Music for string piano

The "Camphuysen" manuscript, an album by an anonymous Dutch dilettante from around 1650, was already edited in 1961 by the recently deceased Alan Curtis, but at that time without the nine intavolations of Genevan psalms, which are now included here. Not all of the pieces are really productive: seven of the twelve movements are simple harmonizations whose upper parts, however, are richly provided with trills and mordents, which is interesting in terms of performance practice. In this respect, they are welcome additions to the literature surrounding the Genevan Psalter. Musically, however, the most valuable is the secular addition, an anonymous three-verse arrangement of the English melody Daphne.

The four partitas by Georg Muffat, a first edition based on a manuscript (SA 4581) which is now back in Berlin, are a real gain for the repertoire. Recently, the keyboard works of this composer, who is so important for the performance practice of baroque ensemble music, have increasingly come to the fore. Compared to the partitas edited in 2003/04 from a Viennese manuscript (Bärenreiter BA 8419 and 8460), the music here is more pleasant and easier to read. The Partita in F major appears in both editions; however - as the editor inaccurately refers to - only five dances are shared, and both versions also contain three additional movements each as unique pieces.

How are publishers supposed to earn money after completing the complete editions of popular composers? Bärenreiter-Verlag is reissuing individual works from the New Bach Edition, albeit supplemented by fingerings by renowned performers. The German pianist Ragna Schirmer has chosen the Goldberg Variations to this task. Her entries largely guarantee a pianistically secure legato. It is strange that fingerings are sometimes missing where they are urgently needed. The assignments of the middle voices to one of the two systems by means of square brackets are mostly helpful. However, the publisher could have improved readability in these places if the notes had also been transferred to the appropriate system instead of just adopting the old edition. More valuable are Schirmer's "sopra" notes to indicate the mutual position of the intersecting and interlocking playing hands on the one-manual piano. Ultimately, however, I am surprised that even today a Bach work, harpsichordistic like no other, is published without commentary as a work for modern piano.

Neuf psaumes pour instruments à clavier suivis d'une page profane Daphne (après 1652), Extraits du Recueil de Camphuysen, CD 3099, Fr. 18.00, Editions Cantate Domino, Fleurier

Georg Muffat, Four Partitas for Harpsichord (D-Bsa SA 4581), first edition of the four unpublished partitas from the archive of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin by Markus Eberhardt, EW 796, € 17.50, Edition Walhall, Magdeburg

Johann Sebastian Bach, Goldberg Variations, Fourth Part of the Clavier-Übung BWV 988, Urtext edited by Christoph Wolff, BA 10848, € 10.95, Bärenreiter, Kassel