Serenade in G major, Op.41 (1801-3)

arranged for flute and piano by Franz Kleinherz

Entrata: allegro

Tempo ordinario d’un Menuetto

Allegro molto

Andante con variazioni

Allegro scherzando e vivace

Adagio - Allegro vivace e disinvolto

If only there were a Beethoven work for flute and piano from the same year as the “Eroica” Symphony and the “Kreutzer”and “Waldstein” Sonatas. But there isn’t. The nearest we have is the Serenade in G with the misleading Op.No.41, which is an arrangement by Franz Kleinherz for flute (or violin) and piano of the sociable Serenade in G Op.25 for flute, violin and viola written, surely, no later than 1796 or 1797. Although Beethoven approved this and another Kleinherz arrangement - the so-called Notturno with the even more misleading Op. No. 42 for viola and piano transcribed from the Serenade in D for string trio Op.8 - he didn’t much like the idea. “The arrangements are not made by me,” he wrote to his publisher in 1803. “So do not dare to state in writing that I have arranged them… I could haver have found the time, or even had the patience, to do work of that kind.”

Surprisingly, bearing Beethoven’s strictures in mind, the Kleinherz arrangement of the Serenade in G is a model of discretion. Far from extending the flute part by incorporating in it passages from the violin or viola part where the flute is silent in the original, Kleinherz actually makes it a little shorter by delaying the first entry of the flute by a few bars in both the minuet and the scherzo. Apart from that, the flute part is much the same as in the trio version. Naturally, to compensate for the fact that the lowest note on the viola is the C below middle C, he drops the piano bass line by an octave from time to time. He also quite sensibly awards the elaborate viola line in the third variation of the second movement to the right hand rather than the left. Other changes in the accompaniment, and there are not many of them, are designed to make it more pianistic and amount to no more than what would have been regarded as legitimate decoration at the time.

As for the scoring for flute, while in most of the six movements (seven including the Adagio introduction to the closing Allegro vivace), there is nothing that Mozart wouldn’t have thought of, the impulsive Allegro molto with its off-beat sforzando emphases was something new to the instrument. The dynamic colouring of the gently syncopated episodes in the rondo finale is enterprising too, although the flute is heard to better effect with its violin and viola companions in this particular case.