“Collaboration” in classical music is something special, because in most cases the people involved don’t know each other. (For example, I have conducted many pieces by Bach, but there are over 300 years between my birthday and Mr. Bach’s birthday…this leads to much more difficult communication
).
The phenomenon that “collaboration” takes place at intervals of many years can sometimes be really curious – as happened in 1922: a composer orchestrated a piano piece by another composer (i.e. he rewrote it so that it could be played by an orchestra), which had lain dormant in some drawer for 50 years – and in the new orchestral version became a WORLD SUCCESS overnight!
Before I show you which work and which two composers we are talking about, I must first introduce you to another artist: the painter Viktor Hartmann.