I. Largo. Allegro
II. Largo
III. Allegretto grazioso
IV. Hornpipe. Moderato
DURATION: ca. 21 Min.
PUBLISHER: G. Schirmer (Music Sales Classical)
From the standpoint of composition, I have gone further than Brahms or Mozart in the Handel arrangements. I have not limited myself, as they did, to expunging sequences and uninteresting figure-work and to enriching the texture; insteqad, especially in the third and fourth movements, whose insufficiency with respect to thematic invention and development could satisfy no sincere contemporary of ours, I have acted quite freely and independently, and while empolying what was usable, undertaken an entirely new strudture. I believe that such freedom will be found hardly more disturbing, stylistically, than the cadenzas which modern writers apply to classical concertos. I do not venture much further than tey do in matters of harmony. Nor do I believe that I need yield to them as regards solidity of form and intensification of motival development, and their interrelating.
Arnold Schönberg (1935)
