# Re-orchestration?



## Guest (Apr 23, 2016)

Has anyone attempted (and recorded) re-orchestrations of established works (successful or otherwise)?

I'm wondering what the 4th movement of Beethoven's 5th would sound like if the horn entry was played on woodwind instead...or low strings...or...

You get the idea.


----------



## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Mahler's retouchings of the Schumann symphonies are most famous, but he also did a few things to Beethoven's when he conducted them. Mostly he lightened up doublings he found excessive in order to make the texture clearer. He didn't make them sound like Mahler.

For a while, this was not too uncommon, and conductors like Stokowski regularly tweaked scores here and there, but today's climate of fidelity to the score views such alterations as problematic at best.



MacLeod said:


> I'm wondering what the 4th movement of Beethoven's 5th would sound like if the horn entry was played on woodwind instead...or low strings...or...


Weaker and less forceful. If you're referring to the opening of the movement, it's already being played by all of the sections of the orchestra.


----------



## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

It´s not particularly common that such attempts are recorded, except alterations and editing in the pieces done by conductors of the past (Stokowski or Walter were examples, cf. for example in _Berlioz_ http://www.classicalnotes.net/classics/berliozsym.html)

Mahler also revised a _Bach_ suite, recorded by Rozhdestvensky and Chailly 




And there´s Anthony Payne´s attempt at a chamber version of _Bruckner_´s 2nd Symphony 
http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/tw.asp?w=W15420

The _Neue Wiener Schule _and its associates did lots of transcriptions of their works for smaller forces, and occasionally _Mahler_´s or _Johan Strauss_´ too.

There´s been several examples of reworking _Mahler_ for smaller orchestral forces, such as

- Erwin Stein´s version of the 4th Symphony 
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/de...r-Kammerensemble-von-Erwin-Stein/hnum/6127055
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/de...r-Kammerensemble-von-Erwin-Stein/hnum/8380911
- the 4th by Klaus Simon 
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/mahler-symphony-no-4/hnum/6672684

- Klaus Simon´s recent version of the 9th 
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/sinfonie-9-bearbeitet-fuer-kammerensemble/hnum/5894669
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/symphony-no-9/hnum/5770616

- orchestral songs, by Gerhardt Müller-Hornbach (and Schönberg) 
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/de...Bearbeitung-f%FCr-Kammerensemble/hnum/7735530

_Händel_´s music has seen a lot of attempts, in particular The Messiah and the Water Music and Fireworks suites.

In _Mussorgsky_´s Night on a Bald Mountain, the tendency has been to play Rimsky-Korsakov´s altered orchestration, 
but Mussorgsky´s own original one constitutes a different, and wilder, listening experience.


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Stokowski had a go at reorchestrating most things he conducted - even the Beethoven 9th!


----------



## Guest (Apr 24, 2016)

Mahlerian said:


> Weaker and less forceful. If you're referring to the opening of the movement, it's already being played by all of the sections of the orchestra.


It's the blaring horns that are the most distinctive feature of that opening which is why I gave it as an example - and I get that it would be weaker. But more importantly, it could be 'different', changing the whole character of the passage, the movement, the symphony.

Joen - thanks for the list and links - I've got some listening to do!

I suppose I'm a bit surprised that no-one's come back with more examples, but I suppose that with CM being a relatively conservative art (except when it isn't, if you know what I mean) the tendency to take others' works and rework them isn't strong - regarded as sacrilegious perhaps?

I think what prompted this thought is that I find composers' choices of instruments intriguing, and the interpretations of the conductors sometimes irritating and the faults of recordings frustrating. Where in this piece I can hear a bassoon clearly, in another performance, it's almost inaudible. I get used to Berglund's Sibelius 2nd (my least favourite of the symphonies) and then listen to the Davis/LSO Live and it's quite different (my least favourite of his cycle).

Lastly, I wonder whether there was ever a tradition that certain instrument combinations are 'forbidden' - and not just for reasons of one always drowning the other out - traditions that have doubtless been trampled on by now by the 'moderns' or the ancients who were modern in spirit?


----------



## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

Does Mozart's G Minor Symphony played by a Jape se Koto Orchestra count?


----------

