Posted by Jay Bertolet on January 07, 2004 at 09:51:31:
In Reply to: Oscar Boehme Sextet posted by Michael Eastep on January 07, 2004 at 03:12:39:
Hey Mike, I hope all is well with you in the great white north!
I just performed the "original" version of this work a couple months ago. I agree with the other poster, it just plain sounds better. In the part that I played, there were indeed several places where octaves are written. What I did was listen to the Asbury Park recording of this work (with Bud Herseth, WOW!) and followed what Charlie S. did in the part. His playing was very tasty and using the octave decisions he made worked very well for me for the most part. I was able to do the part on a CC tuba and I felt it worked very well. The group seemed happy at least. The Asbury recording is available on Amazon.com so you can get that and decide for yourself.
The best advice I can give you is to avoid the King version at all costs. It has long been a pet-peeve of mine that those King arrangements are a violation of all that is holy in our field. For example, his arrangement of the Ewald Symphony in Bb is tragic. I have never played this version where it sounded good. We never seem to have the 6 players needed and I get handed a baritone part that is missing a great deal of music. Even with all 6 parts, it never sounds as good as the original. Which is, of course, out of print. It is unfortunate that the "good" versions of many brass pieces seem to be going out of print as smaller publishing houses are merged with larger conglomerates. It is something we all have to be watchful of because we may come to a point where there isn't access to staples of the repertoire because of these trends.
My opinion for what it's worth...