As the costs for mounting opera, ballet and orchestral concerts rise and as their audiences dwindle, piano transcriptions of works orchestrated for such concerts can be a viable way of disseminating the music more widely than if the music was presented only in its original form. With this in mind, it can be argued that piano transcriptions of music originally written for instrumental ensemble is still a viable form of musical expression, because the piano is still the most widely used medium for the performance of art music in the Western world. Transcriptions of instrumental and vocal music expand the listening audience for a composer's music while they also increase the repertoire of music for the piano for both amateurs and professionals. The CD recording has the aim of providing a reference on which to base an appreciation of Pletnev's work. As the orchestral score is quite well known, the differentiation created by Pletnev, and the quality of his work, can be immediately perceived by hearing the execution of his scores and being able to cross reference his reductions with the original score. Timing references for the piano score have been included to further facilitate this cross-referencing. This thesis comprises two parts: 1. A performance CD of Stravinsky's Petrouchka (1922 piano four-hand version) and Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty (1999 solo piano transcription by Mikhail Pletnev). This accounts for 75% of the thesis. 2. An exegesis, analysing selected portions of the orchestral score of Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty Op.66 and Pletnev's piano transcription suite, prefaced by an overview of piano transcriptions from Liszt to Pletnev. This accounts for 25% of the thesis. The exegesis argues that, while seeking to recreate the colour and drama of Tchaikovsky's orchestral score within the context of a virtuosic piano solo, Pletnev has managed to transcribe Tchaikovsky's score faithfully with minimal alterations.

In this thesis, I demonstrate how I use leitmotif in a programmatic context in my original orchestral suite, The Legend of Two Rings.