# Are there any piano arrangements that are just as good/better than the original?



## level82rat (Jun 20, 2019)

Many times when a piece is arranged for piano it loses a good portion of its beauty. Case in point Vivaldi's Winter on piano. Don't know how to describe it but it just sounds like a cheap knockoff of a better original.

However I then stumbled across Pletnev's arrangement of Tchaikovsky's Pas de Deux. I think this is great, and I enjoy it even more than the original.

What are your thoughts on the matter?


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## Schoenberg (Oct 15, 2018)

When the arrangement for a work is created by some random guy on youtube who is most likely arranging it for the money and uses fancy lighting effects, such as in the video you posted it is almost certain that the arrangement will be a cheap knockoff. However, when the person who arranges the work is respectable and doesn't resort to cheap methods such as having fancy lighting in order to lure in viewers, an arrangement can often be quite good.

However, piano arrangements of an orchestral works will almost always be inferior to the original works, as the transcriber generally attempts to emulate the orchestral textures on a piano, which the piano has difficulty rendering, for reasons such as that the piano cannot sustain sound, the orchestra has a bigger active range, the orchestra can play more complicated parts at once, and that the orchestra has a larger variety of sounds than the piano. (Interestingly enough, organ transcriptions for obvious reasons are not limited by the first and last reasons, and to an extent the second and third.) This means that most transcriptions of works will not live up to the original orchestral work. Still, there are always exceptions such as Liszt's _Capriccio alla turca sur des motifs de Beethoven_ which is not just a mere transcription, but also adds on music to an original work.

If we look over symphonic orchestral transcriptions and delve into a size that is more manageable by pianists to emulate, such as that of a string orchestra, transcriptions can become much more similar to the original work. An example of this would be Grieg's Holberg suite, however it is a slightly different case as it was originally written for piano, but then transcribed for string orchestra.

If we decide to go to the next level and transcribe music written for other solo instruments to the piano, it becomes obvious that piano transcriptions can in fact be better. Liszt (and others) were able to transcribe the organ works of Bach with relative success. Other transcriptions such as the transcription of the Bach chaconne by Busoni, though I have a strong dislike of the transcription, the piano does provide things that the medium of the original work lacked, such as the ability to have true bass.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Schubert/Liszt songs
Gershwin/Earle Wilde
Debussy/Debussy
Beethoven/Beethoven (Grosse Fuge)
Mahler/Cooke (Symphony 10)


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## premont (May 7, 2015)

OK, even if piano arrangements may be listenable and add something - often superfluous - to the original composition, I still haven't heard an arrangement, which I actually thought was better than the original. The arrangements made by the composer himself generally, and not surprisingly, reveals most insight into the work, I think.


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## rice (Mar 23, 2017)

Busoni's transcription of Bach's work?


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Rachmaninoff's transcription for two pianos of his _Symphonic Dances_.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

During the Romantic period, before we had recordings, many composers produced piano and/or chamber versions of their orchestral pieces so that people could play them at home. In many cases that was their main income source from their work. 

But some composers of some more recent works have produced piano versions (often for four hands) of their "hits" with excellent results. I have enjoyed (perhaps as much as the original orchestral version) piano versions of The Nutcracker Suite, The Rite of Spring and 3 Pieces from Petrushka. I also quite like the piano version of Holst's The Planets and there is also a lot of Ravel (I think the piano versions came first). 

I tend to be a lot less keen on orchestrations of piano pieces (Pictures at an Exhibition is an exception but we have Ravel to thank for that). For example, I dislike the orchestration (for strings) of Prokofiev's piano masterpiece, Visions Fugitives.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Rimsky/Cziffra (bumblebee)
Bach/Katsaris BWV 565
Rachmaninov/Richardson (Vocalise, Gilels plays it)
Strauss/Schultz-Evler (Blue Danube)


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

premont said:


> , I still haven't heard an arrangement, which I actually thought was better than the original. The arrangements made by the composer himself generally, and not surprisingly, reveals most insight into the work, I think.


What? Not even this?









Or even this?









Or is there something about the piano which makes it unsuitable for a transcription?


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)




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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

Another mention for the composer who orchestrated some of his piano works to full score without too much fuss...Ravel.


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## premont (May 7, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> Or is there something about the piano which makes it unsuitable for a transcription?


Yes, maybe. The colorless, homogenized sound of the piano will always make arranged music sound truncated in some way. Reger's Brandenburg concerto transcriptions and Liszt's Beethoven symphony transcriptions e.g. may be interesting to hear because the attention is drawn to other elements of the music than the instrumental color of the originals, but to think that these arrangements are better than the originals is going a bit too far IMO. And almost always, when I hear an arrangement for piano, I never-the-less hear the original in my inner ear. So what purpose do such arrangements serve to day?


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