Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904)
Antonín Dvořák’s Cello Concerto op. 104 may be a special challenge for cellists, but for the editor of an Urtext edition it is a real nightmare. Not only – as so often with Dvořák – are there numerous differences between the score and first edition that are difficult to resolve. No, also showing up time and again even within the individual sources, especially in the solo part, are discrepancies and ambiguities, be they owing to multiple overwritings in the autograph or small dynamic and articulation variants between the individual printed part and the score or piano reduction. The engraver’s model for the first edition, which Dvořák himself wrote out in the autumn of 1895, would indeed be very helpful – but it is unfortunately lost. Appearing in New York a few years ago was an early copy of a separate solo part, apparently from Dvořák’s immediate milieu, that surprises in some places with precisely counted “blank measures”. Continue reading
Even though recently the focus of attention owing to their anniversaries has been on composers like Debussy, Beethoven or currently Saint-Saëns, Antonín Dvořák seems to me to be the secret luminary in the Henle programme. Since 2015, no fewer than eleven new Urtext editions of his works have been published by our publishing house, amongst them, many large and central works of his oeuvre such as the late String Quartets opp. 96, 105 und 106, the Piano Quintet op. 81, the Piano Trio op. 65 and the Humoresques for piano op. 101. Our new edition of the Wind Serenade in d minor op. 44 (