Brahms Piano Quintet op. 34 orchestrated by Holloway ("Symphony in f minor")

[ewk]

Dear all,

Brahms himself and also his piano quintet are of course not unsung. But this arrangement is somewhat obscure – mentioned here and there, but it does not seem to be available although it has been recorded in 2014.

Clara Schumann herself suggested that there are orchestral qualities within Brahms' op. 34 two-piano sonata/Piano quintet. Robin Holloway (had never heard of him, but seems to be a somewhat renowned 20th-century composer, his works being recorded by major UK orchestras and conductors) orchestrated it in 2008, the score is available from Boosey&Hawkes, it was performed in 2014 by the Bergen philharmonic orchestra.

Wikipedia tells us that a further 2014 performance was recorded for norwegian Radio – the link to the performance is dead, unfortunately. The snapshop from the internet wayback machine  did not help me to resurrect it – it seems it was a flash-player based media player at the time.

Did anyone record the performance back in 2014 or downloaded it from NRK when it was still available – or is anyone more successful at the internet wayback machine?

Best wishes!
ewk

P.S.:  I put this in the "recordings" forum because it's most about finding the existing recording – but admins may of course relocate the thread if deemed appropriate.

[Ilja]

This is news to me, to be honest, and I'd be interested to hear it!


There is another decent "symphonization" of one of Brahms' chamber works, the G major string quintet Op. 111, by Peter Klatzow. As with the Op. 34, it was apparently started as a symphonic project.

[eschiss1]

Re Op.111 I've heard two string orchestra arrangements of it but not a full orchestra one. I'd not heard or forgotten that it was originally intended as an orchestral work.

[eschiss1]

Ok, actually, seriously, about Op.111, I've not only never heard that, but could you (at least in pmsg) direct me to a source? Thanks... (Radice claims that it was composed at Joachim's request, as a companion for the 3rd violin sonata; orchestral origins are incongrous here.)

[Alan Howe]

This source states that Op.111 was originally intended to be a symphony:
https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/cape-times/20150701/281900181866615

[eschiss1]

Thanks!
Actually, now that I look into a bit more... ... there's a JStor-digitized article on a subject like this; I have limited JStor reading permissions so I will read it. Apparently Kalbeck destroyed some sketches that might have been relevant to this conversation. This article.

[Alan Howe]

The problem is locating an original source, isn't it? Otherwise it could just be a case of Chinese whispers over the years...

[eschiss1]

Brahms' letters contain a discussion of a manuscript supposedly by Schubert that was alleged to be the "original orchestral version" of _Schubert_'s C major quintet, about which manuscript Brahms was withering ("not one page, not one bar of the score can be by Schubert.") (5 January 1897 letter to Hermann Deiters.) Apologies for a possibly amusing tangent.

[eschiss1]

The JStor article mentions something else that may be of some general interest- that there has been some serious speculative (but still based on actual reasoning, that is, correspondence, etc., not on mere unbound conjecture) scholarship in the direction of compiling as good a list of Brahms' destroyed early works as possible (and also perhaps including the unpublished later works that Brahms asked his friends to destroy). ("Unsingable" music by a sung composer in a positive sense. Though I gather some music in those lost works show up in published works of his, and I wonder if at some point a friend quoted some as-yet-unpublished- and eventually never-published- work in a work of theirs, fully expecting it would be recognized as an homage "when" the work they were quoting/hinting at was published... or other such cases not involving Brahms... ah well! Too speculative, I apologize.)

[eschiss1]

The reliability of Kalbeck as a source on just such subjects seems to be a subject of the article I posted a link to. Briefly, and if I understand, Predota argues that the surviving sketch material that seems probably most clearly to belong to one of the two incomplete symphonies Brahms began late in life, gave its material eventually not to the 2nd string quintet, but to one of the 4 serious songs op.121 and perhaps one of the piano pieces of op.117. (Predota, Georg A.: "Muddying the Waters: Max Kalbeck and the Fifth Symphony by Johannes Brahms." Fontes Artis Musicae Vol. 53, No. 4 (October-December 2006), pp. 309-329 (21 pages))