I wonder how many current examples of these will stand the test of time, and/or what purpose they serve. Elgar's 3rd Symphony seems to have dropped off the radar, and I don't suppose Mahler's 10th gets many live performances or airings these days. Do any of them increase our understanding or appreciation of the works concerned - do Vivaldl's 4 Seasons really need to be 'reimagined'? There are reconstructions of Finzi's Violin Concerto, which I haven't heard, and Arthur Sullivan's Cello Concerto, which I have on CD.
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I enjoy Berio's re-working of the Boccherini Musica notturna delle strade di Madrid
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quattr...a_di_Madrid%22
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Not to mention Elgar's Piano Concerto and E J Moeran's 2nd Symphony. The Finzi Violin Concerto is of a different order from these two, and from the Elgar 3rd and Mahler 10th, in that it is complete and was performed by Sybil Eaton and the British Women's Sym. Orch. cond. Malcolm Sargent in 1927, ie not a reconstruction as such, but a re-discovery - Finzi had been dissatisfied with the first movt. and taken out the slow middle movt. for performance separately, consigning the others to benign neglect....until the Tasmin Little recording.Originally posted by LMcD View Post
Correction: The first perf. of the Finzi VC was minus the 1st movt. The concerto with a new 1st movt. was performed complete in Feb 1928, by Eaton and the LSO cond. VW, in a concert that incl. the Sea Sym.Last edited by Roger Webb; 13-06-24, 10:50.Comment
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I think there are too many "variables" involved in this question to be able to case generalise one way or another.Comment
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Originally posted by vinteuil View Post
I prefer the various re-workings by Second Viennese School bods of Strauss waltzes, to the original orchestrations…
Arnold S was of course a dab hand at reducing or expanding earlier music (the Brahms G minor piano quartet arrangement being probably his most familiar) and pops up brilliantly on one of my favourite CDs:
In relation to the above examples, yes certainlyOriginally posted by LMcD View PostLast edited by Nick Armstrong; 13-06-24, 11:50."...the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices..."
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The tricky thing with Mahler 10 for me is that there are now so many of them… it risks distracting attention from the piece itself if one ends up listening for the things that are different from other versions. On the other hand I do think it’s very much worth having the piece in the world, even though Mahler would have done things differently and the finale in particular will always be a bit disappointing.Comment
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... if you liked that - you'll love this :Originally posted by Nick Armstrong View Post
I prefer the various re-workings by Second Viennese School bods of Strauss waltzes, to the original orchestrations…
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Yes, I’d noticed that box-set when finding the image for the Linos disc (which is included in the collection)Originally posted by vinteuil View Post
"...the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices..."
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As the opening post suggests, these finished works come in many different forms which deserve, I think, to be considered separately. For instance, to speak of both the Deryck Cooke Mahler 10 and the Anthony Payne Elgar 3 as 'completions' is to misinterpret both of them, as Cooke and Payne were careful to point out. I was irritated to hear the Payne work actually called this, and to hear people say 'I don't think it's as good as his other two'. Well, of course it isn't, I wanted to scream ,and more besides.
Leaving aside the many works which have been 'completed' by topping and tailing and editing and adding a few final bars where it's clear what the composer intended, we're left with various degrees of imaginings about what the composer 'might' have intended. I think the Cooke Mahler 10 is pretty well established as a convincing way of hearing what Mahler probably intended. The Payne Elgar 3 is frankly (as Payne admitted) a 'symphony on themes by Elgar'. I think both of these will live. But the more creativity the reconstructor has shown , the more doubtful I am. I'm thinking of Martin Yates' Moeran Second Symphony and Kriss Russman's George Butterworth Suite here. Then there are cases where the original is frankly 'used' to make a work by the arranger,as in the case of David Matthews' 'Norfolk March' and Anthony Collins' 'Threnody for a soldier killed in action'. If these are seen as good in their own right,irrespective of how much they resemble the work of the original composer, then they too can survive, if only in a single recording.
Popularity may well cause an 'arrangement' to outlive the original. I deplore the ignorant and misguided reinstrumentation of Arthur Wood's 'Barwick Green ' (the theme tune of The Archers') but I can imagine many people saying 'oh we like it, it's brilliant!' at which I make a polite excuse and leave the room.Comment
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Most of a certain age will have got to know Bruckner 9 through the 3 movement version. Completions using various versions have been championed by a range of conductors of renown, a substantial part of the finale having been scored by Bruckner. Yet having listened intently to Rattle’s fine recording with the BPO, the finale has failed to lodge in the musical memory, and changes the character of the symphony. Probably a case of familiarity interfering with acceptance. A listener being introduced to the work through experiencing the 4 movement completion would, no doubt, come away with a different opinion.
By contrast, the completion of Lulu is entirely satisfying, indeed essential from dramatic and musico-structural perspectives. I was struck by how similar the orchestral completions of Cerha and Kloke are, leading one to think that Berg’s sketches for the 3rd act were pretty detailed. Seeing the 2 act version is unthinkable, but despite this, the recorded version that best reveals the allure, danger and beauty of the work is the incomplete Dohnanyi/VPO recording.
So whether completions are a ‘good thing’, depends!Comment
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One place where completion happens all the time is in Art of Fugue, which is famously incomplete and not hard to complete. However I can say this: I heard the Quartetto di Cremona play it a few weeks ago in London, they didn't try to complete the thing, they just ended with the last note Bach wrote - and I thought it was just perfect to end like that.
Heinz Holliger "reimagined" some Machaut pieces for a recording by Hilliard - I love it! Really love it, the whole thing is wonderful beyond words.
Does anyone here enjoy Grieg's embellished versions of Mozart's solo piano music?Comment
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I believe Kloke made some slight cuts in the first scene of Act III, doubtless upsetting all sorts of numerological patterns relating to numbers of bars! I too love the arrangements of Johann Strauss made for the Society for Private Performance and find them poignant - the world that produced these composers but then largely rejected their music.Originally posted by Belgrove View Post
No one's mentioned yet a work with a completion that's proved enduring: Mozart's Requiem as worked on by Süssmayr - a whole thread in itself maybe.
Last edited by mopsus; 13-06-24, 16:21.Comment
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Originally posted by vinteuil View Post
... if you liked that - you'll love this :
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The Schoenberg chamber orchestration of Mahler's Abschied gives the lie to detractirs who claim that given a free hand he would have ruined Mahler 10 and changed it's character entirely. What Schoenberg was about in his arrangements was informed by his skills as an orchestrator; the re-compositions of Monn and Handel sought to demonstrate what those original composers might have done with their materials had they lived on a couple of centuries to experience the subsequent advances achieved in terms of structural integration and expressive range up to the point of his own abandonment of tonality and change in aesthetic direction, as can be heard in the few later tonal works of his own.Comment
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Perhaps I'm trying to discover why some such 'revisions' work very well in some cases and not in others.
The score to Berwald's 2nd Symphony was lost, and a reconstruction was subsequently worked over to produce an 'urtext'.
The Berio/Boccherini and Schoenberg/Strauss have long been favourites of mine, as has 'Officium' from Jan Garbarek and the Hilliard Ensemble.
Dare I mention Julian Llloyd Webber's Paganini Variations?Comment
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