For decades, the two-volume Henle Urtext edition of Beethoven’s piano sonatas has maintained its status across the globe as the standard edition of reference among pianists. After its publication at the beginning of the 1950s, edited by the Munich musicologist Bertha Antonia Wallner – with the support of the Beethoven Archive in Bonn – this outstanding editorial achievement was quickly recognised by the world of pianists as a new benchmark. Its decades-long, rigorous field testing led to improvements and refinements such that this Henle Urtext edition of Beethoven’s piano sonatas is universally regarded today as the reference source.
The printed fingerings provided by the pianist and important musical pedagogue Conrad Hansen are regarded as meaningful suggestions for solving technical and musical problems: “as few fingerings as possible, albeit instructive ones” (Hansen).
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