Sergei Rachmaninoff’s second book of Préludes, op. 32, was written in the summer of 1910 at his family’s idyllic country house in Ivanovka. This sleepy, rural area inspired the composer to this wonderful, Impressionistic G-major Prélude. It is not very difficult, and is thus also suitable for advanced amateur pianists. Thanks to the cooperation of the Glinka Archive in Moscow, all the autograph sources were consulted for this Henle Urtext edition of the Préludes. As in all of our Rachmaninoff editions, the fingerings are by Marc-André Hamelin.
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
