IMSLP Forums

Who Will Tchaikovsky orchestral version of The Four Seasons?thank you?

Some confusion here. Tchaikovsky wrote a cycle called "The Seasons", but this was for solo piano only:

http://imslp.org/wiki/The_Seasons%2C_Op ... _Ilyich%29

Vivaldi wrote a cycle of concertos for violin and orchestra popularly called "The Four Seasons":

http://imslp.org/wiki/Le_Quattro_Stagio ... Antonio%29

But Tchaikovsky did not orchestrate his piano cycle "The Seasons", or make any arrangements of Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons".

Davydov wrote: But Tchaikovsky did not orchestrate his piano cycle "The Seasons", or make any arrangements of Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons".

No he didn't, but Aleksandr Gauk (the conductor) did. Gauk, however, died in 1963 so this orchestration is not PD (I don't know if it was even published). There might of course be orchestrations by others...

The ubiquitous Theodore Moses-Tobani made orchestrations of the Op.37 as well, all of which were published by Carl Fischer in the early 20th century. Moses-Tobani died in 1955, so all of his orchestrations are free in Canada. Nearly all of them are likewise free in the USA. Under "Rule of the Shorter Term", they are free in the EU as well.

An instrumentation for orchestra of September - December you can find here:
http://www.lothars-music-edition.com/Yo ... r-December

The orchestral score of Gauk version was published in 1956 by Gosudarstvennoe Muzykal'noe Izdatel'stvo (Moscow). Original printing was 500 pieces (quite usual number for Soviet scores), so it is rare score.

Instrumentation is: 3232-4231-timp, perc- cel - harp -strings.

The Gauk orchestration would be eligible for posting here starting in January.

Dear all,

just to add a request to this post: Does anyone have the orchestra score of the Theodore Moses-Tobani version of December by Tschaikowsky? Desperately trying to find it but no success so far. Carl Fischer apparently doesn't publish the edition anymore and weren't of any help.
Any suggestions are highly appreciated and many thanks in advance!

Hate to be the bearer of bad news but if you know Tobani's background, he was a producer of theater arrangements of pop music at the time and the majority of these never had "Full Scores" (just like Johann Strauss Jr. was the same) as we define them today showing all instruments of the setting, all he did was produce piano reduction with cues to the parts of the orchestral instruments playing in the reduction (actually this reduction is more of a setting for Violin and Piano with no cues at all). At this point if you want a Full Score of all instruments, you going to have to make the Full Score in an engraving program like MuseScore or Finale or Sibelius to get one. As far as I know its unlikely one exists, maybe one of the online sheet music sites could have one.

Actually there is a different orchestration that was done of the same piece by Clark McAlister but that is not eligible for upload on the site as its an under-copyright arrangement of its own setting for orchestra (its not the same as the Tobani arrangement).