Music's many different editions

[bachbrahmsschubert]

I was curious on what editions people preferred for certain composers and what editions you will not allow your student to use.

If I walk in to my teacher's studio with any Schirmer edition, she will beat me until I burn it.

For Bach, I prefer Barenreiter; Chopin - Paderewski; Beethoven - Peters; Prokofiev - Universal. Everyone else is either Henle or Dover (which I don't mind for Mozart, people look at me crazy when I say that).

Are there any editions for specific composers that make you cringe upon opening the book? Everyone seems to hate Schirmer, it's sad.

[lorditachijr]

The reason why most people don't like Schimer is probably because they generally over-edit everything and many times their fingerings don't look like they would work for any human hand. I think that generally Alfred and Edition Peters are fairly high quality for most things. I highly prefer getting the urtext for books of larger collections like sonatas or pretty much anything Bach. For violin music, IMC is the only way to go for solo literature. I remember how I got my Beethoven Sonata books... One of my fellow piano students who was from Taiwan returned their over the summer. He went into a music store and found urtext Beethoven sonata books for 10$ each. His family bought as many as the store had and my teacher reimbursed them, saving a great deal of money rather than buying from a better-known company. They are very high quality books; the only problem is that all of the footnotes are in Chinese .

[geze]

I'm so used to getting the cheap ABRSM editions. My ex teacher said they are not all that good. Since I am not an expert in editions, what is the best one for Chopin, Bach, Schubert and Beethoven?

[asiantraveller101]

I used to buy Henle till I discovered Schott (Wiener urtext) edition. Now I absolute love their publication, even though the Wiener edition is not extensive in the music selection. Schirmer is highly accessible and published a lot of different music, and I use it if I cannot find music elsewhere. The only problem with Barenreiter is the smaller print, difficult to read for younger students, including me (with my aging eyes!).
I don't trust Alfred! They are highly inconsistent and I doubt the musicianship/scholarship when it comes to editing.
Dover based a lot of their music on old obsolete Breitkopf and Hartel edition. I only use it for comparative work, not as my main text.
Peters is fairly good, and is highly edited (with exception the urtext edition). Their price is getting extremely high nowadays.

PS. ABRSM edition is not cheap!
PSS. For some reason, Henle has Chinese edition as mentioned by lorditachijr.

[ionian_tinnear]

I use Henle for the most part when available.  I've found them to be the most consistent.  I have a few Peters too, and way too many Schirmers.  Often, for me, it comes to which score I started with is the one I prefer!  Working on a piece from one edition, then switching to another is like putting your shoes on backwards, it can be done, but it's a little uncomfortable!

I lost my copy of Albeniz 'Suite Espanole' and had to replace it.  I couldn't find the same edition, not one of the usual publisher's, that I had, so I got a Schirmer.  What a difference!  There were what could only be errors in several places where notes were just wrong, or so I thought.  So I got another edition, again not a well known publisher.  This edition was exactly the same as the Schirmer in every detail (I ordered it online, always a mistake for new scores).

I've never found that original copy I had, so have had to mark in what I think are errors, listening to recordings to help confirm.

[eda2k]

Hi.

I have many editions, so I may say:

For Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Liszt, Schumann, Schubert, Mendelssohn, in general German composers, use the G. Henle Edition (most accurate).

For Mozart, I have the Barenreiter Edition, but also the Wiener Edition.

For Chopin, use Paderewski, Cortot or the new Polish Edition.

For Debussy, the Durand Salabert Edition.

and for the Russian composers, use Russian Editions.

I don`t recomend Schirmer, Peters, Kalmus, etc. I think that more important than the edition, it`s the editor !

Take Care !