Hi,

My teacher told me yesterday that soon we would be working on some of Chopin's preludes and this lunchtime I went to a music shop to see if I could get a book but was amazed by all the different editions they had. I will be asking her at my next lesson which one she recommends but was wondering how people know what version to pick when they buy music? Is there something you look at in the way music is written? The fingering was completely different from one version to another and so how do you know which one is right for you?
Hmmm...all very confusing to me right now....

Henle is excellent.

For a smaller budget, Dover is a good choice. It reprints the Mikuli edition. Mikuli was a student of Chopin. The older Dover edition is a reprint of the Paderewski edition, which is also good.

No matter which edition you choose, editorial fingering should be treated as a guideline only. You should feel free to make changes as you are learning the piece. Fingering has a lot to do with a player's hand size, technical ability, and musical interpretation.

missypiano

I can only reiterate what organ_dummy has said. Editions can vary enormously, especially in terms of the editorial markings (fingering being a significant example). I find that the process of choosing an edition that suits you is often a matter of trial and error at first, and I have often had to buy several different editions, only to find that the first one I got hold of turns out to be the most reliable and useful . But you should find that, with experience, a particular publisher starts to become a favourite.

I think it's useful to bear in mind the following when weighing up the options:

the introductory section (background information on the work(s), the composer, the first perfomance, hints and tips on interpretation, and so on);
the extent of (or lack of, in the case of urtext editions) editorial markings;
the page layout, and where page turns fall;
the reputation of the publisher;
the price;
the date of publication (earlier editions may be out of step with current musicological opinion, but can also provide interesting details which may be omitted in later ones);

this list is by no means comprehensive, and I'm sure I have left out many other important considerations, which fellow forumites will gleefully pick up on...

In organ_dummy's case, its the highly rated 'henle' editions which appeal the most. I too find them refreshingly straightforward, as are Barenreiter.

Good luck

denmark


correction 'perfomance' = performance

No point repeating organ_dummy and denmark77's advice. But quality of printing and binding are important too. A crisply printed score on good paper is a lot easier on the eyes than a facsimile of an older printed copy - which can be just the tiniest bit fuzzy.

Musical scores need to be better bound and generally tougher than books. They have a hard life.
A binding that won't lie flat on the music stand is next to useless, and an edition where the pages drop out after a few weeks is no fun either.

These are a couple of the factors that add even more to the cost of the better Urtexts.

Good point. I never thought of that until recently when I found a brand new volume of complete Debussy preludes in a second hand shop for less than £5 (the new Durand critical edition which is £20+ first hand), so of course I snapped it up and then discovered at home that it wouldn't lie flat (even after a night under my harp!)

Thank you for your replies Organ_dummy, Denmark and Mad Tom.
They have certainly been most useful and I have a much better idea of what to look for when I next go back to the music shop! I would never have thought of looking "at where the page turns" or at the binding but now that you have mentioned it I realise from a piece I'm working on how important that is! In the Mozart sonato I'm learning I need to turn the page in the middle of a phrase which is not very convenient and the binding is so flimsy that each time I turn it the whole thing keeps falling off the piano! Strange how things sometimes annoy you but you put up with it when you don't know you actually don't have to! Glad I asked my question!!
Thanks again!!!!

My pleasure, you're very welcome missypiano, glad I could help (chivalry is dead? Pah)
denmark

You might find that eventually, when you begin to learn more of them, that having two or even several editions is handy. The first one i bought was the Stainer and Bell, with a red cover, it's only about a fiver, but the noteheads are a bit small. However the first preludes' notes are distributed differently to all the others i've seen, and i kind of got used to this version. The Peters is good, the Henle i'd say is the best overall. There's a good student edition from Schirmer which does have more page turns as the staves are bigger, the one page pieces are on two pages, useful notes which did explain certain things that none of the others do, and a cd played by Brian Ganz who also edits the book. But if i were to go for one it would be the Henle.