Beethoven - Piano Sonatas, Vol. 1

The two-volume Henle Urtext edition of Beethoven's piano sonatas (HN 32 and HN 34) has established itself over the decades as the standard and reference edition among pianists worldwide.

After its publication in the early 1950s, under the responsibility of the Munich musicologist Bertha Antonia Wallner - with the support of the Bonn Beethoven Archive - this outstanding edition was quickly recognized by the pianist world as setting a benchmark. The decades of hard practical testing led to improvements and refinements, so that today this Henle Urtext edition of Beethoven's piano sonatas is considered an undisputed reference.

The printed fingerings of the pianist and important piano teacher Conrad Hansen are considered an important suggestion for solving technical-musical problems: “as few but advanced fingerings as possible” (Hansen).

Alternatively, G. Henle Verlag offers the Beethoven sonatas in the printed Urtext without any fingering (HN 1032 and HN 1034), as well as a pocket score in the Study Edition series (HN 9032 and HN 9034). And in the digital edition of the “Henle Library” app, anyone interested can also find the sonatas, here combined with various subjective, selectable fingerings, namely by Eugen d'Albert, Claudio Arrau, Conrad Hansen and Artur Schnabel.

Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas present us with an almost inexhaustible wealth of pianistic-musical flights of fancy, mostly works that are very well-known in lessons, on stage and in recordings.

Hans von Bülow emphasized the importance and value of Beethoven's piano sonatas with his bon mot, they represented the “New Testament of Music”. These are deliberately the 32 sonatas with opus numbers; The 3 “Elector Sonatas” by the 13-year-old boy, WoO 47, are not considered to be part of the “New Testament”. These are available separately from Henle in Urtext (HN 255). G. Henle Verlag also offers each Beethoven sonata as a Urtext individual edition (printed or in the app).

The characteristics of the Beethoven piano sonatas summarized in the Henle Urtext:

• Always up-to-date scientific-critical Urtext edition based on all available sources
• Music text optimizations as a result of ongoing commitment in musical practice
• All important information about text passages in footnotes on the sheet music page
• Unrivaledly beautiful and correct music image thanks to traditional hand engraving
• with fingering suggestions from Conrad Hansen (alternatives in the app)
• available in two anthologies with fingering, paperback or cloth
• available without fingering, paperback
• each sonata also available separately (printed and app)

In order to meet the growing need for more annotated Urtext editions, but also to document the eminent Beethoven knowledge of one of the greatest living pianists of our time, Murray Perahia, G. Henle Verlag has been gradually publishing all Beethoven books for some time now. Sonatas in a parallel Urtext edition, the Perahia edition.