The great pianist Paul Badura-Skoda counts the first movement of this B-flat major sonata K. 333 as “among the most beautiful … in the piano literature.” And who would want to contradict him? What a pyrotechnic display of wonderful and freely vibrant melodies in the first movement, artfully coupled with pianistic runs and flourishes! The sublime slow movement (“Andante cantabile”) could pass as the piano reduction of a string quartet, while the concluding “Allegretto grazioso” is like the jaunty but subtle dance finale from an opera buffa. As we know today, Mozart composed this miraculous sonata in 1783 – previous Mozart scholarship missed the mark entirely with its much earlier date. It appeared in print a year later, interestingly in combination with the (relatively) early piano sonata K. 284 and the grandiose violin sonata K. 454.
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
