The name Widor is so closely associated with music for the organ that his many compositions for other instruments can easily be overlooked. The Suite for Flute and Piano, presumably composed in 1877, stands out amongst chamber music works on account of the wealth of expressive and tonal nuances.
The late Romantic work is specially tailored to the possibilities of the flute; and it is no accident that it was dedicated to the most important French flautist and flute teacher of the time, Paul Taffanel, who gave its first performance in 1884. From the very beginning the four-movement Suite has been very popular and now belongs to the core repertoire for flute and piano.
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
