Piano Transcriptions for two hands

[rob]

I'm glad everyone enjoyed it! I plan to transcribe all of Clementi's symphonies eventually, although I'm not sure if I can release the 4 numbered ones since they are under copyright, having been unpublished and then reconstructed. I'm working on cleaning up and finishing a couple transcriptions I did years ago, and shared here. Here's the first one: Mozart's first symphony!

This is VERY special stuff Alex. Thank you very much from a non-pianist!

[Babaco]

I'm glad everyone enjoyed it! I plan to transcribe all of Clementi's symphonies eventually, although I'm not sure if I can release the 4 numbered ones since they are under copyright, having been unpublished and then reconstructed. I'm working on cleaning up and finishing a couple transcriptions I did years ago, and shared here. Here's the first one: Mozart's first symphony!

Thank you! This one goes straight to the music rack. Looking forward to seeing your other transcriptions!
Best,
Curtis

[Timtin]

Another excellent work Alex! Thank you.

[Alex]

Just finished, and this is the last one I have for a while. Enjoy, everyone!

Vivaldi Concerto for 2 Oboes in D minor RV 535 (2H Bolton).pdf

[Timtin]

Thanks yet again for another terrific effort.
Btw, Haydn's 'Sturm and Drang' symphonies are great (hint, hint)!

[sgambatiesque]

A couple of requests to throw into the breeze, for transcriptions, fantasies, variations etc on:

PURCELL Chacony in G minor. I've fiddled around with doing this myself, but maybe someone else has already done a decent job of it.

MONTEVERDI Pur ti miro, from The Coronation of Poppea ( this duet possibly written by someone else)...

I'm also quite taken by the Ciacona from "Trattenimenti per camera" op. 22 by Maurizio CAZZATI which is referenced in some of the Christina Pluhar recordings.

[fleubis]

I found this piano transcription of the Bach "Gigue Fugue" for organ on the National Library of Australia website. Evidently, this transcription, by Claude Monteath, is public domain. I do not know whether there are other, better transcriptions available. Perhaps someone on the forum is aware of one.

Dannen, thank you so much for this excellent transcription of the Gigue Fugue. I have been looking for one for years and this very much fills the bill.

[Dannen]

Dear Fluebis,

You're quite welcome. I think the Monteath transcription of the BWV 577 is quite good; and there's an excellent recording, by Andrew L. Simpson, that can be heard on this web page:

http://www.extropygroup.com/vanity%20au ... rdings.htm

I went looking for a Gigue Fugue piano transcription after watching Mike Hawley perform his own transcription on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYvXtAIf-Bk

I'm hoping he'll one day publish his version of the BWV 577 (see below). If you check out the YouTube video, you'll see that I questioned the wisdom of his playing that particular work for a documentary about Bach, since it remains doubtful whether Bach actually wrote the Gigue Fugue. In reply to my comment, Michael sent me the following email message:

"Yes, of course, I know that BWV577 is considered by many to be not a Bach original. There's no autograph manuscript. My recollection is that musicologists asserted, in the 1980s, that it was actually written by Gottfried Homilius --- who was a student of Bach's. Problem with this is that there's no autograph by Homilius either; and Homilius wrote liturgical music, which this piece definitely is not. So while people on important web sites these days seem to tag this piece as 'spurious' in the Bach catalog (because it is 'different' from other fugues, and because there's no autograph), neither can they tie it definitively to some other author (and the only leading contender I'm aware of seems less likely to me than Bach).

"When Bach went to Lubeck to hear Buxtehude, he almost certainly heard Buxtehude's gigue fugue in C, which is sort of the standout precedent. And Bach certainly wrote plenty of other wonderfully fun, virtuosic gigues. So those sorts of dance pieces were certainly in the air.

"Whether or not Bach himself wrote BWV 577, it's darned hard to play (on the organ) and tremendous fun. He may well have written it; or, he may have heard it and transcribed/adapted it and improved it (as he did so many other pieces); or, perhaps it was something he worked up with a student. Whatever the origins --- Bach, not Bach, hybrid Bach --- it definitely adds a lot of fun and a bit of puzzlement to the Bach catalog. And even if he didn't write it himself, I have no trouble believing that it was a piece he loved to play.

"In my remarks in the movie, one of my main points was to emphasize Bach as arranger/transcriber, an omnivore who cut across genres and styles. This is partly why I thought of BWV577, as well as lots of others (the E major violin partita, the lute prelude & fugue, the fiddle fugue for organ/violin, etc). And one of the reasons I played it was, I had just made the piano arrangement. It happened in a funny way. A dear friend of mine and former piano duet partner married her man, a German, in Germany. She wanted me to play organ for their wedding. But it was a tiny little baroque organ in a small stone church in the German countryside --- probably an instrument from the early 1700's. When Mary and I talked about pieces, she thought the Gigue fugue would be great. So I went ahead and learned it --- which was kind of a pain in the ass. I'm a decent organist, but the pedal part in that piece does separate the men from the boys. Anyway, I got it all going and invested a lot of time in it. Problem was, I arrived in Germany and found that the old tracker organ only had 10 notes on the pedal keyboard! Doh. So I rearranged the piece to play it with fingers alone, which is actually doable, and sounded quite nice in that space. And I needed to play, later that summer, a Bach concert on piano. I thought the piece worked rather nicely as a 'closer' for a piano concert, and I really got a kick out of playing it.

"Anyway, that's how it happened to be in my fingers, and how it happened to be performed when Mike Lawrence's cameras were rolling, and why it actually does fit the movie and my remarks in a useful way --- even if some musicologists argue its authenticity.

"I still haven't written the notes down, but now I feel like I should."

[fleubis]

Dannen, thanks for posting the info on the Gigue Fugue. Since I went to music school long before musicologists had questioned its authenticity as a Bach original, I've always considered one of Bach's pieces, so your posting came as quite a surprise to me. Whoever wrote, it I am so glad to finally have a worthwhile transcription for the piano and am adding it to my repertoire.

[Timtin]

In this rescan, Schubert's song Der Wanderer has the distinction of being an arrangement
by Schubert himself, rearranged by Liszt, then rerearranged by Friedmann and Wöss.
Is this a record?

Erratum:- For Friedmann, please read Friedman.

Schubert-Liszt Wanderer Phantasie (2H Friedmann-Wöss).pdf