Shortly after a rather unsuccessful performance of his Piano Concerto no. 1, Johannes Brahms wrote to Joseph Joachim in 1859: “... a second one will sound different”. Nevertheless, a good 20 years elapsed before that second concerto finally took form, and only in 1881 was he able to announce: “I wanted to tell you that I have written a very small piano concerto with a tiny little delicate Scherzo”. Our piano reduction of this anything-but-little symphonic concerto presents the solo part as it appears in the respective, recently published volume of the Brahms Complete Edition (HN 6020). Lars Vogt has succeeded in taming the opulent piano writing with his fingerings. The refined arrangement of the complex orchestral part for the accompanying second piano stems from Johannes Umbreit.
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
