String instruments > Violin and Piano
Max Bruch
Violin Concerto g minor op. 26
Editor: Michael Kube
Piano reduction: Johannes Umbreit
Fingering and bowing for Violin: Kurt Guntner
29.95 $
Urtext Edition, Piano reduction, paperbound
with marked and unmarked string parts
Pages: 75 (VII, 34, 17, 17), Size 23,5 x 31,0 cm
Order no. HN 708 · ISMN M-2018-0708-9
Level of difficulty (Violin): difficult (Level 8)
It made its creator world-famous and added a towering masterpiece to the standard repertoire: Max Bruch’s First Violin Concerto in g minor. Now it’s appearing at last in an urtext edition from Henle. Bruch himself was not always overjoyed at his work’s popularity: "I can’t listen to this concerto anymore," he once complained to his publisher Simrock, "do you suppose I’ve only written one concerto?" By now the Bruch Concerto has found a permanent place in the world’s concert halls. Henle’s edition provides not only a razor-sharp urtext for the solo part, but a preface that alone is worth the price of the volume: who could have guessed that the concerto went through a convoluted genesis with multi-layered revisions, and that some of the changes go back to the famous violinist Joseph Joachim?
Audio example: Anne-Sophie Mutter
Deutsche Grammophon 028946364123GOR
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Reviews
The complex genesis of the work is unravelled in a comprehensive preface and all the various sources have been scrutinized in producing this fine edition.
[Sheet Music, Winter 2003]
The levels of difficulty of the
music for violin published by G. Henle Publishers
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| easy | medium | difficult | ||||||
The levels of difficulty of the violin music published by G. Henle Publishers
| Level | Degree | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | easy | Beethoven, 6 German Dances WoO 42 |
| 2 | Beethoven, Rondo G major WoO 41 |
|
| 3 | Mozart, Violin Sonata F major KV 547 |
|
| 4 | medium | Haydn, Violin Concerto A major Hob. VIIa:3 |
| 5 | Bach, Violin Concerto a minor BWV 1041 |
|
| 6 | Brahms, Violin Sonata G major op. 78 |
|
| 7 | difficult | Paganini, No. 9 from Capricci op. 1 |
| 8 | Beethoven, Violin Concerto D major op. 61 |
|
| 9 | Berg, Violin Concerto |
I have assigned all of the violin music in G. Henle Publishers' catalogue a level of difficulty, ranging from "very easy" to "very difficult". The model for this was the evaluation system with nine levels developed for Henle's piano catalogue by Rolf Koenen. Unlike the works for solo piano, I have decided against evaluations that lie between two levels (e.g. 4/5 or 7/8).
This kind of attempt will always be "relative" to some degree. While the work remains the work, what is relative is the technical and musical ability of the player. Let us take a look at Mozart, for example, from the perspective of an Arthur Grumiaux and from that of a very young pupil. It is clear to whom my levels of difficulty are addressed: to the pupils or their teacher. I have, of course, always endeavoured to objectively assess the purely technical level of difficulty. But everything "between the lines" is, of course, left up to the judgement of each individual musician. Depending on our abilities, we perceive the "difficulty" of a work for violin differently, yet with the same conviction.
At the start, categorizing violin literature into levels of difficulty from 1 to 9 seemed to carry a certain risk as well as being unknown territory, yet I have now gained a deep insight into all of the works for violin in G. Henle Publishers' catalogue.
Ernst Schliephake © 2013