Hans Gal ? - w/c 5th May

[mercia]

week commencing 5th May composer of the week - Hans Gal - 1890 - 1987

so what ought I to know about this (neglected ?) composer ?

some nice photos on his society website

http://www.hansgal.com/photos-eng.html

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i much enjoy this sequence of recordings of Gal's symphonies; there are is also the violin concerto

[Roehre]

i much enjoy this sequence of recordings of Gal's symphonies; there are is also the violin concerto

All 4 Gal symphonies have now been released on CD in this way, coupled with Schumann.

will be for me an interesting CotW. Look forward to that one.

[amateur51]

Hans Gal as COTW? - that's more like it

[richardfinegold]

week commencing 5th May composer of the week - Hans Gal - 1890 - 1987

so what ought I to know about this (neglected ?) composer ?

some nice photos on his society website
http://www.hansgal.com/photos-eng.html

Try the cello Concerto.

[mercia]

I shall .... on Thursday by the looks of it

[Serial_Apologist]

Hans Gal appears to have been almost completely overlooked by everyone, so this is the first I've heard of him. V much looking forward to hearing his music, and anticipating something post-Mahlerian in idiom.

[Pabmusic]

My only long-term acquaintance with Gal was a biography of Brahms that I found tedious. It will be good to hear his music.

[Roehre]

My ... long-term acquaintance with Gal was a biography of Brahms that I found tedious. It will be good to hear his music.

Applies to me too, but I revised this opinion re the Brahms biography as soon as I found a German copy (don't know what language is the original, is the German the translated version or the original one?)

I like his 1933 violin sonata and the Serenade for strings from four years later.

[Thropplenoggin]

I've enjoyed everything I've caught so far (only brief snippets between o'the hoof)...will be returning to listen in full later. One wonders why he remains so absent from the schedules.

[Nick Armstrong]

I've enjoyed everything I've caught so far (only brief snippets between o'the hoof)...will be returning to listen in full later. One wonders why he remains so absent from the schedules.

Was about to write something remarkably similar to that paragraph

[Serial_Apologist]

Much of the commentary is concerned with Gals's musical conservatism - so how is it I hear, not a continuation of Schubert, Mendelssohn and Schumann, but of Brahms and especially Reger, with that feeling one gets in his music, and the later Zemlinsky's for that matter, that the contrapuntal momentum driving the music above all else allows the harmonic field at various points to seem capable of slipping all tonal anchorage?

[MLF]

The introduction to Hans Gal's music has been an absolute revelation - and precisely what Radio 3 ought to be doing. I must agree with Serial Apologist - on the basis of what I have heard so far, I cannot regard his music as being characterised by conservatism as compared with say, York Bowen.

May I also recommend his solo piano work, which I have been bingeing on this morning.

[Serial_Apologist]

The introduction to Hans Gal's music has been an absolute revelation - and precisely what Radio 3 ought to be doing. I must agree with Serial Apologist - on the basis of what I have heard so far, I cannot regard his music as being characterised by conservatism as compared with say, York Bowen.

May I also recommend his solo piano work, which I have been bingeing on this morning.

Completely agree, MLF - especially as regards York Bowen who like Bantock, to my mind, gets far too many plaudits on this forum.

Listening right now to the parts of the Violin Concerto currently being broadcast, I'm thinking of my late, pianistically gifted mother's huge respect and understanding for Beethoven and Brahms, wondering if she could have failed to admire the music of Gal, whose unsettling shadows announce it as incontestibly of the 20th century as the later works of Zemlinsky and Faure, and if he could have offered her the bridge to Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School so many still find it hard to traverse.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Every time I look at this thread I thonk it's going to be about the new Manchester United manager.

Seriously, I'm quite unfamiliar with this composer, but I've been drawn in by the little I've heard to date.