Alternative Arrangements

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Bob_Crotchet
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I see that Dejan Lazic is playing "Brahms Piano Concerto No.3" at the Proms this year. In a nutshell this is Lazic's own arrangement of the Brahm's Violin Concerto, and re-badged it as PC no.3. You can see him discuss it here... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A17KP89kRco

Having heard the CD recording I think he's done a very credible job, but I am not sure how I feel about an artist taking the liberty of calling his arrangement Brahms 3rd? Certainly Brahms often made alternative arrangements and transcriptions of his  works, but it was his in the first place. Should an artist be able to do the same?

DaveF
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RE: Alternative Arrangements

Agreed - the annoying thing is the title.  If Brahms had decided to make the violin concerto a piano concerto instead, it would have been no.2, and the B flat major would then have been "no.3".  Even Schoenberg only called his splendid orchestration of the G minor quartet "Brahms's 5th" as a joke.

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CraigM
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RE: Alternative Arrangements

 

To be precise, what he calls the piece is 'Piano Concerto No. 3' in D major (after Violin Concerto) (arr. Lazić)’ and NOT Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 3 – much in the way that Anthony Payne described his reconstruction of Elgar’s third symphony as Edward Elgar: The Sketches for Symphony No. 3 Elaborated by Anthony Payne.

 

Not much liberty taking there...

Bob_Crotchet
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RE: Alternative Arrangements

Yes but Payne was working with Elgar's sketches for a 3rd Symphony and titled it as such - it's not like he arranged the sketches into Elgar: Cello Concerto No.2...

CraigM
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RE: Alternative Arrangements

Bob_Crotchet wrote:
Yes but Payne was working with Elgar's sketches for a 3rd Symphony and titled it as such - it's not like he arranged the sketches into Elgar: Cello Concerto No.2...

But Payne didn’t just use Elgar’s sketches for the symphony, but also incorporated material from other works such as the Nursery Suite and The Last Judgment as well as composing things entirely from scratch. So Dejan Lazic is hardly taking any more liberties that Payne did.

 

But talking of taking real liberties, how would it be if someone in the twentieth-century composer took all the best tunes by a eighteenth-century composer, rearranged them and presented it as a new ballet work? Which is what Stravinsky with Pulchinella. Was he taking liberties as well?

 

 

allanscriven@ho...
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RE: Alternative Arrangements

Did not the esteemed J S Bach arrange Vivaldi's Concerto for Four Violins and Orchestra as his own Concerto for Four Harpsichords and Orchestra? This was not an unusual thing for composers to do then but I do not know whether he gave credit to Vivaldi for the source.

P.S. If you want to hear the Vivaldi, Mullova has a great performance of it on Onyx and I enjoyed the Pinnock Bach version on DG Archiv.

33lp
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RE: Alternative Arrangements

Indeed Bach did (see my comment on "new Gershwin recording...") but I doubt he would have credited Vivaldi! And then there are the versions  of his own works where original autographs do not exist. Did he write concerti for keyboard then arrange them for violin or vice versa and should BVW 1060 be for just violin or as often done include oboe? Do we know that all the various arrangements of Bach's concerti are actually by Bach?

There are many other modern examples besides Stravinsky; Respighi's Birds & Ancient Airs & Dances, Franck's violin sonata arranged for 'cello or viola etc etc.

he ying
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RE: Alternative Arrangements

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