HN 555 – A printing error in CPE Bach’s sonata for solo flute?

Posted on November 25, 2013 by Norbert Müllemann

HN 555These days our latest Urtext product comes from the prin­ter, ‘hot off the press’: an edition of the Sonata in A minor for Solo Flute by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
(HN 555). This is no place for detailing the practical cha­rac­te­ris­tics of this edition (fold-out pages for making rea­ding the music easier with fewer page turns; complete re­pro­duc­tion of the first edition for all of you who want to delve into this cru­cial flute work at the source and play if possible from it; performance-practice comments by the master trans­verse flautist Karl Kaiser, who with much ad­vice tended to the edition and traced the im­por­tant ideas back to the following text). The discussion be­low has to do with only a single note in the 2nd movement. Continue reading →

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‘Pour Piano et Violon ou Violoncelle’ – Is there a cello sonata by César Franck?

Posted on November 11, 2013 by Peter Jost

César FranckIn connection with the general blog post by Dominik Rahmer on ‘Set­ting, version, arrangement – how far may Urtext go?’ (October 2012), we are going to deal here with a special case of ar­range­ment. Anyone searching the Internet under ‘César Franck Cello So­na­ta’, will get more than 80,000 results. But already from the head­ings on the pages we will quickly see that this ‘cello sonata’ offered is an arrangement of the famous Violin Sonata in A Major. Continue reading →

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“Hark, Hark! The Joy Inspiring Horn” – Discoveries in Schumann’s Konzertstück, Opus 86

Posted on October 28, 2013 by Dominik Rahmer

For pianists and string players, especially, the name Henle stands for reliable Urtext e­di­ti­ons of their classical repertoires – since the publishing-house founder Günter Henle was himself a pianist, the publishing house al­so focussed in the early years on that par­ti­cu­lar literature. Yet in the meantime the wind instruments have likewise become firm­ly established in our catalogue. Continue reading →

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Wieniawski’s Scherzo-Tarantella, op. 16: Structural designs for a synthesis between a tarantella and a scherzo?

Posted on October 14, 2013 by gast

As noted in the Preface to the Henle edition of Henryk Wieniawski’s Scherzo-Tarantella (HN 553), a violin and orchestra version of this work exists in an incompletely preserved photocopy of a lost autograph. This version was not published, and it presents a few no­table material differences in comparison with the published violin and piano version. Un­for­tu­na­te­ly, no other autograph of the Scherzo-Tarantella has survived, and without do­cu­men­ta­tion regarding Wieniawski’s editing process, we could not consider the violin and orchestra version as a source for the violin and piano version. Continue reading →

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A forgery? And if so, by whom? On the closing bars in Mozart’s Wind Quintet K. 452

Posted on September 30, 2013 by Wolf-Dieter Seiffert

The autograph of Mozart’s piano quintet for piano and four winds K. 452 harboured a secret for more than 200 long years. I could first reveal it as part of my Urtext edition (HN 665 and HN 9665) in the year 2000. Continue reading →

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High time for the low register – the double bass conquers the Henle catalogue

Posted on September 16, 2013 by Annette Oppermann

The strings, together with the main instrument, piano, have all along played a large role in the Henle catalogue. As early as amongst the house’s first publications from the 1940s, standard string-repertoire works can be found with Beethoven’s cello variations and violin sonatas (HN 5 and 7/8, both of course meanwhile revised according to the text of the New Beethoven Complete Edition); in the last six decades this repertoire has been systematically extended from Bach to Berg (as, incidentally, can also be gathered from our 13 video Interviews with 13 internationally renowned violinists on 13 great violin works). The double bass, on the other hand, first came to Henle with the new millennium, and for that there are many reasons … Continue reading →

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Ossia and Da Capo – Confusion in Schumann’s Papillons, Op. 2

Posted on September 2, 2013 by Norbert Gertsch

Sometimes a conundrum can’t be solved, even when the source situation makes abundant material available to the editor of an Urtext edition. This, for instance, is the case with Robert Schumann’s Papillons, Op. 2, for which the ‘definitive version’ can hardly likely be determined. Continue reading →

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Filched Melodies – Sarasate’s ‘Zigeunerweisen’ (Gypsy Airs) under suspicion of plagiarism

Posted on August 19, 2013 by Peter Jost

The use of folk-music elements in art music has, as is well known, a long tradition reaching back to the late Middle Ages. In the 2nd half of the 19th century this practice obtained new qualitative significance against the background of rising nationalism. If it served so many composers as a demonstration of their rootedness in their homelands, and at the same time as a self-confident counterweight to the dominance of German-Austrian music at that time – we think, for instance, of Edvard Grieg or Antonín Dvořák –, then other musicians paraded with great success the exotic charm of foreign sounds.

Benefitting like hardly anyone else from the fashion for such national idioms was the violin virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate (1844–1908), who in his own compositions borrowed from the folk music of numerous European countries and regions. Continue reading →

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“Liebestod” revisited – yet more problems in Franz Liszt’s transcription of Wagner

Posted on August 5, 2013 by Dominik Rahmer

Some time ago we had previously devoted a blog post to our new Urtext edition of Liszt’s piano transcription Isolde’s Liebestod (HN 558) in order to consider the various readings of the sources (see Wagner, Liszt, and Isolde ‘slurred’ – how well do composers proofread their own works?). Today, we’re going to re-examine the piece closely, for it has much to offer not only pianists, but also philologists… Continue reading →

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Schubert deletes, Brahms restores. On the first of the three posthumous piano pieces (Impromptus) D 946 by Franz Schubert

Posted on July 22, 2013 by Wolf-Dieter Seiffert

Schubert did not live to see the publication of his three impromptus composed in May 1828. They were not printed until 40 years later (!), and it was no less a person than Johannes Brahms who edited these piano pieces beloved by pianists and audiences down to the present day. Continue reading →

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