Product Description
Borodin wrote his String Quartet No. 2 in 1881. Seventy-seven years later, Robert Wright and George Forrest took the subordinate theme of the Quartets second movement and used it as the basis for "Baubles, Bangles and Beads," in the 1953 Broadway musical Kismet. The song became a hit in its own right and enjoyed success on recordings, radio and television.
The second movement of Quartet No. 2 is titled "Scherzo," and although written for a string foursome, it sits well with brass quintet. This arrangement follows Borodins score closely, including retaining the G major key signature. It does, however, lower the register by one octave throughout most of the piece, taking advantage of the warmer sound of (and greater accessibility for!) brass instruments.
The piece clips right along, getting as fast as (at one point) a tempo marking of dotted half equals 96. And it does contain a lot of eighth notes and greater-than-one-octave jumps. The top four instruments all work pretty hard. The tuba, for the most part, has it fairly easy except in those few instances when it must take over the entire doodle-doodle-oodle eighth note figures. But its worth the effort and is fun to play.
This arrangement was completed in 2017, and performance time runs about 4 minutes, 14 seconds. The arranger, Les Smith, will be happy to provide substitute parts (for example, treble clef baritone for euphonium) at no charge; contact him directly at lessmith61@bellsouth.net. For more arrangements by Les, enter "Sweetwater Brass Press" (without the quotation marks) in the SheetMusicPlus search box.
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