BURMEISTER ARRANGEMENTS
Richard Burmeister made an arrangement of Liszt's Concerto Pathétique in E minor by changing its original form for two pianos into a concerto for piano solo with orchestral accompaniment. Until now the original has remained almost an unknown composition; partly for the reason that it needed for a performance two first rank piano virtuosi to master the extreme technical difficulties and partly that Liszt had chosen for it such a rhapsodical and whimsical form as to make it an absolutely ineffective concert piece. Even Hans von Bülow tried in a new edition to improve some passages by making them more consistent, but without success.
However, as the concerto contains pathetic musical ideas, among the best Liszt conceived and is of too much value to be lost, Mr. Burmeister ventured to give it a form by which he hopes to make it as popular as the famous E-flat major concerto by the same composer. The task was a rather risky one, as some radical changes had to be made and the character of the composition preserved.
To employ a comparison, Mr. Burmeister cut the concerto like a beautiful but badly tuned bell into pieces and melted and moulded it again into a new form. Some passages had to change places, some others to be omitted, others again repeated and enlarged. Mr. Burmeister went even so far as to add some of his own passages—for instance, a cadence at the beginning of the piano part, the end of the slow movement and a short fugato introducing the finale. As to the new form, the result now comes very near to a restoration of the old classical form: Allegro—Andante—Allegro.
Mr. Burmeister has also made a very effective welding of Liszt's diabolic Mephisto Waltz for piano and orchestra which he has successfully played in Germany. He also arranged the Fifth Hungarian Rhapsody for piano and orchestra (Héroïde—Elégiaque). To Mr. Burmeister I am indebted for valuable information regarding his beloved master Liszt, with whom he studied in Weimar, Rome and Budapest.