Chopin Piano Concerto No.1 arr. Kalkbrenner

[jen_alyce]

Hi everyone,

I am seeking the sheet music to Kalkbrenner's arrangement of Chopin's Piano Concerto No.1, Op.11 for Piano and String Quintet: Grand Concerto pour le Pianoforte avec Accompagnement d´Orchestre ou de Quintuor ad libitum / composé et dédié à Monsieur Fréd. Kalkbrenner Fr.

If anyone has it I would be extremely grateful for a scan!

Jen

[steltz]

We don't have the Kalkbrenner arrangement, but we do have the arrangement for piano and string quintet by Richard Hofmann here:

http://imslp.org/wiki/Piano_Concerto_No ... 3%A9ric%29

Click on the Arrangements tab and then scroll down to it.

[kalliwoda]

Note:
You seem to have misunderstood the title ...composé et dédié à Monsieur Fréd. Kalkbrenner...
This is just a dedication, there is no arrangement or editorial work by Kalkbrenner whatsever!

[steltz]

@jen_alyce: then the one already here is probably the one you want. Enjoy it!

[jen_alyce]

Thank you both for the replies. I know that it was dedicated to Kalkbrenner, I was simply quoting the full original title. A review I read about a performance with the Iberia String Quartet saying they had based their arrangement on the "Kalkbrenner version" led me to believe that he had made his own arrangement, but perhaps it is one and the same as the Hoffman arrangement? I'll keep researching! If anyone else has any more info on this please do let me know!

Cheers!
Jen

[kalliwoda]

There seems to be a Pre-Hofmann version with quintet - see here
http://musikipac.staatsbibliothek-berli ... 1&cop=:osy
With a Kistner Plate Number 1020 this dates from 1835 and will most likely be off-limits for photocopying, but I can compare it to the later Hofmann version on IMSLP (Kistner Plate 4870) sometime next week.

[jen_alyce]

Thank you Kalliwoda! This is has been stumping me for months but now it's turning out to be truly fascinating. I can't believe I've never used the forums on this site until now! Very interested to hear what you think about Kalkbrenner vs Hofmann version.

[Melodia]

Actually the first version was by Chopin himself (and as noted above, apparently dedicated to Kalkbrenner, who was his teacher after all)

[jen_alyce]

I just stumbled across this thread about Concerto No.2. Wondering if a similar thing has been done to the Concerto No.1: the wind cues appear in the piano part rather than "arranged" into the strings?

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=3788

I'll compare the Hoffman string parts and orchestral string parts today.

[kalliwoda]

Your guess is completely correct and the first edition of the 1. Concerto is like the 2. Concerto:

The 1835 Kistner print has a Piano part with extensive orchestral cues (Plate 1020.1021.1022). The string parts seem to be just copies of the original string parts, but they have some wind cues too (Plate 1020.1021).
Compared to the Hofmann edition, the only other recognizable difference are a few corrected phrasing marks. Wind cues in the string parts seem on a first glance not to be converted to string parts proper but just left out - will have to check this again, as I read your comment above only after my library visit.

[jen_alyce]

Great, thanks!

I have been doing a little research of my own for those interested. I no longer believe that an attributed “Kalkbrenner” arrangement exists. He may have had some part in the process, but I can find no information about it whatsoever. I contacted Kirstner, who at first confirmed that Kalkbrenner did do an arrangement but even they seemed hazy about the details! I’m not convinced that the person I spoke to knew much about it either. I questioned her for further information and haven’t heard from them since. The original Kirstner edition that I had originally thought was the Kalkbrenner that you are been looking at have 3 plate numbers: 1020, 1021 and 1022. These refer to the versions: for orchestra, quintet and piano solo respectively. It seems that these “Quintet” (or so sometimes small chamber string ensemble) settings were used mainly for rehearsals and private salon performances. There are passages in the Hoffman edition that would be impossible for a quintet to manage, demanding the presence of second players. I have found a fantastic article “Arrangements of Chopin’s Concert Works” by Halina Goldberg published in The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 19, No.1, 2002 University of California Press. She talks about the original Kirstner edition and it’s lack of coverage of the wind parts saying, a performance of this edition for quintet “hardly qualifies as a complete and satisfactory musical rendition. The Chamber parts found among the extant original publications of Chopin’s concertos are decidedly problematic.” A footnote then explains “Hoffman’s quintet arrangement of this concerto rectifies all these problems and is truly self-sufficient”. - Though as long as it is played by a double-quartet with Bass It seems the words "quintet" and "quartet" really were just another name for a small chamber ensemble...Halina discusses this further in her article. You can get from Jstore: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jm.2002.19.1.39.

So there you go! We end up back at the beginning with the Hoffman parts

[steltz]

I'm not surprised the publisher couldn't give you much information -- some of them have been in existence for over 100 years, and details tend to get buried or go missing.

I thought it was extremely funny when the real composer of "Wagner"'s Adagio for clarinet and strings was eventually found -- someone found a box of scores in an attic, if I remember correctly, and in it was a full Baermann quintet containing a slow movement identical to the piece that everyone knew couldn't have been by Wagner.

The publisher of the "Wagner" piece should have known who it was by, since they turned out to be the original (decades and decades before) publisher of the Baermann!