Recommended Sheet Music, Frédéric Chopin: Trois Nouvelles Études

The Complete Chopin: A New Critical Edition

Established as the most important ongoing scholarly edition of Chopin’s music, The Complete Chopin: A New Critical Edition from Edition Peters is indispensable for any discerning pianist. Under editor-in chief John Rink, some of the world’s leading Chopin editors bring their exceptional collective knowledge to permeate the project with unique authority, utilising the latest international scholarship. A beautifully presented performing text of each work based on a single principal source together with important variants prioritises the needs of practical pianists. A thorough critical commentary, and illuminating prefatory essays in English, French, and German are also included in each edition.

The Complete Chopin is based on two key premises. Firstly, there can be no definitive version of the works as variants form an integral part of Chopin’s music. Secondly, a permissive combination of readings from several sources (in effect producing a version of the music that never really existed) should be avoided. Therefore, the editors’ procedure is to identify a single source for each work, and to prepare an edition of that source (regarded as ‘best’ even if it cannot be definitive). Simultaneously, important variants from other authorised sources are reproduced either alongside or within the main music text, in footnotes, or in the Critical Commentary, therefore enabling scholarly comparisons and facilitating choice in performance. Multiple versions of whole works are presented when differences between the sources are so abundant or fundamental that they go beyond the category of ‘variant’.

Frédéric Chopin: Trois Nouvelles Études

The latest in Edition Peters The Complete Chopin, is Roy Howat’s new edition of Trois Nouvelles Études. Originally published in 1840 in the multi-composer Méthode des Méthodes, these etudes are Chopin’s least overtly virtuosic studies, but arguably the most quietly sophisticated of them all in terms of how they train the pianist’s sensitivity to sound, rhythm, and texture. After 180 years it seems remarkable that new details can still be found in these pieces, but Howat’s edition prints some for the first time; notably a number of melodic variants in the first etude and notes in the second etude that all previous editions bowdlerized. These authentic notes are sensitively restored and act as a pivot in the second etude’s structure, altering our perception of the music’s texture and voicing.

This edition also confirms some authentic fingering still unfamiliar to most pianists, such as whimsical thumb ‘hops’ down the black keys at the end of the third etude. In keeping with the editorial procedure of this series, the edition is based on a principal source, the manuscript Chopin carefully prepared for his friend Ignaz Moscheles. In addition, some changes that Chopin introduced after publication also feature here as variants, allowing pianists to choose options for performance in full awareness of where they come from. You can purchase the Trois Nouvelles Études, watch Edition Peters' promotional video, and browse other publications in The Complete Chopin series below.

More from The Complete Chopin – A New Critical Edition