Brahms by Arrangement, Volume Two: Orchestrations by Robin Holloway
Composers who orchestrate the music of earlier colleagues often serve them best when they add something of themselves to the work in hand. These three orchestrations by the English composer Robin Holloway (b. 1943) demonstrate his profound understanding of and affection for two of the most important Romantic composers – and his re-imagining of Brahms’ Sonata for Two Pianos (which Brahms himself recast as his Piano Quintet) as a symphony gives one of the greatest of all compositions a wild and thrilling energy, making it also a masterpiece of our own age.
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Cellerina Park, leader
Paul Mann, conductor
Listen To This Recording:
- Theme: Andante, Leise und innig
- Variation 1: Pochino più mosso, delicato
- Variation 2: Più mosso –
- Variation 3: A tempo, grazioso –
- Variation 4: Misterioso
- Variation 5: Grazioso con moto –
- Variation 6: Alla marcia
- Variation 7: Allegro leggiero
- Variation 8: Andante con moto ardente
- Variation 9: Maestoso –
- Variation 10: Alla marcia, poco lento
- Epilogue
- No. 1: Con moto egual’e dolce
- No. 2: Gently lilting, flowing
- No. 3: A tempo, andantino piacevole teneramente
- No. 4: Con moto amabile: supple and airy
- No. 5: Vivace
- No. 6: Andante serioso
- I Allegro non troppo
- II Andante
- III Scherzo: Allegro – Trio
- IV Finale. Poco sostenuto – Allegro commodo
BRAHMS
Variations on a Theme of Schumann, Op. 23, for piano duet (1861; orch. 2016)
SCHUMANN
Six Canonic Studies, Op. 56 (1845; arr. for two pianos by Debussy, 1891; orch. 2011)
BRAHMS
Symphony in F minor, Op. 34 (1864; orch. 2008) (after the Sonata for Two Pianos, Op. 34a)
FIRST RECORDINGS
MusicWeb International :
‘This is the main work here [Symphony in F minor after the Sonata for Two Pianos Op. 34a] and I want to say straightaway that, like the Schoenberg orchestration, it sounds marvellous. […] All the power and passion of the work come across.
Here he [Paul Mann] leads the BBC Symphony Orchestra, whose expertise with unfamiliar scores needs no stressing. The recording is good and the sleeve note, from which I have drawn, helpful. Brahmsians who are not averse to transcriptions should explore this.’
—Stephen Barber, MusicWeb International