D or C♯? What does Ravel want the violinist to play in “Tzigane”?

Posted on February 3, 2014 by Peter Jost
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), 1925 (Licence: PD)

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), 1925 (Licence: PD)

Maurice Ravel’s concert rhapsody “Tzigane” is known to exist in three versions: in the original for violin and piano (April/May 1924), in the slightly-later version for violin and or­ches­tra (July 1924) as well as in a version for violin and lu­thé­al, (October 1924); the luthéal, only just developed and then quickly given up again, is a string-instrument device that when installed in the upright or grand piano makes it possible to generate a new sound register that Ravel used here primarily to imitate the sound of the Hungarian cim­ba­lom. Continue reading →

Posted in autograph, Chantal Juillet, Monday Postings, Pascal Rogé, piano + violin, Ravel, Maurice, variant reading | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

A wrong ‘D’ goes out into the world – Rachmaninoff’s Prélude in c sharp minor under the magnifying glass

Posted on January 20, 2014 by Dominik Rahmer

The last blog posting on 6 January has already let it be known: we are welcoming Sergei Rachmaninoff as a new composer in the Henle catalogue! With the expiration of copyright on 1 January 2014, works in Germany and many other countries of the EU and worldwide have now come into the public domain, so that there is no longer anything standing in the way of a new critical edition of his compositions. Continue reading →

Posted in autograph, first edition, Monday Postings, piano solo, Prélude in c sharp minor (Rachmaninoff), Rachmaninoff, Sergei, variant reading | Tagged , , , | 14 Comments

Corelli, La Folia and Rachmaninoff’s Variations, Op. 42

Posted on January 6, 2014 by Norbert Gertsch

In May and June 1931 Sergei Rachmaninoff composed his famous and much-played piano ‘Variations on a Theme by Corelli’, Op. 42. Only: The theme is not by Corelli! And what do we now call the child? Better, perhaps, ‘La Folia’ Variations … Continue reading →

Posted in Corelli Variations op. 42 (Rachmaninoff), Corelli, Arcangelo, Monday Postings, piano solo, Rachmaninoff, Sergei, Vladimir Ashkenazy | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Christmas Blog

Posted on December 23, 2013 by publisher

Dear Reader,

we most warmly thank you today for your interest in the Henle Blog. We also look for­ward to your visits in the coming year and promise interesting postings on musical ques­tions concerning music texts.
Today, you will find here a film that is really something. It is an old production from a full 30 years ago of the Bach Christmas Oratorio with Nikolaus Harnoncourt con­duc­ting. Absolutely worth hearing and seeing! Continue reading →

Posted in Bach, Johann Sebastian, chorus + orchestra, General, Nikolaus Harnoncourt | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Why facsimiles, actually?

Posted on December 9, 2013 by Annette Oppermann

The blue Urtext editions certainly amount to the lion’s share of our catalogue, but, in­ci­den­tal­ly, we do also still produce a completely different kind of music edition; these are facsimiles, that is, literal reproductions of especially significant manuscripts. Often e­nough we even stock both for a work, so that many people may ask: Why do we actually need the facsimile if, after all, we have a reliable Urtext edition that gives a scholarly e­va­lu­a­ti­on of just this source and hence offers the musician the optimal foundation for per­for­mance? Continue reading →

Posted in autograph, facsimile, G. Henle Publishers, Monday Postings, notation, Schubert, Franz, Violin Sonata op. 137 (Schubert) | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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 →

Posted in Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel, first edition, flute solo, Flute Sonata Wq 132 (C.P.E. Bach), Monday Postings, ornamentation | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

‘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 →

Posted in Franck, César, genesis, Martha Argerich, Mischa Maisky, Monday Postings, piano + violin, piano + violoncello, versions, Violin Sonata (Franck) | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

“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 →

Posted in autograph, Concert Piece op. 86 (Schumann), first edition, G. Henle Publishers, horn, Monday Postings, notation, Schumann, Robert | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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 →

Posted in genesis, Monday Postings, piano + violin, Scherzo-Tarantella op. 16 (Wieniawski), versions, Wieniawski, Henryk | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

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 →

Posted in autograph, Monday Postings, Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, notation, versions, Wind Quintet K. 452 (W.A. Mozart) | Tagged , | 3 Comments