Restoring the lost score of Emeric Stefaniai's "Schön Rosmarin" piano transcription

 Sergei Rachmaninov's virtuoso piano transcriptions of Fritz Kreisler's "Liebesfreud" and "Liebesleid" - No. 1 & 2 of the "3 Alt-Wiener Tanzweisen" ("Old Viennese Dances") for violin and piano, originally published in 1905 and 1910 - were written in 1925 and 1921 respectively, and are, of course, a staple repertoire for pianists around the globe until today. But why did Rachmaninov never transcribe the third piece of the set, "Schön Rosmarin"? Well, one theory has it that he was aware of an already existing arrangement, of which he - allegedly - owned a copy of the sheet music and which he might even have performed himself (although there is no evidence to consolidate this claim), and that he appreciated the quality of this arrangement so much, that he did not intend to write his own version of Kreisler's Rosmarin, to complete the cycle of the two previous pieces he had already transcribed.¹

Emeric Stefaniai (ca. 1906)

But who is the author of this acclaimed piano arrangement of "Schön Rosmarin"? It is the nowadays entirely forgotten Hungarian pianist and composer Emeric Stefaniai (Stefániai Imre in Hungarian; Budapest 1885 - Santiago de Chile 1959). Himself a pupil of Ferrucio Busoni and Ernst von Dohnányi in Berlin and an acclaimed concert pianist, praised for his interpretations of Franz Liszt's piano music, he moved to Spain in 1914 as a court pianist, but returned to Budapest as a teacher at the renowned Academy of Music². From 1947, however, he permanently settled in Chile, where he headed the music department at the Pontifical Catholic University in Santiago until his death. 

Unfortunately, unless hidden in the archives of the Budapest Academy or the Chilean university, there appears to be no available sheet music of Stefaniai's transcription: it is therefore with great gratitude to the American YouTuber Frank Himpsl, owner of at least two fine player pianos, who a few years ago uploaded three videos of a piano roll containing Stefania's "Schön Rosmarin", made in November 1924³ by the French pianist Maurice Dumesnil (1884 - 1974)⁴.  According to Himpsl this roll no longer exists (it got shredded), but luckily his videos show the piece in full, with the keyboard of the mechanical piano in good view as the piece is played, thus allowing to observe the performance of the "invisible" pianist. When listening to the videos, despite the many limitations of any player piano recordings, it becomes clear that Stefaniai's transcription is indeed a masterpiece, deserving to be performed again!

From these YouTube videos as the only surviving sources of the piece, the attempt was made to reconstruct the score note-for-note, in order to obtain at least an approximated version of the transcription. Of course, there are many inaccuracies in those mechanical recordings made by once famous companies such as Welte-Mignon, Hupfeld or Ampico, not least in respect of the imprecise reproduction of the intended tempi, dynamics, as well as nuances of touch, pedalling or agogic, even any accidentally wrong notes by the pianist would be preserved on the rolls.⁵

Initially in the restoration process, some of the freely available online sheet music-conversion tools (mp3 to pdf)⁶ were used in order to facilitate the task, however, this yielded very mixed results. Whilst most of the notes were displayed correctly, albeit not necessarily in the right octaves, and even the key of G major was recognised, the rhythmical conversion was entirely out of place⁷ and accidentals were exclusively shown as sharps, with no consideration given to the enharmonically appropriate use of the harmonies. So, with the help of the YouTube videos (and changing the playback speed to 0.25x where necessary), and with much needed common sense, the pdf-"score" could be manually tidied up, transferred onto a music editing software and a draft version produced, based on two, each slightly different, automatic online conversions: 

conversion tool - version 1

conversion tool - version 2

which resulted in the following "authentic" first draft version:

draft version

Subsequently, the alteration of the semi quaver notes used by both online tools into quaver triplets, the allocation of the base notes in line with the down beats as well as the distribution of the voices into left and right hand, contributed significantly to the progress towards obtaining an eventually usable piano score, although some more editing still remained to be done.

In a next step, the allocation of voices and chords to either the left or right hand were decided, and several enharmonic changes would be made, in order to allow for reasonable harmonic progressions - in keeping with the original Kreisler piece. Out of this: 

conversion tool

draft version

now became this:

final version

The final step would see the addition of all interpretational marks, including dynamics, articulation, tempi and a general tidy-up to make a well-presented, printable score. As not all the markings could be extracted for certain from the piano roll recordings alone, a published piano arrangement of the original violin piece made by the composer Fritz Kreisler himself⁸ proved a valuable source, although not applicable to all parts of the piece, since Stefaniai's transcription relied - without doubt - on many artistic liberties. The remaining gaps would be filled by simply using one's imagination and a gut feeling for this particular musical style. An approximation rather than an exact replica, but nevertheless a physical copy of the sheet music has now emerged, to be enjoyed by professionals and lovers of good music alike.

Frank Himpsl, the YouTuber and lucky owner of the piano roll, is quite right to call this forgotten piece "[...] high class piano, [...] the kind of thing Leopold Godowksy could likely improvise". We are looking upon a most beautiful and highly elegant pianistic miniature - an arrangement of the original piece rather than a paraphrase in the sense of Liszt -, a great encore⁹, which is reflecting the finest Fin de Siècle as a fitting tribute to the great composers and arrangers of Viennese dance music, from Kreisler to Rachmaninov to - Emeric Stefaniai.

The completed and edited score is now available in full on this blog:

https://blackpoolmusicgroup.blogspot.com/p/fritz-kreislers-schon-rosmarin-piano.html

A video-score, with the 1924 piano roll recording by Maurice Dumesnil, can be watched on our YouTube channel:

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¹ In contrast, the blog's author always believed that no such transcription of "Schön Rosmarin" existed, when he wrote his own piano transcription of the very same piece in the early 1990's; this version has recently been revised and can be found on IMSLP.

² where he was the teacher of the later world-famous Géza Anda.

³ This would be proof that the piece predates at least Rachmaninov's "Liebesfreud" transcription. An interesting analogy can be found in the following passages comparing Rachmaninov's famous transcription from 1925 with Stefaniai's "Schön Rosmarin" version, which adds further buoyancy to the claim that Rachmaninov possibly may have had knowledge of the Stefaniai piece: 

⁴ Another piano roll recording allegedly made by Nora Winogradoff-Gorges, for Welte-Mignon (Welte Rot, Roll-No. 2898), sadly cannot be traced.

⁵ Obviously incorrect notes have been marked accordingly in the restored score.

⁶ e.g. AnthemScore

⁷ Perhaps the software would work more reliably when converting some rhythmically more steady music, such as jazz or pop, as it quite clearly does not cope well with any rubati or ritardandi, amongst other factors.

⁸ published by Schott Piano Classics ED 9025

⁹ The piece might well be played together with the two Rachmaninov transcriptions, to complete the cycle of the "3 Old Viennese Dances".