Insightful RestorationThe editor of this new edition for Bärenreiter, David Friddle, apparently found the Schuberth edition unreliable, containing, as Liszt acknowledged, a fair number of inaccuracies which even he failed to adjust. These led Friddle back to the only fair copy in the Goethe-Schiller Archiv in Weimar, and his impressive edition is, as he admits, ‘a good faith attempt to restore the several layers of expression that were inadvertently peeled away from Liszt’s initial outpouring…’
Friddle has provided a useful extended essay as a Preface, drawing on the authoritative insights on 19th-century performance practice of Riemann, Grove and the more recent
Classical & Romantic Performing Practice by Clive Brown. Liszt’s slurs in the vocal parts are articulation. It is very handsomely produced; the Pater noster is even printed with Liszt’s alternative single statement (…deliver us…). But we are given a note on the International Phonetic Alphabet employed throughout, distinguishing German from English-speaking Latin, and a glossary of Liszt’s more unusual directives.
—Choir & Organ, September 2007