Piano transcriptions

[cloughie]

Rite of Spring is very effective (Barenboim/top & Argerich/bottom is a great romp)

I seem to remember a Decca issue of the Rite by Eden and Tamir.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I seem to remember a Decca issue of the Rite by Eden and Tamir.

... and there's a very good NAXOS CD with Peter Hill & Benjamin Frith, coupled with Stravinsky's Sonata and Concerto for two pianos. (Peter Hill wrote the very good Cambridge Music Handbook on The Rite of Spring, too.)

I heard the two-piano Rite played in a concert by Pascal and Ami Rogé; some octave transpositions needed in order to prevent hand tangling, but the harmonic sense comes into sharp relief in this "black & white" (but by no means "monochrome") transcription.

[Zucchini]

Maybe it's better to hear the orchestrated before the two piano version.

I'm sure that's true.
The Barenboim/Argerich live performance is on a single piano

https://youtu.be/l7GtXZTrKJc

[Jonathan]

I'd like to hear some of Alkan's transcriptions in concert sometimes. Those I have heard are very effective.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

There was a rather good transcription of Tchaikovsky’s Valse des Fleurs on this morning’s Breakfast. I don’t often listen, but I was waiting for today’s Park Run. Maybe I should’ve tweeted the programme to tell them.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The Barenboim/Argerich live performance is on a single piano

(so was the Rogés - and this, of course, affects the transcription: the octave transpositions to prevent "hand tangling" wouldn't be necessary in a two-piano version.)

[Pulcinella]

Are they transcriptions or reductions (perhaps originally for rehearsal purposes)?
Or is that a semantic difference we need not concern ourselves with?

Eric Walter White calls it a reduction for piano duet (published in 1913; the full score was published in 1921, he says) by the composer.
There is a similar reduction of Petrushka; in my youth my skills were such that I played secondo in a college music society performance of it!

[Belgrove]

Serendipitously the first half of the UK premiere of Brad Mehldau's piano concerto at the Barbican

https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2019/event/brad-mehldau-with-britten-sinfonia

features arrangements of Bach by Stravinsky, Charles Coleman, Webern and Berio, none of which I know. Looking forward to this concert.
Last year's recording After Bach is formed from selected Preludes and Fugues, followed by Mehldau's reflections upon them.