Hjalmar Borgstrøm Piano Concerto - midi

[pianoconcerto]

Darrel Hoffman has uploaded a midi realization of Borgstrøm's piano concerto in C, Op. 22 (1910), based on the two-piano score he found on IMSLP:  see <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzGVvoCsZB0&t=870s>

Perhaps someone can help him locate the full score which includes 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets (B♭), 2 bassoons + 4 horns, 2 trumpets (C), 3 trombones + timpani + strings.

[Gareth Vaughan]

The digitised Borgstrom MSS held by the National Library of Norway can be found here

The PC Op. 22 is MS 2106 - MS Full Score is here and Orchestral Parts are here

There are also MSS of a PC in D minor and one in G minor. However, these appear to be incomplete.

[pianoconcerto]

Thanks, Gareth.  Maybe he will revise his midi if he has the time.

[Gareth Vaughan]

The PC is a good work IMHO. It would be really lovely to hear a performance with a first class soloist and orchestra.
Maybe Darrel might like to take a look at the D minor concerto since a lot of that (at least the solo piano part and some of the orchestration) is extant.

[tpaloj]

It's a nice coincidence that Mr. Hoffman has decided to transcribe this concerto. I set up to do the same last year but due to time issues I had to put the work aside and I only transcribed some of the first pages. I disagree with Mr. Hoffman about the opening cadenza: I don't believe there's any argument regarding its placement. National Library of Norway has two full scores of this concerto, both of which clearly place the cadenza here in this position, as a bridge between the horn-led opening and the full-force restatement of the main theme that follows after the cadenza.

Anyway, it's a very muscular, excellent concerto by Borgström which should deservedly be noticed. In orchestral guise, the opening pages will sound something like this:

YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/nySnMqha4_c

Again, many thanks to Mr. Hoffmann for providing a transcription of the whole work.

[Darrel Hoffman]

Thanks for the plug.  I have for the past year been working on an exhaustive catalog of every piano concerto ever written (later expanded to include harpsichord, organ, and other keyboard instruments).  It's not just romantic era, I cover everything from Baroque to present day.  I started the YouTube channel to provide midi recordings of works that are otherwise not available.  I'd like to make the catalog available in some fashion as I suspect it would be a useful resource to other fans of rare music.  It currently exists as a Google Tables database, and the only way to see it is for me to explicitly share it with another person's Google account.  Not sure how to get around that.

As for the Borgstrøm, the biggest difference between the separate parts and the conductor score is that the latter has no trumpets, and only 1 trombone.  I wonder if the additional brass was added later?  Or if they were just omitted from the conductor score to save space?

[Darrel Hoffman]

Actually, on closer inspection, it appears that the conductor score does include the trumpets, and the trombones, but the trombones don't appear until the 3rd movement.  (I was mistakenly reading "Tromba" as trombone).  What's concerning is that the separate parts include trombones I & III, but not II.  I think it's all there in the conductor score, though annoying that they're on 2 different clefs since I generally combine them to save space.  (Better than the Herz where they were on 3 different clefs.)

[Alan Howe]

Thanks - and welcome to UC.

[Gareth Vaughan]

Darrel, it looks to me that you have 2 tenor trombones and a bass trombone, which is standard. Hence the 2 different clefs, and I think the 2nd trombone is in the parts, except that the first page of the 2nd trombone part seems to be missing. I will look more carefully tomorrow. (The trombones play only in the 3rd movt of the PC.)

Herz would have written, probably, for an alto, tenor and bass trombone - hence the 3 different clefs.

[eschiss1]

Wait, how'd we get to Henri Herz? (Oh never mind, I see where he was mentioned earlier.)
If you're considering a reconstruction of Herz's 6th piano concerto with chorus from the reduction (whose orchestral parts have been lost, I believe), that would be fun to hear, yes, I believe In the meanwhile of course, thanks for this!!!

[Darrel Hoffman]

Yes, sorry, the Herz #5 was one of my previous submissions on YouTube (not realizing that I'd been scooped a week earlier by the Hyperion recordings all being uploaded - I have the Herz #3 almost ready to go as well, but there's kind of no point now since the recordings are clearly far better than anything I can do with midi.)

I'd also like to hear a full version of the Herz #6 (I have played it - just the piano part of course, and I'm nowhere near a concert-level performer), but that's definitely not going to work well with midi. Best I could do would be fakey oohs and ahs for the choral part - though considering the text of it happens to be a Muslim prayer, I could see that some might consider it controversial.  (It really shouldn't be, but what can you do?)  Still, that's too bad if the orchestral parts are actually lost.

Anyhow, I guess this is getting off topic for Borgstrøm.  I may have a look at that D minor concerto at some point, though if it's really incomplete I'm not sure how much I can do with it...

[tpaloj]

I recall looking into Borgstrøm's d-minor concerto at one point. There are a total of 295 entries of Borgstrøm manuscripts on the Library of Norway website, many which are just a few pages of drafts for various orchestral works (complete or incomplete!). The listed materials for the D minor concerto were very fragmentary and far, far from finished (from what I recall). But I may be mistaken: please do share your findings here if you happen to be looking further into the matter.

[Gareth Vaughan]

I think you are right. I had another look myself and it seems my memory played me false. There is not as much as I thought there was. (Well, it is about 6 or 7 years since I last explored the mss.)

[Darrel Hoffman]

Looks to me like about half of a first movement, but it just kind of stops at the end, doesn't reach anything like a satisfying conclusion, which leaves me with two options: Either finish it myself, which I don't feel qualified to do (I could maybe finish a piece by a composer I know really well - Beethoven and Chopin are probably the only ones as I've studied them extensively and played or at least heard almost their entire repertoire multiple times, but I only know this one piece by Borgstrøm), or just leave it without an ending, and I don't really like that either.

I will add the 2 unfinished concerti to my database however - wouldn't be the only incomplete pieces on there.

[pianoconcerto]

Hi Darrel, since you're new to UC, allow me to mention my discography of piano-and-orchestra works, the short version of which is online at https://www.siue.edu/~aho/discography/Discography.pdf.  This will let you know if a recording exists of a particular work (note:  underlined works are in electronic rather than real performances).  My full discography (offline) includes record/CD labels, performers, sources, etc.; I am happy to provide additional information as needed.  This will save you from preparing midi versions of works that have already been recorded in some form.  I look forward to your future uploads.