Thursday, September 22

Volodos Latest Transcription (Tchaikovsky op.54 no 10)

I've written quite a few times about the Russian pianist Arcadi Volodos. I believe he is one of the really great pianists of our time. I was fortunate enough to hear him live in London, where he performed Prokofiev 2nd Concerto - it was a superb performance. (I always wonder why didn't he ever record this concerto?...)

Anyway, I want to say a few words about his transcriptions, and in particular his latest one - Thaikovsky's "lullaby in a storm" which he played/recorded in his Vienna recital. As I've written in the past, when you write a transcription you must have in mind the instrument you are writing for - its sound and its capacities. Volodos is well aware of that, that is why his transcriptions are, in my view, very succesful from a pianistic point of view.

His latest one, I believe it's probably his best - definitely more mature that the others. It somehow goes deeper than the previous ones, in terms of richness of sound and atmosphere.
Volodos takes full advantage of the piano's inherent capacities; he also enriches the score with a multi-dimentional melodic line (one can easily see Rachmaninoff's influence here). The result is a wonderful piece which does not "look" like a transcription at all...


I would very much like to play this piece but I cannot find the score!




14 comments:

Anonymous said...

i have looked everywhere for the sheet music of this transcription, why has no one done it yet!?

christos makropoulos said...

I really don't know! I've looked everywhere too, but in vain. It seems that the only solution is to write the score myself - but I know I'll never have the time for that. Besides, it's not so easy! To me, it's his best transcription so far, in terms of maturity and musicality. Don't you think?

thewayup said...

surely some of the people who've done the other volodos transcriptions will have done this?

christos makropoulos said...

Well, it seems that all other transcriptions have been "transcribed" except this one! By far the most popular one is Volodos's version of Alla-Turca, but one can quite easily find all the others too... Not this one! If you ever come across the score, please, let me know! I so much want to play it! Thanks for commenting on my blog.

Petrof said...

Please, if you happen upon the transcription, let me (and about fifty thousand others) know!

Anonymous said...

still no transcription of this available?

Anonymous said...

Ffffff I tried to transcribe it, but I've just given up. I'm not good enough for this.

Anonymous said...

http://www.scribd.com/doc/112933459/Volodos-Berceuse-54-10

Anonymous said...

At last! Hope it's a good one...

Anonymous said...

Yes, it is. Played it on a concert 2 days ago.

Anonymous said...

Congratulations!

Anonymous said...

This is very good. Thank you! However, the scoring is messy in places. The bars with the sopranino clefs and octave bass clefs are unnecessarily complicatedly written. Normal clefs are fine to use here

Anonymous said...

Thank you M. Yokoyama! Been waiting such a long time for this...

Jiyang Chen said...

Thanks for the link to the sheet music! I learned and recorded the transcription last month:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPqJYjv8Q0E