Quarts into Pint Pots: Matthew Rye reviews two discs of Wagnerian piano arrangements

Reviews of Wagner, arr. August Stradal: ‘Winterstürme wichen dem Wonnemond’, The Ride of the Valkyries, Schluss des letzten Aufzuges (Die Walküre), Forest Murmurs (Siegfried), Rheinfahrt aus dem Vorspiel, Trauermusik aus dem letzten Aufzug (Götterdämmerung), Wesendonck Lieder, piano Juan Guillermo Vizcarra (Toccata Classics, 1 CD); Overture (Der fliegende Holländer, arr. Debussy), Siegfrieds Tod und Schlussszene (Götterdämmerung, arr. Pringsheim), Bacchanal (Tannhäuser, arr. Dukas), Prelude and Liebestod (Tristan und Isolde, arr. Reger), piano duo Yaara Tal and Andreas Groethuysen (Sony Classical, 1 CD).

March 2014, Volume 8, Number 1, 94–5.

There is a long and venerable tradition of Wagnerian transcriptions from the composer’s own day – making concert snippets to sell the stage work – to the present, with a recent handful of orchestra-only potted Rings. These two CDs, one a first volume in a series devoted to a single arranger, the other a recital of duos arranged by different hands, together give an interesting insight into the challenges, ingenuities and, indeed, pitfalls involved in attempting to resize Wagner’s orchestral landscapes into the domestic miniatures of a piano or two.