Richard Burmeister made an arrangement of Liszt's Concerto Pathetique 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 Buelow 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 (Heroide--Elegiaque). To Mr. Burmeister I am indebted for
valuable information regarding his beloved master Liszt, with whom he
studied in Weimar, Rome and Budapest.