Sheet Music acquisitions (July 2024)

I was in Paris yesterday so had the chance to go to two sheet music shops. This is dangerous. But I got a couple of things I was looking for. So, I have the Dvorak Humoresques beside me, the Henle edition. I’ve wanted to pick these up after coming across a really nice Barenboim recording and I have this delusion I’ll have time to learn them.

I also picked up Liszt’s second piano concerto – that was something I had failed to find a few months ago, and it was never urgent, per se…I have some more Liszt to report but the last thing I got in that show was Rhapsody in Blue, which I want to do some bits of. Gershwin music is a bit odd, probably because most of it isn’t out of copyright yet so I have an Alfred edition which was apparently restored to his original manuscript. This is that fetish for “Urtext” which I think is fine for music that is two hundred years old, more recently though…it depends….a bit.

From Ariosa, a new to me shop, we have Liszt Consolations, the Budapest edition, Africa by Camille Saint Saens, and his 4th piano concerto. For Africa, it’s the Durand edition (because it was the only one there), and for the 4th concerto, it was the Henle edition, because it was 10 euro less expensive than the Durand edition. The other two books I bought was the Chopin collection of Mazurkas and Liszt transcriptions of Beethoven Symphonies 6-9. The latter is a Dover edition which seems to be easier to get than the Budapest edition.

Strictly speaking I am already learning Liszt Consolation 2 so there is some work there. From the rest, I don’t intend to work too hard any any of them in the short term except possibly the second movement of the Beethoven Symphony no 7.