Back in the pre-recording and pre-radio days, if you wanted to hear new orchestral works without traveling to symphonic concerts, you simply had to play this music yourself at the piano. Because the piano was virtually the home entertainment center, music publishers brought out thousands of orchestral, chamber, choral, and operatic works in arrangements for one piano four hands, designed primarily for home use.
More skilled pianists could opt for harder two-handed solo arrangements, such as Theodor Kirchner’s of Schumann’s Symphony No. 2. Kirchner was mentored by Mendelssohn, and became friendly with Robert and Clara Schumann. Although a prolific composer in his own right, Kirchner also churned out numerous piano arrangements, mainly because he needed money to feed his gambling habit. Yet his “de-orchestration” of Schumann’s Symphony No. 2 for solo piano is anything but a piece of hack work.
Schumann’s orchestration loses nothing in translation via Kirchner’s idiomatic keyboard deployment. The poignantly expressive Adagio’s long trills and yearning motives seamlessly interweave, while even the close-lying detaché contrapuntal episodes provide refreshing textural contrast. Unlike the heavier and thicker four-hand and two-piano versions of the Allegro Finale, Kirchner treats the obsessive chordal dotted rhythms with care, deploying filled-out chords and added octaves discreetly. It helps, too, that pianist Ronald Lau has a great ear for color, along with supple hands that can toss off the Scherzo’s darting staccato lines and rapid sequences of chords with minimum effort.
Perhaps Ferdinand Hiller (1811-1885) is better known today as the dedicatee of Schumann’s Piano Concerto and Chopin’s Op. 15 Nocturnes than for his distinctive compositional output. Certainly he was a witness to history. He studied with Hummel, with whom he visited Beethoven on his deathbed. He heard Schubert accompany Johann Michael Vogl in Winterreise. He knew Mendelssohn, he assisted Wagner in staging Tannhäuser, and he taught the young Max Bruch.
While Hiller’s piano concertos have been deservedly revived in Hyperion’s Romantic Piano Concerto Series, his once-highly-regarded four-movement 1849 E minor symphony remains forgotten and unperformed. Lau, however, fervently believes in the piece, and has taken it upon himself to transcribe it for solo piano. While the opening Allegro energico movement admittedly overstays its welcome, the Adagio’s melodic interest and inventive harmonic ideas compensate, and also inspire some of Lau’s loveliest playing.
He brings admirable delicacy and point to the Scherzo, which blends Mendelssohnian lightness and Schumannesque repetition. However, I suspect that Lau holds back in the Finale; the declamatory motives and surging phrases seem to need more dynamic contrast and driving force than Lau is willing to concede. Then again, I don’t see other pianists lining up to record Lau’s effective arrangement, nor any orchestral performances of the symphony on the horizon. Lau provides his own excellent, informative annotations.