Arrangements for string orchestra - thanks but no!

[rauschwerk]

On instance in which it does work is Arensky's Variations on a theme of Tchaikovsky (his Legend). It comes from a larger work for violin, viola and two cellos which I once heard played by Rostropovich and friends. But I much prefer the string orchestra version, recorded by Barbirolli as a coupling for the Tchaikovsky Serenade. Who plays it now, I wonder?

[Richard Barrett]

(Richard will be much more articulate than I am about this i'm sure)

No, I think you put it with perfect clarity if I may say so.

I find it a bit weird that so many people are generalising here about not liking string-orchestra arrangements of chamber music. Some are more successful than others, as MrGG says. I like the Shostakovich ones better than the string quartet originals, for example, though I think the main reason is that for me most string quartets have a tendency to exaggerate that music, while the collective sound of a section playing together gives a different perspective on the music's expressive aspects. I think this is true of the Beethoven quartets that have been done in this way also - you wouldn't want to hear them like that every time, but then nobody has to, the "originals" are still there to return to. Boulez's Livre pour cordes is much better than the string quartet it derives from, although in that case there's a bit more than arrangement involved.

And how many people here who despise string-orchestra arrangements of quartets are on the other hand quite happy to hear Bach's vocal-ensemble music sung by choruses several times the size of the groups he wrote for (if his intentions are what's at issue), or regard his concertos and suites as "orchestral" music, when in fact they aren't? The Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, for example, would in its time have been performed by seven or eight players. Any version involving more is an arrangement!

[MrGongGong]

So, it would seem that once again
The character that we all know as "sid" would seem to be off beam completely
I'm really looking forward to the "reveal"

[Don Petter]

Then there's the motive; aren't some string orchestral arrangements of chamber music written with a view to trying to "popularise" them? - i.e. to get them in front of larger audiences?

Too many strings attached. QED?

[kea]

I think this is true of the Beethoven quartets that have been done in this way also - you wouldn't want to hear them like that every time, but then nobody has to, the "originals" are still there to return to.

That's a good point, although in some cases there seems to be little reason to ever choose one over the other. Unless you're mildly obsessed with arrangement and transcription as I am.

And how many people here who despise string-orchestra arrangements of quartets are on the other hand quite happy to hear Bach's vocal-ensemble music sung by choruses several times the size of the groups he wrote for (if his intentions are what's at issue), or regard his concertos and suites as "orchestral" music, when in fact they aren't? The Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, for example, would in its time have been performed by seven or eight players. Any version involving more is an arrangement!

Well, the old counter-argument to that is that if Bach had had the opportunity to have twenty violins to a part he would have been glad for it, so we're really doing him a service by performing his music with grander resources than he ever would have had access to. Although how people know that without having talked to him personally, I've no idea.*

* of course Mozart on the other hand really did want twelve double-basses and double wind on each part, but his instruments were also a fair bit quieter, and audiences a fair bit noisier

[aeolium]

And how many people here who despise string-orchestra arrangements of quartets are on the other hand quite happy to hear Bach's vocal-ensemble music sung by choruses several times the size of the groups he wrote for (if his intentions are what's at issue), or regard his concertos and suites as "orchestral" music, when in fact they aren't? The Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, for example, would in its time have been performed by seven or eight players. Any version involving more is an arrangement!

Although if one is defending (and indeed praising) string-orchestra arrangements of string quartets, it would seem somewhat inconsistent to attack the arrangements of those Bach works for larger forces.

I don't have anything against arrangements per se, but in this case I tend to agree more with LeMartinPecheur's view. Of the arrangements I've heard, I don't think the orchestral arrangement improves on the string quartet version (and I find it difficult to avoid thinking of the original). It doesn't, for me, add anything in terms of the expressive power of the music and it loses focus, texture and - in classical period works - that conversational quality of the quartet, the interplay of individual voices. It's hard to imagine an orchestral arrangement of a Haydn string quartet, for instance (though he did go the other way, with the string quartet arrangement of the orchestral Seven Last Words).

[Roehre]

All very good sense, comme d'habitude! Of course such arrangements need to be viewed as separate entities in their own rights. That said, I have to admit that, whilst convinced by the Barber arrangement, Verklärte Nacht and the Lyric Suite, despite the immense skill deployed in the preparation of their string orchestral versions, just don't persuade me that they're on the same level as their originals; the Schönberg in particular loses a sense of immediacy and emotional intimacy when dressed in the lush and sumptuous garb of the string sections of great orchestras. They're both wonderful as string orchestral pieces, of course but, to me, they still lose something of the essence of the original chamber versions.

I like many of the string orchestra versions of original quartets (Beethoven, Schubert as mentioned i.a.), quintets (Schubert, Brahms op.111 i.a.) or sextets (Verklärte nacht, Tchaikovsky Souvenir de Florence, Brahms opp.18 and 36 i.a.), I also do think their characters are affected, as ahinton implies. Especially when composers' own arrangements are taken in account I do think we are effectively speaking about two different works, by chance based on exactly the same material.
Verklärte Nacht is an example: its striking immediacy in its original is replaced by a sumptuous, in some cases (in the 1943 version more than in the 1917 one) overwhelmingly romantic, but not less gripping!, sound. In my appreciation these two elements do exclude each other in this work.
Therefore not different approaches to one work, but effectively creating two different though strongly related ones.

I think that this is largely dependent on the skill of the arranger (and it would be hard to imagine anyone more skilled at stringwritings and arranging that Schönberg) - and it's also necessary, I think, to consider such arrangements made by the composers themselves as distinct from arrangments made by others. Then there's the motive; aren't some string orchestral arrangements of chamber music written with a view to trying to "popularise" them? - i.e. to get them in front of larger audiences?

The Brahms Op. 25 in Schönberg's arrangement is another animal altogether; a chamber work for piano and strings in whose new version the piano is dispensed with and an entire symphony orchestra deployed; I find it outrageous in places and outrageously aumsing in others! I've no idea what "Brahms the Progressive" would have made of it, but the orchestral repertoire would be poorer for its absence.

I am not only thinking of Brahms' op.25 here, but also of Szell's orchestration of Smetana's String quartet no.1 "From my life" (as performed during the 2012 (iirc) Proms), which IMHO should be heared much more (but let's face it, Brahms/Schönberg op.25 was until quite recently also considered to be out-of-bounds, both by concert managers and recording companies): a brilliant orchestration, opening up some details in the original score which without this orchestration would be rather difficult to hear in its original.
Two different works based on the same canvas is also Pfitzner's String quartet in c-sharp op.36 and the symphony in c-sharp op.36a based on it.

....
I find it a bit weird that so many people are generalising here about not liking string-orchestra arrangements of chamber music. Some are more successful than others, as MrGG says. I like the Shostakovich ones better than the string quartet originals, for example, though I think the main reason is that for me most string quartets have a tendency to exaggerate that music, while the collective sound of a section playing together gives a different perspective on the music's expressive aspects. I think this is true of the Beethoven quartets that have been done in this way also - you wouldn't want to hear them like that every time, but then nobody has to, the "originals" are still there to return to. Boulez's Livre pour cordes is much better than the string quartet it derives from, although in that case there's a bit more than arrangement involved....!

with the DSCH quartet arrangements (especially, but not exclusively, Barshai's) I do think -again- that new works are created. Especially the Barshai wind+strings-version of the 3rd quartet op.73 and a string+percussion-version (by an unknown arranger, on the Caprice Label) of op.110 change the character and underscore specific details of these works.

Ergo: listening to works in other than instrumental forces as prescribed by the composers themselves opens ears to other sonorities, not only accentuating previously unnoticed details, but also creating essentially other works, to be appreciated as independent entities IMO.

[JimD]

I'm partial to The Art of Fugue played by a string quartet, but I suppose that doesn't really count...

[Roehre]

I'm partial to The Art of Fugue played by a string quartet, but I suppose that doesn't really count...

My first KdF was on string quartet, and I am very fond of it. Actually, if had had to make a choice now, this recording would be for me the one to keep.

[Serial_Apologist]

The prospect of the five Carter quartets being arranged for string orchestra's an interesting one! I can't quite see anyone doing any of them, though! And what about the other way around, in the case of Strauss's string septet arrangement of his Metamorphosen?...

In the case of the Strauss (the septet version of which I have not heard) the diminution of forces would be so in other respects too, given the continual oscillation between orchestral and chamber textures constituting so important an aspect of this work's impact. For comparable reasons one might feel similarly had Elgar composed a string quartet or sextet (say) version of the Introduction and Allegro, Vaughan Williams re-arranged likewise the Tallis Fantasia, Bliss his Music for Strings, for examples.

[Serial_Apologist]

The Brahms Op. 25 in Schönberg's arrangement is another animal altogether; a chamber work for piano and strings in whose new version the piano is dispensed with and an entire symphony orchestra deployed; I find it outrageous in places and outrageously aumsing in others! I've no idea what "Brahms the Progressive" would have made of it, but the orchestral repertoire would be poorer for its absence.

I feel the same way - also about the Handel and Monn re-compositions (for such they really are). Rather gives the lie to "Schoenberg the man with no sense of humour" image popularly portrayed - and much humour too is to be found in the non-tonal output too! But I'm off-topic .

[ahinton]

I feel the same way - also about the Handel and Monn re-compositions (for such they really are). Rather gives the lie to "Schoenberg the man with no sense of humour" image popularly portrayed - and much humour too is to be found in the non-tonal output too! But I'm off-topic .

Well, while you are momentarily so, the old chestnut about the humourless Schönberg deserves to be consigned to oblivion when one considers two of his well known remarks - one about having enrolled in active serice in WWI in order to get away from Vienna and have some peace and the other about having devised a system of composing that would ensure the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years (which, if taken seriously and at face value would, as Ronald Stevenson once observed, have been "a strange idea for an Austrian Jew to have")...

But yes - back to the topic, indeed!

[Roehre]

In the case of the Strauss (the septet version of which I have not heard) the diminution of forces would be so in other respects too, given the continual oscillation between orchestral and chamber textures constituting so important an aspect of this work's impact.....

A bit off-track as it hasn't got anything to do with string(quartet)s:
Richard Straus made a nearly complete reduced non-vocal version of the Rosenkavalier for pianotrio, a couple winds and percussion as accompaniment for a silent film in the 1920s. (Was recorded by Ensemble 13 on DHM in 1979 (iirc)).
A lot of re-composing there too, an also including some military marches of his from the 1890s.

Btw, the Handel and Monn works by Schönberg aren't "true" arrangements as meant in this thread, effectively these works were recomposed (which is not the case with the Brahms or his Bach orchestrations (St.Anne's fugue e.g.).
It's rather difficult to re-discover the originals in the Schönberg versions, even if you've got the originals at hand and playing them immediately in succession.

[Richard Barrett]

the old counter-argument to that is that if Bach had had the opportunity to have twenty violins to a part

My point being that if one can be so sure that Bach "would have wanted" why not also think that about string quartet composers like Haydn or Beethoven?

Mozart enjoyed hearing his symphonies played by a large orchestra when it happened, that's true. But there's no evidence to suggest that he "would have wanted" his music always to be played like that. Nor is it true that instruments of the late 18th century were "quieter" relative to the spaces they were played in (see Stefan Wienzierl, Beethovens Konzerträume, where this is rather convincingly demonstrated).

[Richard Barrett]

Just to be a bit more clear:

(a) all kinds of arrangements (transcriptions, adaptations, remixes...) are possible, some maybe ill-advised, but none of them actually destroys the original, and

(b) (tangentially) using "what the composer would have wanted" as a justification for anything is completely specious. There is only "what the composer had and did."