Unusual 20^th century music in unusual combination:

ARC-3.0

Gabriel Saab: Symphony No. 1 e-minor op. 1 World Premiere, Krakow, March 18th , 1997 Radio Symphony Orchestra Krakow cond. Jacob Kowalski Carl Schuricht conducts  historical recordings: Frederick Delius:  Sea-Drift Carlos Alexander, Baritone Chorus and Symphony Orchestra of the Bavarian Radio Munich, Herkulessaal, March, 8th, 1963 Rudi Stephan: Musik für Orchester (1912) Municipal Orchestra Berlin, 1942

 This CD actually is out of print. If you are interested, you may obtain  private copies from Werner Unger

Gabriel Saab (1923 - 2003), discovered music by way of his paternal friend Carl Schuricht. But he only started to compose relatively late, after completing a career as an international diplomat in the service of the United Nations. His first symphony is indebted to his late Romantic idols and synthesizes their style with the moving tones of his Egyptian homeland. The publication of his first symphony is a monument to Gabriel Saab as a friend and mentor, without whose committed support archiphon's considerable Schuricht edition never could have been realized.

Carl Schuricht is well known to friends of classical music as a performer of classical and romantic symphonies (Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner). But even his Mahler performances were a genuine surprise for musical experts (The live recording of Das Lied von der Erde from the year 1939 earned a place in the quarterly list of the German Record Critics' Prize and won the Toblach Gustav-Mahler Prize in 1997). And few people realize that Schuricht also worked to popularize contemporary music. This may be due to the fact that he devoted most of his energies to lesser-known composers of his own generation. He particularly admired Frederick Delius, but unfortunately, Sea-Drift (a piece he first got to know at the Essen Composer's Festival of 1906) was the only one of that composer's works which he recorded.
One particular rarity is Schuricht's recording of orchestral music by Rudi Stephan (1887-1915), one of the most promising talents among the generation of young composers, but who suffered a tragic and senseless death as a soldier in 1915. Those few works of his that survive, display an expressive musical language which stands so to speak on the precipice of tonality. Herbert Rosendorfer wrote: "If Rudi Stephan had been able to continue his work, the musical history of the twentieth century would have evolved differently. Perhaps that head, which was shattered by a bullet on 29 September 1915, contained the pathway to unimaginable realms of music, which only a sensual and musically gifted man like Rudi Stephan could have trodden."