Bach/Busoni - a pairing that makes pianists’ hearts beat faster. This is because Busoni succeeded in making piano transcriptions of works that Bach had originally tailor-made for another instrument in such a way that one can still sense the original sound world while the grand piano is able to show off its full potential.
Together with the C-major Toccata, BWV 564, his transcription of the Organ Toccata in D minor, BWV 565 (now, after some interim uncertainty, once more considered a work by Bach), was to round off his reworkings of Bach for Breitkopf & Härtel in 1900. In Busoni’s view a worthy culmination because the toccatas were indeed - as he informed his publisher - “obviously the best among my achievements of this kind and I am confident in expecting they will make a strong impact”.
G. Henle Publishers agrees with this assessment and presents the famous D-minor Toccata and Fugue in an attractive Urtext edition that has consulted all of the sources and offers fingerings by the exceptional pianist 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 optimized for practical use (page turns, fingerings)
- are of high quality and durable (cover, paper, binding)
- contain a short preface that introduces the work (particulalry 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
