Complete Keyboard Transcriptions Of Concertos By Baroque Composers

Features 16 of Bach's transcriptions for solo keyboard instruments (piano and harpsichord) of concertos for violin and other non-keyboard instruments by Vivaldi, Telemann, and others. Bach-Gesellschaft edition.

Early in his career, Bach began to transcribe for the keyboard a number of concertos for violin, oboe, and other instruments by such baroque masters as Vivaldi and Telemann. His purpose: to study and explore the works of other composers as well as to supply good clavier music for his own performances. This collection of sixteen of these celebrated transcriptions is reprinted from the definitive Bach-Gesellschaft edition prepared by Ernst Naumann and presented in a study format designed to give amateur and professional pianists and harpsichordists a lifetime of pleasurable study and use. Six of these glorious keyboard works are known to be transcriptions of Vivaldi violin concertos. Three are based on concertos written by Duke Johann Ernst of Saxe-Weimar, the son of Bach's employer at Weimar. One is based on a violin concerto by Telemann, another on an oboe concerto by Alessandro Marcello, and another on a concerto by Benedetto Marcello. The sources of the remaining works are unknown. Vivaldi, whose music Bach probably first heard in 1712, was to provide a strong influence on the young composer. Bach would eventually assimilate the Italian's style and use it with his own contrapuntal heritage and the Northern idiom in creating what we recognize today as the typical Bach style. These transcriptions, which represent his introduction to the new idiom, richly display a dynamic virtuosity that makes their performance an exhilarating experience.

Evidence indicates that the concertos of Vivaldi, Bach, Haydn etc were performed as chamber music, not the full orchestral works commonly assumed. The concertos of Vivaldi, Bach, Handel and their contemporaries are some of the most popular, and the most frequently performed, pieces of classical music; and the assumption has always been they were full orchestral works. This book takes issue with this orthodox opinion to argue quite the reverse: that contemporaries regarded the concerto as chamber music. The author surveys the evidence, from surviving printed and manuscript performance material, from concerts throughout Europe between 1685 and 1750 (the heyday of the concerto), demonstrating that concertos were nearly always played one-to-a-part at that time. He makes a particularly close study of the scoring of the bass line, discussing the question of what instruments were most appropriate and what was used when. The late Dr RICHARD MAUNDER was Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge.

Liszt's reputation as the supreme pianist of the 19th century often overshadowed his other achievements, including transcribing the works of such composers as Richard Wagner for the piano. This collection features all 15 of Liszt's brilliant compositions of Wagnerian themes from Rienzi, Flying Dutchman, Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Tristan and Isolde, Parsifal, and others from 1848 to 1882.

The three piano concertos contained in this volume were all composed in 1785, when Mozart was 29. High points of one of the most amazingly productive and creatively brilliant periods in the composer's life, yet they are masterworks of very different character: No. 20 (K466 in D Minor), a work of intensity, passion, and spiritual conflict; No. 21 (K467 in C Major), with its luminous, world-famous "Andante, " a work of calm and majesty; and No. 22 (K482 in E-flat Major), music of grace and maturity, said to have "realized the century's ideal whilst yet casting aside the shackles of fashion." These three works are presented here in authoritative two-piano playing editions edited by Franz Kullak and Hans Bischoff, two of the nineteenth century's leading piano editors and teachers of pianists. Their classic format for two keyboards is the universal standard, for students and professionals alike, for learning and rehearsing all piano concertos. It gives the pianist the most accessible form and practical means to prepare a work for performance. To this practicality Dover adds the convenience and economy of compiling three major concertos within a single volume.

Intimate, melodious, and full of rhythmic life, these works are reproduced from authoritative early scores. Selections include Septet, Op. 20; Sextet, Op. 71; Sextet, Op. 81b; Octet, Op. 103; Rondino, WoO25; more.

The work of 100 years and three generations of archivists, this compilation, which originally appeared in 1905, encompasses the musical wealth of a nation.