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hey all,

i'm wanting to discover some unknown composers, preferably in the romantic period, but others are fine. I'm going to be creating scres of these unknown composers so that there are at least some good pdf's of them, hopefully i can increase the exposure to these composers by doing this.

so, who would you suggest, the only unknown composer i know of is bortkiewicz any others would be fantastic!

thanks for your help

Zac

I'm not sure I understand your intent (creating scores?), but there are numerous lesser-known Romantic era composers on Wikipedia's list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Romantic-era_composers

The Henselt Library of Nineteenth Century Piano Music is a fascinating trove of relatively obscure scores from the period:

http://www.henseltlibrary.org/

Steven

If they are unknown, how would we know about them?

what i mean is that most unknown composers scores are terrible quality, so i thought that if i wrote them up on sibelius i could increase the exposure to these composers.

thanks for that steven, is there anyone specific you would suggest?

not specifically unknown, but i thought that it would be the best way to explain what i ment, i can change it if there is too much comfusion


Zac

I'll put in a vote for Theodore Kirchner. He's never played today, but he was highly regarded by Schumann and Brahms.

I'm also a fan of Hugo Reinhold. There are only two works of his that are readily available, a set of miniatures that often show up in teaching anthologies, and an impromptu in C# minor.

Try some Henselt -- I'm rather fond of his concerto, although sadly, many aren't.

Try playing some of his Etudes -- he has a unique style, and they're pretty fun. I was reading through the first etude from Op 5 just the other day. Great stuff, although there are some nasty reaches in a few of his pieces[I'm looking at one now that goes A-E-G#-D].

Then of course there's Alkan. Not entirely obscure, but not well-known either. Recommended works to start with are his Etudes op. 39 [Especially the Concerto and the Symphony, both for solo piano] and his op.33 sonata[in particular the 2nd movement].

Felix Blumenfeld, Sergei Liapunov, Anatol Liadov, Pancho Vladigerov, Henryk Pachulski, Georgy Catoire, Vladimir Rebikov, Eugene D'Albert, Benjamin Godard, Ignaz Friedman, Carl Preyer, Alexander Krein.

I second Blumenfeld! Not all of his works are masterpieces, but there are some real gems in his oeuvre.

Anton Eberl (sometimes published as Mozart).

Carl Filtsch

Dohnanyi has amaziingg Concert Etudes

Charles V. Alkan

Ernst Toch

Felix Blumenfield

Carl Tausig

Anton Rubenstein

Adolf Henselt

Emil von Sauer

.... the list goes on and on for years!

XAVER SCHARWENKA!!!

But besides him I would recommend Alkan's etudes and esquisses, Chaminade's etudes and valses, Dobrzynski's nocturnes, Ginastera's Danzas Argentinas, Moscheles' etudes, Clara Schumann's pièces fugitives, and pretty much all Thalberg.

I'd recommend the Moses Fantasy to start. It's a good introduction to Thalberg's style. It even contains some of his so-called "3-hand-effect."

I think the Ginastera is still under copyright. And in a legible edition, to boot. If the point of the OP is to improve on the legibility of some old editions, some of the suggestions in this thread so far miss the mark, because there are already editions that are fine.

He said he wants to increase the exposure of these composers. The OP mentioned Bortkiewicz whose music is certainly in print.

But his way of increasing their exposure is by transcribing and editing their music. This is only possible if the music is out of copyright, and only useful if the editions that exist are of poor quality/legibility. So I think he only mentioned Bortkiewicz as an example of a lesser-known composer, not as one he was thinking of transcribing. Perhaps he should be a bit clearer.

Are you sure you aren't just hoping to post these scores on Sibelius to try and profit?

This piece by Carl Tausig is worth a listen.

cirtain, i dispise the sibeliusmusic website just for that reason