From: tait@cs.columbia.edu (Carl Tait)
Subject: Re: Schirmer, Chopin, Mikuli, and Horowitz...
Organization: Columbia University Department of Computer Science
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 06:47:25 GMT

In article <104607@bu.edu> spacefox@acs.bu.edu (Godfrey Degamo) writes:
>
>     Anyways, after buying Chopin Nocturnes For the Piano, Joseffy Edition
>from the Schirmer's Library of Musical Classics (L. 30), I discovered,
>looking at the back of the book, that there is a Mikuli and Joseffy
>Editions of Chopin's works.  I suppose they are arranged differently,
>but by how much?  And does it really make a significant difference?

No Chopin edition published by Schirmer is trustworthy.  Both Mikuli
and Joseffy take liberties with the text that make them useful only
as secondary sources, not primary editions for study.  Mikuli can
be worthwhile for comparison, since he studied with Chopin -- but
simply by looking at his edition, there's no way to tell where Chopin
ends and Mikuli begins.

The two most respected editions today are Henle and the ever-
controversial Paderewski.  Henle follows the original manuscripts
and first editions as religiously as possible, though it sometimes
uses highly questionable variants as the primary text.  I prefer
Paderewski, who doesn't follow the original sources quite as 
slavishly, but who provides copious notes detailing the conflicts
and corrections in the sources.

Dover now reprints most of the Paderewski edition in multiple
inexpensive volumes.  But for some reason, they chose Mikuli instead
of Paderewski for the Mazurkas -- why??

>      I have Vladimir Horowitz, The Last Recording a Sony Classical CD.
>I am curious as about his performance of Chopin's Nocturne Op. 62, No. 1

An appealing performance, but not a great one, IMO.

>In particular, I am curious about 2 measures.  It's location
>is 2 measures over from the last measure containing a trill.  (Trill is
>on F#)

Measures 77 and 78, right?  (Yet another disadvantage of Schirmer is
the lack of measure numbers.)

>Anyways, the measure in question is the 2 measures where the only
>the right hand plays, according to my Mikuli edition.
>      It seems to me, that Horowitz performance of these two measures sounds
>much thicker than what I can do (ofcourse, I'm no Horowitz!)  How does he
>accomplish this?

Well, there are two *voices* going, though they're both in the right hand.
Horowitz makes a clear distinction between the voices (he may have even
used both hands to play this), and uses the pedal liberally, both of which
create the illusion of a lot going on.

>I know that Horowitz had a habit of modifying compositions.  Is it
>so in this case? 

Not here, but in many other places in the piece.  There are several
doubled octaves, reinforced chords, and a curious B-sharp (not B-natural)
as the fourth left-hand eighth-note in measure 13.  In addition, the
melody is modified in measures 20 and 54 (at least!).

>Well, sorry if this is a boring trivial question not worth your time or
>net-space.

Don't worry; I had fun answering it.

(Incidentally, there is an absolutely exquisite recording of this
Nocturne made by none other than Vladimir Ashkenazy in 1965.  It
was coupled with Ravel's Gaspard and other pieces on London CS 6472.
Check those used record stores -- you won't find a performance like
this on Ashkenazy's recent CDs!)

Carl Tait