GG's "notated" La Valse

[aq094@lafn.org (Eugene Selig)]

The only music he published was his String Qt. (published by a small 
obscure publishing house), and his vocal fugue, "So, You Want to Write a 
Fugue." The Ravel piece, which he plays on one of the Sony Series Videos, 
is available from the National Library of Canada's GG collection (Music 
Archives). I sent for it, and it is only a copy of the original Ravel 
score, with GG's "notations." These are very scant, but if you listen to 
his playing you will see that what he is doing is play a "fuller" 
arrangement than Ravel indicates in the conventional two-hand scoring. 
That is, Ravel includes various extra staves from which the player can 
choose how much to play. GG swallows the score "whole" and gives it the 
sound of three hands playing. As he says in his spoken introduction about 
the piece, Ravel scored it for orchestra, two players at one piano, two 
players at two pianos, and, least successfully, one player at one piano. 
It is really GG's prudent selection of the various possibilities given by 
Ravel that constitute GG's "notated" version.