Chopin's 2nd sonata and his Piano Trio are the pieces I'm working on for the Juilliard evening class I'm taking. So instead of relying on IMSLP I actually mailed-ordered a decent edition. The National Edition, edited by Jan Ekier, apparently is endorsed by the Chopin Piano Competition so it's gotta be the best. I find it kind of cute the publisher Theodore Presser Company also publishes the Pederewski editions, arguably the best edition outside of this National Edition.
So the sonatas and the trio arrived in the mail today. Definitely interesting to see what kind of work the editors did to arrive at "urtext" edition, with extensive performance and source notes.
There are keys differences between the IMSLP and this National Edition. I'll list a couple--they happen to both come in the very first measure of the pieces.
2nd sonata 1st movement, measure 1:
The IMSLP version (edited by Klindworth) has p as the dynamic marking.
The urtext has an f.
Comment: Good to know--all the recordings I heard on youtube basically play somewhere between an mf and and f. It does make more musical sense that way.
Piano Trio 1st movement, measure 1-2:
The IMSLP version (edited by Kistner) has staccato over the chords in quarter notes.
The urtext does not have the staccatos.
Comment: Again, good to know. Both make musical sense, I suppose. Emmanuel Ax actually plays them staccato (except for the last note) in his recording with Yo-Yo Ma and Pamela Frank, so I've been puzzled what to do there. Legato won't feel as lively, but we'll find out how it sounds when I actually play them in an ensemble.
My point is that it just puts you on more solid footing when you have an urtext version that you trust. There are enough things to worry about when you're performing, so the last thing you need is to wonder if whether you can trust your score that you're learning the notes from.
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