Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner For which composers are Bärenreiter Urtext editions, best?

Wow, looks like a little early Christmas present for yourself. Once you get them, let us what you think of it vs your other editions. That will be interesting.

Yes, it will be quite the treat. I did indicate they could put it on the slow-boat so that they can hopefully arrive after my flat renovation is done so that I will have space for them

BTW, since I will now have 3 different editions of the Inventions/Sinfonia (Henle, Weiner, Bärenreiter), I'm now actively looking to collect some more urtext editions of these as you saw from my note about the 2015 Peters edition, but I think I'd want to have fingering suggestions to be a really practical and useful edition, as it will be a long time before I can figure out fingering on my own. So based on your comments on the other thread, I think I will say no to the 2015 Peters edition, but look around for other urtext with fingering for those pieces.

If you are looking for the modern ones, you can get the ABRSM edition by Richard Jones. It has both the fingering and the suggestion for the ornaments. There are some good comments also.

The old Busoni has a lot of excellent comments quite worth the reading, fingering, ornaments and articulation, not too romantic. A great musician who understood Bach well. Its on imslp but you can also get a printed version from Schirmer.

Just to note the sale on the Bärenreiter have improved to 32% off with an early Black Friday coupon ("EARLY2019"). Sadly, I missed that but did get 28% off in total.

If you do not have a copy Schumann's "Album for the Youth",it would be well worth it.These consist
of not only easy pieces but some are about gr 7 or perhaps a bit beyond .
Even just for sight reading practice an excellent group.of pieces,many quite beautiful.
Another is Kinderscenen which is not really just written for children but decribes them.

I want the Bärenreiter edition of the Mozart concertos. Now I have no excuse. I'll probably get three of them (I already have some published by Schirmer).

Bärenreiter's Rameau collection is a classic.

I just realised that the reduction you mentioned Tyrone is on SheetMusicPlus and not Bärenreiter's website.

Oh, you can't order from SMP because you are in Ireland... Oops.

But! if SMP can do such a discount, there might be some other music reseller in Europe doing it as well.

I'm supposed to get the "performing-scholarly-critical edition" of the Bärenreiter Bach cello suites in the mail today; it's supposed to be seven volumes in a folder. It was from SMP as well but I don't know if it was discounted or not. It was a pretty good deal though. The copy I had was just a single-volume performing edition, so I'm looking forward to this more comprehensive setup. Music sure has a way of sucking up your money.

I can actually order, but it takes forever to get here with the cheaper postage options. It might be cheaper to just buy from Bärenreiter directly. For an order over around $40 I could be stung for fees. I'll have a look and see which option is best.

Come to think of it, most printed music is VAT free, and import duty isn't charged on shipments worth less than €150.

The sale on Sheet Music Plus has improved to 36% discount total, plus free shipping (when I ordered, it was 28% discount budget shipping, but not free).

So I think I will order the two Schuman books Lady Bird suggested above (43 Piano Pieces for the Young Op. 68 & Kinderszenen Op. 15). I'm thinking of adding Forest Scenes Op. 82 to that. But even so, I'd need to add about $45 more in music books to get the discount.

Anything other "nice to haves" for the intermediate / advanced-intermediate level? Further suggestions? Collections would get me there, but those are all too far above my level to be useful for the foreseeable future.

Both books (or either book) of The Well Tempered Clavier.

Barenreiter makes some fantastic books IMO. I have several of their Rachmaninoff books and the Scriabin Sonatas - they are expensive but worth it. That said, the spines leave a bit to be desired. I've had mine re-bound with spiral since I prefer to play out of books that easily stay open.

Well, it turns out waiting was the right thing. For Cyber Monday, which ends in 2hrs 45mins, Sheet Music Plus removed the $75 minimum purchase to get the 20% discount, which was on top of the 20% on the Barenreiter Urtext and they kept the free shipping.

So I ended buying:

Schumann
Forest Scenes, Op. 82
Scenes from Childhood, Op. 15
43 Piano Pieces for the Young op. 68

Beethoven
Sonata for Pianoforte, Op. 27: No. 1 in E-flat Major ‘Quasi una fantasia' / No. 2 in c-sharp minor ‘Moonlight Sonata’

All told, it was just $30.00.

I'm surprised that's so urtext as to be completely unfingered, but I looked it up, and it is!

Do you know about Alfred's version of Bach's Inventions and Sinfonias, ed. by Willard Palmer? Excellent with good fingerings, suggested written-out realizations of ornaments, extensive notes, etc.

https://www.alfred.com/j-s-bach-inventions-sinfonias-two-three-part-inventions/p/00-606C/

Some of those Alfred Masterworks Editions are great. I like the ones edited by Nancy Bricard. Her Gaspard de la Nuit is particularly good, as she discusses possible errors in the de facto standard Durand edition, as well as insights provided by those who knew Ravel.

I often buy Alfred editions just for the fingerings. They are relatively cheap compared to Henle, Wiener Urtext, etc. I prefer the fingerings (where present) in the Henle editions, however. The heavily and idiosyncratically edited Schirmer editions sometimes have some very interesting fingerings as well.

I bought Debussy's "Children's Corner" and "Suite Bergamasque" in the Barenreiter editions during this sale. They are very good, with half the book devoted to discussing publishing history and various editions used to create the Barenreiter editions...similar to other Urtext publishers. I love having all that detail and knowing exactly why various editorial decisions were made. It appeals to the OCD in me!

I second that.