For decades the two-volume Henle Urtext edition of Beethoven's piano sonatas has maintained
its status across the globe as the standard edition of reference among pianists. After its
publication at the beginning of the 1950s edited by the Munich musicologist Bertha Antonia
Wallner - with the support of the Beethoven Archive in Bonn - this outstanding editorial
achievement was quickly recognised by the world of pianists as a new benchmark. Its
decades-long rigorous field testing led to improvements and refinements such that this Henle
Urtext edition of Beethoven's piano sonatas is universally regarded today as the reference
source. The printed fingerings provided by the pianist and important musical pedagogue Conrad
Hansen are regarded as meaningful suggestions for solving technical and musical problems: as
few fingerings as possible albeit instructive ones (Hansen). G. Henle Publishers also offers
the Beethoven sonatas in an alternative Urtext print edition without any fingerings (HN 1032
and HN 1034) as well as a pocket score in our study score series (HN 9032 and HN 9034) And
interested parties may also find the sonatas in the digital version in the Henle Library app
here in conjunction with a variety of subjective selectable fingerings by the likes of Eugen
d'Albert Claudio Arrau Conrad Hansen and Artur Schnabel. Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas unfurl
before us a virtually inexhaustible wealth of pianistic and musical flights of fancy
predominantly works of the greatest familiarity in piano lessons concert halls and
recordings. Hans von Bülow emphasised the importance and significance of Beethoven's piano
sonatas with his bon mot that they constituted the New Testament of music. The 32 sonatas with
opus numbers are a conscious choice the three Electoral Sonatas by the thirteen-year-old boy
WoO 47 are not included in the New Testament. These are available from Henle in a separate
Urtext edition (HN 255). G. Henle Publishers also offers every Beethoven sonata as a standalone
Urtext edition (in print or in the app). The features of the Beethoven piano sonatas in Henle
Urtext editions at a glance: -a scholarly critical Urtext edition on the basis of all
available sources always kept up-to-date -optimisations of the musical score as a result of
continuous usage in musical practice -all important information about musical passages included
in footnotes on the same page -notational settings of unmatched beauty and accuracy thanks to
traditional musical hand-engraving -fingering suggestions by Conrad Hansen (alternatives in the
app) -available in two collected volumes with fingerings paperbound or clothbound -available
without fingerings paperbound -each sonata also available separately (in print and in the app)
In order to satisfy the increasing need for more heavily annotated Urtext editions but also in
order to document the eminent Beethoven knowledge of one of the greatest living pianists of our
age Murray Perahia G. Henle Publishers has for some time now been gradually publishing the
complete Beethoven sonatas in a parallel Urtext edition the Perahia Edition.
