Customer Reviews

Schubert: New Piano Transcriptions of Famous Masterworks

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Anyone who spends 5 minutes with this book can see that it is indispenseable. Every song is here, arranged alphabetically. Before borrowing the book from a library, I had the groundless fear that, while listening to, say, Winterreise, I would have to flip back and forth between the dispersed songs (and wear out the pause button on my player). But of course, the songs in each cycle are together, with simply the name of the cycle alphabetized.

Further on this stimulating subject, I will mention the one thing about this book that irks me. In contrast to the practice in English books, all of the songs beginning with "Der" ("The") are listed together, making a sort of subset of such songs. The same for "Die" and "Das". Since I don't know which of these three words should come before "Unterscheidung," for example, I would have to look up perhaps three places in order to find the song. Unless, of course, I had greater knowledge of German or could recall or check for the correct word (which happens to be "Die"). This is nitpicking, though, and the book sports an index of first lines. Lovely volume.

If it weren't so blasted difficult to purchase! The "beware" above has nothing to do with the book itself, but rather with this amazon page. If you click on "paperback" edition (the hardcover is currently not available), you are transported to a completely different book! I nearly purchased the other book (ISBN 0634026062) through the "staying up much too late" mists. This warning will become irrelevant soon, one hopes.

If you love Lieder, Schubert, or have a Godardian fascination with translation, grab this one (once you've found a way)!