IMSLP Forums

What would be the situation regarding a piano reduction that is under copyright, but where the publisher has put cues in for VnI/II, Cor., etc. Would it be legal to reconstruct the orchestral parts from the reduction?

Do you have a specific piece in mind? I can' think of a vocal score that contains enough of these cues and with such frequency that an orchestral reconstruction would even be possible. You're question is an interesting one and I don't have a precise answer, although I would be tempted to say "no".

It's a clarinet concerto by Vaclav Tucek. Mostly strings, but with the odd horn cue thrown in, it wouldn't be that difficult to re-construct. I wouldn't mind doing the whole thing from scratch from original manuscript, but being Bohemian, I suspect the manuscript is somewhere in one of those libraries that believe in super copyright for works a couple of hundred years old.

I would guess the manuscript it is in the Prague National Library.
The first edition is 1973 (Panton), but there are several new editions (2001, 2005) by other publishers, all apparently only with Piano reduction. Panton is now part of Schott. But there is no orchestra material in their hire library catalog.
For many works that were performed by czech orchestras there exist very nice copied manuscript scores and parts either in the Archive of Czech MIC, formerly the Czech Music Fund CHF (czesky hudebni fond) or in the archives of Czech Radio Prague. In 2008, the Czech Music Fund lending library was incorporated (as unprofitable on its own) as a separate part into the sheet music archive of Czech Radio.
Best to search musicbase.cz, and it is there:
http://www.musicbase.cz/index.php?page= ... h=&ID=8819
and there seems to be a catalog entry for the Czech Radio Rental Shop - you could inquire there, there is a button on the bottom of the page. They may even have a score for perusal....
Edit Juli-21:
And in the scanned card catalog of printed music at the Prague Natl Library is a photocopy of the partitura:
http://katif.nkp.cz/Katalogy.aspx?katkey=060HUD - scroll to catalog card No. 711.

Slightly off topic, but I always wondered why if parts exist, the term "reconstruction" is used but that term is also used for when a composer/historian completes a piece using sketches or whatever...