My very first encounter with Bärenreiter editions occurred in my early teenage years. As I was working through the marvellous red Mozart Editions, I was seized by how different his quartets and his duos for violin and viola were from what I had previously played or heard so far. 

I was split between shock and excitement, as it was so thrilling to finally reach so close to the composer’s original work and not exclusively trying to reproduce that which the great performers of past generations have done with the piece.

Young generations of musicians must obviously benefit from the legacy brought by the greatest musicologists through intellectually honest and competent research. Nevertheless, this pursuit of the accuracy of the score was rather revolutionary for the eighties. 

Since the very beginning of our career in 1991 and throughout, Bärenreiter scores have been a guide and a companion, with which we have shared endless hours of hard work, stern discussions but on top of all, magical discoveries. 

Our adventure started with Mozart and Schubert, but we are so delighted that your publications have been diversifying and growing so much. We have been recently so excited to receive Beethoven’s last quartets.

It is truly difficult to summarise forty wonderful years of collaboration with your edition. To conclude (this love letter), I wish to quote our dear professor Siegmund Nissel, second violin of the Amadeus Quartet, teaching us a Mozart quartet:

“You have the chance to have the true text (score is better), chance that we didn’t have, so play what Mozart wanted, even if it’s different from what we played with the information we had.”

Marc Danel for Quatuor Danel:

Marc Danel, Violin
Gilles Millet, Violin
Vlad Bogdanas, Viola
Yovan Markovitch, Cello