Description

OEuvres pour piano/Klaviermusik/Piano Music
Edition en 10 recueils/Edition in 10 Bänden/Edition in 10 volumes
Volume 8: Pièces à quatre mains B
Instrumentation: piano 4 hands
Edition: full score
Editor: Eberhard Meyer/Ingrid Meyer
Difficulty: easy to medium

“Suite en forme de Valses op. 39: Ballabile, Valse lente, Scherzo-Valse, Danse sacrée, Interlude et Bacchanale; Les Gitanos: Valse espagnole op. 15/2”

The second volume of compositions for four hands by Mel Bonis contains two
works: a “Suite en forme de Valses” and “Les Gitanos”.
« Suite en forme de Valses » opus 35/39
This is a collection of five waltzes first published in 1898 by Alphonse Leduc,
Paris:
– Scherzo-Valse op. 35
– Danse sacrée op. 36
– Ballabile op. 37
– Valse lente op. 38
– Interlude et Bacchanale op. 39
The suite is a well-structured salon-type work of intermediate difficulty, although
some of the pieces call for a certain degree of virtuosity if they are to be
played at an appropriate tempo. The music, with its slight orientalist flavour,
emanates an air of elegant nonchalance. The entire suite takes about 15 minutes
to perform.
Mel Bonis put a lot of work into this composition, and she published it simultaneously
in several different versions: an arrangement for a large symphony
orchestra, one for piano “after the orchestral suite” and one for piano with four
hands.
In all three cases the configuration of the pieces is different:
1) The orchestral version comes in two separate volumes. The first contains:
“Ballabile”, “Interlude et Valse lente” and “Scherzo-Valse”, and the second:
“Danse sacrée”.
2) The three pieces in the first orchestral volume – “Ballabile”, “Scherzo-
Valse” and “Interlude et Valse lente” – were published individually in 1899
with the remark “Reduction of the Suite d’orchestre en forme de Valses for
solo piano”.
3) We have discovered two different volumes published in 1898 of the arrangement
for four handed piano. The first was found in the family archives
and consists of four pieces in the following order:
– Ballabile
– Danse sacrée
– Scherzo-Valse
– Interlude et Valse lente
The second can be found in the Bibliothèque Nationale de Musique in Paris
and consists of five pieces as follows.
– Ballabile
– Valse lente
– Scherzo-Valse
– Danse sacrée
– Interlude et Bacchanale
For the four-handed version in this edition we had to make a choice, and we
decided to base it on the afore-mentioned version in the Bibliothèque Nationale
de Musique.
As the Interlude that precedes the Valse lente in the first volume is identical to
the Interlude of the Bacchanale apart from the key – C-sharp minor in the first
case, D-minor in the second – we decided, like Mel Bonis in the second version,
to let it precede only the Bacchanale.
Les Gitanos opus 15/2
First edition, Hamelle, Paris, 1891
The work exists in a version for piano published by Hamelle in 1891 and in an
orchestral version (orchestration by AD Gauwin) which appeared in 1904, also
published by Hamelle.