I am not really able to remember my very first encounter with a Bärenreiter edition because I basically feel that I have lived with them forever. It must have been Mozart, Beethoven or Czech music but most probably it was Mozart. Later on, already on the path to a professional conducting career, Bärenreiter editions were definitely those I worked with the most, and I guess especially the works of Dvořák were the main works there. The fact that Bärenreiter took over the former state publishing house in Czechoslovakia and worked on the upgrade of its musical materials meant that almost every piece of that repertoire I conducted came from a Bärenreiter edition. Later I also preferred conducting Beethoven from the Bärenreiter editions. Especially in the case of the Urtext editions where the publishing house researches everything from scratch and where the edition is not just simply based on an originally existing reprint (which however is still of value), the Bärenreiter scores are indispensable today, and I am very grateful for their quality. My latest encounter with Bärenreiter’s beautiful scores was studying (and conducting, in the second case) Janáček’s Osud (Fate) and the Glagolitic Mass in the edition prepared by Jiří Zahrádka. 

Jakub Hrůša
Conductor

Chief Conductor of the Bamberger Symphoniker
Principal Guest Conductor of the Czech Philharmonic
Music Director Designate of the Royal Opera House