Somewhat OT: Schoenberg arrangements

[Urs Liska]

Hi all,

this is somewhat off-topic, but I hope you won't mind the advertisment - 
in the end there *is* quite some LilyPond in it.

On Feb 18, 8-9.30 PM CET I will be on Deutschlandradio Kultur, 
presenting my second largest recording project, a 2 CD set with 
historical Schoenberg arrangements. This emerged as a follow-up to my 4 
disc set with Schoenberg's complete lieder 
(http://www.schoenberg-lieder.de, some excerpts can be heard at 
https://www.youtube.com/user/schoenberglieder) and includes very 
different kinds of arrangements. Unfortunately I don't have an idea yet 
when it will be released. I'm going to talk with the editor about the 
music and the project, and one will be able to listen to about an hour 
of music - most of it unheard so far, at least in these versions. 
Appearing beside me are Konrad Jarnot (baritone), Claudia Barainsky 
(soprano) and the GrauSchumacher piano duo.
Detail page of the broadcast:
http://www.deutschlandradiokultur.de/klaviermusik-zu-acht-haenden-schoenbergs-werkstatt.1091.de.html?dram:article_id=310418
Deutschlandradio Kultur can also be listened through their online stream 
at 
http://www.deutschlandradio.de/radiohoeren-auf-deutschlandradio-de.219.de.html

Of course it is mainly going to be about the music, but I intend to also 
talk a bit about LilyPond, as it did play a certain role in the project. 
I think the tasks in that project finally brought me into seriously 
using LilyPond, and they marked the start of my continuous mailing list 
activity, presumably with this post:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2010-05/msg00098.html
covering a still unsolved issue.
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2010-06/msg00438.html
also covers a very important and still unsolved issue, but here we are 
at least making promising progress, some four and a half years later ;-)

The score fragment discussed and shown in 
http://lilypondblog.org/2013/06/complex-tasks-yes-please/ is part of the 
project and will be heard, as is the example on page 12 of the essay 
attached to this post: 
http://lilypondblog.org/2013/07/plain-text-files-in-music/
But the most exciting pieces are two sets of eight hand piano 
arrangements which I edited for the first time from the manuscripts 
(well, actually from digital versions of them, but I'm sure I'll go to 
Vienna one day to complete the task with the real scores). For a very 
important historical concert in 1910 Anton Webern arranged the 
orchestral interludes of part I of the Gurre-Lieder for two pianos with 
six/eight hands. That concert not only featured  the premiere of this 
first part (three years before the premiere of the full orchestral 
version) but also those of the Book of the Hanging Gardens and the piano 
pieces opus 11. Re-creating this three-hour concert for the 100th 
anniversary was an experience to remember. For this occasion I compiled 
a continuous version of part I of the Gurre-Lieder with piano from two 
to eight hands, using these eight hand arrangements, Schoenberg's 
original piano versions of the songs (contained in the lieder box) and a 
few very short excerpts from the known piano reduction by Alban Berg. 
Performing this live is a very daunting but also rewarding task :-)
At a similar concert in 1912 three eight hand arrangements from the 
orchestral pieces opus 16 by Erwin Stein were performed, presumably for 
the first and last time until the current recording. Of course these new 
editions have been prepared with LilyPond, but unfortunately they have 
only reached the state of being performable. For financial reasons they 
haven't been published yet. So if someone would manage to raise a few 
thousand Euro ... (the calculation for the two eight hand sets is about 
1.500 Euro per piece, although there would also be the option to do the 
whole Gurre-Lieder part I, which would of course be more expensive 
although the piano songs have already been had their scholarly review in 
the Complete Edition and would "only" have to be copied).

So after all this _is_ a LilyPond broadcast even when I won't really 
talk about it ...

Best
Urs