Sarasate Violin and Piano Vol. 4...with Raff (and Chopin, Gounod, Moszkowski...)

[TerraEpon]

So I just got the final disc in the eight disc survey of Sarasate's music by Tianwa Yang for Naxos -- I reommend every single one.

What's interesting about this one, all but one piece transcriptions of other composers (and said last piece an opera fantasy), is the inclusion of the last and longest piece, Raff's The Love Fairy, Op. 67 (Le Fee d'Amour).
Obviously this was recorded for violin and orchestra for Sterling, but this is Sarasate's transcription...
Now the online catalog (complied by our esteemed board owner) lists Raff as having made his own transcription. But I went and looked at the scores on IMSLP, one credited to the Raff (or more properly on the score itself with no arranger credit at all) and one to Sarasate. But....both scores look exactly the same. So I'm guessing that Raff in fact didn't make a piano reduction himself, but rather the one credited to him is in fact this same Sarasate one.
Well it's a great piece either way...

[Mark Thomas]

OK. Raff composed La fée d'amour in December 1854 and Schott's published his violin/piano reduction in January 1857. That's the score at IMSLP, fully credited to Raff. The orchestral parts weren't published until August 1877, and the full score in April 1878. It became one of Sarasate's favourite pieces, which he played across Europe.

Although I haven't compared them note by note, I agree that the other (Sarasate) edition at IMSLP of the piano reduction does look identical to the original one, even the plate number is the same but, judging by the title page design and the typography of the score, it is clearly from a later date. Hofmeister XIX verifies the three publication dates of 1857, 1877 and 1878, but makes no mention of Sarasate in any of the three entries. Neither is there a transcription by him in any of the Hofmeister entries for his own publications. If one looks at the title page of the second score at IMSLP, it says "Édité par Pablo de Sarasate", edited by.. not transcribed ("Transcrit") or arranged ("Arrangé"). It was common practice for publishers to issue editions of violin works edited by famous virtuosi of the day, their editing usually comprising bowing recommendations and perhaps a new or alternative cadenza. In the original score, Raff had relied on the advice of the work's dedicatee, Edmund Singer, the virtuoso leader of Liszt's Weimar orchestra at the time. I'm not really clear, from a quick look at the two scores, just what Sarasate added or changed, but it's not much I suspect. If it turned out to be simply a reprinting of the original, but after Raff's death in 1882, then it may be that he did nothing but lend his name to the edition, thereby extending the copyright and protecting the publisher's intellectual property for many more years. Raff will have sold the score outright to Schott's in 1857, so neither he nor his estate would have had any royalties or claim on the score.

Raff routinely prepared his own piano reductions of his orchestral scores (and Brahms sniffily criticised him for wasting his time in doing so), so this wasn't in any way unusual. In any event, as Sarasate was only twelve when that original was printed, there is no way that he had any hand in making the reduction.

I'd like to know more about the edition "edited" by Sarasate, and in particular the publication date, but it still seems to be 100% (or almost 100%) entirely Raff, and calling it a transcription is way off the mark. I hope all that helps, and thanks for giving me the heads up on the Sarasate edition and the Naxos release, both of which had passed me by.

[Mark Thomas]

The British Library record of its Sarasate edition gives an acquisition date of c.1900, which would fit in with the posthumous publication theory, and also explain why it doesn't appear in Hofmeister XIX.

[eschiss1]

Though I don't know whether, with libraries (especially online, where library database programs don't always give people the widest range of options for entering these things), "c.1900" means "c.1900", "c.190x", "c.19xx", "c.1890-1910", "c.1870-1930", etc. etc. etc. ...

[Mark Thomas]

I take your point, Eric, but I guess that it's still reasonable to expect c.1900 to date it to sometime after Raff's death in 1882.

[TerraEpon]

Thanks Mark. Given that Sarasate and Raff are both composers I catalog (own personal compilations of works lists), I'm always trying to be and get the info right....on top of the fact I want to tag it right and get it right in my other catalog (noting all the classical recordings I own), knowing who did what is important.

Oddly, the Naxos disc liner notes seem to slightly imply in their wording that Sarasate didn't do the arrangement -- I thought maybe they threw it in for filler given it was "one of Sarasate's favorite pieces to perform" -- which is what caused me to do the checking in the first place.

[JimL]

I, for one, always wondered why Sarasate never composed a concerto, but concentrated on shorter works.  He certainly had a melodic gift, and if he doubted his ability to develop themes he could always rely on the truncated form used by Wieniawski in his 2nd concerto (and many others).

[Mark Thomas]

In contrast to the other fourteen tracks, the booklet notes don't actually say, or even imply, that the composition was anything other than 100% Raff: "La fée d'amour (track [15]) by Joachim Raff is an extraordinary piece and was certainly Sarasate's favourite concert item, which he seems to have played at virtually every concert, either with piano or with orchestra. The nineteenth-century popularity of Raff owed much to his greatest champion, Sarasate. La fée d'amour, like much that Raff wrote, has fallen from the repertoire, and this recording may very well be the first. Sarasate played other pieces by Raff with great regularity, including the Sonatas Nos 1 and 2 and a Suite."

[eschiss1]

Well, Sarasate did include Fée d'amour in concerts in 1892 (St. James Hall, London, October the 8th at least) (and maybe earlier- hrm, "The Musical Courier" indeed has him performing the orchestral version in London in mid-1889. These from Google Books searches, etc). I don't know if it was his own edition, though. Oh, ok, I see from the above that "Sarasate edition" might not exist in this case or, as with many LoC editions, might be a matter of adding fingerings (which under US copyright law - well, that's US copyright law of the late 19th century, which was --- erm--- weak.)

(I seem to recall William Newman (in The Sonata Since Beethoven) quoting Sarasate praising Raff's violin sonatas.)

[eschiss1]

the Sarasate version of the violin/piano arr. and the original (violin/piano arr. I mean) have both been uploaded to IMSLP, so, well, no better way to compare than download both and compare, I suppose... (erm, or not, since only the piano score seems to be available of the 1856/7 release, and I'm guessing Sarasate's changes were largely to the separate violin part. ... Hrm.)

[TerraEpon]

'Piano score' in instrument + piano cases is almost always both instruments. Actually I can't think of any cases where's NOT the case....certainly every clarinet solo I own has the clarinet part in the piano score.
And as I said in my first post I checked both and they seem to be the same. Now I didn't do a throughout detailed look but the piano arrangement, at least, seems to be the same (I did notice a couple superfluous differences, like a metronome marking in one but not the other)

[eschiss1]

no, this BSB scan lacked the violin solo part. The description of it at the Bavarian Library site claimed piano score and solostimme, but the only hint of that is the page and a half of violin cadenza @ page 20 and 21, and I guess p.20 in a too-quick, hurried, going-to-the-next-job processing could be mistaken for a separate violin solo part.