String Quartets (he wrote about 20 according to the link) and his solo piano works (on Amazon, 4 volumes are listed w/ Mark Anderson).  Dave

Cello Concertos, No. 1-3 - Muruzabai (Et’Cetera)
Chamber Music - Royal Conservatory Canada (RCA)
Piano Concertos, No. 2 & 4 - Porcelijn (CPO)
Piano Trios, No. 6, 9, 10 - Storioni Trio (MP3)
String Trios, No. 1-4 - Lendvai String Trio (Champs Hill)
String Trios, No. 5-8 - Lendvai String Trio (Champs Hill)
String Trios, No. 9-12 - Lendvai String Trio (Champs Hill)
String Trios, No. 13-16 - Lendvai String Trio (Champs Hill)
Symphony  No. 3 + Suite - Porcelijn (CPO)
Symphony Nos. 6, 5, & 19 - Porcelijn (CPO)
Symphony Nos. 8 & 15 - Porcelijn (CPO)
Symphony No. 10 et al - Porcelijn (CPO)
Symphony No. 18 et al - Porcelijn (CPO)
Violin Concertos - Ferschtman/Porcelijn (CPO)
Wind Serenades - Linos Ensemble (CPO)

     

     

BOY!  Julius Röntgen (1855-1932) - looking through this short thread, I have just one post back in 2009 and must have just started to collect his wide variety of recordings - one of my interests, as a retired radiologist, was his relationship to Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, discoverer of X-rays - indeed they were distant cousins (see first pice below - Source) - I now have 10 CDs of this composer (listed in the quote) - one has an interesting cover w/ a chest X-ray.  Now, I've not listened to these in a while but have pulled out the stack and will in the upcoming days.  Thanks for the reminder - Dave

[mc ukrneal]

Well, now reviewing and listening to my modest collection of Julius Röntgen's works - last time mentioned (2nd quote at bottom) was nearly 2 years ago in this thread when I had 10 CDs - now I am up to 15 discs (1 MP3) (first quote) - I've been starting w/ mainly the chamber works (7 of the 8 shown below) - attached are numerous reviews of nearly all of these recordings for those interested and just wondering what to purchase first (or stream - many Röntgen albums are available on Spotify).

I'm enjoying all of these performances; the first 2 CDs shown are great 'starters' w/ excellent reviews - love the Lendvai Trio gals but would probably recommended the middle two volumes.  The Storioni Trio is also quite good and there is a 2nd volume.  Julius was a long-lived and prolific composer w/ well over 600 works to his credit - a detailed list can be found HERE - will post my remaining recordings in my next entry - not sure that I want to add much more (maybe the 2nd Storioni Trio recording)?  BUT, much is missing, e.g. String Quartets (he wrote about 20 according to the link) and his solo piano works (on Amazon, 4 volumes are listed w/ Mark Anderson).  Dave

     

     

Great Stuff. I've been interested in those piano volumes. Maybe next time presto has a sale on those downloads, I'll consider it...

[SonicMan46]

Great Stuff. I've been interested in those piano volumes. Maybe next time presto has a sale on those downloads, I'll consider it...

Hi Neal - looking forward to your comments - might put together a Spotify playlist of the solo piano music (all 4 Anderson volumes are available) and possibly one of string quartets just to sample these two genres; but don't feel like adding much more.  Dave

[SonicMan46]

My Röntgen Collection - Part 2 - shown below are my remaining 7 CDs, mostly Symphonies, plus Violin Concertos & Wind Serenades - the first image shows a list of Julius' symphonic output, 21 works (Source) of which 8 are on the pics shown - mostly excellent reviews in the attachment, except for a couple by Dubins, so I've included several rebuttal comments.  Again not sure that I want to obtain every Rontgen symphony but looking forward to suggestions by others.   Dave

     

     

[Christo]

Posted here from the Pieces that have blown you away recently-thread:

Julius Röntgen.

I have just discovered this fine composer.  There are not that many entries about him in GMG.

[André]

Cross-posted from the WAYL2 thread:



Disc one: 3 Suites for solo violin.

Donald Tovey, the Scottish composer, pianist, musicologist, editor etc was composer Julius Röntgen’s best friend. It’s on Tovey’s advice that Röntgen embarked on writing solo violin works ‘in the style of Bach’ in the period 1921-1930. Tovey would provide themes and Röntgen wrote preludes, bourrées, sarabandes, fugues, arranging them in suites (3). To complete the corpus he also wrote 3 sonatas, again in the Bach style.

Anyone with a liking for solo violin works will dip into this set as in a candy jar. Röntgen’s suites are more tuneful than comparable works by Reger, while less overtly original and fantastical than Ysaÿes’s contemporaneous works for solo violin. I didn’t know of violinist Oliver Kipp, but on the evidence of his work here he is an excellent technician and a fine musician. He studied under Thomas Brandis (longtime concertmaster of the BP) and currently leads the violin section of the NDR Radiophilharmonie.

Perfectly natural sound, with good presence and hall ambience. Produced in 2015, this extremely fine set is warmly recommended. The other two discs are devoted to solo cello works and duets for violin and cello.