[net.music.classical] 4-hands Mephisto Waltz

anderson@uwvax.ARPA (05/03/84)

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On the subject of 4-hands adaptations of other music --
I went to a concert by a piano duo a few years back (Nancy Arganbright
and Dallas Weekley, if memory serves... faculty at some provincial
campus of U. Wisc, and fine pianists).  The high point of the recital
was a 4-hands version of Listz's Mephisto Waltz.  This as an utterly
amazing work, the 2-hands version of which actually contains about
3.5 hands worth of material at points (it's one of those pieces, like
the Debussy Preludes and Stravinsky's Petroushka Suite, where there
are three clefs some of the time).  Anyway, it came off very well.
I later wrote to Arganbright and Weekley asking for a pointer to the
music.  They said it was Liszt's adaptation, they had found it at
a Liszt library in Germany, their copy was "too faint to copy" (a lame
excuse), and that I should try writing to the museum.  I never got
around to it, but it would certainly be nice to have.