G. Henle Urtext

Debussy had intended to write a cycle comprising six sonatas. However, as he was seriously ill, he was forced to conclude it with the third one. Whereas the Sonata for Cello and Piano and the one for Flute, Viola and Harp were quickly written in 1915, an unusually fruitful compositional year, the violin sonata posed difficulties for the composer in the following year. He struggled with the finale in particular, and was only able to send the work to the publisher Durand in April 1917. Its difficult genesis is soon forgotten when one listens to the resulting work: it displays perfect classicism and is full of life, as the composer himself remarked. - Publisher.

Ludwig van Beethoven wrote his ten violin sonatas during a period of just fifteen years, between 1797 and 1812. Using our carefully revised two-volume edition of the complete sonatas, the performer can observe with fascination how Beethoven refashions, and varies, the principles of sonata form in each work. What makes this Urtext edition particularly valuable is the fact that all the sonatas have been edited using the surviving manuscripts as well as the original print editions personally supervised by Beethoven. When laying out the text, our editor has attempted to preserve the layout of these sources as exactly as possible. Thus Beethoven's original notation is reproduced in strict conformity with these models, vividly elucidating the musical relationships desired by the composer. Along with an annotated part, an extra part without fingerings is included for violinists who want to establish their own approach to Beethoven's violin sonatas. - Publisher.

Inspired by Béla Bartók's violin sonatas, Ravel planned his own sonata for violin and piano in 1922, but at first did not get beyond sketches. Many interruptions ensued and the work was only finished in 1927. He dedicated it to his violinist friend Hélène Jourdan-Morhange. Regarding the sonata's sparse, thinned out compositional structure and instrumentation, Ravel later emphasized that the sonata proved the tonal incompatibility of the violin and piano. Yet it still succeeded in winning a permanent place in violin repertoire -- not least because of its middle movement inspired by jazz elements and the "blues". The fingerings in this Henle Urtext edition have been provided by two masters of their instruments: Christian Tetzlaff and Pascal Rogé. - Publisher.

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? - Publisher.

At the first performances of this sonata, composed between 1920 and 1922, even close friends of the composer were perturbed: Following the intoxicating sounds of La Valse, the smaller scoring and modern musical language of the sonata were a shock. Yet this pioneering work has now become a permanent fixture on the concert stage. To help the players, we are now presenting two performance scores in which the other instrument's part is also given. Both parts are included in a marked and an unmarked version. The world-renowned musicians Christian Poltéra and Frank Peter Zimmermann provided the fingerings. - Publisher.