The seed from which the idea for this disc germinated was Eduard Steuermann’s piano transcription of the Schoenberg Kammersymphonie, which I have played for a long time. I think it has an enormous historical value, since Steuermann was so close to Schoenberg and played his music very often, expanding on the composer’s relatively small piano output with this transcription, even transcribing “Verklärte Nacht” for piano trio. The Kammersymphonie is an incredibly difficult piece for the piano, there are scarcely any recordings of it, but I think it is truly beautiful and worth showcasing, both in recordings and in live performances. Interesting to a pianist, the transcribed Kammersymphonie offers intriguing foreshadows of Berg’s yet-to-come sonata, perhaps a significant example of the density of polyphony and expression that was to inspire Berg’s own writing.
I was interested in programming the Schoenberg alongside other attractive piano-transcriptions of similarly impressive and renowned orchestral pieces from the same era, and Stravinsky and Debussy were obvious choices. Yoichi Sugiyama’s transcription of Mahler’s Adagietto, from the 5th Symphony, was written specifically for this project.
My hope is that the disc can show the incredible potential and variety of the piano as an instrument. Many people surely know already these pieces in their original orchestral guises, but by listening to the piano transcriptions I hope it’s possible to discover new perspectives on the same landscapes. In the past centuries it was a fashion that composers and pianists would play piano reductions of orchestral works, in order to share them more intimately with their audiences in informal or private contexts, and I am proud to align myself in this tradition.
