Ben Laude’s piano channel is absolutely worth your time. He is a loss to ToneBase’s piano channel in general. Anyway, he posted this lately:
I really got back into buying sheet music when I came across some of the piano transcriptions done by Vyacheslav Gryaznov (and I’ve started seeing them turn up in exam lists for the more challenging grades and diplomas). I like the idea, because it fights against some of the received wisdom I had when I was a child that you had to play things properly. That being said, my list would have been different (and is probably already different from the list I made yesterday while I was listening to.
- Valse-Fantaisie by Glinka/Gryaznov
- Erlkonig by Schubert/Liszt
- 7th Symphony by Beethoven/Liszt
- Dance of the Blessed Spirit by Gluck/Siloti
- Prelude in B Minor by Bach/Siloti
- Adagio from the 5th Symphony by Mahler/Tharaud
- Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov/Noacke
- Star Spangled Banner – Rachmaninoff
- Laudate Dominum – Mozart/Olafsson
- Adagio Symphony No 2 by Rachmaninoff/Trifonov for 2 pianos.
- Masquerade Waltz by Khachaturian/Nakajima
I bought Gryaznov’s transcriptions on the foot of something that isn’t listed above – the Italian Polka by Rachmaninoff. It, too, is a great transcription in its own right. I’ll probably never be able to learn it.
Ben’s list did not include anything from Alexander Siloti and I think that’s a pity. Certainly, they may lack of the fireworks of the Flight of the Bumblebee but the Prelude listed above (originally in E-minor I think) is utterly stunning, no matter who plays it.