Bruckner arr Payne symphony no 2

[ahinton]

There's even Mahler 9 arranged for 12 instruments - see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWMAyfhUk8I - and I gather that it's not even the only one of its kind. It opens OK but as soon as the pianos come in...

No, I can't either...

[Lento]

As someone who doesn't own a recording of Bruckner 2, and has been rather unsure about the piece on the few occasions I heave heard it, all your replies have been particularly interesting and gratefully received. I had tended to think of Schönberg more as an upscaler (V Nacht, Brahms Piano Quartet No 1), in my ignorance, btw.

[Richard Barrett]

According to the article (G. 4/2014) it's part of a series attempting to recreate Schoenberg's "Society for Private Music Performance"

So I understood, but my question stands! - the raison d'être of that society was to perform mostly new and unfamiliar works, under economic restrictions of scale, to an audience that would have heard them either not at all or in inadequate performances, which is of course no longer the case, especially with recordings of almost everything being available. I wonder why Anthony Payne would take up his time with a project like this...

[jayne lee wilson]

It gets worse...

From the same G. article, here's Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, producer/instigator of the project: "...in the very best sense this is an up-to-date view of Bruckner, a composer who in my view has been owned for too long by dogmatic musicologists pinning their colours to either the Haas or Nowak mast. You find musical solutions, and if that means you take something from 1873 and add a bit from 1877, you do it."

Ignorant as well as arrogant. He seems unaware of what Haas actually did (quite a few years ago now...), or the difference in this approach to Nowak's strictly disciplined musicology. Or what Karajan did in his recording of No.2 (HvK conflates 1872 and 1876).
No mention of William Carraghan, possibly the most dedicated and important Bruckner scholar/editor of all, without whom we wouldn't have the revelatory text of the original 2nd Symphony (which Pinnock has either not heard or not understood).
And little respect for mere Brucknerian musiclovers, who have been plotting rather enjoyably complex and undogmatic courses through recordings and editions for decades. (Those "dogmatic musicologists" WOULD keep getting in our way...)

OK, Mr. Pinnock - so we let various conductors assemble their own "performing versions" of the symphonies... and leave it to later musicologists to sort out the New Bruckner Chaos that was the result...

[Madame Suggia]

I've not heard the Bruckner/Payne 2 yet but the version i've grown to know and love is on Arte Nova: Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hiroshi Wakasugi.

[Alison]

Has Anthony Payne run out of ideas for his own compositions ?

Any suggestions for what his next project should be ?

[EdgeleyRob]

Has Anthony Payne run out of ideas for his own compositions ?

Any suggestions for what his next project should be ?

Vaughan Williams Cello Concerto ?

Although I believe there's virtaully nothing of the finale to work on,and Mrs VW was not in favour of anyone trying to complete the work.

[ahinton]

Vaughan Williams Cello Concerto ?

Although I believe there's virtaully nothing of the finale to work on,and Mrs VW was not in favour of anyone trying to complete the work.

Er - David Matthews, anyone?...

[EdgeleyRob]

Er - David Matthews, anyone?...

Of course,Dark Pastoral,based on the sketches for the slow movement,but I wonder if Mr Payne could come up with a complete 3 movement work of what survives.

From

https://www.allthingsstrings.com/News/Interviews-Profiles/Steven-Isserlis-Lost-and-Found-Cello-Concertos

We don’t know what Vaughan Williams himself thought about the concerto, but his widow said it should never be completed. I think she was right. There’s a draft score of the first movement, a few minutes of the second movement, and virtually nothing of the last movement; so it would have been too big a leap of faith to complete all three. And two movements don’t really make a satisfying whole. But having looked at what there was of the slow movement [of the Williams concerto], I thought it was just too beautiful to waste, which is why I asked David to arrange it.”

Matthews adds that while the first movement could be realized, there’s doubt as to whether the draft is actually complete. And since he could make little sense of the maze of disconnected sketches that constitute the Finale, it was the central slow movement that was most promising. “There’s only the first four minutes,” he says, “but actually that was an asset, because after Ursula Vaughan Williams’ death the family trustees suggested that if I were to carry on from where [Williams] left off and compose the rest of the piece, this would evade her prohibition, since it would be largely my piece rather than [his]. I invented a tune in the middle that is very closely related to something he’d already started, and then at the end I brought back and extended the original opening.

[Petrushka]

So I understood, but my question stands! - the raison d'être of that society was to perform mostly new and unfamiliar works, under economic restrictions of scale, to an audience that would have heard them either not at all or in inadequate performances, which is of course no longer the case, especially with recordings of almost everything being available. I wonder why Anthony Payne would take up his time with a project like this...

Richard Barrett has taken the words right out of my mouth here.

Forumites will be familiar with my difficulties in getting to grips with the Bruckner 2 when I have loved all of the others for decades, but I cannot understand the reason for this project at all. Let's hope it doesn't set a precedent.

[Barbirollians]

Richard Barrett has taken the words right out of my mouth here.

Forumites will be familiar with my difficulties in getting to grips with the Bruckner 2 when I have loved all of the others for decades, but I cannot understand the reason for this project at all. Let's hope it doesn't set a precedent.

I think Madame Suggia is right to praise the Wakasugi but the piece really only fell into place for me upon hearing the Giulini/VSO on Testament .

[ahinton]

So I understood, but my question stands! - the raison d'être of that society was to perform mostly new and unfamiliar works, under economic restrictions of scale, to an audience that would have heard them either not at all or in inadequate performances, which is of course no longer the case, especially with recordings of almost everything being available. I wonder why Anthony Payne would take up his time with a project like this...

I agree that it doesn't come across as the most obvious task for him to have taken on. Here's what he has to say about it.

"Standing in the Academy's foyer after another entrancing Sunday morning Bach cantata programme, I was button-holed by the Principal, Jonathan Freeman-Attwood. I didn't realise that I was about to lose my next five months' composing time, as he captured my interest with his plan to resurrect the idea of Schoenberg's Society for Private Musical Performance, concentrating on those notable chamber arrangements of what were for the time (1918) rarely heard orchestral masterpieces (Mahler's Symphonie No. 4, Debussy's L'aprés-midi d'un faune, etc). Then, like a bolt from the blue came the question, how would I like to extend the tradition by contributing an arrangement myself. I held my ground, ‘Like what, for instance?' ‘What about Bruckner's Second Symphony?' came the reply. I was stunned. As it happened this was the only Bruckner symphony I'd never heard, and while admiring much of this composer's work, I did not consider myself a committed Brucknerian. I gulped and said I'd have a look at it.

I acquired a score and recording, and quickly came to the conclusion that despite Bruckner's massive orchestral effects, a chamber arrangement for judiciously chosen forces was a distinct possibility. As is often the case with pre-twentieth-century German music, the basis of the orchestral texture was the string sonority, and if I could replace that aspect of the score with, say, a sextet of two violins, two violas, a cello and a double bass, I would be well on the way to solving my problem. The wind and brass sonorities in Bruckner also provide an exciting presence of course, but I felt they could be represented with a bold central core of flute and oboe with pairs of clarinets, bassoons and horns, plus a single trumpet and trombone supported by harmonium and piano to imply more than was actually present in the line up.

I decided to accept the commission, but feared the amount of hard work involved at a time when other commitments were hanging over me. I am an unrepentant luddite, and have never reconciled myself to the use of computer programmes to speed the process of producing a full score. This was to be a hand-written job, and the symphony consisted of some 1,750 bars. ‘Well dear reader', as Charlotte Brontë might have said, ‘I completed it', and during the course of five months' hard labour came to admire the symphony enormously. Certainly, I now think it structurally the tightest of Bruckner's earlier symphonies. Performed magnificently under Trevor Pinnock's direction by one of the finest chamber groups I've heard in the Royal Academy of Music Soloists Ensemble, the arrangement exceeded my most extravagant expectations, and I owe to all concerned my heartfelt gratitude."

I don't think that this quite answers your question but...

[Richard Barrett]

Forumites will be familiar with my difficulties in getting to grips with the Bruckner 2 when I have loved all of the others for decades, but I cannot understand the reason for this project at all.

Of course it may conceivably be that pieces of eight played a decisive role... but still I can't imagine why a composer would prefer to do something so seemingly unnecessary like that rather than writing something new.

Having written that, it comes to my mind that I can't recall any of this symphony (or for that matter the ones preceding it), I must try to put that right later today, and who knows, it might scream at me that an arrangement for wind quintet is what the world really needs.

[Madame Suggia]

Thanks for the heads-up Barbirollians

The Giulini 2 is on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSzki-fmsoM

[Sir Velo]

Of course it may conceivably be that pieces of eight played a decisive role...

mIAAOW....

but still I can't imagine why a composer would prefer to do something so seemingly unnecessary like that rather than writing something new.

I seem to recall a few long forgotten composers by the names of Berio, Mahler, Schoenberg, Liszt and Mendelssohn et al who had a habit of going back and "improving" on their predecessors' output, with some not completely artistically negligible outcomes.