De Facto Concertos/Symphonies/Symphonic Poems

[Ilja]

Dear all,


A few weeks ago, I corresponded with a Belgian musicologist, who told me in the course of that conversation that Gabriel Pierné used to combine three of his pieces for piano and orchestra to create a de facto second piano concerto, with the Poème Symphonique Op. 37 as the first movement, the Fantaisie-Ballet Op. 6 as the second, and the Scherzo-caprice Op. 25 as the third. Perhaps not coincidentally this is the order that Hyperion puts them in on their RPC CD, but I haven't read the notes there.
I was rather intrigued by that concept, and couldn't off the top of my head think of many other examples where separately composed pieces were played consistently together, in the same order, thereby in fact creating a new, "accumulative" piece.
I vaguely remember reading that Philipp Scharwenka instructed his Wald- und Berggeister and Frühlingswogen to be played back-to-back (although I'm unsure in what order), and there is Granados' "Piano Concerto" of course, but IIRC that was an assembly job concocted after the composer's death.
Therefore: can you give other examples of the same?

[tpaloj]

Berlioz meant his Symphonie Fantastique and Lelio to be performed consecutively together. Tchaikovsky's 3rd piano concerto might also count, but that's more of a matter of posthumous interpretation – but the piece has an interesting history no matter what.

I recall reading of an opera composer whose two operas could be played simultaneously or something to that effect. Wish I'd remember the name...

[Revilod]

Are you thinking of Strauss's  "Ariadne auf Naxos"? A serious opera and a burlesque are to be performed simultaneously to "save time".  ( This is done for an amusing dramatic purpose, of course. )

Milhaud's 14th and 15th quartets can be played simultaneously to form an octet.

But, as regards playing two pieces one after the other, Rontgen wanted his 6th and 7th piano concertos to be played consecutively.

[Gareth Vaughan]

About Rontgen, yes I'd forgotten that.
There was a baroque (I believe) composer I heard about at school who was supposed to have composed 3 oratorios which were each performed on 3 consecutive nights; then, on the 4th night, they were performed simultaneously. But I cannot remember the name of the composer. I don't think it can have been one of the more well-known ones - and perhaps that tells us something about the musical merits of this contrapuntal tour-de-force.

[eschiss1]

Re the Tchaikovsky: the Andante and Finale are the 2nd and 4th movements of the planned symphony in E-flat major, but he did mean for them to be the 2nd and 3rd movements of his piano concerto no.3, afaik (when that project was abandoned). (http://en.tchaikovsky-research.net/pages/Piano_Concerto_No._3.) As he only finished the first movement, only that movement was published (the 2nd and 3rd movements were completed by Taneev and published separately.) In any case we're following the composer's wishes and keeping together parts of a work that was, at some point, intended to be a Concerto, so this is a separate case.

As to the opera composer some of whose operas could be performed separately or in counterpoint (these don't survive) I think his name was Raimondi. Alan Walker mentions him as an influence on Liszt.

[Gareth Vaughan]

That's it, Eric - Pietro Raimondi. Thank you. And as Wikipedia tells us (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietro_Raimondi) my memory had played me false and he was early 19th century, not baroque. Pity they haven't survived - one would like to have seen the scores, if not heard them performed.

[Gareth Vaughan]

A quick search of the ICCU shows that a full score of the three oratorios appears to be held in the BIBLIOTECA DEL CONSERVATORIO SANTA CECILIA in Rome. Will check more fully later.

[eschiss1]

That's very good to hear. Maybe it's the specific works that Liszt was interested in that disappeared, or maybe those were the three works and they disappeared only just as far as he knew... (Because of having to put most of my books in storage for a year, I don't have my copy of Walker to hand unfortunately.)

[Mark Thomas]

Alan Walker: Franz Liszt - The Weimar years, 1848-1861 p.319

[Ilja]

As for the operas, were we perhaps talking of Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana and Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci, which are often seen together?

[eschiss1]

The sense in which Raimondi's operas or oratorios could/can be played together wasn't in succession, btw, but at the same time in counterpoint (like the Milhaud quartets, or like that part of Liszt's Tasso where you have a section that works whether you consider the whole orchestra, or just the winds, or just the strings, as individual minuets...)

[Gareth Vaughan]

Yes, the Raimondi work is an exercise in counterpoint and not what Ilja was talking about. It was merely an interesting digression.

[kolaboy]

According to Banfield's Finzi biography a Jonathon Cook has reconstructed the finale of Finzi's piano concerto - though apparently the Grand Fantasia was intended to be the 3rd movement (I had wrongly assumed it was the 1st) of a four movement work. At any rate it would be nice to hear the reconstructed 4th movement at some point...

[Rainolf]

How often is Dvorak's Trilogy of concert overtures "Nature-Life-Love" (so the original title) performed as a cycle, as the composer originally intended? "In Nature's Realm", "Carnival" and "Othello", played after each other, form a symphony-like piece with cyclic connections between the movements:

In Nature's Realm: Allegro
Carnival: Scherzo with Trio
Othello: Adagio (the slow introduction) and Finale
______
Dvorak's Symphony No. 8 1/2

In my opinion it was a mistake of the composer to let his publisher publish this work as three different pieces, which resulted in performances and recordings of the isolated overtures. The cyclic performance of the overtures make much more sense. The reminiscenses to the Nature overture in Carnival and Othello only could be recognised as such when the three movements are played together.

[Ilja]

I honestly had no idea. But having played this a few times now, I'm not sure that Carnaval works that great as a middle movement...