Despite all the metadata appearing correctly, this album will not appear under Rachmaninoff as Composer or Artist. This is true for my local copy or the Qobuz version.
This album has multiple composers in the credits, including Rachmaninoff. This album appears under every one of them except Rachmaninoff.
Thanks for pointing that out. I wondered about that before, but I believe Roon understands both spellings are the same person.
Here is the Qobuz version where the spelling matches. I added it to my library, but it still doesn’t show under Rachmaninoff, just like my local copy doesn’t show.
It’s also odd if I filter for “A Window In Time” in all the albums by Rachmaninoff, both local and Qobuz, including Qobuz albums not in my library, nothing comes up.
Had a similar problem with several classical composers who are long dead but appear both as a composer and a performer (Richard Strauss, Benjamin Britten and others). If I recall it correctly, removing ´Rachmaninov´ from all other roles than composer and primary artist, solved the issue. Reason being that roon files albums on the artist´s and composer´s page either under ´composed by´, ´main albums´ or ´appearances´, not several at the same time. So if one is both a composer and ´Soloist´, ´Piano´ in your case, the album does not appear as classical composers before the age of mass recordings seemingly do not have an ´appearances´ section.
Make sure you edit the credits correctly both for all tracks of the album containing any Rachmaninov credit other than ´composer´ and for the album itself.
Does the album in question show up in album overview when focus-filtering for ´rachmaninov´ as a composer or a performer?
Should not be a problem here, as the original spelling of Рахманинов is in the database, and all Cyrillic letters contained in this name, do offer a clear transliteration. There are just different conventions of transliterating, particularly for the Russian ´в´ which can be ´v´ in latin letters, or ´w´ or ´ff´.
Roon understands different transliterations well in my experience, maybe except some non-standard ways of transliterating sounds in Russian which do simply not have any equivalent in Latin alphabet, like ´җ´ or ´ Щ´.
PS: Found the ´Rachmaninov plays Rachmaninov´ album on my HD, but I cannot replicate what I did to make it show up on Rachmaninov´s composer page.
I can deny Sergey Vasilyevich the status of a classical composer by editing the profile, so the album appears under ´Albums in my library´ and ´Main albums´. That’s not a solution, though
As the album is correctly shown in the global library album overview, focus-filtered to the performer being Rachmaninov, I can kind of live with the result. Not ideal, though, if you are a fan of original performances by the composer.
Interestingly, some classical composers are treated as both composer and performer, being granted a role as ´Conductor´ for example and their own ´Main albums´ section in the discography:
So no problem with Benjamin Britten, Aaron Copland and Igor Stravinsky. Weirdest yet most prominent examples, whom I would expect to appear as a conductor or performer as well as as composer, are Richard Strauss, Sergey Rachmaninov, Sergey Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich.
It’s apparent Roon “understands” Rachmaninoff is a composer on the album in question, but for some unknown reason it refuses to display it on Rachmaninoff’s composer or artists page.
I may have to just accept this as one of Roon’s baffling quirks (among others ).
At least I now know I can use the composer filter on the Album page, at least for titles in my library. However, this makes me wonder what other performances by composers I may be missing since Roon also doesn’t see these albums in Qobuz.
The moment a person is primary artist or performer, the album in question would not show up under ´composed by´. Problem here is that Rachmaninov is not granted a ´main albums´ or ´appearances´ section, so the album is invisible on the composer´s page.
I’ve noticed this on other albums where the composer is incorrectly identified as the artist as well (ie Beethoven, Mozart, etc). In this case, it’s simple to just correct the artist/primary artist tag.
But as you point out, this is a problem when the composer is also the artist/primary artist.
I have that album and it doesn’t appear in the Rachmaninov section for me either. Also the four famous recordings of his piano concertos do not appear.
It seems to be a general problem for dead pianist composers who lived into the early recording era. For example, Qobuz has many piano roll albums of long dead pianist composers, including Ravel, none of which appear in artist or composer sections:
Also more contemporary examples of living pianist composers like Fazil Say are quite hit and miss. This album of Say compositions where Say does not have a piano performer credit does not appear:
Some famous examples of conductor composers like Stravinsky and Bernstein seem to behave as expected as there was quite some activity from roon on this topic several years back and those cases were treated then. But clearly there are still many cases slipping through the net and it is time it was revisited. Not only is it very difficult to navigate to these types of albums in roon once they are in your library, it is very difficult to find them in the first place and I often find it is much easier to favorite them in Qobuz and start that way around rather than the roon GUI.
Yes, it’s become apparent to me that I cannot use Roon to discover other albums not in my library where the composer is also the artist, unless I already know the exact title of an album.
Do you have any suggestions in how to navigate the Qobuz app to find such recordings? I tried using the search feature for Rachmaninoff, but it just shows me every album where Rachmaninoff is the composer as well (too many to search through!) but not the artist.
These days I use Google in AI mode to find the exact title of the album I am interested in. It’s often quicker and easier than allmusic.com. Then in Qobuz I make sure I have set the “release name” button. Most of the time that is enough. You can see there was actually a companion album of Rachmaninov playing other composers works:
If Qobuz returns a data set too large to browse, I just right click and do a browser search on the page (chrome). Seamless integration of AI is the way forward I think to significantly improve search, library management etc. but I have the impression that roon has other priorities.
Fully understand your concern, but as mentioned, these ´recordings´ have not been published as albums while the composer/performer was still alive. The ones I am aware of have been recorded on LP or CD decades after the piano rolls (Welté Mignon or others) have been made. Other cases before 1954 have been released on Shellack 10", never properly filed. To be fair, I would not expect a metadata base or software to represent this properly. If an album was published after the composer´s death, it is to be expected not to regard him as a performer (but rather assume this is a case of wrong assignment of a composer).
Yes, this poses an imperfection of a musicological database, but I would guess this is a limited problem, not a high percentage of albums is affected. Correct me if I am wrong here.
Was this a deliberate step taken by roon to grant these specific composers their own main albums/appearances section? Or was it s side effect of them existing as conductors or pianists in the underlying database already?
Except from Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, Ravel, D. Shostakovich, J. Sibelius and R. Strauss, whom of the famous composers having produced some albums of significance, is really affected? Hindemith, Vaughan Williams, Orff?
Fully understand your feelings, maybe I am more forgiving with roon. It is handling millions of different albums and creates rich metadata, more consistent and easy to browse than any musicological database. I don’t expect it to be perfect, particularly with classical albums, as I am aware of the general quality of metadata and what kind of mess it is in streaming apps. Even Apple Music Classical is not perfect although they tried something similar and they own the whole thing.
As we discuss this matter, I am opening Johann Sebastian Bach´s main page, Qobuz is offering no less than 14,226 albums crediting him as a composer. Under ´compositions´, the BWV is almost perfectly represented, with just a few dozen tracks being not properly assigned to the composition. That is what I call a fantastic browsing experience, thanks @ Roon team.
Unfortunately, I don’t see those search options on the iPad app that would allow me to narrow down the results. I guess the iPad app is limited and I would need to log into the Qobuz website? I’ll give the website a try. Hopefully, using the website on my iPad will work since I rarely use our desktop computer (not very convenient).
Perhaps I’m just not understanding, but it seems simple to me. If someone is recognized/credited as a Composer on an album in Roon, that album should show up when looking at that composer’s page in Roon, regardless if they are dead, alive, or any other credits they also have on the album.
I can understand Roon not displaying a composer’s album properly if the metadata is incorrect and is missing composer information, but the examples here do include the proper metadata, so Roon should be displaying these albums properly.
I suspect this is an oversight or bug in Roon. However, because it’s likely seen as very niche, I don’t expect it will be fixed.
I would have thought so as well but it is unpredictable. Examples seem to be treated on a case by case basis rather than in a general rules enforced way. I don’t think it will ever be fixed now either as there are similar posts going back a very long time. But I don’t think that’s because it is niche. Roon is a mature product now, so any change is difficult, not just this.
If you play a lot of contemporary Classical music it is not difficult to find examples but I don’t know what the pattern is. Very hit and miss. This one from Jennifer Higdon doesn’t list:
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