Premiering My Transcription of “Litanies” Next Saturday
I incorporated your suggestions about incorporating some of the organ colors and techniques over to the piano, and came up with the “wall of sound” I wanted to create in the last two pages of “Litanies”.
Thank you ALL for the suggestions you provided! They helped a lot.
The organ prof (actually, he’s really more of a musical mentor - interesting to be mentoring with someone who is half my age!) I’m working with said my transcription is “horrifically difficult” but playable. I agree with him. The original last two pages on the organ are also “horrifically difficult” on the organ.
I’m playing my transcription on a program next Saturday. I’m also including my transcription of Bach’s “Valet will ich der geben” (BWV 736), and my “Bach Counterpoint” on the program.
In “Bach Counterpoint”, I took a prelude from one of the unaccompanied Bach sonatas and added a line of counterpoint. The cantus firmus remains the same through the piece, though it switches between the hands as needed. The counterpoint covers the full length of the keyboard. I composed it in a neo-Baroque style, reminiscent of Busoni (a favorite composer), but with my own touches: passagework played with the fingers of one hand playing over or under the other hand; HUGE leaps; really uncomfortable passagework; parallel minor ninths in 16th notes. I set out intentionally to write the most difficult piece I could imagine which was still playable by one performer. My mentor described it as “ten pages of pianistic terror” which I took as a compliment! 🤗 Then I learned the piece.
I actually studied organ for two semesters as secondary instrument when I was an undergraduate, 55 years ago. The pedals drove me absolutely up the wall. I ended up making transcriptions of the organ pieces, which I played on organ. My organ teacher back then suggested that I might want to consider making transcriptions of organ pieces for the piano.
I realized that I would never be more than a very mediocre organist (probably because I’m a pianist!) but I absolutely fell in love with the organ literature. My transcription of “Litanies” is a life-long “bucket list” dream.
My mentor gave me an assignment to see if I could work out my own transcription of Bach’s Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C; Vierne’s “Carillon de Westminster” (which I think is going to be great fun to play!); and to start looking at pieces by Dupré. Dupré strikes me as being to the organ what Liszt is to piano in terms of difficulty. Do you all have any suggestions of Dupré pieces which might work on a piano?