To mark the 150th anniversary of Debussy’s birth in 2012, we are proud to present a tribute to his piano solo works in three volumes, available as a paperbound or a clothbound edition. As a publishing house whose main focus is on piano music, it was important for us to give a special place to the works of Claude Debussy, the innovator of piano style. Thus since the early 1980s we have steadily been publishing single editions of all of Debussy’s important works for the piano.
Our editor Ernst-Günter Heinemann has worked closely with the French Debussy scholar François Lesure to present Debussy’s elaborate music in high quality Urtext editions. Beginning with the "Danse bohémienne" from 1880, all of the single works from our catalogue have been drawn together in these three volumes, arranged according to their date of composition. And as a little "encore" we have included the Prélude to the cantata "La Damoiselle élue" in volume I.
Each of the three volumes contains true highlights for the piano. But the short and lesser known works also offer a glimpse at the modern classical composer Debussy from a different angle. In addition each volume contains a helpful glossary with all of Debussy’s often very vivid performance instructions translated into English and German.
G. Henle Publishers stands for Urtext sheet music of the highest quality. The Urtext editions not only provide the undistorted and authoritative musical text but are also aesthetically pleasing, optimised for practical use and extremely durable. And then there is the strong, distinctive blue profile: (almost) all of the Urtext editions are bound in the characteristic blue cardboard.
Musicians trust Henle's blue Urtext editions because they:
- provide an undistorted, reliable and authoritative musical text
- offer superb, aesthetically appealing music engraving
- are optimised for practical use (page turns, fingerings)
- are of high quality and durable (cover, paper, binding)
- contain a short preface that introduces the work (particularly useful for AMEB exams) in German, English and French, as well as explanatory footnotes for particularly interesting passages in the score
- contain a description of the sources, an evaluation of the sources, readings and a documentation of the corrections made (= "Critical Report") in German and English, and often also in French
