Franz Joseph Haydn: Le Pescatrici - Dramma Giocoso

Franz Liszt: Années De Pèlerinage, Première Année - Suisse

Henle Urtext edition based on the original manuscript and first edition. Edited by Ernst Hettrich with fingerings by Hans-Martin Theopold.ContentsChapelle de Guillaume Tell Au lac de Wallenstadt Pastorale Au bord d''une source Orage Vallée d''Obermann Eglogue Le mal du pays Les cloches de Genève Appendix: Vallée d''Obermann (early version based on the Haslinger edition of 1842)

Claude Debussy: Ballad

In autumn 1891 Debussy ’s early Piano piece, Ballade slave, was published by Choudens. When he had it re-engraved by Fromont in a slightly revised form in 1903, he deleted the word slave. Thus the title pointed more markedly to the work’s narrative character. Yet one can detect a certain Russian influence, stemming from the time he spent with Nadeshda von Meck – Debussy was at times her house pianist. Even echoes of Balakirev can be heard. The occasionally unconventional tonal approach already heralds the Debussy of the important cycle Pour le Piano, published in 1901.

Franz Liszt: Vallée d?Obermann ? Single edition

“Obermann”, the epistolary novel by the French Romantic Senancour, inspired Liszt to write the first volume in his collection “Années de Pèlerinage” (HN 173). A wanderer is searching for his ideals in the solitude of the Swiss mountains. The composer was able to identify with these ideas to such a great degree that he prefaced the eighth piece (“Le Mal de Pays”) with an extract from the novel’s 38th letter. It is this text which also accompanies our edition of the sixth piece “ Vallée d’Obermann ”. To aid comprehension we have also included translations of the French orginal into German and English. Now the most important composition in the “Années I” is also available in a separate Henle urtext edition.

Claude Debussy: Images -1894 (Henle Urtext Edition)

This work only has the title in common with the well-known “ Images ” I and II from 1905 and 1908. Debussy dedicated the three-part cycle to the daughter of a painter friend, writing: “These pieces shy away from brightly lit salons, in which people are usually to be found who do not care for music. They are rather soliloquies of the Piano and the self and it is not forbidden to employ the special mood conjured up by rainy days”. The slow movement – it resurfaces in a slightly altered form as the middle movement of “Pour le Piano” – is associated with the atmosphere in the Louvre and its old paintings. This is Impressionist music of a very special kind.

Ludwig Van Beethoven: Variationen, Rondo, Tanze

Beethoven personally designated these three works as “minor pieces,” thus referring to their technical demands and their light artistic weight. While the variations on “Se vuol ballare” from Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro had most likely been written in Bonn, the Rondo dates from the first Viennese years at the latest. The six Deutsche Tänze (German Dances) are an occasional work from 1796 for the two Prague Baronesses Thun so that they could as we can read on an old copy “dance to their tunes on other people’s heads.” In view of the rather unsophisticated writing, the musical abilities of the young countesses must have been fairly limited. Altogether, the three pieces offeryoung violinists and pianists a welcome preparation for Beethoven’s later pieces in this scoring.

Debussy: La Plus Que Lente Piano Solo

Slow waltzes enjoyed a special vogue in Parisian salons of the early twentieth century, leading Debussy – with a twinkle in his eye – to produce his piano waltz “La plus que lente” (“The Slower-than-Slow”). Parisian publisher Durand brought Debussy’s piano waltz, issued in July 1910, to a wider public by publishing it that same year as a supplement to Le Figaro, as well as in arrangements (by others) for violin and piano and for piano, 4-hands. Debussy himself produced a version for orchestra, and in 1913 he even – at a rather faster tempo – recorded it on a piano roll for the Welte-Mignon company. This work, headed “molto rubato con morbidezza” (with much rubato, morbidly), is now available as a separate Henle Urtext. A preface, extended from those in the anthology volumes HN 1194 and HN 404, will stimulate curiosity about this charming miniature waltz.