Scott Morrison on Liszt's LVB 9 transcription:

>The burden of it was that I was predisposed to NOT like it because of
>missing the voices (not to mention the orchestra) but second time around
>came to value it as a composition on its own, and with my own instrument,
>the piano.

I get this the other way around with Ravel piano music, most of which
is also available for orchestra from Ravel's own pen.  I've come to
realize that they're just not quite the same pieces of music, so I have
to listen to them differently.  There are some things missing, and there
is a lot more of some other things.

I also find this with Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances (incidentally,
another of my "greatest pieces of music"...  comments and flames welcome),
which I knew for years only as orchestral music, then fell in love with
as piano music through the Ashkenazy/Previn recording, and now I prefer
the two piano version, although I still love both.  (Don't care much for
Argerich/Rabinovitch, which fact surprises me.)

Btw, not to revive the debate of the merits and legitimacy of programme
music versus absolute music, but the Dances, like Beethoven's Ninth,
while monumental works on their own, also benefit from extramusical
understanding (the words to Schiller's poem, and Rachmaninoff's cryptic
programme).  I used to have trouble with the last movement of the Ninth,
until I thought about it in the context of the words.  "Alle Menschen
werden Bruder..." (And what about that fugue!  nothing extramusical
necessary there.  And the pastoral first development of the theme.)

Michael Cooper