# Completions, Good Hoaxes, Mistaken Identity & What You Think Of Them?



## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

So, short of actually being a composer in the classical era, I think one of the coolest jobs is writing completions of corrupted or lost works. Robert Levin's ability to compose idiomatic completions for Mozart always impresses me.

I post this just because I kind of enjoy the art behind composing in a given composer's style (which is a real skill and not without controversy)---and enjoy collecting recordings like these. I'm always looking for new "completions", including hoaxes, and would enjoy any recommendations. Many that I'm already aware of:

Mozart Completions:

Concerto for Piano and Violin
Requiem
Mass in c
La Clamenza di Tito

I think there's some rarely heard chamber music by Mozart that's been completed, but I'm blanking out on what they are.

Related to that:
https://www.wbur.org/news/2012/02/16/harvard-mozart

There are also:
Schubert Symphonies
Operas
Lazarus

Beethoven's 10th
An early Piano Concerto for which there's only the piano part.

Bach
Art of the Fugue
And one of my favorite "unfinished" Fugues:






& the Markus Passion

And one of my all time favorite completions is of the six lost Haydn piano sonatas (which, at the time, were passed off as genuine discoveries).

https://www.theguardian.com/music/tomserviceblog/2015/aug/12/the-best-classical-music-hoaxes

I have these on CD and I listen to them and enjoy them (though there may be too much of CPE in them).

https://www.amazon.com/Paul-Badura-Skoda-Plays-Piano-Sonatas/dp/B000001SW2

And just found them on Youtube:






And then there's always Kreisler's hoaxes, like his Händelian Concerto for Viola, but he wasn't quite as convincing.

But, I'm all ears. What else is out there? What good completions and what genuinely enjoyable pieces have been passed off as by a great composer --- like Mozart's 6th and 7th violin concertos?

And for any of you with Spotify:


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

The fourth movement of Bruckner's 9th symphony was "completed" by William Carragan from extensive sketches. The finale is interesting to hear, but isn't remotely on a level with the first three movements, which are among Bruckner's greatest. It's certainly far from representing the composer's wishes, and I'm for leaving the work as he left it.

Elgar's 3rd symphony was "completed" by Anthony Payne, who essentially composed a symphony based on 130 pages of sketches. The work is properly referred to as being by Elgar/Payne. It may or may not resemble closely what Elgar himself would have done, but there's plenty of genuine Elgar in it, and as a piece of music it's quite successful.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> The fourth movement of Bruckner's 9th symphony was "completed" by William Carragan from extensive sketches. The finale is interesting to hear, but isn't remotely on a level with the first three movements, which are among Bruckner's greatest. It's certainly far from representing the composer's wishes, and I'm for leaving the work as he left it.


Before being quite so dismissive of it, I suggest that you listen to the Samale etc., completion and the more recent revised Schaller. The latter seems to me to be the best. Also don't forget that Bruckner had finished much of the last movement including orchestration (see Harnoncourt's recording where he goes into detail.)


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Rachmaninov's 5th Piano Concerto, Tchaikovsky's 7th Symphony and complete 3rd Piano Concerto have also been recorded, they are very free adaptations, but I wouldn't call them essential listening in any way. 

Reconstructions of Scriabin's vast Mysterium is more interesting, IMO. Same applies to Avramov's Soviet-futurist Symphony of Factory Sirens, and works by Russolo.

Oh yes, and the one above all - Mahler's completed 10th (various versions).


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Becca said:


> Before being quite so dismissive of it, I suggest that you listen to the Samale etc., completion and the more recent revised Schaller. The latter seems to me to be the best. Also don't forget that Bruckner had finished much of the last movement including orchestration (see Harnoncourt's recording where he goes into detail.)


I sometimes find Bruckner's final movements problematic - the finale of the 8th, for example, starts out with a bang but seems a bit uncertain and anticlimactic after the power of the first three - so it doesn't surprise me that someone else's attempt at composing a Bruckner finale should fall short. Of course Bruckner himself was insecure about his work. But I wasn't aware of those other attempts at the 9th. I'll check them out.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

For hoaxes, I think Fritz Kreisler's violin pieces after Vivaldi, Pugnani, Couperin, Padre Martini, Dittersdorf, Francoeur, Stamitz, et al. still take the cake. Not because they sound scrupulously authentic, as the ones I've heard have more than a little of Kreisler's own late romantic style to them, but because he performed them successfully for 30 years before the truth came out. I doubt he would have gotten away with that in the internet era.

As far as completions go, the biggest letdown for me is Alfano's completion of Turandot that Toscanini legendarily refused to conduct. Berio's completion, though obviously not entirely in the style of Puccini, to me is vastly more original and successful.


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## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

There's a completion of Schoenberg's Moses und Aron by Zoltan Kocsis out there, which has been performed, Budapest, January 2010, but not recorded. Has anyone heard it? It obviously hasn't caught on.....

Berg's Lulu is of course, by necessity, a completion. I can't tell where Berg ends and Cerha starts!

I too have issues with the Finale of the Bruckner Ninth, and with some of his finales in general. Glad - nay, relieved - to see I'm not the only one on that latter point....

The best hoax ever ever has to be those Hitler Diaries, back in the early 1980's. Not very musical admittedly, but very funny in hindsight.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Hoaxwise, my local classical station still announces this cello concerto as a work by Johann Christian Bach.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

KenOC said:


> Hoaxwise, my local classical station still announces this cello concerto as a work by Johann Christian Bach.


It's a great concerto, though nothing at all like JC Bach. I forgot about this concerto! I used to have a recording of this on LP when I was a little kid in the 70's. I still remember the LPs cover, blue with gold lettering.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

vtpoet said:


> It's a great concerto, though nothing at all like JC Bach. I forgot about this concerto! I used to have a recording of this on LP when I was a little kid in the 70's. I still remember the LPs cover, blue with gold lettering.


The concerto is adapted from a viola concerto that Henri Casadesus claimed he found among old papers and attributed to JC Bach. Of course Henri himself was the author, and a fine job he did too! There's a very nice performance of the original viola version here.


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## Guest (Jun 23, 2019)

Schubert: As is well known, Schubert is famous for not completing several works. I have only taken an interest in obtaining completions for various symphonies: D 616, ,D 708a, D 729, D 759, D 936a. Most of my completions are by Brian Newbould. I listen to them very occasionally, but with one exception they're mainly of academic interest only as far as I'm concerned.

The one I listen to occasionally with some interest is Symphony No 10, D 936a, which Schubert worked on in his last few weeks in October 1828. The piano sketches only surfaced in 1970. They were orchestrated by Brian Newbould and various recordings exist. The second movement has a really nice melody, so typical of Schubert.

Tchaikovsky: Symphony No 7 is a work he abandoned and re-used later to create his Piano Concerto No 3. There was an attempt by someone named Semyon Bogatryryev to complete the symphony based on the original notes. There are several recording of this work. It sounds like Tchaikovsky but lacks overall sparkle and sufficiently good lyrical sections that normally characterise Tchaikovsky's work.

Other: For the record, I have discovered a few other works not mentioned in the OP that were evidently completed by someone other than the original composer. They are:

Brttten - Movements for a Clarinet Concerto, compl, by Colin Mathews
Butterworth - Fantasia for Orchestra, compl. Yates
Clementi - Symphony No 4, compl. Spada


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

fluteman said:


> As far as completions go, the biggest letdown for me is Alfano's completion of Turandot that Toscanini legendarily refused to conduct. Berio's completion, though obviously not entirely in the style of Puccini, to me is vastly more original and successful.


I think Alfano is underestimated. I favor his original, full version of the final scene, to which Toscanini took a meat axe, leaving us the truncated ending we're used to hearing. The full version gives us some time to get over the horrifying death of Liu, which Puccini lingers over too long. How are we supposed to enjoy watching Calaf and Turandot getting it on while Liu's body is still warm? (Dramatically, Puccini boxed himself in at this point: what should happen immediately after the nicest person in the opera has just killed herself to save the man she loves from the most vicious person in the opera? A love scene? Really? My suggestion: Turandot should see what Liu is about to do, have an attack of conscience, and rip the dagger out of her hand. That would make Calaf's pursuit of her, and her yielding to him, more credible and acceptable.)

The original Alfano finale doesn't remedy the dramatic problem Puccini faced, but at least it gives Miss Turandot time for an attitude adjustment, and although Alfano's original contributions don't sound exactly like Puccini, they come pretty close and don't clash. Berio's ending is interesting and worth hearing, but it leaves me feeling that I've left Puccini's world behind, and the quiet ending, while it spares us the (viscerally exciting!) vulgarity of the Alfano, causes the colorful, extroverted score to withdraw into itself in a manner untrue to the opera's character and uncharacteristic of the composer.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> I think Alfano is underestimated. I favor his original, full version of the final scene, to which Toscanini took a meat axe, leaving us the truncated ending we're used to hearing. The full version gives us some time to get over the horrifying death of Liu, which Puccini lingers over too long. How are we supposed to enjoy watching Calaf and Turandot getting it on while Liu's body is still warm? (Dramatically, Puccini boxed himself in at this point: what should happen immediately after the nicest person in the opera has just killed herself to save the man she loves from the most vicious person in the opera? A love scene? Really? My suggestion: Turandot should see what Liu is about to do, have an attack of conscience, and rip the dagger out of her hand. That would make Calaf's pursuit of her, and her yielding to him, more credible and acceptable.)
> 
> The original Alfano finale doesn't remedy the dramatic problem Puccini faced, but at least it gives Miss Turandot time for an attitude adjustment, and although Alfano's original contributions don't sound exactly like Puccini, they come pretty close and don't clash. Berio's ending is interesting and worth hearing, but it leaves me feeling that I've left Puccini's world behind, and the quiet ending, while it spares us the (viscerally exciting!) vulgarity of the Alfano, causes the colorful, extroverted score to withdraw into itself in a manner untrue to the opera's character and uncharacteristic of the composer.


Well, we agree on one key point. The problem with Turandot is more the way Puccini left it than how Alfano or anyone else has finished it. But while Alfano succeeds pretty well in not doing too much violence to the Puccini style, his ending is unconvincing and unsatisfying to me, and not just to me, from what I've read. (I'm not familiar with the "original version" -- I guess I need to check that out.) 
I'd rather see Berio's admittedly somewhat strange but entirely original approach. And it looks like YOU have some original ideas too. So we'll all have to check out your version when you get an opera company to perform it.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

fluteman said:


> Well, we agree on one key point. The problem with Turandot is more the way Puccini left it than how Alfano or anyone else has finished it. But while Alfano succeeds pretty well in not doing too much violence to the Puccini style, his ending is unconvincing and unsatisfying to me, and not just to me, from what I've read. (I'm not familiar with the "original version" -- I guess I need to check that out.)
> I'd rather see Berio's admittedly somewhat strange but entirely original approach. And it looks like YOU have some original ideas too. So we'll all have to check out your version when you get an opera company to perform it.


I can't get La Scala or the Met to return my calls. Maybe I should approach the Youngstown Ladies Opera Society.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Hoaxes? Has anybody mentioned Abalone? Oh, I mean Albinoni... 

And Ms. Hatto, of course...


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## Minor Sixthist (Apr 21, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> I sometimes find Bruckner's final movements problematic - the finale of the 8th, for example, starts out with a bang but seems a bit uncertain and anticlimactic after the power of the first three - so it doesn't surprise me that someone else's attempt at composing a Bruckner finale should fall short. Of course Bruckner himself was insecure about his work. But I wasn't aware of those other attempts at the 9th. I'll check them out.


Are the final four or five notes of Bruckner 8 not completely _hilarious?_ Am I the only person who burst out laughing when I first heard that stupid ending? The immediate reaction I had was chuckling, shaking my head, and promptly feeling kind of disgusted. I've never laughed at a symphony, let alone a Bruckner. What the hell is with that ending? It's like he procrastinated and had to wrap it up quickly... really quickly, like he left the last bar to a newbie composition student, who was like, aight guys, let's just do a _unison_ 5-3-2-1 to finish this up, a _brass unison_ ... I don't know, it's comical to me. And seriously, this is the movement that begins as one of the most legendary low brass excerpts ever! It's one of the universal excerpts you just learn because you do, and you'll play that thing as soon as you have a full section and get a break during rehearsal. It is in these moments that we love Bruckner just a little less then Bruckner loved dead people.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

KenOC said:


> Hoaxes? Has anybody mentioned Abalone? Oh, I mean Albinoni...
> 
> And Ms. Hatto, of course...


The Hatto hoax was hilarious, and got amazingly far in this high tech, internet era. Of course, it was entirely appropriate, and a large part of the fun, that fancy internet and computer technology is what ultimately did that hoax in, rather than some 'professional' critic being professional enough to realize that nobody is capable of successfully recording the entire standard solo piano repertoire, (on 113+ CDs), in something like 13 years, much less an aging, frail woman suffering from terminal cancer who never had much of a career even in her younger years.

I congratulate the late Ms. Hatto and her record producing husband for pulling that off. But for me, Fritz Kreisler wins the hoax contest, even though it likely wouldn't have worked in the internet era. He composed real music, and rather good music at that, which has to count for more than making fake CDs using the performances of other pianists.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Johannes Brahms was mistaken for Richard Wagner eating at a kosher restaurant and was promptly thrown out. After realizing its mistake the restaurant apologized and offered Brahms a voucher for a free beer at the Red Hedgehog Tavern. The real Richard Wagner was later found wandering the streets and asking for a handout to buy a bag of chestnuts. He was turned down by the kosher proprietor until he apologized and became an equal opportunity conductor.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Minor Sixthist said:


> Are the final four or five notes of Bruckner 8 not completely _hilarious?_ Am I the only person who burst out laughing when I first heard that stupid ending? The immediate reaction I had was chuckling, shaking my head, and promptly feeling kind of disgusted. I've never laughed at a symphony, let alone a Bruckner. What the hell is with that ending? It's like he procrastinated and had to wrap it up quickly... really quickly, like he left the last bar to a newbie composition student, who was like, aight guys, let's just do a _unison_ 5-3-2-1 to finish this up, a _brass unison_ ... I don't know, it's comical to me.


I hate to be the one to tell you this, but yes, you may be the only person who has ever laughed at the end of Bruckner's eighth. I suppose I _might_ find it amusing if my prostate were not acting up after an hour and a half of a symphony that's nearly as long as the first act of _Parsifal._

I guess the effect of the ending depends partly on the conductor. But for me no conductor quite saves the Eighth's finale as a whole. The "problem of the finale" crops up throughout the history of the symphony. The Classical masters solved it by not pretending that after three other movements anyone wanted yet another serious musical dissertation. Beethoven changed all that by looking at the finale as a culmination of what came before, and forever after composers, having explored matters of import in their opening sonata-form movements and their profound adagios, were saddled with the choice of eiher surpassing the previous movements or reverting back to the "now let's relax and have fun" approach of Papa Haydn. This was especially tough for Bruckner, since having fun was not his forte, and since his adagios are sooooooo profound you feel almost sacrilegious doing anything afterward. Many people feel this and don't care about "completions" of his Ninth (I've tried two of these so far and find them both highly unsatisfactory).

By the way, I react to the two-note figure that ends Mahler's First much as you do to the ending of Bruckner's Eighth. The first time I heard it I said to myself, "What was that?", or something equivalent.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> I hate to be the one to tell you this, but yes, you may be the only person who has ever laughed at the end of Bruckner's eighth.


Bruckner's eighth? I ain't laughed so hard since Uncle Lem's beard got caught in the mangle! :lol:


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

'Japanese Beethoven' Mamoru Samuragochi exposed as a fraud.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Art Rock said:


> 'Japanese Beethoven' Mamoru Samuragochi exposed as a fraud.


Forgot that one. Not only pretended to be deaf but paid somebody else to write his music. The only way he could have been more fraudulent was if he was really a Latvian pretending to be Japanese!


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

> I guess the effect of the ending depends partly on the conductor.


Indeed, I've always found for example the first Haitink/CtGebouw DDD recording very impressive, with sufficient weight in the ongoings of the Finale of Bruckner's 8th.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Bruckner came close to solving the finale problem when he suggested using his _Te Deum_ as a last movement for the 9th - but he apparently didn't have the nerve to carry through with it!


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## David Phillips (Jun 26, 2017)

Rosemary Brown, a middle-aged English housewife, claimed to receive music from the other side. Lizst, Chopin, and Debussy all communicated tons of music to her and an LP of 'their' compositions was released on a major label. Unfortunately none of the composers seemed to be aware of new developments in music since their deaths, and all were happy to write crude pastiche works in the styles that made them famous.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

David Phillips said:


> Rosemary Brown, a middle-aged English housewife, claimed to receive music from the other side. Lizst, Chopin, and Debussy...


I remember reading about her. Never knew there was an LP released of her channeling. I wonder why she never channeled Salieri? Seems like that would have been a safer mark. As far as I'm aware, forging another's art, music or literature didn't really get going until the very end of the 18th century. That's when you had, for example, the Ireland Shakespeare forgeries. The 19th century picked up the pace. I suppose the whole idea relies on the premise that something is worth forging. And it probably wasn't until the end of the 18th century that Shakespeare (and other artists) began to take on canonical status. Nobody though JS Bach was worth a forgery. And he wouldn't be easy to forge. Interestingly, I can't think of any equivalent 19th century effort to actually produce a piece of music ascribed to a "great" composer?


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## geralmar (Feb 15, 2013)

Briefly in the early 20th century it was thought a tenth Beethoven symphony had been unearthed. The "Jena" symphony, however, was an honest misattribution. The actual composer was Friedrich Witt.


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## geralmar (Feb 15, 2013)

When finally corrected, the misattribution of a recording of the first Chopin piano concerto to Dinu Lippati created much embarrassment for EMI-- and the critics who had heaped glowing praise on it.

https://thepianofiles.blogspot.com/2010/01/dinu-lipatti-chopin-concerto-scandal.html


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

geralmar said:


> When finally corrected, the misattribution of a recording of the first Chopin piano concerto to Dinu Lippati created much embarrassment for EMI-- and the critics who had heaped glowing praise on it.
> 
> https://thepianofiles.blogspot.com/2010/01/dinu-lipatti-chopin-concerto-scandal.html


I very recent example of missatribution occurred when the painist Anthony Spiri released a collection of Keyboard works by WF Bach:

https://www.amazon.com/W-F-Bach-Fan...y+spiri+bach&qid=1561416542&s=gateway&sr=8-11

But oops. Turns out all three of the sonatas were by J.W. Hässler. Someone must have pointed it out to him because Spiri and the label hastily released two more CDs:

One of Hässler's Keyboard works including the missattributed works:

https://www.amazon.com/Johann-Wilhe...ny+spiri+bach&qid=1561416542&s=gateway&sr=8-7

And one of WF Bach's Keyboard works, including those correctly attributed:

https://www.amazon.com/W-F-Bach-Pia...ny+spiri+bach&qid=1561416542&s=gateway&sr=8-1


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

I'm all in for hoaxes. That's why I eagerly await the Sibelius Eighth! Heck! I want to hear it, even if it _is _a hoax.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

SONNET CLV said:


> I'm all in for hoaxes. That's why I eagerly await the Sibelius Eighth! Heck! I want to hear it, even if it _is _a hoax.


I frankly would love it if some humility-challenged forger attempted Mozart --- not early but late Mozart. A piano concerto perhaps?

I once forged some Shakespeare when transcribing a play. It was convincing enough that some scholars took it seriously. When asked, I immediately fessed up, but I was never forgiven and was banned from that corner of the UUNet. That was back in the Internet's infancy. Some people have no sense of humor. Me and Fritz Kreisler. Just a couple years ago a saw a transcript of the play online and there was my forgery! Alive and well! No one ever removed the passages.

So, this is some of my interest in the subject matter. There's blood on my hands.

I once started composing a String Quartet in the style of Mozart, just to see how far I could get...


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Well, there's always Piltdown Man.


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## rice (Mar 23, 2017)

joen_cph said:


> Rachmaninov's 5th Piano Concerto


I hate they called it the fifth. I don't care if they put it in quotation marks or not, it's a blatant fraud.
It was not the composer's intention at all! If Rachmaninoff wanted his symphony to be a piano concerto in the first place he would have done so, easily. 
It was just the idea of a random arrogant dude, probably thought of it in the pub drunk. Call it a transcription, fine I wouldn't care but how dare they called it the fifth!


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

geralmar said:


> When finally corrected, the misattribution of a recording of the first Chopin piano concerto to Dinu Lippati created much embarrassment for EMI-- and the critics who had heaped glowing praise on it.
> 
> https://thepianofiles.blogspot.com/2010/01/dinu-lipatti-chopin-concerto-scandal.html


I own the bogus 1971 Seraphim LP. What a shame the better quality tape of the genuine performance was lost. I couldn't even listen to the surviving excerpt on the linked web page as it is blocked in my country on copyright grounds.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

We had to orchestrate a piano piece for assessment each year at the Alma Mater and I found out that 2 of my peers simply handed in each others from the year before, copying each others score in their own hand.

Best ever muso hoax I heard about was in a recording session in London involving John Georgiadis. He started messing around with the overhead mics and was told off by the engineer over the room intercom for all to hear. That didn't stop him and after more very public chastising from the engineer, he'd had enough. The engineer came storming into the room and a blazing row ensued in front of the whole orchestra. Suddenly the engineer grabbed Georgiadis' violin (a Strad) and threw it on the floor , smashing it. After the gasps (especially from the string section) had subsided, the two protagonists stood there in silence....until...Geordiadis started giggling. It turns out the smashed 'Strad' was a cheap Chinese violin and the whole stunt was just that. I may have some details wrong, but that is in essence what happened I believe.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

mikeh375 said:


> It turns out the smashed 'Strad' was a cheap Chinese violin and the whole stunt was just that. I may have some details wrong, but that is in essence what happened I believe.


Of course, for the conspiracy-minded among us, the thought immediately occurs that Geordiadis started giggling because they both realized they accidentally smashed the Strad, and now had to pretend it was all a joke. Geordiadis has been playing the cheap Chinese fiddle ever since.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

LOL vtpoet, but not the case thankfully.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 10 in E flat major is a hypothetical work, assembled by Barry Cooper from Beethoven's fragmentary sketches. This title is controversial since it cannot be proved that all the sketches assembled were meant for the same piece. There is consensus, however, that Beethoven did intend another symphony.




 In late 1814 and early 1815, Beethoven sketched the first movement of a piano concerto in D major, what would, if completed, have been the Sixth Concerto. He made about seventy pages of sketches for the first movement and started writing out a full score; this runs almost uninterrupted from the beginning of the movement to the middle of the solo exposition, although the scoring becomes patchy as the work proceeds and there are signs of indecision or dissatisfaction on the composer's part. This torso of a movement represents one of the most substantial of Beethoven's unrealized conceptions.
Why did Beethoven abandon it? A number of circumstantial reasons might be adduced: perhaps he planned it for the cancelled benefit concert of 1815, or perhaps he intended to play the solo part himself and abandoned the project when his deafness made this impractical.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

hammeredklavier said:


> Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 10 in E flat major is a hypothetical work, assembled by Barry Cooper from Beethoven's fragmentary sketches. This title is controversial since it cannot be proved that all the sketches assembled were meant for the same piece. There is consensus, however, that Beethoven did intend another symphony.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Personally I find Mr. Cooper's realisation of Beethoven's 10th Symphony (lol) overwrought, rambling and a bit crap. Considering Beethoven revised, reworked and rewrote his stuff all the time, for me it doesnt really represent Beethoven's work. Just a personal opinion but I know a few others who feel the same. I'd rather the sketches had been left well alone.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Regarding Beethoven's unfinished "6th Piano Concerto," I heard a recording of the pretty substantial part of the 1st movement that Beethoven put in full score. It was uninteresting and seemed to be merely going through the motions. That's likely the reason Beethoven abandoned it.

He wrote it (or tried to write it) during a period when his inspiration seems to have been at a low ebb. He finally broke out of that with the Hammerklavier.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

rice said:


> I hate they called it the fifth. I don't care if they put it in quotation marks or not, it's a blatant fraud.
> It was not the composer's intention at all! If Rachmaninoff wanted his symphony to be a piano concerto in the first place he would have done so, easily.
> It was just the idea of a random arrogant dude, probably thought of it in the pub drunk. Call it a transcription, fine I wouldn't care but how dare they called it the fifth!


Agree, but more than this, it's (predictably) inferior to Rachmaninoff's four authentic concerto masterpieces. Alexander Warenberg obviously knows those works thoroughly and reproduces Rach's style of piano writing almost perfectly, but he can't fully disguise the fact that there's a difference between orchestral and piano writing, which Rach understood. Not surprisingly the piano sometimes sounds superfluous here, and despite its lavish use in passages that don't belong to it, it's the orchestra that remains the dominant partner in a way that it isn't when Rach himself writes for the combination.

That said, there are parts of the concerto that sound authentic and do work quite well, and listeners unfamiliar with the 2nd symphony, or able to set aside Rach's flawless way of balancing the sonorities of piano and orchestra and pacing their participation in his own concertos, will probably enjoy this transcription. I can do so intermittently. But what this "forgery" brings home to me, above all, is what a truly great composer Rachmaninoff is.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

hammeredklavier said:


> Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 10 in E flat major is a hypothetical work, assembled by Barry Cooper from Beethoven's fragmentary sketches. This title is controversial since it cannot be proved that all the sketches assembled were meant for the same piece. There is consensus, however, that Beethoven did intend another symphony.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


How anyone can be foolish or arrogant enough to think he can work successfully with Beethoven's sketches escapes me completely. Unlike Mozart, Beethoven did a great percentage of his thinking on paper, and I have no doubt that a realized 10th symphony would have been very unlike what Cooper gives us. We can only imagine what a mess would have resulted had Beethoven died while composing his 5th symphony and someone had tried to put together his sketches for that. But maybe Leonard Bernstein can help us out here:


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

Woodduck said:


> How anyone can be foolish or arrogant enough to think he can work successfully with Beethoven's sketches escapes me completely. Unlike Mozart, Beethoven did a great percentage of his thinking on paper, and I have no doubt that a realized 10th symphony would have been very unlike what Cooper gives us. We can only imagine what a mess would have resulted had Beethoven died while composing his 5th symphony and someone had tried to put together his sketches for that. But maybe Leonard Bernstein can help us out here:


Listening to that Bernstein recording made the whole thread worth it. If I'm remembering, I think Norrington also did something like this quite recently.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

One of the longest running "hoaxes" concerns the beautiful "Concerti Armonici" first published anonymously in 1740. These were long attributed to Pergolesi, who, thanks to his great popularity and early death, had a lot of music scurrilously attributed to him in the hopes it would sell better.

In a manuscript found in his castle circa 1980, authorship was conceded by one Count Unico Wilhelm van Wassenauer, an amateur violinist who in a forward to the manuscript claimed to have written them between 1725 and 1740, and indicated he permitted their publication on the condition his name not be used. IMHO, this might mean they were written by some poor and now-forgotten composer commissioned by Wassanauer, who then informally took credit for composing them to show off to his aristocratic friends. But perhaps after a few years they became so popular and well-known among the aristocratic set he was urged to have them published, which he then had done anonymously, leaving the manuscript and his confession of authorship to be found by future generations. He would have no motive to show off to the general public, who might wonder why he produced no other music, much less anything else of that caliber, or to risk being exposed by the actual composer.

If I am right, that is one clever and longstanding double hoax.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

fluteman said:


> One of the longest running "hoaxes" concerns the beautiful "Concerti Armonici" first published anonymously in 1740. These were long attributed to Pergolesi, who, thanks to his great popularity and early death, had a lot of music scurrilously attributed to him in the hopes it would sell better.


Yes, I was just describing him here.

As I wrote there, I do think Wassanaer was a composer possessing some genius. I can't fathom what was keeping Wassanaer so busy that he couldn't have composed a few more sets of concerti. Sigh...


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

vtpoet said:


> Yes, I was just describing him here.
> 
> As I wrote there, I do think Wassanaer was a composer possessing some genius. I can't fathom what was keeping Wassanaer so busy that he couldn't have composed a few more sets of concerti. Sigh...


You don't find it suspicious that a nobleman, diplomat and amateur violinist should suddenly publish six highly polished and sophisticated high baroque concertos that are clearly the work of an experienced composer (and by the way insist they not be publicly attributed to him)? Where is his other music? (Wikipedia mentions three recorder sonatas allegedly discovered in 1990, but I know nothing about them.) Whom did he study with? How did he develop his skills?

The story is suspicious especially since in those days the wealthy often commissioned music to pass off as their own. Count Franz von Walsegg commissioned Mozart's Requiem to pass off as his own, as he had with other works. Yes, Count Wassenaer would be a genius if he wrote those concertos, but I remain skeptical, not least because of his excessive modesty about taking credit for them to begin with.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

fluteman said:


> You don't find it suspicious that a nobleman, diplomat and amateur violinist should suddenly publish six highly polished and sophisticated high baroque concertos that are clearly the work of an experienced composer (and by the way insist they not be publicly attributed to him)? Where is his other music? (Wikipedia mentions three recorder sonatas allegedly discovered in 1990, but I know nothing about them.) Whom did he study with? How did he develop his skills?
> 
> The story is suspicious especially since in those days the wealthy often commissioned music to pass off as their own. Count Franz von Walsegg commissioned Mozart's Requiem to pass off as his own, as he had with other works. Yes, Count Wassenaer would be a genius if he wrote those concertos, but I remain skeptical, not least because of his excessive modesty about taking credit for them to begin with.


And yet they are rather distinctive, aren't they? What other composer do they sound like? Here's the Wassenaer article in Wiki:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unico_Wilhelm_van_Wassenaer


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> And yet they are rather distinctive, aren't they? What other composer do they sound like? Here's the Wassenaer article in Wiki:
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unico_Wilhelm_van_Wassenaer


Yes, they are excellent examples of the Italian high baroque style, though to me they do sound less like Pergolesi than other works that have been (probably in many cases also wrongly) attributed to him. Ironically, the Pergolesi attribution was always known to be little more than a reasonable guess. I never gave any thought to who the real composer might be, if not the Count. That would require some research by a serious expert in the music of that period who likes my theory.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

fluteman said:


> Yes, they are excellent examples of the Italian high baroque style, though to me they do sound less like Pergolesi than other works that have been (probably in many cases also wrongly) attributed to him. Ironically, the Pergolesi attribution was always known to be little more than a reasonable guess. I never gave any thought to who the real composer might be, if not the Count. That would require some research by a serious expert in the music of that period who likes my theory.


I suppose it's possible to go all Earl of Oxford with Wassanaer, but there are contemporaneous accounts linking him to the music and researchers of expertise have agreed that he wrote them. Musical training (and to a high degree) was hardly an anomaly at the time, there were dukes and princes before him, who composed accomplished music, and Kings and princes after him, even princesses and the like. Wassanaer, in my opinion, just happened to posses some genius for music. It's doubtful that these concerti were the first pieces he wrote. I suspect a fair amount of music by Wassanaer was either lost or destroyed (possibly by him).


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

vtpoet said:


> I suspect a fair amount of music by Wassanaer was either lost or destroyed (possibly by him).


Well, Count Wassenaer went to the trouble of saving the manuscripts for these six concerti, which he says he wrote over a 15-year period, in his library, where they were found in 1980, even though he called them "wretched". So I'm not sure why he would have destroyed his other music. Perhaps more will be found some day. If so, I'll be sure to give it a listen.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

vtpoet said:


> I suppose it's possible to go all Earl of Oxford with Wassanaer, but there are contemporaneous accounts linking him to the music and researchers of expertise have agreed that he wrote them. Musical training (and to a high degree) was hardly an anomaly at the time, there were dukes and princes before him, who composed accomplished music, and Kings and princes after him, even princesses and the like. Wassanaer, in my opinion, just happened to posses some genius for music. It's doubtful that these concerti were the first pieces he wrote. I suspect a fair amount of music by Wassanaer was either lost or destroyed (possibly by him).


Also, I now see that someone has written an entire 191-page book purporting to demonstrate that Count Wassenaer wrote this music. I guess if I'm going to express skepticism about that, it's incumbent on me to read the book. I'm not sure that's worth the time and effort. I wasn't even willing to do that for the Shakespeare ghost-writer theorists.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

Hey, after all this talk about reconstructions (and the like) I completely forgot about Sardanapalo:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/life...2db42c-6949-11e9-a698-2a8f808c9cfb_story.html

Has anyone listened to the reconstruction?


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

I don't pretend many of you are especially interested in this, but having raised my doubts as to the authorship of the Concerti Armonici, originally attributed to Pergolesi, by Count Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer, I decided to follow through and have read the treatise by Albert Dunning, "Count Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer: A Master Unmasked or The Pergolesi-Riccotti Puzzle Solved", that is the basis for attributing the works to van Wassanaer.

This treatise consists of 27 pages of text and historical photos, together with footnotes and an extensive appendix of musical scores, including the complete manuscript of the concerti found by Dunning at Twickel castle, the family residence. 

The manuscript is not in van Wassenaer's hand, though other musical manuscripts found at the Castle, all copies of works by other composers, are. What is in his hand is a preface on the front of the manuscript in which he claims authorship of the concerti and explains how he finally relented to repeated requests that he permit them to be published on the condition it be done anonymously. There are also a few comments or annotations in the margins of the manuscript in his hand in which he critiques parts of the work, which he says are a little too short or too long, for example, and a more lengthy, and incorrect, explanation of the origins of a fugue subject in one of the concerti.

To me, all of that may add up to the conclusion that the works are possibly by van Wassenaer, but not to a definitive conclusion that they were composed by him "without question", as Dunning claims. Also, although he may have been an avid amateur musician, as were many in his social circle, and knew professional musicians personally, Dunning seems to concede there is no hard evidence that he ever had any serious musical training, much less training in composition.

Long ago, one of my graduate school professors taught me that just because something is published, even in a fancy hard-cover book with lots of illustrations and footnotes, doesn't make it true. What is known is that van Wassenaer took credit for writing the concerti within his circle of aristocratic music-loving friends, and in a written statement he left in his library for his family and future generations to discover, but he was unwilling to do so publicly in his own time.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

fluteman said:


> Long ago, one of my graduate school professors taught me that just because something is published, even in a fancy hard-cover book with lots of illustrations and footnotes, doesn't make it true.


Bravo for saying this. Scholars can be wrong. What they usually excel at is in gathering data, doing work in manuscript discovery, finding lost documents, being aware of what other scholars might be saying in their field - BUT not always in drawing _conclusions_ based on what they have discovered, and sometimes they can also be swayed by somebody else's personality or deeply subjective influences in drawing their conclusions. I read one dubious scholar who concluded that the Italian composer Andrea Luchesi wrote many of Mozart's most famous scores anonymously, and he was being serious. Not everything in print is beyond reproach and it sometimes needs to be sincerely questioned. When provided with reliable and sufficient historical details, most listeners can draw their own conclusions though sometimes it can be helpful to get a professional opinion too. But it's an opinion, not always fact.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Larkenfield said:


> Bravo for saying this. Scholars can be wrong. What they usually excel at is in gathering data, doing work in manuscript discovery, finding lost documents, being aware of what other scholars might be saying in their field - BUT not always in drawing _conclusions_ based on what they have discovered, and sometimes they can also be swayed by somebody else's personality or deeply subjective influences in drawing their conclusions. I read one dubious scholar who concluded that the Italian composer Andrea Luchesi wrote many of Mozart's most famous scores anonymously, and he was being serious. Not everything in print is beyond reproach and it sometimes needs to be sincerely questioned. When provided with reliable and sufficient historical details, most listeners can draw their own conclusions though sometimes it can be helpful to get a professional opinion too. But it's an opinion, not always fact.


Excellent point, and very well put. Here, Dunning (1936-2005) was a respected Dutch musicologist, and his intelligence and knowledge of baroque music are both evident in his writing. But it's also evident that he wrote with an agenda -- to establish van Wassenaer as the composer of these works permanently and without further question or debate. You can see his academic objectivity slipping away from certain subtle details of his presentation, though he works hard to maintain it. Edit: There are more suspicious circumstances than I mentioned in my post above. Dunning doesn't hide them, but nor does he address them.

It would seem even harder to claim much of Mozart's music was written by anyone else with any semblance of logic or objectivity, as there is a lot of contemporary evidence of Mozart's career as a musician that by this point has been minutely and meticulously documented. But it shows how scholarly researchers can become too enthusiastic and emotionally invested in their subjects.


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## techniquest (Aug 3, 2012)

Does anyone know anything about a Shostakovich 16th symphony? I remember reading somewhere a long time ago that something had been found (sketches, notes...?) and I wondered if anyone knew anything about this. Sorry this is so vague.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mykola_Ovsianiko-Kulikovsky

Mikhail Goldstein was probably one of the greatest hoaxers of the 20th century. He fooled a lot of people temporarily with the Ovsianiko-Kulikovsky Symphony no. 21. Even Mravinsky recorded it!






Goldstein's motives were less about drawing attention to himself, but rather making a social statement as a Jewish composer. Antisemites were saying that Jews shouldn't write music using the folk songs of other cultures, and also could never live up to the greats. He wanted to prove them wrong, and he very nearly succeeded.  Read the wiki article for the whole story.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

techniquest said:


> Does anyone know anything about a Shostakovich 16th symphony? I remember reading somewhere a long time ago that something had been found (sketches, notes...?) and I wondered if anyone knew anything about this. Sorry this is so vague.


It's true that some people say there are more comprehensive fragments of the work.

From what I remember, the only alleged brief ~~~recording is more or less a hoax, based on other music.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mykola_Ovsianiko-Kulikovsky
> 
> Mikhail Goldstein was probably one of the greatest hoaxers of the 20th century. He fooled a lot of people temporarily with the Ovsianiko-Kulikovsky Symphony no. 21. Even Mravinsky recorded it!
> 
> ...


I think this post wins the thread. It's one thing to play a hoax on the general public without endangering ones own career or personal safety, as many have done, it's another entirely to rub the noses of the Soviet regime in their own nationalist propaganda at the height of the cold war. I'll listen to the entire symphony when I have the chance. How ironic that this piece is still considered important in Ukraine.


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mykola_Ovsianiko-Kulikovsky
> 
> Mikhail Goldstein was probably one of the greatest hoaxers of the 20th century. He fooled a lot of people temporarily with the Ovsianiko-Kulikovsky Symphony no. 21. Even Mravinsky recorded it!
> 
> ...


That hoax remains iffy, however. Many Ukrainians still view this work as authentic, and upon listening to it, I tend to side with them. Given that the Ukraine did not develop far musically until later (unlike Germany and France, but like the Scandinavian and Baltic countries), Ukrainian music, say, by 1890s, can still sound anachronistic as compared to advanced musical language of a Scriabin and the Impressionists. This symphony in question sounds as though Glinka or Dargomyzhsky, or even Serov could have written it. It shows that the composer had knowledge of Beethoven and yet had enough wit to infuse folk-music with admirable ingenuity.

It is true that the Ukraine was virulent anti-Semite.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

The concept of Ukraine has had different national and geographical definitions through the years. For instance, Prokofiev and Stravinsky were born in present-day Ukraine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ukrainian_composers

and in the early decades of the 20th century, cities like Lviv (for quite some time in Poland), Odessa, Kharkiv and Kyiv likewise had a very flourishing classical music life.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

joen_cph said:


> The concept of Ukraine has had different national and geographical definitions through the years. For instance, Prokofiev and Stravinsky were born in present-day Ukraine
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ukrainian_composers
> 
> and in the early decades of the 20th century, cities like Lviv (for quite some time in Poland), Odessa, Kharkiv and Kyiv likewise had a very flourishing classical music life.


Indeed. In fact, Odessa was home to the great violin teacher Pyotr Stolyarsky, whose students included Nathan Milstein, David Oistrakh, Joseph Roisman (in fact, Milstein was a childhood friend and neighbor of Roisman, and it was Roisman's mother who suggested to Milstein's mother that violin lessons might be a good influence on the mischievous 7-year old Nathan), and Mikhail Goldstein and his brother Boris. Boris became a major soloist, though his career was hampered by problems with the Soviet authorities.

I was not familiar with Boris's brother Mikhail Goldstein before this thread, but a quick internet search confirms that in addition to being a violinist, he was a composer who like Fritz Kreisler liked to pretend a number of his works were written by various 18th and 19th-century composers, including Glazunov, Reicha, Tartini and Balakirev. He is also responsible for reconstructing Borodin's B minor cello sonata from an apparently incomplete surviving manuscript.

So, with all due respect to Orfeo or any Ukranians who think he was not behind Ovsianiko-Kulikovsky's Symphony no. 21 (what a funny choice for a hoax -- apparently Ovsianiko-Kulikovsky wasn't even a composer at all -- where are his first 20 symphonies?), the odds seem pretty good that he was.


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