4.0 out of 5 stars
The music can stand on its own in these piano transcriptions, April 29, 2011
This review is from: Bernstein: West Side Story Symphonic Dances; Fancy Free; Touches (Audio CD)
After all, it's Liszt who started it, and he did it galore. I mean, transcribing orchestral compositions for the pianoforte: Beethoven's complete symphonies and Berlioz' symphonie fantastique and Harold in Italy (the latter for viola and piano), his own works of course, plus the numerous paraphrases and fantasies on all the popular operas of his days (and his days lasted easily 50 years).
So there is precedent to Austrian/Swedish pianist Dag Achatz' transcriptions of Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from "West Side Story" and the ballet "Fancy Free". The former was Achatz' initiative, and it was met with Bernstein's approval, so much so that, as Achatz reminisces in the liner notes, Bernstein requested that he transcribe Fancy Free as well.
What is lost then, and what is gained in the passage from orchestra to piano?
Lost is obviously (despite the ability of the piano to emulate, to some extent, the orchestra) the variety and lushness of orchestral colors, and the added lyricism they convey in the more lyrical moments, the mood of Broadway. Achatz is very aware of that. As he writes: "the sonic capabilities of the piano are somwhat limited when compared to a full symphony orchestra, which has always fascinated me. (...) A colour photograph is changed to black-and-white". Or a Michelangelo fresco into an etching.
What is gained: a rhythmic pungency, a sharpness of attack, a bounce and lightness of touch, and of course, the never-abating astonishment at the pianistic virtuosity. At 2:49 in track 3, the "reduction" from orchestra to piano even imparts the music an atonal angularity that you wouldn't believe was ever in West Side Story, and makes it sound, here, like an entirely original piece that would have been composed specifically for the piano.
So does the music, so transcribed for the piano, stand on its own? With "West Side Story", it is probably impossible to say, because there is no way the listener can erase from his mind the constant memory of the original piece - and not just the symphonic dances, mind you, but of the complete musical. Achatz' transcription in no way can replace the original (nor does it aim at doing so), but it offers as enjoyable, entertaining and valid a hearing as any Liszt transcription or paraphrase of a popular opera in relation to the original composition: not subservient to the original(as is the case, for instance, with those two-piano transcriptions of some Mahler symphonies that are recorded now and then), but an autonomous piece offering its own pianistic and musical rewards. "Fancy Free" sounds like sophisticated ragtime or like piano music that the lighter Copland - the composer of The Cat and the Mouse or Four Piano Blues, not of the Piano Sonata or Piano Variations - could have written. Bersntein returned to his roots, in a way.
"Touches" is the one Bernstein piece in this recital that was directly written for the piano, in 1981. It consists of a (Bergian-sounding) Chorale, eight variations and a coda. It is less than 10-minutes long. The variations sound like the piano music that an American composer steeped in the French neo-classical and German expressionist traditions would have written: distant echoes of Copland's "serious" style, Sessions, Perle. Nothing revolutionnary in the piano technique and nothing major, but an interesting because rare facet of the art of Bernstein.
TT 57 minutes.
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