Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances, composed in 1915, are among his best-known works. They exist in multiple forms, since as well as several piano arrangements and a later orchestral version of his own there also exist arrangements by his contemporaries that were made with his consent. Today we can even access performances of the dances by Bartók himself; these recordings document varied repeats enriched by octave doublings to make a sort of “concert version” of the dances. Bartók expert László Somfai brings order to the rich fund of sources, and in Henle’s Urtext edition enters significant variants directly into the musical text itself.
G. Henle Publishers stands for Urtext sheet music of the highest quality. The Urtext editions not only provide the undistorted and authoritative musical text but are also aesthetically pleasing, optimised for practical use and extremely durable. And then there is the strong, distinctive blue profile: (almost) all of the Urtext editions are bound in the characteristic blue cardboard.
Musicians trust Henle's blue Urtext editions because they:
- provide an undistorted, reliable and authoritative musical text
- offer superb, aesthetically appealing music engraving
- are optimised for practical use (page turns, fingerings)
- are of high quality and durable (cover, paper, binding)
- contain a short preface that introduces the work (particularly useful for AMEB exams) in German, English and French, as well as explanatory footnotes for particularly interesting passages in the score
- contain a description of the sources, an evaluation of the sources, readings and a documentation of the corrections made (= "Critical Report") in German and English, and often also in French
