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Schumann and Tchaikovksy mandolin quartet arrangements
The other day, I was leafing through some old sheet music left from a predecessor mandolin orchestra to our current group and came across a number of arrangements for fretted instrument ensembles by Jim Hulley. Jim lived in Timperley (now Greater Manchester) and was active in the BMG Association in the UK in the 1980s. These pages were in an envelope postmarked 1990 sent directly from him to the secretary of the orchestra, and do not ever appear to have been opened or used (although I expect that other BMG groups would also have received and played them).
We have a number of other Hussey arrangements in our repertoire, but I hadn't seen these two pieces: Schumann's Träumerei and Tchaikovsky's "Dreams" (the more common title in English is "Sweet Dreams", from his "Album For The Young", Op. 39). Nice settings which I thought may be of interest here, so I am attaching scans.
I have also recorded this setting of Träumerei at home as a mandolin quartet:
1915 Luigi Embergher mandolin (x2)
Mid-Missouri M-111 octave mandolin
Vintage Viaten tenor guitar
https://youtu.be/DVYtPqjcLbs
There is an ongoing debate about the "proper" tempo of this piece. Hulley has marked the arrangement "andante", and Schumann's original metronome marking was 100 bpm. I'm taking it at around 80bpm, which sounds right to me although most piano versions these days are much slower.
I may try the Tchaikovsky as well, but it's tricky to record by multi-tracking because of the way Hulley has split the piano parts between the instruments.
Martin
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The following members say thank you to Martin Jonas for this post:
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