Schumann Fantasy - Orchestration (Caleb Hu)

Here's my orchestration of Schumann's Fantasy, one of the greatest piano works of the Romantic era, now transformed into a sprawling symphony for a full-sized Romantic orchestra. I ran into a lot of challenges doing this—especially in the 1st movement, which is one of Schumann's more pianistic compositions in terms of texture and range. The 2nd movement, while much more orchestral in nature, is just damned difficult for all the instruments involved. The 3rd is straightforward but requires a lot of sensitive playing and long sustains that might give the brass/woodwinds fits. There's definitely long stretches where they'll have to find their own spots to breathe.

In general scoring, I chose to more or less stick to an orchestra that Schumann and Brahms might have been familiar with: two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, and strings. There are a number of virtuosic parts in all three movements, particularly in the strings, horns, and flutes. Schumann would have liked this kind of virtuosic and stand-out use of valved horns. The contrabassoon is somewhat optional since it's just doubling the double basses for the most part, but it does add a nice darkness to the bassline. Four to five modern timpani are required, which would have been alien in Schumann's time (who was the first to use even three timpani).

0:00 I. Durchaus fantastisch und leidenschaftlich vorzutragen (Exposition)
4:39 Im Legendton (Development)
8:09 Erstes tempo (Recapitulation)
10:54 Etwas langsamer, sehr innig (Coda)

12:03 II. Mäßig. Durchaus energisch (A section)
15:32 Etwas langsamer (Trio)
17:05 (Return of the A section)
19:20 Viel bewegter (Coda)

20:16 III. Langsam getragen. Durchweg leise zu halten (Opening)
21:21 (Main thematic material)
25:29 (Recapitulation)
29:10 (Coda)

Some major changes from the source material: I was pretty liberal with adding extra tempo markings when I saw fit (in German, of course), and the 2nd movement was moved up a half step to F major to make it a little easier to play and get a bigger, brighter, sound. Some syncopations were also removed from the 2nd movement trio; otherwise it'd simply be impossible to conduct.

Audio/sheet music all done on Musescore4. Make sure the resolution is set to 1080p

Listen to the original work here:    • Schumann: Fantasie in C, Op.17 (Andsnes)