Orchestral Excerpts

goldenmoose · Post by **goldenmoose** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 7:31 pm

Hey,
How do I go about starting my Orchestral Excerpt collection?

DonShirer · Post by **DonShirer** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 11:20 pm

Just noticed that Hal Leonard publishes two low brass (tromb, euph,tuba) excerpt CD's at $20 each.
Vol 1 has Auber, Beethoven, Bellini, Berlioz, Cherubini, Donizetti, Mendelssohn, Rossini, Schubert and Weber.
Vol 3 has Brahms, Aubrier, Chausson, Chopin, Franck, Lalo, Lizst, Offenbach, Schumann, Suppe.
They don't say how many more theyare planning on.

Tubainsauga · Post by **Tubainsauga** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 10:45 am

I would reccomend also getting Gene Pokorny's excerpt CD. Its quite helpful and very interesting. If you want to get an idea of what some of the excerpts will be like, I'd also reccomend getting the 3 Sear & Waldeck books. You can get all of them for around the price of 1 Torchinsky book. Theyâ€™re by no means complete but theyâ€™re a good start.

ahowle · Post by **ahowle** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 2:06 pm

Yes, the Pokorny CD is great, and it gives you a great concept of how to play the excerpts.

As far as the sheet music itself goes, I would recommend getting complete parts strongly over getting just the "excerpts." If you play anything for any kind of audition, you will need to have studied not only the complete tuba part with multiple recordings of the piece, you'll also need to study it with the full score. If you're in college, your college library should have a pretty good collection of recordings, so that would be the best (legal) economical way of getting familiar with the pieces themselves.

I have several Torchinsky books as well as the Cherry CD, and take it from me, the Torchinsky books are a waste of money if you get the Cherry CD. The Cherry CD has not only the complete tuba part, but all 3 (or 4) complete trombone parts, as well as any "tenor tuba" or contrabass trombone complete parts, to pretty much every significant piece of orchestral literature that is not copyrighted (the only really "important" things that the Cherry CD is missing, that I've noticed so far, are Prokofiev 5 and Pictures at an Exhibition). It even has the complete low brass parts (all of them) to the entire ring cycle. The Cherry CD was about 80 bucks if I remember correctly, whereas the 4 Torchinsky books that I have bought (the Wagner one, the Strauss one, the Brahms/Dvorak one, and the Berlioz one) total to over 100 dollars, and don't even have nearly half the stuff in them that the Cherry CD does. The Torchinsky books do, however, have "notes" written by Abe Torchinsky on each piece, but they still do not make them worth it to me.

Buy the Cherry CD, and your collection of orchestral lit. will be 99% complete. All you'll need is a printer and plenty of ink and paper.

ahowle · Post by **ahowle** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 2:56 pm

Yeah, I think so too. He even says on the CD that it should by no means be a "final result," but rather a place from which one can start.

Chuck(G) · Post by **Chuck(G)** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 3:39 pm

The CD set that Hal Leonard distributes is produced by the same folks who do CDSheetMusic.com. All in all, I've been disappointed with the one CD I've bought--if I were looking for trombone parts, it'd be pretty good. But there's entirely too much stuff marked "Tacet" when it comes to tuba parts on the CD. IOW, you're getting lots of "filler" for trombone and not much for tuba.

ahowle · Post by **ahowle** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 12:12 am

There are more trombone parts on there because first of all there are three trombone parts as opposed to one, or rarely two tuba parts, and second of all there are simply more orchestral pieces in which the trombone has a significant part...

The makers of the CD have nothing to do with the fact that the tuba tacets on some pieces in which the trombones have stuff... that would be the composers.

The fact of the matter is that there is lots of good tuba stuff on there, it's the complete part, and it's way cheaper than any other (legal) means by which one can build his collection of orchestral tuba parts.

Rick Denney · Post by **Rick Denney** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 9:02 pm

ahowle wrote:I have several Torchinsky books as well as the Cherry CD, and take it from me, the Torchinsky books are a waste of money if you get the Cherry CD.

I wouldn't go this far by any means.

Both include the complete parts, which we all agree is a good thing.

The Torchinsky books also contain Mr. Torchinsky's advice on how to play the parts, and that has considerable value. The books also include some parts you won't find on Gordon Cherry's CD.

The Torchinsky series included some works that were protected by copyrights that were either not enforced in the U.S. (as with the Shostakovich excerpts) or were used by permission. The Prokofiev books come to mind, and they are still available if you look around. The Shostakovich books were pulled from the market because of a GATT agreement to start enforcing copyrights on Soviet intellectual property, but the books are still available from time to time. I'm sure there are a few others but I haven't compared them to know for sure.

Neither include many of the parts we'd all like to see from works published since 1923.

Rick "who has both and who plans to keep both" Denney

ahowle · Post by **ahowle** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 10:49 pm

I haven't been able to find any of the Torchinsky books of twentieth-century composers anywhere. Those would definitely be worthwhile, as they would presumably contain stuff that the cherry CD does not.

Rick Denney · Post by **Rick Denney** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 11:22 pm

ahowle wrote:I haven't been able to find any of the Torchinsky books of twentieth-century composers anywhere. Those would definitely be worthwhile, as they would presumably contain stuff that the cherry CD does not.

It takes patience, but they are out there. It also takes a willingness to pay when the opportunity strikes. I bought my two Shostakovich books two years ago from a private collector who took bids on TubaEuph. I don't know how often it happens, but at least it happened once.

But most 20th-century stuff is still unavailable, which is a drag.

There is a sprinkling of 20th-Century stuff in the 20th-Century Orchestral Studies, which is apparently pretty rare. I have it, too, bought at a plain-ole music store back when it wasn't rare. It doesn't have complete parts, but it does have stuff not available anywhere else.

Rick "thinking that if you see one of the Shosty books or the 20th-Century book, grab it" Denney