My arrangement from the Peters piano, four hands score of this waltz by Joseph Lanner. It’s the second of my two holiday self-treats. There’s not really much justification for it as there are several recordings out there and I don’t have the full score. I’ve always liked the piece, however, and as all of the recordings I have heard have been “improved” to some extent so I thought I would have a go. I deliberately didn’t listen to any recordings of it for literally years, in the hope that I would forget the “improvements” and make my own mistakes.

All of the recordings I have heard play the opening as a fairly sedate march. It is marked presto.

Other various improvements are –

Lanner uses four trumpets It seems that most performances rewrite the third and fourth trumpet parts for horns and/or trombones. Really changes the sound.

Add extra percussion. Looking at other scores, Lanner may only have written for two percussionists – timpani doubling bass drum and cymbals and a side drum, in this case doubling triangle. Most conductors seem to add more (and may be the root cause of my habit of using too much percussion when orchestrating Lanner. I may have gone the other way here.)

Using too big an orchestra. Lanner was writing for an orchestra of 30-40 players in total, although I’m sure he added more for big events. If you play it on an orchestra with 40 plus strings you swamp the wind, unless you double up and then you change the sound of the piece completely: Donizetti becomes Verdi.

Some add bits and pieces that just aren’t there to make the piece more “Viennese”, i.e. like Strauss.

None of these destroys the piece; just changes the sense of it. If it makes the music more accessible to an audience used to Johann Strauss II, then so be it.

My treat to myself is not to do that.