Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas are the “New Testament” of music, according to Hans von Bülow. Our selection here does not take things quite so solemnly, because we have also taken the opportunity to show the more “worldly” side of the composer, with dances, bagatelles, the unusual character piece “Lustig und traurig” (“Happy and sad”), and of course the indestructible “Für Elise”. As usual in our series “At the piano”, all the pieces are arranged progressively from easy to medium level of difficulty. And you do not have to be in awe of Beethoven’s piano sonatas either: the highly Classical sonata in G major (essentially a sonatina) offers an ideal introduction to the many-facetted world of Beethoven’s sonatas. In contrast to this, we also show Beethoven the “poet at the piano”, with the first movement of his “Moonlight” Sonata in c-sharp minor, along with the funeral march from the Sonata in A-flat major – visionary creations that already point far ahead into the world of Romanticism.
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
