Henle Blog

Our attention was recently drawn to a passage in our edition of Franz Liszt’s Études d’exécution transcendante (HN 717), which has not yet been annotated in any known critical edition. Ben Yin, a piano student of Prof. Claudius Tanski’s at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg, noticed while studying the notorious “Mazeppa” Etude (No. 4 of the Études d’exécution transcendante), that the outer voices at the first appearance of the theme (mm. 7 ff.) – unlike the middle voice played alternately by both hands – only incompletely fill in the 4/4-time measures: Continue reading →

George Gershwin was tragically snatched from life in 1937, far too early at age 38, leaving us merely to guess what masterpieces for the classical music world, not to mention his many musicals, he would have left behind had he lived on into old age. On Broadway he had already achieved everything to be wished for. But with Rhapsody in Blue in 1924 the 26-year-old had only begun his journey into the spheres of Carnegie Hall. He had just 12 years left to write some of the most important orchestral and operatic works in American music history. A few piano works were still to be written and a single chamber work, the string quartet movement Lullaby (HN 1224). Continue reading →