As Urtext editors, we could sometimes despair: we’re offering the music world a reliable music text, but those for whom all our work is devoted go on ignoring the new findings in their playing and teaching.
You’d like an example? I recently heard a young, very talented Korean violinist play Mozart’s D-major Concerto, K. 218 (HN 680). Apart from the fact that he unfortunately dispensed with the ‘common sense’ standard, at least in historically informed performance practice, of playing the tutti passages and conducting the orchestra as primarius, we heard in detail all those little note errors and subjective editorial additions ultimately going back to Ferdinand David’s first edition of 1865. Continue reading