Description
Chopin was a perpetual reviser, sometimes almost obsessively so. He was quite capable of sending radically differing versions of the same piece (even on the same day, in the case of one of the Nocturnes), to his various publishers. This has created a minefield for all subsequent editors of his music, and there has been a tendency to fall into the trap of mixing elements from the various sources.
The unique attribute of the new Peters Edition is that it follows scrupulously a ‘single best source’ for each piece, so that the piece is presented exactly as Chopin would have known it at a particular juncture. Sometimes, especially for the Nocturnes and Mazurkas, the result is likely to be surprising, perhaps even unsettling, but this edition will in fact bring us closer than ever before to the real essence of Chopin’s music.
