Sounds great to my ears Jos. I like your midi-performance better than I like the composition. 

That is sounding great.  I like that piece and never heard anything of this composer.  I thought the strings and violins especially sounded almost perfect,  very realistic and natural.   But the cello sounded too bright and also has too much release time.  It sounds like each note is taking too long to decay and then getting in the way of others especially on fast passages.  Also the cello sounds different from the other strings in basic EQ even though it obviously should be center stage - did you change it from the other settings?  But those are just mixing aspects I noticed and it is a great performance and a wonderful piece.  

Thank you, William for listening and commenting.

Indeed, I'm rather pleased with the orchestra and the way it's playing, but the cello deserves more liveliness and daring approach. That is partly to be explained by a lack of experience with solo strings in VSL, partly because I'm not a cello player. 
I've checked your advice or suggestion, but honestly I can't see your point. The short samples don't have any release in itself, and the release added is barely 15-21 (for these samples: stac, spic, detS, rstac, respic, rspicF and pizz). I have listened many more times to these passages and honestly I do not hear a prolongued releases there. Could it be a result of the reverb (Synchron Stages 2.1)?

As to your remeark on the EQ: I've put the solo cello back a tiny bit in the space; thus it will lose some brightness.

Thanks for yoyr help. A new version will be posted in the original link.

Jos

Maybe it is the Synchron I am not used to on the cello.  Also I don't have the best setup for internet listening - it is a laptop separate from my studio so I should listen on my actual monitors to see if it is the same.  Anyway it is a very fine performance and I don't mean to attach too much significance to the EQ etc.

A new version, including all the positive remarks and suggestions, has been posted today. Same link on top.

Jos

@Paul McGraw said:

Sounds great to my ears Jos. I like your midi-performance better than I like the composition. 

Thanks Paul. Such a pity that you're not so fond of the composition. Joseph Fiala (friend and contemporary of Mozart) was quite famous  and a fine, experimenting composer. The rather free form of this first part (Allegro Moderato) proves that he was somehow ahead of his time. Mozart copied quite some ideas of Fiala... He was an excellent musician and played several instruments: the oboe, cello and viola da gamba. He was court composer in Salzburg from 1778 till 1785 and worked furthermore in many European cities like Prague, Munich, Saint Petersburgh, Vienna... He regularly attended the house concerts at the Mozarts in Salzburg. His musical strength were absolutely his concertos.

Cheers,

Jos

That sounds great.  I didn't hear any of that long release effect on the cello.  Somehow I wanted the cello still darker though now it is just a matter of taste.  The positioning and image seem about perfect.  The articulations such as the changes between fast legato, detache and staccato are controlled very naturally. This could become a VSL demo it uses the cello so well.  Is that cadenza already scored?   Hearing this piece again makes me like it even more, and it's very interesting what you said about the composer and Mozart. 

Hi William,

Thank you so much.

The cadenza wasn't scored so far, but I wrote it down from an audio example and turned it into my version and interpretation. It's a compilation of the main themes and figures from that movement in a free style.

Jos

Hi Jos,

Congratulations on the piece once again.  Your willingness to experiment and bring out the best qualities of the instruments is to be commended.  We're all students on a journey, improving our craft, and I see those sharing music on this forum as giving us a gift...a very personal one, so even if a piece of music doesn't resonate with someone, it should still be seen as a valuable and heartfelt contribution.

Reading your words on Fiala being a contemporary of Mozart, reminded me of an experiment conducted many years ago by CBC Radio (our national public broadcaster).  They suggested a correlation between an audience's willingness to accept a piece of music that they'd never heard as "great" or "poor" simply due to the name recognition of the composer.  They essentially said audiences suffer from the "placebo effect" which might explain why it is so difficult for a composer to gain recognition in their lifetime.  

They took a large focus group comprised of a cross section of "regular people" and broke the group up in to two listening groups.  They played a piece by a contemporary of Mozart (can't recall who, but it wasn't Fiala) and told one group that it was Mozart, and the other group the actual name of the composer, largely unknown.  The listeners were asked to fill out a survey with many probing questions about their enjoyment of the music.  They did this test with multiple groups and the correlation was that consistently, the group that thought they were listening to Mozart was almost unanimous in their praise of the work, while the other group was almost always much more negative toward the music.  

This also reminds me of the time I read that Joshua Bell (I think it was Joshua!) was performing at the Lincoln Center one evening, and during the day played in the subway to passers-by, largely unnoticed and uninterested in his music.  These kinds of scenarios illustrate how much external forces influence perception of music, rather than simply the music itself.  It is this understanding of human behaviour that allows for instance, reality television producers to successfully cultivate an audience, while classical musicians have struggled for ever to be relevant and meaningful to the mainstream...because said classical artists are always focussing on the music, the technical, the artistic, and not connecting with those that are not able to see their art in the same way.  

Actually, to that end, I am reminded of yet one more interesting tidbit.  I was listening to a chamber music seminar through Chamber Music America, and the speaker was talking about how orchestras can stay viable in this day and age.  Through his discussions with orchestra musicians, he uncovered a regular belief that the musicians felt they could improve their subscriber base by improving the quality of their performance.  They argued that the elusive 2% missing from their execution would magically win over hard to please people, and improve their attendance!  Can you believe how naive such a belief was?  He spent a long time trying to prove how flawed that thinking was, but some of the musicians remained convinced that the quality of the orchestral performance was the only real factor determing the success of their concerts.

Sorry for the great diversion, but after listening to your rendition of the Fiala, it really got me thinking about all these things and I wanted to share and see what you all think.

Dave

That's amazing that the players would think they were not doing well enough and if they did better would get everyone's attention.  Utterly delusional. And sounds very familiar.  😢

Hi Dave, William

Some years ago (2001) I was very lucky that I had a commissioned work played (once) live with an international orchestra consisting of 48 musicians. They were all members of small orchestras accompanying folk dance groups delegated to my town for the biannual international folkdance festival. (It's on my website, but in a very poor rendition, long time before VSL). So by nature this orchestra was not a trained ensemble because they had never played together before. But the ambience was so particular due to the special circumstances. Among these musician there were some very interesting players (2 Argentinian bandoneon players and a Korean percussion ensemble). I had to adapt very quickly the score in order to let these people participate as well. They performed rather well (with only one 2 hours reheasal), but of course it was not perfect. At that occasion we had an audience of over 400 people! The middle part of the piece was a percussion solo on which a group of flag wavers performed a lively and colourful flag choreography. The musicians didn't expect anything else than playing together with that unique language 'music' they all understood in that very specific ambience. That was quite an experience although not performed in the best of circumstances and a solist miscounted his measures to start... A fellow violinist noticed it and stood up to play the solo prima vista. Isn't that nice?

In March next year, my town organises a concert with exclusively work of mine. I know that they can't/won't play perfectly, since it will be with an amateur symphonic orchestra, but I'm very pleased with the attention my work gets. That is a real appreciation and I don't mind it not being performed to the best of the abilities and possibilities. In 2023 some of these pieces will be played by the national orchestra at the occasion of the 900 years existing of my town. So you won't hear me complain, although all this is very local and none of my works have drawn any attention by the cultural authorities of Belgium. I wrote a special composition for the celebrations of the end of World War I (1918). Even my province managed to ignore it completely, although they knew about its existing, had the score, a recording, and they did organised a number of concerts for the occasion. I'm well aware that this is not great music, but it was written with the possible audience in mind: accessible to a broad audience with references to the historical events and the present commemorations.

So attending concerts...? Let's first organise them or the cultural departments should and not only for the exquisite happy few pretending they understand present day evolutions in music. Real music lovers are open minded and appreciate every decent composition, no matter who plays and who composed it. Maybe then concert halls will attrackt more than 15 people filling the middle row. Music to be enjoyed, that makes one happy, not to frighten tem off.

Jos

That is great your town is doing that.  That really means something.   However on the province ignoring you - that is the usual.  If you are local, you are scum.  That is how people think.  In fact, it has a name -  "provincialism." 

I was told by a "music director" of the Reno Philharmonic in Nevada, and this is a quote:   "We are not interested in the works of local composers."  In other words, if I wrote the exact same thing but was from Vienna, they would love it. 

That is the kind of attitude I have seen ever since.  People usually don't care (?) about composers now - they already have quite enough music.  

Hi William,

As we say in Dutch: "Geen sant in eigen land" or translated freely: no saint in your own land. 

Jos

Hi Jos

Great job, wonderful and expressive rendition of a surprisingly fresh composition (I didn't know the composer)

Maybe a little more vibrato on the cello in few places and a bit shorter appoggiaturas here and there would add realism, but it is a matter of personal taste ;-)

The solo cadenza towards the end is impressive and shows your high level og musicianship and mastery of your expressive tools

Thanks for sharing

Best

Stavros

Hi Stavros,

Thanks for listening and commenting. Fiala is one of the many 'forgotten' composers, contemporaries of Mozart. Many Czech composers stayed in the master's shadow for obvious reasons, but that way their names and works remained in that shadow. Most of them have published excellent compositions, but again, the miraculous Mozart (and Haydn) drew all the attention to his music...
Glad I could bring at least one of them into the spotlights again.

Jos