Naxos Blog

Music history is replete with composers, conductors and other performing artists who have tasked themselves with transcribing, arranging, or reorchestrating another composer’s music. This, in itself, is not new.

My introduction to transcription was when, as a young child, I heard the Bach-Busoni “Chaconne” performed by the wonderful Cuban pianist Jorge Bolet. It wasn’t until I was a bit older that I discovered that this stupendous work was taken from Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1004 for solo violin. As I later discovered, a substantial part of Ferruccio Busoni’s compositional output (and some of his best-known works) consisted of his piano transcriptions (Bach’s “Chaconne” is probably his best-known). In addition to Bach, Busoni wrote transcriptions of works by Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, Schoenberg, Wagner, and many others. Franz Liszt’s catalog also boasts an extensive list of musical transcriptions for piano, including Beethoven’s symphonies; works by Mozart, Verdi, Donizetti, Tchaikovsky, and Wagner; and even a version of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique.

Modern pianists also have explored ways to expand the intrinsic orchestral qualities of the instrument. The legendary Vladimir Horowitz took on this challenge (who could forget his finger-breaking transcription of John Philip Sousa’s Stars & Stripes Forever?), along with Vladimir Viardo (another Russian) and, of course, Glenn Gould (yes, it could be argued that Gould was a composer too). And I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t list a couple of the great violinists who arranged works for their instrument, e.g. Fritz Kreisler and Jascha Heifetz. I know I’ve missed plenty of examples – current and otherwise. Of course, many non-pianists contributed to this literature as well, sometimes with mixed results. Mahler tinkered with Beethoven’s orchestrations (I love Mahler, but I must confess I never warmed to his Beethoven Retouchen) and orchestrated Schubert’s Quartet No. 14 in D minor, D810, “Death & the Maiden,” quite a successful orchestration in my opinion. Arnold Schoenberg arranged Bach Chorales and orchestrated Brahms’ Piano Quartet, Op. 25.

And then there was Leopold Stokowski and that famous Stokowski sound. Naxos currently has three superb recordings of Stokowski transcriptions and arrangements, which feature composer/conductor José Serebrier, who was Stokowki’s protégé: Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky transcriptions (Naxos 8557645), which received two GRAMMY nominations; J.S. Bach transcriptions (Naxos 8557883); and the most recent offering, Wagner: Symphonic Syntheses by Stokowski (Naxos 8570293).

There is no doubt that Leopold Stokowski was a trailblazer. And he took a lot of flack from the “serious” music community for what was often dismissed as egregious flamboyance, and for the liberties he took with his orchestrations. That said, Stokowski developed a sound that can only be described as unique, and his experiments with instrument placement and bowings were thoroughly modern. Stokowski was responsible for what became known as the “Philadelphia Sound.” He “… [created] this lush ‘Philadelphia Sound’ through the use of ‘free bowing’ in the strings and staggered breathing with doubled winds … ” Serebrier elucidates this “habit” as follows: “Because bows naturally lose in power as they descend, and similarly gain in power as they ascend, combining bows simultaneously in both directions would in principle produce a more even sound …” Stokowski’s experimentation with wind placement was another signature. According to Serebrier, to prevent the winds from being buried by the strings, Stokowski tried having them “placed to his right, in place of the cellos of violas. This drastically changed their sound, and the over-all balance.”

Stokowski’s changes in the placement of instruments even extended to accommodate the acoustic idiosyncrasies of a specific hall. Mostly, it was the Stokowski magic that José Serebrier describes in his liner notes: “The sound of the orchestra would change within moments of the first encounter with Stokowski. There was nothing that he had said or done to make such an obvious change, other than to start rehearsing after a minimal greeting … Stokowski’s idea of sound was unmistakable and special …” And Stokowski cared deeply about the music.

Stokowski, who began his career as an organist, wanted to bring the music of J.S. Bach to audiences at a time when Bach’s music had largely fallen out of fashion. During his lifetime, Stokowski orchestrated over one hundred of Bach’s works. In his transcriptions, he was able to recreate the sound of the organ by thickening the orchestration with sufficient doublings in the bass lines (adding extra cellos, double basses, and tubas). Serebrier notes that “Stokowski lined up the basses in the back of the stage on high podiums, with the horns directly in front, to produce a soundboard for the horns and for the entire orchestra. It also gave the basses an organ-like quality.” His Bach orchestrations have a particularly lush sound.

Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition was a different story. According to Serebrier, over 50 people have orchestrated Mussorgsky’s work. The Ravel version, commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky in 1922, “had a very French sound,” and Stokowski wanted to create a version more attuned to the Russian sound. In his version, Stokowski also omits two pictures: Tuileries and The Market Place at Limoges.

Unlike the Bach and Mussorgsky discs, the music on Wagner: Symphonic Syntheses by Stokowski consists not of transcriptions, but rather of “symphonic syntheses” or “symphonic poems.” Stokowski, who championed Wagner’s music throughout his life (and from the very first days of his career with the Cincinnati Orchestra), brought Wagner’s music to a much broader audience through a series of 78 RPM recordings with the Philadelphia Orchestra, for which he wove together extended orchestral excerpts from great Wagnerian operas. Most of the people who heard these recordings had never entered an opera house before; this was their first exposure to Wagner’s music. Stokowski titled these excerpts, which took the form of elaborate tone poems, Symphonic Syntheses. And because Wagner’s orchestration was already so superb, there was no reason to re-orchestrate his music. In some cases, Stokowski would take some of the vocal lines and give them to instruments in the orchestra. For the music of Tristan und Isolde on the Naxos recording, Stokowski simply took the Prelude from Act I and inserted the Liebesnacht (Love Music) from Act II before ending with the famous finale, the Liebestod.

Serebrier’s liner notes to all three Naxos discs are a must-read and go into the Stokowski sound in much greater detail. You can also access a recent Naxos Podcast in which he talks about the recent Wagner-Stokowki disc with Raymond Bisha.

(My thanks to José Serebrier for allowing me to quote liberally from his liner notes.)

Last note: There also are a great many recordings still available of Leopold Stokowski conducting his own transcriptions, including Original Masters: Leopold Stokowski (Decca #000150902), which includes his famous arrangement of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, and Bach-Stokowski (EMI 66385), among others. I might also suggest picking up or downloading (if possible) some recordings of other music Stokowski first brought to American audiences, such as Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 (a live Carnegie Hall performance from 1950 is available on Archipel #108). Furthermore, if you get ahold of the Library of Congress performance with the Symphony of the Air, I can’t recommend it enough (Bridge 9074). It includes Vaughan-Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis (my personal favorite performance of this work), Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4 and Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll.

OTHER SUGGESTED LISTENING

Naxos 8557377/Symphony No. 9, arr. Franz Liszt; Konstantin Scherbakov, piano;
Hyperion 66671/5/Beethoven Symphony No. 9, arr. Franz Liszt; Leslie Howard, piano
Naxos 8550725/Symphonie Fantastique, arr. Franz Liszt, Idil Biret, piano;
Hyperion 66433, Symphonie Fantastique, arr. Franz Liszt, Leslie Howard, piano
Naxos 8555034, Bach-Busoni “Chaconne,” Wolf Harden, piano;
RCA Victor Gold Seal Catalog 7710, Bach-Busoni “Chaconne,” Jorge Bolet, piano
RCA Gold Seal 7755: Horowitz Encores (Sousa/Horowitz: Stars & Stripes Forever)
ProPiano Records PPR224509: Vladimir Viardo: Organ-Piano Transcriptions – Bach-Liszt, Frank-Viardo
SONY SK46279: Glenn Gould conducts & Plays Wagner
Bridge 9033, Beethoven: Symphony No 9 (Mahler Edition) / Peter Tiboris, conductor
Naxos 8557524 Schoenberg: 5 Pieces for Orchestra: Cello Concerto; Brahms: Piano Quartet, Fred Sherry/LSO/Robert Craft.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 at 11:45 am and is filed under Tidbits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.