Rachmaninoff - Prelude B minor Op.32 No.10 (orchestration)

Greetings all!

I present here my latest orchestration of Rachmaninoff's beautiful and haunting Prelude in B minor.

It's a rough score (as usual), with lots of slurs yet to be added, and flute division that needs sorting.

Some of the notational issues come from the original piano midi I used as my source. E.g. The places where I have two crotchet triplets followed by a minim sextuplet. (Obviously four triplets would be preferable.)

Also the strange tempo change to 80 bpm, and time signature change to 5/4.

I will fix these; though it's going to take a lot of work, as I don't think there's an easy way to do batch conversion of tuplets in MuseScore. (Unless someone knows different?)

The big bombastic chords in the piano original were quite awkward to deal with; but I realised I didn't need to match the piano rhythms exactly. All I really needed were pulsing chords of some kind: so that's what I've tried to create.

I haven't been able to find any other orchestrations of this piece: so mine may be the first?

Anyway hope you enjoy.

rachmaninoff-prelude-in-b-minor-op-32-no-10 (orchestration) #47.pdf

Edited 2 hours ago2 hr by Alex Weidmann

1 hour ago, Alex Weidmann said:

Greetings all!

I present here my latest orchestration of Rachmaninoff's beautiful and haunting Prelude in B minor.

It's a rough score (as usual), with lots of slurs yet to be added, and flute division that needs sorting.

Some of the notational issues come from the original piano midi I used as my source. E.g. The places where I have two crotchet triplets followed by a minim sextuplet. (Obviously four triplets would be preferable.)

Also the strange tempo change to 80 bpm, and time signature change to 5/4.

I will fix these; though it's going to take a lot of work, as I don't think there's an easy way to do batch conversion of tuplets in MuseScore. (Unless someone knows different?)

The big bombastic chords in the piano original were quite awkward to deal with; but I realised I didn't need to match the piano rhythms exactly. All I really needed were pulsing chords of some kind: so that's what I've tried to create.

I haven't been able to find any other orchestrations of this piece: so mine may be the first?

Anyway hope you enjoy.

This is wonderful (and I'm not just saying that because I love the piece 😆).

I think you've retained the character of the original piece, without making it sound muddy or too heavy. Your doublings and overall orchestration choices seem calculated and well thought out. I think the few notation issues are an easy fix, and would make the score more readable. Good job 👏🏾