Both of these editions of extra-canonical Beethoven piano concertos can be considered, in different senses of the word, reconstructions. Jon Ceander Mitchell has produced a new performing edition of a work from Beethoven's Bonn period that survives only in a manuscript copy of the solo part with corrections in Beethoven's hand; the new edition offers significant improvements over the previous version produced by Willi Hess nearly 60 years ago.
Jonathan Del Mar's edition of the piano version of op. 61 is identical to that of the much more familiar violin version in all but the solo part. Thus, it draws on a wide range of sources that do not exist for WoO4. The solo piano part, though, is likewise based on limited source material mostly not in the composer's hand. Due to the differing conditions of the sources, the two editors have approached their tasks from seemingly opposite directions.
Mitchell had arguably the harder challenge, since he had to recreate the entire orchestral score from hints given in the manuscript. Like most solo parts of late-eighteenth-century keyboard concertos, this one includes reductions of the orchestral ritornellos with some instrumental cues, making it appropriate for a performer who also plays continuo and directs. (As was also typical for the time, the part is labeled ‘Cembalo’, but the highly pianistic writing makes it unlikely that it would have been performed on any other instrument.) Like Hess, Mitchell has assumed the use of the four standard string parts, plus the flutes and horns indicated by the manuscript cues. He has also added parts for two bassoons, but has been more circumspect than Hess about composing new material, something that Hess did freely in his flute parts and in the altered ending of the third movement. By contrast, Mitchell has tried to make sure that ‘all accompanying lines follow the contour of the piano's lines, without calling attention to themselves’ (Introduction, p. viii). When he adds material, as at mm. 115 ff. in the first movement, it is derived from thematic elements presented elsewhere, and seems to fit the context. One issue he does not address, but which is treated by Del Mar in his Critical Commentary (pp. 31 ff.), is whether the string parts should be reduced during the piano solos, as they frequently were by Mozart and others.
Though published in 2010, Mitchell's edition has clearly been in existence for nearly a decade, since it was recorded for Centaur records in 2004, with Grigorios Zamparas as soloist and Mitchell conducting the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic Orchestra, and was performed publicly in Brookline, Massachusetts later that year (Introduction, p. x). These performances were presumably made using privately produced parts, and the present edition would be considerably enhanced through the publication of those parts in A-R's Special Publications series. As it stands, its primary significance is that it offers a carefully edited score that is highly serviceable for study purposes, with an extensive critical report at the end. Short appendices provide the text of passages that were deleted by Beethoven from all three movements in the manuscript, and of two brief sketches. The orchestral parts added by Mitchell are set off in smaller notes, and the rationale for them is explained briefly in the introduction and at greater length in the critical report. Bowings are carefully indicated in the string parts.
The lack of any printed cadenzas or lead-ins, though, shows again that this is an edition for study and not for performance. In addition to the large cadenzas that are obviously called for toward the ends of the first and second movements, there are numerous places where fermatas in the solo part clearly allow for spontaneous improvisation. While Mitchell acknowledges these places, and suggests that the deleted material in one of the appendices be used at one such place in the last movement, he provides little other help in this regard to the would-be soloist.
One of the most interesting aspects of the Del Mar edition of op. 61, by contrast, is the inclusion of Beethoven's cadenzas for the first and second movements (the former most unusual for its use of solo timpani) and of a lead-in for the third movement. Since the possibility that the piano part in the concerto is the work of an arranger has never been conclusively ruled out, the fact that the cadenzas and lead-in survive in Beethoven's hand is particularly significant. Del Mar even suggests that, ‘due to their very considerable scale and originality … these cadenzas may now amount to no less than the main impulse for a performance of the piece at all’ (Preface to Score, p. v).
Del Mar's procedure has been to expand in various ways on his already-established text of the violin concerto. The orchestral score is identical except for the inclusion of the piano in place of the violin. There is also a separate volume with a piano reduction of the orchestral part and, more intriguingly, one with the original version of the piano part, which, like that of WoO 4, includes orchestral reductions and instrumental cues during the ritornellos. ‘Clearly’, Del Mar states in the Critical Commentary, ‘the soloist was expected to … take a very much more central role in the command of the performance than merely that of virtuoso soloist’ (p. 31). However, ‘the numerous Tutti…Solo indications in all the sources for Beethoven's concertos are a subject that has hardly yet been investigated at all thoroughly’ (ibid).
Del Mar acknowledges that this question is complicated by the fact that score publications of this and other Beethoven concertos did not appear until the later nineteenth century, by which time performance traditions had changed significantly. His conclusion is that in the early Beethoven concertos (and hence, presumably, in WoO4 as well), the strings would have been reduced during the solo passages, while in the later concertos (certainly including op. 61), these cues, which occur mainly in the first violin parts, were meant to designate differing styles of performance rather than changes in the actual number of players. This would certainly apply to the opening of the work, which in Del Mar's score begins with the timpani part carefully marked ‘Solo’, as in the first edition (which he nevertheless describes on p. 25 of the Critical Commentary as ‘perhaps the most problematic of the sources for op. 61’), while the ‘Tutti’ designation only appears at measure 10. (The Henle edition follows the autograph in placing it at the top of the score in m. 1.) Del Mar then parenthetically repeats the ‘Tutti’ designation at the parallel passage at m. 110. Here and elsewhere, as is the case with his editions of the Beethoven symphonies, Del Mar has drawn carefully on all the available sources and has sometimes made what could be considered subjective editorial decisions. The result is a score that is authoritative, useful and informative for scholars and performers alike.
When it comes to this piano version of op. 61, though, Del Mar's procedure raises terminological questions that cannot be evaded, since the entire edition comes with the Bärenreiter Urtext imprimatur. No manuscript of the work exists, either in Beethoven's hand or in anyone else's, in which the piano part alone appears with a full score; the principal source for the part is the Stichvorlage by Joseph Klumpar, which contains both the violin and piano versions. No completed text of the piano part exists in Beethoven's hand, and the tutti passages in that part may have been edited by Beethoven but were most likely done primarily by somebody else (Critical Commentary, p. 35). The keyboard reduction of the orchestral parts was made by Yuriko Murakami for this edition.
In what sense, then, can the score, the solo part, or the piano part with keyboard reduction be accurately described as an Urtext? Might it not make sense to follow the more modest claim made by A-R, which says of all volumes in the Recent Researches series that ‘the content is chosen for its high quality and historical importance and is edited according to the scholarly standards that govern the making of all reliable editions’ – and might that not be a more generous description of what Del Mar's painstaking labors have achieved?
