Posted by Jay Bertolet on September 19, 2000 at 11:47:33:
In Reply to: Re: Ewald #1 Symphony for brass choir posted by Keating Johnson on September 19, 2000 at 11:26:32:
Its funny you would say this. I've tried so many times to play the RK version with only 5 players, with me playing the euphonium part and taking the appropriate passages down an octave. In my opinion it still doesn't work because there are things left out of the 5th part that are in the 6th part. So the only way to make the RK version work as a quintet is to go through both parts and cobble together one part that covers everything and in the right octave. I found it much easier to just buy the quintet version.
I know all this first hand because for a long time the only version my quintet had was the RK. I tried to convince the other members of the group not to use this arrangement in a quintet setting and it ultimately took me finding the original and using that version once to convince my group that the quintet version is superior. I think one of the problems with people using the RK version in a quintet is that so many of the RK versions of works classify the tuba part as optional. This simply isn't the case with the Ewald because the scoring has been changed in the original 3rd, 4th, and 5th parts to accomodate the 6th part.
My opinion for what its worth...