III
Mr. Krehbiel once wrote, in discussing the question of the re-scoring of the Chopin concertos: “It is more than anything else a question of taste that is involved in this matter and, as so often happens, individual likings, rather than artistic principles, will carry the day.”
It is admitted at the outset by all musicians that the orchestrations of the two concertos in E and F minor of Chopin are meagre and conventional, not to say hackneyed.
Written in the pre-Beethoven style they simply rob the piano soli of their incomparable beauty, become a clog instead of an aid, and have done more to prejudice musicians against Chopin than any other compositions he has written. That they were penned by Chopin himself is more than doubtful, as his knowledge of instrumentation was somewhat slender, and the amazing fact will always remain that while his piano compositions are ever fresh and far removed from all that is trite or commonplace, the orchestration of his concertos is irksome and uninteresting to a degree. In both concertos the opening tuttis are long and take off all the cream and richness of the soli that follow.
The tone of the piano can scarcely vie with that of the orchestra, yet in the first movement of the E minor concerto the lovely, plaintive solo of the first subject in E minor is deliberately played through; the audience and the pianist must patiently wait until it is finished and then, like an absurd anti-climax, the piano breaks in, repeating the same story, only dwarfed and colorless in comparison. In the Tausig version of the E minor opening the tutti differs, in that it omits entirely the piano solo, contenting itself after the first theme, with the small secondary subject in E minor that is afterward played by the piano. Then come the rich opening E minor chords on the piano, and we are once more plunged in medias res without further ado.
The orchestral tutti before the piano enters in C major, is in the Tausig version very effective despite the dreaded trombones. It must be admitted that here we get some Meistersinger color which is—so the story runs—because Wagner had a hand in the arrangement. Certainly Tausig submitted it to him for judgment.
The orchestral canvas is broadened, the tints brighter, deeper, richer and offering a better background for the jewelled passage work of the piano.
The brass choir is so balanced as to float the staccato tone of the piano, giving it depth and sonority.
Take for example the horn pedal-point in E, which occurs in the middle of the romanza where the piano has the delicate, crystalline chromatic cadenza of three bars only. What a stroke of genius for Tausig to introduce the brass here! It floats the fairy-like progressions of the solo and in what ethereal hues! But orthodox pianists will say this is not Chopin, and raise their Czerny-hands in horror.
The changes in the piano parts of the first movement of the E minor concerto are effective, they in no sense destroy the integrity of the ideas; where there is a chromatic scale in unison, Tausig breaks it into double sixths and fourths and chordal figures which are not simplifications or mere pyrotechnics but decidedly more “pianistic” and brilliant.