Rossini-Wilhelm Tell Fantasy arr. Wenzell (SP)-2M

Wilhelm Tell (also known as Guillaume Tell (Swiss French), Guglielmo Tell (Swiss Italian), Guglielm Tell (Swiss Romansh), Wilhelm Tell (Swiss German) – or simply Wilhelm Tell (in English)) is a folk hero of Switzerland back in late 15th century, who was forced to shoot an apple off the head of his son, in order not to be executed.

The story of the folk hero fascinated the Italian composer Gioachino Rossini (1792 – 1868), who composed Guillaume Tell; an opera in four acts to a French libretto by Etienne de Jouy and Hippolyte Bis, based on Friedrich Schiller's play Wilhelm Tell. It was premiered by the Paris Opéra at the Salle Le Peletier on August 3rd 1829 (and later in an Italian version in 1831 by Calisto Bassi as Guglielm Tell). This was Rossini's 39th and last opera, after which he went into semi-retirement before dying nearly forty years later. The William Tell Overture became famous and has later been repeatedly used (sometimes as a parody) in many different arrangements and by composers such as Dmitri Shostakovich, Franz Liszt and Benjamin Britten among many others.

Years later, the principal timpanist in Staatsoper and professor at Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, Franz Krüger chose to make a fantasy-filled arrangement based on the motives from Rossini's William Tell Overture. He arranged it for Xylophone solo and Orchestra and named it Tell-Fantasie. This arrangement is a re-arrangement of William Tell by marimba soloist Ronni Kot Wenzell for two marimbas based on Franz Krüger's Tell-Fantasie - made roughly a century later.

Number of players: 2
Difficulty: Advanced

Instrumentation

Player 1: Marimba (4 octave)
Player 2: Marimba (4.3 octave)