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Hello,

I just uploaded the Novello engraving of Cui's Op. 22.

At the work page:
http://imslp.org/wiki/4_Pieces_for_Pian ... ntonovich)
there are now two editions of this work.

I changed the information for the Breitkopf edition that had already been uploaded long before. It seems unlikely that the Breitkopf edition is a reprint of the original Bessel edition (the number of pages differs by 2, and the style of engraving doesn't seem to be like Bessel). A note on the first page of music says that Breitkopf has Bessel's permission.

I haven't seen the Bessel edition myself, so I can't be absolutely positive. The Breitkopf includes an ossia passage, fingerings, and pedal markings that are lacking in the Novello edition.

Please take a look at this Breitkopf upload again to see whether I'm right or just bonkers.

Thanks!

There's no way that edition was engraved in 1981. It's true the engraving is unlike any of Bessel's work, which has more of a French appearance. We can also rule out Novello, which is characterized by the unusual bass clefs. It looks like the product of C.G. Röder's enormous music factory sometime in the late 19th century. I know that the western agents (Rahter, Bote & Bock, etc.) of Russian publishers would sometimes re-engrave selected items. I don't know who Bessel's agent was at the time, but that would be one possibility.

By 1981, all but the very high-end engraving was being done in Korea - where a stamp plus pen-and-ink with drafting templates method was employed. Breitkopf certainly reprinted an older publication for this, even if the editor made some amendments. Any editorial changes would have to be fairly minor since manually changing an already-engraved piece of music in any significant way would be more expensive than having it done new. (This remains true even in today's world of Photoshop, etc.) Is it possible that Belaieff, Gutheil or Jurgenson first published these? In contrast to Bessel, most of the Belaieff and Gutheil's engraving was done at Röder's monster facility in Leipzig. Jurgenson's was done in Moscow, but it looks closer in style to the German production than Bessel's does.

(The plot thickens) OK, the Bessel is listed as 25 pages in the OCLC record, with plate numbers 1590-1593. Bessel was definitely the original publisher. The Breitkopf we have is 27 pages (24 music). The Bessel is also listed as having 23 pages of actual music. Bessel apparently issued the Nocturne separately much later, plate 4423, 7 pages (probably 6 of music). Did Cui revise the Nocturne - or the entire set - sometime around 1900? I think it's most likely a Bessel score of some sort was reprinted here unless the scenario given above transpired, which is not impossible but somewhat unlikely.