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The community orchestra I play in is doing Rimsky-Korsakoff's Russian Easter Overture, neat to play and listen to. The tuba comes in at bar 46 with a relatively exposed line, shared with the double basses and the bassoons, but not the trombones. It starts with F F F E D, with the F being the one on the fourth line of the bass clef. I picked up the 1968 CSO recording with Stokowski, who ought to know, and was surprised that the tuba part (presumably Jake) is played an octave lower at this point and, with some loud double basses, it all sounds like mud. Granted that it's marked "lugubre," but "lugubre" isn't "mud." More to the point, when the line is repeated a few bars on, it's marked "agitato" and the quarter notes are staccato, but the recording is very muddy here, also.

Questions: Is it customary to play this an octave lower than written? Could we be using an odd arrangement? It's from Carl Fischer, "adapted by Henry Sopkin." Is it customary to ignore the "pp" and staccato markings?

I have played it as written coming in on on the F the 4th line up. There was never any change to the orchestration of which I am aware - must have been Stokowski's strange idea to drop the octave?

The tuba is an octave ABOVE the bassoons for that figure, so it must be played super light and definitely at a dynamic no more than the marked pp. I played it on Eb as that was all I had at that time, but would anyway consider using a bass tuba, rather than 6/4 CC if I was playing today. I think it would sound more in character. You have 9 bars rest to change over to the contrabass tuba before F.

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My favorite recording of this piece is also the Stokowski/Jacobs recording . So when I play it either I talk with the conductor or just wait and see how they are doing it . The Stokowski first tuba entrance is kind of fast, my conductor did it slowly like a hymn which lent itself to the original voicing , but the theme in half time starting on Bb worked Very well and the B theme where you start on the C was way effective . The conductor loved it so I never mentioned any Stokowski editing . In the big orchestras you play the ink unless otherwise instructed but the Stokowski voicing is credible and if you really like some or all of it why not try it in your group and see ? I , for one , would love to have the basoon play that second line B that goes on forever in Tchaikovsky Romeo and Juliet . And who's to say that if Pete's first tuba player had requested it that he wouldn't have rescored it ? I don't see anyone playing Fantastique on ophiclides lately . I hope you really enjoy this great tune whatever you decide . Ed