If you know someone going to China...

...or are going yourself, one of the best bargains to be had is the Mandarin edition of the Bärenreiter Urtext Beethoven Symphonies, edited by Jonathan Del Mar.

Here's the cover of the 9th Symphony:

These are fully authentic publications, with all frontis matter and footnotes translated to Mandarin. Below, the instrumentation list and catalog of sources used to by the editor:

and the first page of the score:

The plates are identical to the European edition; the covers and bindings are of similar quality to the European counterpart. The paper is actually a bit heavier and smoother (to my fingers, at least).

You don't necessarily need to find a music specialty store to find these - I found them at one of the large bookstores in Shanghai.

Why would you want to make your luggage significantly heavier for the return trip?

The cost of the full score of the 9th Symphony via sheetmusicplus.com is $158.95.

The cost of the Chinese edition is.....



RMB 78, which equals $11.42 as of this writing.

You can bring home the entire set of 9 full scores for something less than $50! Leaves plenty of money to buy tea, fans and mooncakes for the person who fed your cat and watered your plants while you were traveling.

Addendum to last post....

... and eating, can't forget that. Have fallen way off the wagon into the stagnant sewage filled ditch when it comes to sweets this week. Found in the Whole Foods shopping bag tonight while putting away groceries: carrot cake, dried apples, Darrell Lea Australia liquorice (addicted!), a dark chocolate bar, as well as a chestnut pastry bought after work at Cafe Zaiya and forgotten. Similarly, the inspiration of speculating about some programming ideas put me on an online score shopping binge. En route: the Dover Daphnis Suites (is there any difference from the score of the full ballet? I guess I'll find out...) , Adams' Violin Concerto, Rach Paganini Rhapsody (somehow the ex-library hardbound pocket score with yellowing pages bought ~20 years ago at a used bookstore doesn't cut it anymore), large Breitkopf Schubert Unfinished (apparently got an older copy, price has gone up), the Dover complete Nutcracker, and finally, a rather extravagant item that I'll write about once it arrives.... 

Time to switch to Ramen noodles in advance of the bills showing up!

Why, oh why doesn't Breitkopf and Härtel have a US distributor?!

You'll find as this blog goes on that I'm all about showin' the love to Breitkopf and Härtel . I start jonesing for each new Orchestra Urtext score from the time they announce them; I can usually hold off buying until they print the study score size (lag time of a year or more) but I've let myself be lured into buying a few in full size, such as the Beethoven Leonore #3 that came out last year. The Juilliard Bookstore carries a few of the Breitkopf urtext study scores (the Schumann Symphonies, Sibelius 2nd, some of the Beethoven Symphonies); Theodore Front seems to carry a decent stock and is generally a good shop to check out online. But for this impatient, instant-gratification oriented boy, it's very frustrating to have to order online from B&H and wait for shipment from Germany (which ain't cheap) if one of those shops doesn't happen to have music in stock. So if anyone out there has the combination of adequate capital and inadequate business sense to enter the print music distribution business, have at it!

Eulenburg Audio + Score series -- some great critical/urtext editions for cheap!

When I saw that Eulenburg/Schott had begun publishing a 50 volume, glossy-covered, study (not pocket) score-sized editions of standard orchestral rep with companion CDs inside the back cover, I thought it was a clever way to repackage their existing library in a more marketable form but, with my usual snobby reflexes was doubtful I'd want to be seen with a score that came packaged with its own CD.  I was pleasantly surprised to discover that, while many of the volumes preserved the comfortably familiar 10%-too-much-ink-on-the-plate orthography of the old school pocket scores, there are a number that present very affordable and readable reproductions of the best available urtext/critical editions published by Schott and Breitkopf and Härtel.

Particularly noteworthy:

Dvorak Symphony No. 8 in the new (2004) edition by Klaus Döge that incorporates tempo markings and other information from Dvorak's conducting score that was also used as an engraver's copy. I unfortunately didn't discover this until after I'd spent $70+ on the full size score (the consolation being that the full score has the detailed critical report at the end)

Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6 in Thomas Kohlhase's 1993 edition from the new collected works published by Schott (it doesn't appear that this particular collected works has made any progress past this volume and an album of piano pieces, unfortunately).

Other volumes, such as Dvorak Symphony No. 9 appear to have had corrections applied to the old plates; the score of Mozart Symphony No. 35 (Haffner) is newly engraved, though the critical provenance is unclear.

Overall, the series is worth checking out. And if you happen to make it to a good book or record shop in China, you'll find that this series and a fair number of the Eulenburg pocket score are available for very low prices -- 38 RMB for the Dvorak 8, which is around $6 US.

Update, 9/5/09: Had a chance to look at a few volumes from this series at the Juilliard Bookstore. A large number are re-engraved and list Richard Clarke (presumably not the counter-terrorism expert) as editor but offer no other provenance or list of sources, etc. Probably not a bad alternative to Dover reprints, given their improved readability and free CD, but not necessarily any more reliable than the older Eulenburgs.