Re: GG: La Valse (again)

[frank@clark.net]

On Wed, 8 Jan 1997, Bradley P Lehman wrote:

> On Wed, 8 Jan 1997, Tim Conway wrote:
> 
> > I bought and listened (several times) to GG's rendition of La Valse on CD 
> > a couple of months ago. Just before Christmas I switched on ABC Classic 
> > FM in the middle of a piano transcription of La Valse, but clearly not 
> > GG's. I couldn't tell who was playing but he or she certainly wasn't 
> > having as much effect as GG, even though the recording was more recent 
> > and live. At the end of the piece there was clapping and the radio 
> > announcer said that the piece had been played by two people, not one. I 
> > was so astonished that I didn't hear whether it was a four-hand or 
> > two-piano version, nor can I remember the players' names.
> 
> According to the notes in the Argerich/Rabinovitch recording (two pianos),
> Ravel published four versions: two pianos (the original), piano solo,
> piano duet, orchestra.  Some of the inspiration for the composition was a
> proposed ballet by Diaghilev, which then didn't come through.  

The _Grove Dictionary_ is generally reliable and speaks only of an
orchesral version, 1919-20, and a two piano version of 1921. Schwann Opus
(my copy is a year old), however, lists:

B.Berezovksy [trans. for piano]
Dussaut (solo piano)
L.Lortie (playing Ravel's solo piano arrangement)
L.Lortie & H.Mercier (playing Ravel's 1921 two-piano arrangement)
G&S Peckinet (ditto)
H.Peter & V.Stenzl (pnos) ("Klavierduo").
I don't know if the last is played on one or two pianos.

The _Gramophone Catalog_ for 1995 lists some others, but none labeled as
four-hands.

In any case, as Gould explained in the letter to Sylvia Hochberg, quoted
in the Sony release, he worked from Ravel's transcription (apparently for
solo piano) that had a third stave that contained many of the elements of
coloration but which was unperformable with two hands. Gould edited it for
his CBC broadcast.

Moral: Don't always trust _Grove_. 

Also, Jerzy Chwialkowski, _The Da Capo Catalog of Classical Music
Compositions_ (BUY THIS BOOK!!), lists orch, pf, and 2pf versions, no
four-handed version.

Question: Where did Nancy Canning get Opus 45 for the piece?

> GG's transcription is a hybrid of the piano versL.Lottieions. 
> 
> By the way, sliding off to a related topic, does anyone happen to know if
> Gyorgy Sandor's Sony box set of Bartok's piano music includes the piano
> solo (ballet) transcription of the Concerto for Orchestra?  I like
> Sandor's single disc of it that was issued earlier.  The "complete" box
> doesn't say on the outside whether the CfO is included or not. 
 
I don't know. Bartok arranged the work for piano in 1944, the year
after he composed the original. 

Frank