Talk:Gaspar Cassadó

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[edit] Cassadó's adaptation of the Arpeggione Sonata

received a review in Fanfare Magazine (September/October 2005 issue - Vol. 29 no. 1, pages 271-2, from Bernard Jacobson). Though I do not know the adaptation, I find Jacobson's comments contrasting the difference between arranged sonatas (Barbirolli's Cimarosa oboe concerto, I think?) and more concertante works - he gives Mozart's K 107 as another example of the latter (adaptations of works by Johann Christian Bach, but with full tutti sections, for example) perceptive.

(This was in a review by Jacobson of a recording of this adaptation from before 1934, by Cassadó/Hallé Orchestra/Hamilton Harty, released on the Hallé's then-new label. Jacobson brought up the contrast in part to note- this was what interested me, this and the silliness on a related subject in Concerto where the purpose of orchestral tuttis is constantly misstated, but that's just by the way - anyway, that Cassadó's adaptation is indeed a concerto, not an arranged sonata, yes, but has less good to say about the quality of the adaptation:

"... had the wit to see that Schubert's sonata form needed some modification.... Unfortunately, he was no Mozart... [in the sense that] his added material amounts to little more than stretches of bravura.)"

So - mixed review... Schissel | Sound the Note! 00:32, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

  • You could say the same thing about Bach's "silly" arrangements of Vivaldi's and Marcello's Concertos. They don't belong as solo keyboard pieces. And Bach's additions, such as various virtuoso passages that ruins Vivaldi's original ideas, are unnecessary. Why is it when Bach, the "Great Master", does something it's like the Bible, and when an equally talented composer, yet not historically glorified, writes an arragement, he is talked down upon? It's a different time and Bach and Mozart aren't Gods!

Maestroukr 10:05, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I think you missed my main point in favor of my second one, and you want to take this up with Mr. Jacobson, who can be e-mailed at Fanfare if nowhere else. I disagree as to the rest as well. (There is a more positive review here which does not address the issue raised by Mr. Jacobson. He specifically compares the changes rung on JC Bach's sonatas and Schubert's, by the way, though briefly- Cassado's being filler material and the young Mozart's presumably not. A review in another issue of Fanfare of a Reincken- adapted-not-arranged!-by-Bach sonata does compare it - again somewhat briefly - to the Reincken partita on which it was based (the Reincken is also recorded, on Chandos by the Purcell Quartet), noting ways in which Bach made it his own- interesting processes added to (without detracting from) an interesting piece.

Cassadó's own solo suite has been receiving well-reviewed recordings (and I do not at all disdain such works as "mere miniatures" or anything thelike. My favorite work as practicing would-be violist was an arrangement of a Bach cello suite, the Krenek, Britten and Wellesz solo cello works are other very fine ones to mention merely three.) This is a comment about one piece, but your reaction to my comment tells me much. Thanks. Schissel | Sound the Note! 15:25, 26 September 2007 (UTC)