Liszt’s piano rhapsodies stand in the tradition of his transcriptions of operatic or song melodies, yet employ folk dances and songs as their source material. Completed in 1864, Rhapsodie espagnole is a late reminiscence of Liszt’s extended travels to Spain and Portugal in 1844–45. On the basis of two popular Iberian dance tunes, Folia and Jota, Liszt here sets off fireworks of representative rhythms and tone colours with a highly virtuosic presto finale. The long inaccessible autograph manuscript of the composition is now accessible once more – an occasion for G. Henle Publishers to revise its Urtext edition.
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
