Achim Breiling:

>Just a stupid question: Why did they do these cuts? To make the work fit
>to whatever (LP, radio broadcast) or to omit some too difficult passages?

Sometimes, believe it or not, they think the passages so weak that the work
as a whole suffers.  They believe they're doing the composer a good turn.
In this era of Composer Knows Best, we find such cuts hard to accept and
the acme of arrogance.

Steve Schwartz