TECLA - Piano

This edition presents the 32 piano sonatas of Beethoven in facsimiles of the earliest known editions, from the fine copies that are in the Austrian National Library, with their kind cooperation.

My aim in this edition is to provide pianists with these facsimiles in order that they can play directly from them. These present facsimiles are absolutely usable by players, and actually they are a delight to play from. These editions come directly from Beethoven, in that they are the versions that come directly from the manuscripts which Beethoven sent to his publishers. You can perfectly well say that these facsimiles are, as it were, the 32 piano sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven edited by Ludwig van Beethoven.

But surely, I hear some people ask, you need a modern edition, don’t you? No, indeed you do not. Beethoven’s early engravers did marvellous work, the notation gives no problems to players of today, the edition is valid because it comes straight from what Beethoven sent to his publishers, and you know when you use a facsimile that you are not going to come across the changes and compromises that a modern editor must sometimes make.

These facsimiles are “best-text”, that is to say that they are versions that come from only one source, in this case the first known printed edition, rather than from readings from various sources. Best-text is the type of edition that is most favoured by modern editing theory because it represents a version which did actually exist at one moment of time, whereas editions which mix readings from various sources, as modern editions often do, present the player with versions that by definition never existed at any one moment of time.

Some modern editions make changes that have no evident reason for having been made. The danger of those unreasoned changes is avoided if you use these present facsimiles.

Don’t believe me? Try the first page of the Moonlight Sonata (op. 27 no. 2) which is available FREE here. Or purchase the whole Moonlight Sonata at a very low price either TECLA 1029 printed or TECLA X 10331 PDF.

By the way, the 32 piano sonatas come in a slipcase which contains each sonata printed separately. The slipcase sometimes has slight defects, but the individual sonatas inside are immaculate.

Brian Jeffery

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