| German version |
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A wrong note in the Ninth? Inconceivable! After all, Beethoven’s symphonies are part of the standard classical repertoire all over the world. And yet it’s true: even today many orchestras play Beethoven’s symphonies from sheet music containing mistakes handed down since Beethoven’s day. This is where a music publishing house like Bärenreiter in Kassel steps into action. Bärenreiter’s goal always has been to provide musicians with sheet music reflecting as closely as possible the original intentions of the composer, i.e. to produce an “urtext” or definitive score. First, an editor has to be found who is willing to delve into archives and libraries and extract the “urtext” from a myriad sources. Particularly in the case of the Ninth, this is a tedious and nerve-wracking process. Some twenty sources have survived: manuscripts, handwritten copies, master copies for the engraving, first editions, separate instrumental parts. Jonathan Del Mar, the English editor of Bärenreiter’s Beethoven Edition, has scrutinized them all at first hand. The result of his painstaking labors is a score that allows conductors, with the aid of a Critical Report, to retrace every single note in the piece and explain how it got there. In Beethoven’s case, of course, this does not mean that we will hear a completely new symphony. But many passages will force aficionados to perk up their ears. As the advertising slogan goes, “You’ll hear the difference.” But the house is not only interested in the Great Masters: it has always maintained a commitment to contemporary music. Hugo Distler, Ernst Krenek and Günter Bialas had their music published in Kassel; and in Manfred Trojahn, Matthias Pintscher, and others Bärenreiter has signed on highly gifted composers. |